AdaptNSW Forum 2025

The 2025 AdaptNSW Forum is an exploration of our entangled, complex and interdependent world, and to Other Ways of Knowing, Thinking, Feeling and Doing. To face climate risks, we need to shift from business-as-usual and lead with our humanity.  By embracing approaches that recognise how everything is interwoven, we can rethink our values, systems and actions to build a just and hopeful future.

Transformation begins not by turning away, but by engaging with the darkness. Only then can we create space for regeneration: grounded in care, guided by knowledge, and shaped by right relationship.

Expressions of Interest for presenting at the Forum open on Wednesday 18 June 2025 and close on Wednesday 16 July 2025.

With the overarching theme of Other Ways, the four Forum sub-themes are an invitation to explore the work being done to shift from the status quo to tackle the climate crisis: Other Ways of Knowing, Feeling, Thinking and Doing.

Knowing invites us to embrace multiple ways of making sense of the world, including through Traditional Ecological Knowledge and ancestral wisdom. These ways of knowing reconnect us to nature and ourselves, and explore what is possible when we embrace a wide range of knowledge systems and put them side by side, in dialogue, with mutual respect.

Thinking explores the latest innovations in adaptation science and encourages new ways of engaging with climate risk and opportunity. Through examining the systems that make up our complex world, we can continue to widen the circle of what is considered valuable and move beyond the status quo.

Feeling centres emotion, connection, and care as vital to climate action. It honours our deep ties to Country and each other, recognising that what we feel shapes what we care about, and how we choose to act.

Doing explores adaptation in practice, making change on the ground to transform the world and bring climate solutions to life. This includes through partnerships between science and traditional knowledge holders, tailored local responses, storytelling, play, gamification, and making. 

• Climate adaptation practitioners from all sectors including government, business and industry, education and community
• Decision makers, planners, resource managers in state and local government
• Anyone interested in learning from multi-disciplinary leaders in the climate adaptation field

• Cutting edge climate and adaptation science
• Connect with and be inspired by others; grow and deepen your networks
• Build your innovation and transformation skills in cross-sectoral workshops
• Practical tools and resources for incorporating climate adaptation measures into the strategic planning goals and objectives of your organisation