This article is part of the NI Adaptation Policy Explained Series, if you would like to learn more about the publications discussed in this document, you should have a look at our other links:

• NI Climate Adaptation policy in 2026: Introduction to CCRA4-IA and NICCAP3
  

• What is the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) and Independent Assessment (CCRA-IA)? | Climate NI

• How can I use NICCAP3 and CCRA4-IA? | Climate NI

 

 

What is the Northern Ireland Climate Change Adaptation Programme?

The UK Climate Change Act 2008 requires all devolved nations to publish a national adaptation programme in response to the most recently published climate change risk assessment by the UK Government. Coordinated by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Northern Ireland’s Government Departments prepare an adaptation programme responding to the climate change risks and opportunities for Northern Ireland, called the Northern Ireland Climate Change Adaptation Programme (or NICCAP for short).

NICCAPs are developed in 5-year cycles, with the most recent – NICCAP3, published in March 2026 – relating to the risks set out in the third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment in 2022. The next national adaptation programme, NICCAP4, is due to be published in 2029. NICCAP4 will be in response to the UK Government’s Fourth Climate Change Risk Assessment, which will be published in January 2027 (not the independent advice published in May of 2026 which we cover elsewhere in this series

If you would like to learn more about Climate Policy in Northern Ireland, Climate NI continually updates a Climate Policy Timeline on our website so you can see how mitigation and adaptation policy has developed over time.

 

What is NICCAP3?

NICCAP3 refers to the third iteration of Northern Ireland’s third Climate Change Adaptation Programme, published on 19^th March 2026 and covering the period up to 2029. While all devolved nations publish their own adaptation programme, Northern Ireland is notable as the only part of the UK which also includes a range of external stakeholders from local government and civil society. Conducted in collaboration with Climate NI alongside a host of other partners, this additional engagement has been commended by the CCC and better reflects the ‘whole-of-society’ approach required to address the far-reaching impacts of climate change.

 

How is NICCAP3 Structured?

Excluding forewords, summaries and appendices, NICCAP3 has 18 chapters, broken up into seven ‘parts’ comprised of thematic chapters.

• Part 1: Introduction
• Parts 2-6: Themed chapters (see table below)
• Part 7: Monitoring and evaluation

Though it has always been included in preceding NICCAPs, for the first time, an Adaptation Delivery Plan (ADP) has also been included as an Annex. It lays out in more detail the full list of actions, including how they respond to the risk identified in the third Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3).

 

 

Part 1: Introduction

Chapter 1 begins by setting out the strategic foundations on which NICCAP3 is built. Through key agreements and strategies issued by the Northern Ireland Government (e.g. New Decade, New Approach and the Green Growth Strategy), as well as key developments in climate change adaptation action (including Climate NI’s own work with the Local Government Climate Action Network, among others), this chapter sets the scene for climate change adaptation action in Northern Ireland.

The Vision for the NICCAP underpins all the work that follows in the document, and is as follows:

Chapter 2 provides a short history of the legal basis underpinning the NICCAP, including the UK Climate Change Act 2008, as well as a brief summary of the CCC and Met Office reports on the climatic changes NICCAP aims to address. Chapter 3 closes out the introductory Part 1 of NICCAP3 and addresses the development of NICCAP3 both as a continuation upon the work of the previous Programmes, as well as important changes between this publication and its predecessor.

 

Parts 2-6: Themed Chapters

For the themed chapters, NICCAP3 structures the different types of risks and opportunities according to the CCC’s Adaptation Monitoring Framework. The CCC is required to assess future NICCAPs within three years of publication (as per Section 48 of the Climate Change Act 2008), accordingly, this Framework is used to aid in more efficient monitoring of adaptation progress.

At the time of NICCAP3’s publication in March 2026, the CCC’s Adaptation Monitoring framework was constituted by 13 Thematic Areas for climate risk and adaptation, organised under five key areas in NICCAP3 (it has since changed in May 2026). Accordingly, the Key Areas are represented as overarching ‘Parts’, while each Thematic Area is represented as a Chapter.

Part Number	Key Area/Part	Thematic Areas/Chapters
2	Natural Capital	Nature, Working Lands & Seas
3	Food Security	Food Security
4	Infrastructure Services	Water; Energy; Telecoms & ICT; Transport
5	People & The Built Environment	Towns & Cities; Buildings; Health; Community Preparedness and Response
6	Disruption to Business & Supply Chains	Business, Finance

 

 

Table 1: A table outlining the structure of NICCAP3 including Part number, Key Area and Thematic Area/Chapter

 

These Parts and themed Chapters each follow a similar structure:

• The ‘Parts’ act as an introduction of sorts to the Thematic Chapters contained therein. Each Part contains an overarching ‘Objective’ designed to focus the intent of adaptation in that Key Area and to measure progress. Following the objective statement is a short introduction to the section, providing a high-level overview of the risks faced by this Key Area, and the areas of society that can play a role in building resilience. Lastly, the section closes by outlining the Thematic Areas/Chapters that fall under this section.
• Each ‘Chapter’ begins with a contextual introduction to the thematic area and its importance to Northern Ireland. Following this, each chapter provides an introduction to the nature of the risks affecting the Thematic Area, both in terms of impacts that are already taking place (e.g. extreme weather events) and in terms of possible future impacts. Each Chapter concluded with a section titled ‘What we are doing’ and lays out the important, real-world actions that are already taking place across Northern Ireland to address the risks covered by the chapter, as well as a referenced list of all the actions that relate to each risk. Each of these Actions are assigned a code in brackets (e.g. the exploration of expanding Greenways across east Belfast has the code ‘BE8’ as the 8^th action in the Built Environment chapter). This code can then be looked up in the Adaptation Delivery Plan (ADP) Annex for further details.

