Comprehensive, regional-scale climate impact assessments for primary industries - A framework for practitioners

Primary industries (biological production systems including agriculture, forestry and fisheries) are heavily dependent on climatic conditions for successful production and are directly exposed to future climate change. The cumulative effect of these potential impacts could place entire industries at risk. Climate impacts must therefore be assessed at regional scales to inform strategic adaptation decisions. Common approaches using biophysical process-based models are beneficial for detailed assessments, but they are constrained to a limited number of commodities for which well-calibrated models are available. For sector-wide and regional strategic planning, an approach is needed that enables multiple and diverse primary industry commodities to be assessed in a comparable and rigorous manner.We developed a novel approach to climate impact assessment that addresses significant challenges in understanding climate change impacts on primary industries at regional scales. This approach enables consistent and rapid assessment of multiple commodities. Key to its success was the application of three guiding principles—universality, flexibility, credibility—within a framework designed to ensure comparability across diverse commodity assessments. These principles and framework are general and can be applied in different jurisdictions and to different commodities, enabling better understanding among governments and decision-makers of collective climate risks faced by primary industries, and helping to identify priority areas for adaptation action. • This novel framework enables comparable climate impact assessment across diverse commodities. • Three principles—universality, flexibility, credibility—guide implementation. • Six-step framework is successfully applied to 37 commodities and biosecurity risks. • Framework identifies climate impacts and knowledge gaps systematically. • Bridges gap between detailed single-commodity modelling and broad, shallow assessments.