This is a story of a collaborative approach to enabling adaptation planning at a regional scale, between scientists, the leaders of a regional climate adaptation group, State Government and consultant facilitators

While each of the partners brought domain-specific expertise to the collaboration, a key aspect of their capacity to work together was the overlap in knowledge and skill between individuals, beyond the specialist knowledge associated with their professional roles.

While this broad skill/knowledge base held by each individual supported development of shared understanding between the collaborators, development and implementation of the adaptation planning approach involved a considerable further shift in thinking and practice for most of them.

Aligned goals and the opportunities the initiative provided to meet individual interests of the partners may have facilitated the commitment required for co-creation of the adaptation planning initiative.