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Local authority climate action plan guidance

The Local Authority climate action plan guidance was created to help to develop the information and understanding required to develop an adaptation strategy for your local authority and the area under its jurisdiction.

The guidance consists of four key steps:

  1. Preparing the ground - as part of this stage, you will lay the groundwork for a successful adaptation process with stakeholders and within your organisation;
  2. Building the evidence base - this stage focuses on establishing the local authority context, developing a county/city-wide baseline emission inventory, assessing climate change risks and impacts and exploring the broader policy context of the climate action plan;
  3. Developing the framework of climate actions - this stage aims to help you in developing your current and future specific, measurable, assigned, realistic and time-bound
    actions within a framework of vision, mission, goals and objectives.
  4. Implementing and reporting - this stage aims to help you implement the climate actions and then follow up on them with reporting at organisational, local and national level.

Although these steps appear as sequential, it is important to remember that adaptation decision-making is an iterative process and moving backwards or forwards to revisit a step or anticipate a future step may be appropriate.

Local Authority Climate Action Plans were finalised in Q1 2024.

The previous Local Authority Adaptation Strategies required from each Local Authority under Ireland's Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act were published in 2019 and these were based on the Local Authority Adaptation Strategy Development Guidelines December 2018 (pdf).