New report – “How well prepared is the UK for climate change?”

Citation

(2011), "New report – “How well prepared is the UK for climate change?”", International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Vol. 3 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijccsm.2011.41403baf.001

New report – “How well prepared is the UK for climate change?”

Article Type: Feature From: International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Volume 3, Issue 2

The independent body that advises the UK Government on climate adaptation (the Adaptation Sub-Committee) has published its first national assessment of how well prepared the UK is for climate change. Climate change is already having an impact in the UK. Since the 1970s, average annual temperatures have risen by 1°C, and spring arrives 11 days earlier.

These impacts are likely to increase as a result of future climate change, with the incidence of extreme weather events such as floods, heat-waves and droughts becoming more frequent. This report urges the UK to start taking action to prepare for these impacts, ensuring that we have the resilience to cope with climate change. The committee stressed that adaptation is not an alternative to mitigation but complements our continued and essential efforts to reduce emissions by 80 per cent in 2050. Adaptation is about adjusting the way that we do things to ensure that we are prepared.

The committee found that some progress has been made by government in raising awareness, but crucially, that very little tangible action has taken place on the ground. The emphasis should, therefore, now be on moving from talking about adaptation to taking action in five priority areas: land use planning, infrastructure, buildings, natural resources and emergency planning. Recent research suggests that taking measures to adapt to climate change could halve costs of climate change, and that the costs of failing to adapt will outweigh the costs of acting in the short term.