Examination of Witnesses (Questions 43-68)
DR CHRIS
WEST
1 DECEMBER 2009
Q43 Chairman: Good morning and welcome
to the Committee. Thank you very much for coming in. You have
heard what has been said so far, including the fact that we are
working to a strict timetable. For a long time the UKCIP was the
main government-funded body working on adaptation. We now have
a new framework in place for adaptation and Defra has a bigger
role. How does that leave you? How do you fit into this new landscape?
Dr West: We always worked at the
bottom-up level with stakeholders, with people who really needed
to adapt, and we regretted the absence of the top-down imposition
of the requirement to adapt. That has now been addressed with
the Government's programme. It has made a number of changes to
our relationship with our funding department, with Defra; some
good, some bad. When we heard about the move of climate change,
with the exception of domestic adaptation, across to the new Department
of Energy and Climate Change, we were disappointed and said this
is splitting up climate change, but actually everywhere where
mitigation and adaptation have been considered together, adaptation
has always ended up the poor relation and marginalised, so the
situation we have within Defra is that it is a very high priority,
so in practical terms that is a real advantage. The only cost
is that we are more disconnected from that interesting international
adaptation agenda, but we have ways of addressing that.
Q44 Chairman: That is interesting.
We are conscious as a Committee, having focused on climate change
issues for the last four years or so, that this is our first inquiry
dedicated specifically and solely to adaptation, so it rather
bears out what you have just said. During the lifetime of the
UKCIP the scientific evidence has got stronger about the scale
and the urgency of the problem. Are you able to react quickly
in the light of that evidence about the perhaps slightly changing
and growing threat and therefore the need for a bigger and more
urgent adaptation programme?
Dr West: I think we have. We have
known what evidence is coming along in terms of climate itself.
I think we have been able to keep ahead of that. Certainly when
the programme started when I joined it seven years ago we spent
a lot of time persuading people that this was a real issue, that
climate was really changing. Two years ago we made an executive
decision that we would not do that ever again. If somebody wanted
to talk about whether the climate is changing we would say, "We
will talk about it in the pub afterwards. We are meeting here
to do something about it," and we have had no negative reaction
from that decision. In terms of the increasing level of prospective
climate change, we are able to deal with that because we have
always talked in terms of an adaptive approach. You do not, if
you like, adapt to one future; you have to adapt to a range of
futures. If that range extends you are still in the same situation.
Q45 Chairman: And this new organisational
structure does not inhibit continuing to do that?
Dr West: I do not think so. I
think it highlights an issue that is important, that dealing with
climate change in terms of adaptation does require both the bottom-up
approach and the top-down approach. The focus at the moment is
very much on the top-down, requirements of the Act and things
like that, and it is easy to forget perhaps that a lot of that
is only working because of a lot of work beneath the surface,
if you like, ten years or so of UKCIP engaging people and persuading
them that this is a real issue and that they ought to start thinking
about it for their own purposes. One of the reactions we always
got was, "When the Government says we have got to do it,
we will do it." That was a very common response from local
authorities. I think that bottom-up approach has prepared the
ground for the current top-down work. However, that bottom-up
detailed technical end of it is still important and I think that
is where our role will continue to be.
Q46 Joan Walley: Let us look at that
role a little more and let us look at the role of local authorities.
If you look at mitigation we have had the Carbon Trust and we
have had the Energy Saving Trust and that has had funds come down
from government who have provided that bottom-up work. What similar
level of support is required for adaptation? Where are those resources
and how is this work by local authorities going to be funded?
Dr West: That resource has never
come out of government and maybe will never come out of government.
Q47 Joan Walley: Should it?
Dr West: Possibly. I will come
back and answer that directly in a moment. The feature of adaptation
that we have always used because there is not that big resource
is "you will adapt for your own reasons", and local
authorities are a nice example of organisations that have a duty
of care and they recognise that duty of care for the well-being
of the community. That has been our way into local authority taking
action on adaptation. They are doing it because they can do that
job of looking after the community better by adapting. We have
always said yes, this is a necessary extra task but in the long
run we believe it will save you time and effort.
Q48 Joan Walley: But just supposing
that there was some equivalent of the Carbon Trust, say, to help
local authorities to exercise their duty of care. Do you think
there is the resource capacity inside local authorities as things
stand at the moment to take advantage even if there were that
external support or if it was not just coming from a new body
that was set up, say from what was already there in departmental
spending budgets?