 

NICCAP3 Adaptation Actions and the Adaptation Delivery Plan (ADP)

NICCAP3 contains over 280 actions from across NI Executive Departments and wider NI stakeholders including from the public and private sectors, eNGOs and Academia. These are laid out in detail in the Adaptation Delivery Plan attached as an Annex. The ADP is laid out in two parts:

• Part 1: Risk/opportunity reference list
  • A table that outlines the nature of the risk/opportunity, the ‘Risk Number’ code it is given in the main document, specifying whether it is a Risk or Opportunity, its urgency score, as well as a list of the Actions being taken forward to address each risk (provided in a code format that can be looked up in the latter Part of the ADP)
• Part 2: Action Reference list
  • A comprehensive reference table providing a full description of each climate change adaptation action, including a range of additional information: the Key Objectives and chapters of NICCAP3 it relates to, responsible department/organisation, any additional partners responsible for delivery, the CCRA3 risk the action addresses and a timescale for delivery

 

Part 7: Monitoring and Evaluation

The final part in the main  NICCAP3 document provides an overview of the processes behind the monitoring and review of the Programme, as well as an evaluation of NICCAP3’s predecessor – NICCAP2 – published in 2019.

The first of these two sections covers the legislative requirements for reporting on implementation throughout NICCAP3’s operational period (i.e. 2024-2029) and includes processes for collating annual progress updates (supported by Climate NI), a Mid-Term Review (conducted by DAERA), as well as an independent progress assessment (carried out by the CCC 3 years after publication). Chapter 17 may be particularly useful to adaptation practitioners and researchers, as it provides a scoring criteria against which both policy and delivery can be measured, aligned with the CCC’s Adaptation Monitoring Framework scoring criteria.

 

 

 

What has changed between NICCAP2 and NICCAP3?

Climate Change Committee recommended changes from NICCAP2

As part of its 2023 independent assessment of progress in adapting to climate change in Northern Ireland, the CCC identified a range of recommended changes to be made to subsequent NICCAP publications to address issues and build upon existing action. In Part 1, Chapter 3 of NICCAP3, these initial issues were presented, alongside the work that has been undertaken in response to these issues in the creation of NICCAP3:

 

 CCC Recommendations

• Recommendation: Better linking of NICCAP actions to climate change objectives; as well as including specific targets, top-level goals and key performance indicators
  • NICCAP3; contains a new, refined vision, co-designed with a range of stakeholders
• Recommendation: Increased coverage of sectors and policy areas; several sectors were inadequately covered in NICCAP2, and the CCC indicated a wish to include interdependencies between sectors
  • NICCAP3; covers all devolved policy areas, while reserved policy matters are addressed in the UK’s third National Adaptation Programme (NAP3)
• Recommendation: Engagement through the development process; using the development process of NICCAP3 to raise climate change awareness and understanding of climate risks
  • NICCAP3; development of NICCAP3 exceeded legal requirement of Climate Change Act 2008 by including non-Departmental stakeholders including academia, NGOs and the voluntary sector (among others) in the development process, as well as by carrying out a public consultation on a draft of the programme.
• Recommendation: Better Monitoring and evaluation; 29 of 45 outcomes could not be evaluated due to data gaps.
  • NICCAP3; A suite of indicators is being developed to support monitoring and evaluation, aided by key, sector-specific stakeholders.

 

Increase in number of Stakeholders, Actions and Case Studies

One of the major accomplishments of NICCAP3 has been the expansion of stakeholders included in delivering climate change adaptation action, including Government Departments, Local Government, eNGOs and the private sector, amongst others. Because of this, the number of actions has also increased significantly, from 150 in NICCAP2 to over 280 in NICCAP3. This table below compares how the level of action has changed between NICCAP3 and its predecessor:

Key Area	NICCAP2 Number of actions	NICCAP3 Number of actions
Natural Capital	70	178
Infrastructure Services	16	132
People and Built Environment	31	189
Disruption to Business and Supply Chains	4	53
Food Security	7	58
Local Government (NICCAP2)/Strategy (NICCAP3)	22	34

Table 2: A table outlining the number of actions in NICCAP2 and NICCAP3 broken down into Key Areas

 

NICCAP3 has also doubled the number case studies it has included in the report on its predecessor. These case studies provide examples of climate change adaptation action, with 12 examples taken from across civil society, academia and beyond.