What Matters Most?

Disaster adaptation demands decisions about what we protect, what we adapt, and what may be lost—decisions that must reflect what communities truly value. Yet community consultation is often too narrow or too unstructured to meaningfully inform these decisions. What Matters Most grew from this gap. Working in a region still navigating the impact of the 2022 floods, the challenge was to create a process that people could trust, and to turn their values and local knowledge into actionable data which could inform new planning.

What Matters Most provides a focal point for understanding community values, helping communities and government to build a shared picture that can inform decision making. It creates an opportunity for people to share what matters to them and see what matters to others, supporting policymakers to engage with these perspectives in a structured way. Establishing this shared understanding prepares communities to navigate complex challenges together. It helps build trust and connections within the community and helps lay the basis for enduring support for adaptation decisions.

What Matters Most has been designed to inform NSW Reconstruction Authority’s first multi-hazard Disaster Adaptation Plan, directly influencing the direction of large-scale public investment in disaster adaptation. The process engaged residents across the Northern Rivers, creating a shared interpretable foundation for both communities and government as they navigate complex adaptation challenges. Community values about place, landscape and risk are now more substantially embedded in the planning process—grounding adaptation decisions in what people most want to protect. Tested in practice, What Matters Most is ready to be applied in other regions facing similar challenges.

The workshop toolkit centres on a deck of values cards, with cards describing things that are shared by the community. Each participant sorts the cards into four groups, from ‘matters most’ to ‘matters least’, with the option to add their own. They then answer questions such as ‘What gives your community its character?’ and ‘What is under pressure or at risk?’ by selecting a handful of cards from the deck. The project team then gathers this information to create a series of visualisations showing what matters to people across the community.