7 January 2025, Fenton House, London
What happened:
The workshop held on January 7th 2025, at Fenton House, a National Trust property in north London, demonstrated the Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) approach to managing future climate impacts. Key participants included Imogen Wood and senior colleagues from the National Trust, and Rosalind Cornforth and Celia Petty from the Walker Institute. The workshop addressed concerns arising from heritage at risk in the UK and beyond, and built on previous research linking national climate change storylines to context-specific impacts. The impact of concern in this workshop was that of increased heat on a unique collection of musical instruments.
The discussions highlighted the importance of using local knowledge to benchmark vulnerability and involved other heritage organisations including Historic England. The workshop emphasized the need for time-responsive, iterative policy planning to avoid lock-ins, identifying short-term (low-regret) actions alongside longer term options to reduce negative impacts. Early warning indicators were also discussed to determine when policy actions might become outdated.
Key challenges for adaptation decision-making were addressed, including uncertainty in climate, local socio-economic scenarios, the scale gap between global climate projections and local impacts, and the weak link between knowledge production and application. The workshop advocated for a decision-centric framework that starts from the adaptation goal, focuses on keeping options open, and involves multiple stakeholders in the decision-making process.
An overview of the Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) approach was presented followed by interactive sessions focusing on the challenges specific to Fenton House and its collections, along with possible adaptation pathways. Participant responses indicated that that the systematic approach to the selection of short-term actions consistent with long-term goals was constructive and useful, and helped address the problem of policy paralysis due to uncertainty.