In an open letter to Defra minister Emma Hardy, CCC Adaptation Committee chair Baroness Brown warns that “we are not yet adapted for the changes in weather and climate that we are living with today, let alone those that are expected over coming decades”.
Although the independent climate advisors believe that limiting warming to 2°C is still “achievable”, they say that “prudent risk management needs to consider a wider range of possible worse outcomes”.
At the high end of possibilities, reaching a 4°C increase by the end of this century “cannot yet be ruled out” and should be “considered as part of effective adaptation planning”.
The letter calls for “clearly measurable and time-bound targets” for adaptation set relative to a baseline of today’s level of resilience so that progress can be clearly tracked, with explicit delivery accountability for government departments.
This comes after the CCC’s progress report in April revealed that effective adaptation “remains limited”, and despite some progress, planning for adaptation “continues to be piecemeal and disjointed”.
“Governments have repeatedly failed on their ambitions to make the UK resilient to climate change,” Baroness Brown wrote in her letter. “The people of this country are already experiencing the impacts of a changing climate, and we owe it to them to prepare, and to help them prepare, for what we know is ahead.
"It is important that the government and bodies like ours continue to use scientific, factual analysis as the basis for our respective decision making and advice.”
A framework of clear long-term objectives should be set out in the next National Adaptation Programme (NAP), according to the CCC, with targets for every five years.
The letter states that a well-adapted UK should deliver a future where:
ISEP CEO Sarah Mukherjee MBE commented: “Our cities, towns and individual homes need to be more resilient to flooding and heatwaves. For example, building more flood defences, changing building regulations to include ventilation and cooling, or encouraging the installation of heat pumps that also provide air conditioning.
“This is not just about policy and pounds – but people. And just like the government is investing in the skilled people to transform our energy system to be low carbon to mitigate emissions, we need to invest in skilled people that can deliver that long list of adaptation measures.”
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Chris Seekings is the Deputy Editor of ISEP’s Transform magazine, which is published biomonthly for ISEP members. Chris’s role involves writing sustainability-related news, features and interviews, as well as helping to plan and manage the magazine’s other day-to-day activities.
