Victorian business and industry play an important part in the Australian economy, producing almost one quarter of the nation's GDP.  Ensuring long-term economic sustainability requires that overall productivity is maintained and that key industry sectors continue to grow. Understanding how this can be achieved on a sector-by-sector basis, requires an appreciation of the changing threats and opportunities the economy is likely to face in a changing climate.

Key industry adaptation needs

Because adaptation is context specific, different business sectors have different needs. However, key needs common for most sectors as articulated by people interviewed prior to the roundtable were:

• Accessible and sector-specific adaptation information that is fit for task.
• Greater understanding of how to mainstream adaptation across organisations and knowledge of which process and methodologies are most suitable for this task.
• Coordination of networks to enable program development and knowledge exchange within and between organisations.
• Decision making and planning support to enable better preparedness to, and recovery from, events such as bushfires, floods and heatwaves.
• Appropriate finance and finance-related products to support businesses to prepare and recover from climate related events.
• Collaborative working relationships that span public, private, research sectors and community to build resilience.
• Governance, a clearer understanding of roles and responsibilities.
• Long-term policy is needed to support adaptation activities and the long-term investments needed to enable this.
• Greater understanding of possible future legal ramifications.
• Better understanding of opportunities particularly in relation to future and emerging markets.
• The need to be able to make the business case for adaptation a greater understanding is needed of the tangible (monetary) and intangible (non-monetary) to enable more complete valuation and understanding of the benefits associated with adaptation to support businesses cases