Understanding the difference between mitigation and adaptation

In this article, Matthew Belsey, Environmental Reporting and Data Manager at Culture for Climate Scotland, explains the difference between climate mitigation and climate adaptation, and highlights how both are needed for the Scottish cultural sector to flourish.

What are the two most important things the arts and culture sector must act upon to work towards a net-zero Scotland, and prepare for the climate of today and tomorrow? Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, referred to as climate change mitigation, and adaptation to the impacts of climate change.

Understanding these two distinct actions, and seeing where they intersect, is important so we can take the most impactful action, contributing to the Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP3) and Scotland’s urgent 2045 net-zero targets.

Mitigation

In our glossary, we define mitigation as ‘reducing the greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere in order to slow or stop global climate change.’ An action is mitigation if it directly results in a reduction of your carbon emissions.

Examples of mitigation actions

Some mitigation actions in the Scottish cultural sector as reported through our annual environmental reporting:

• Curious Seed’s director travelled to a conference in Spain by train in 2024-25 to limit emissions from staff travel. Travelling by train instead of flying reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 60%.
• In the summer of 2024, Cove Park received money from Local Energy Scotland to install 85 solar PV panels on its main building, along with 20 batteries and two air source heat pumps replacing the LPG boilers in accommodation units. This has the potential to avoid over 2 tonnes of carbon per year.
• In 2024-25, Vanishing Point built sets for its production of Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey locally in Japan and the UK, avoiding emissions from freight.

Adaptation

Adaptation Scotland defines adaptation as ‘a process of on-going adjustments in response to observed and projected climate change impacts.’ It’s about making changes to delivery or operations based on current or expected changes in weather or climate. Importantly, adaptation is not about replacing something like-for-like or fixing your building. It’s about changing the current approach, system or infrastructure to ensure it copes better with the risks created by the changing climate.

Resilience

The term ‘resilience’ is often used interchangeably with adaptation. However, there is a slight difference in their meaning. ‘Adaptation’ refers to specific actions taken to cope with the changing climate. According to the explainer article from the Grantham Research Institute, ‘What is the difference between climate change adaptation and resilience?’, resilience refers to the ‘capacity or ability to anticipate and cope with shocks, and to recover from their impacts’. Taking adaptation actions can help your organisation be more resilient.

Many organisations view adaptation through the lens of risk. Using your existing risk assessment process is an effective way to start working on adaptation.

Examples of adaptation actions

Below are a few actions from Scottish cultural organisations that have introduced adaptation measures based on risks to their operations, reported as part of our annual environmental reporting:

• Glasgow Women’s Library is seeking to alter a flat roof at the back of the building in a way that will make it weatherproof and avoid pooling, after establishing this as a risk from expected increased rainfall.
• Travelling Gallery ensures that there is flexibility in its travel dates for touring, in case of increasingly common weather-related disruption to roads or public transport infrastructure.
• Theatre Gu Leòr plans to implement a hot weather plan, which will include supplying water and ensuring ventilation.
• Stills plans to produce an alternative online/offsite delivery model to work around extreme weather if their building space has to close.

Why it is important to understand this distinction

We need to act to be ready for a climate-changed world. You may be asking, to what extent do we really need to know whether an action is mitigation or adaptation? Is it not just climate jargon that categorises the vital action that needs to take place? To an extent, yes. However, there are some significant reasons why this classification is important to understand:

• For the Scottish cultural sector to flourish in a climate-changed world, we must all mitigate our emissions and adapt to climate change. If we don’t mitigate our emissions, it is likely our energy and travel costs will continue to increase, we will lose public support and struggle to get core funding. If we don’t adapt to the changing climate, our buildings will become unusable, events and tours will be disrupted, and our finances, and staff and artist health and wellbeing, will be at risk. It is important to know which actions are mitigation and which are adaptation so that we give attention to both.
• Many organisations or artists will have received or hope to receive funding from Creative Scotland. When applying for this funding, . On the environmental sustainability section of the Creative Scotland website, they break this down into six further themes, two of which are climate mitigation and climate adaptation. Demonstrating your awareness of these themes and being able to highlight the actions you are taking for each of them is important to fulfilling this funding criteria. And it’s not just Creative Scotland that has environmental criteria. Local authorities and foundations are increasingly including mitigation and adaptation in funding applications.
• There are also specific pots of funding for climate action. Some of these are for mitigation (like the CARES funding) while others are for adaptation (like the now closed Creative Scotland and Scottish Futures Trust buildings adaptation fund). If you apply for a pot of funding with a project that isn’t within the detailed scope, you won’t receive the funding. Understanding whether a project is focused on mitigation or adaptation is vital to ensuring you submit a relevant project.

A common misconception

One misunderstanding we frequently see in our environmental reporting is the difference between ensuring buildings and operations are ready to function with a low environmental impact, and ensuring our buildings and operations are ready to function in the current and future climate. We see organisations reporting how they are installing renewable energy sources as an adaptation measure. In most cases this is not adaptation. While it is ‘adapting’ your organisation for a future of decentralised energy systems, it is not adapting your organisation to the changing climate or extreme weather. However, this can also be a matter of framing. If your organisation is based in a rural or remote area where a risk of the changing climate is power shortages or power infrastructure damage, then having your own, decentralised energy supply is a matter of adaptation.

Much of the confusion could come down to this framing. While insulation primarily reduces energy consumption, it can also improve building temperature regulation, which will be important as we experience more extreme temperatures. While purchasing or hiring an electric car can reduce emissions from travel, it can also provide an alternative travel option if public transport infrastructure is impacted by extreme weather. When we think in this way, it starts to become clear that the most impactful climate action will both mitigate emissions and adapt to the changing climate.

The best climate action will consider both

We need to mitigate emissions and adapt to flourish in the climate-changed future. With limited time and capacity, it makes sense to focus on actions that work towards both. These are often transformational actions that will change how we work, with a focus on doing things better for people and planet. As we start to transition to this way of thinking, it is an opportunity to create better practice and better institutions.

Some organisations are already thinking in this way as shown by these examples from our annual environmental reporting:

• In winter 2024, An Tobar and Mull Theatre closed its buildings and moved performances into community spaces across Mull with a peripatetic model. This reduced their energy emissions which were especially high in the winter period. It also meant audiences had less distance to travel during the winter months, when Mull experiences some of the harshest weather, adapting their delivery model to meet the needs of the changing climate.
• Wigtown Book Festival moved offices in 2025. They used this substantial change to ensure that the new office was low carbon/carbon neutral and adapted to the changing climate.
• Dundee Rep installed secondary glazing in its studios and offices which increased internal temperatures by 3˚C. In the Scottish Dance Theatre studio alone, this saved 15,300 kWh in 10 months. These windows also strengthen Dundee Rep’s resilience against stronger winds that are increasingly experienced due to the changing climate.

It is also worth recognising that some adaptation actions could cause an increase in emissions. For example, as temperatures increase, buildings may seek to install or increase air conditioning. This will cause an increase in energy consumption. Therefore, it is vital to decarbonise our electricity supply alongside the increased use of air conditioning, to make our spaces more usable in extreme heat while not increasing emissions.

Test your knowledge

To help you consolidate the knowledge from this article, we have a quiz where you’ll be asked to identify if an action is mitigation, adaptation, both or neither.

Take our ‘Mitigation or adaptation’ quick quiz now!

Beyond mitigation and adaptation

While this article has focused on mitigation and adaptation, we encourage you to think more holistically about your environmental action. What is the impact of your work on biodiversity? How are you contributing to the reduction of waste and a shift to the circular economy? And vitally, how can we ensure our actions are being delivered in a just way so that we don’t further exacerbate existing inequalities? Find the intersections in your action. Nothing exists in isolation and the actions we take now are contributing to our future systems. Let’s ensure we’re working towards a low-carbon, climate-adapted, just future where the Scottish cultural sector can flourish.

If you would like to discuss this further or have any questions, please get in touch at [email protected].