Dr West: Just cash going straight
to local authorities would not do it. I think there is a knowledge
gap that could be addressed by funding something like ourselves
magnified many times and we could engage with every local authority.
At the moment we engage with, if you like, those willing to learn
about the process and we can pass that on.
Q49 Joan Walley: Is that not the
problem that you might have a local authority that is willing
and has the capacity but you might get some areas of the country
where there is not even an understanding or an acknowledgement
of it? Who is going to do that training or where is that going
to come from?
Dr West: We can do a small part
of it but we cannot do all of it. It has to be driven from those
local authorities and some of them are way behind others.
Q50 Mr Caton: You have mentioned
that you welcome the new structure in providing a top-down element
to complement the work you are already doing bottom-up, but in
your written memorandum to us you argue that government departments
themselves need to develop a more bottom-up understanding of climate
change risks. What sort of steps should large government departments
be taking to develop that understanding and what sort of support
do they need to provide?
Dr West: I think government departments,
civil servants in general and the policy people who tend to pick
up this agenda work naturally top-down. They think in generalities,
they think in terms of their own policy area perhaps. What we
would advise and, where possible, we have advised this, is actually
to get down to the coal face where people are solving day-to-day
problems because one of the things that is becoming very clear
is that we are not talking about an issue that will happen in
the future. We have had decades of climate change and we now have
what we would call an "adaptation deficit" and drilling
down to the operational level to understand how people are now
dealing with that adaptation deficit, what things they are facing,
how they are solving those issues, is an important part of the
richness, if you like, of the risk assessment that government
departments are now required to do. I do not believe you can do
it top-down. You have to engage, if you like, the people with
boots on and ask them what they are experiencing now.
Q51 Dr Turner: You note in your own
evidence that Stern set out a very basic principle which most
of us recognise in theory which is that investment now yields
benefits in due course. You say that that principle is now recognised
but somewhat in the abeyance because not a lot of it is actually
happening in terms of resource allocations in government. Why
do you think this has happened? What do you think is not happening
and what do you think are the barriers?
Dr West: There are a number of
barriers. You were asking earlier in this session about the Treasury
Green Book, which goes some way towards valuing the whole life
of a project or an activity. I think they are not going as far
as perhaps our Victorian forebears did in investing for a long
period in the future. We are required to be much more efficient
these days. People are required to show that money is being wisely
spent, and if that means you design something for 30 years in
the expectation that its value will be zero after that time and
you will build something else, then everything is built for today's
climate. Where we have engaged people and a lot of effort is to
ask, "Is there another way round?" It is always that
investment for the far future is the first thing to be cut off
any project. People start off with the best of intentions and
then somebody says, "We can save 5% if you do not do that,"
and they have to do it. I think that Treasury lead is still not
strong enough to invest for the far future.
Q52 Dr Turner: So you are saying
that short-term priorities will always squeeze out investment
in long-term projects?
Dr West: It appears so.
Q53 Dr Turner: That is a little sad,
is it not? Have you any levers in your climate change team with
which you can attempt to influence resourcing decisions?
Dr West: Yes. Not in terms of
finance, I think, but in terms of reputation we can say, "Do
you really want to be in a situation where people will look back
on your decisions and say `how short sighted'?" Sometimes
that is effective. Sometimes it is the immediate reputational
benefit of saying we have sorted this out for 50 years, we are
happy that whatever it is is proofed against the worst that climate
can throw at it, but it is persuasion, it is a small carrot, it
is not a stick.
Q54 Colin Challen: How do businesses
respond to the adaptation agenda? Are they prepared for it? Are
they really aware? Is it big companies that are maybe doing things
or SMEs as well? What is happening on that front?
Dr West: Again this short-termism
is a problem but there are companies who recognise there is reputational
value in addressing this issue. There is increasing anecdotal
evidence that investors recognise that a company that is addressing
climate risks adequately might also be addressing other risks
rather better than the average, so that is beginning to be applied.
In terms of size of company, the very smallest have real trouble
dealing with this. You can talk to them about the very near term,
risks they are facing right now, and they can do a few things
about that. Sometimes the middle-sized companies will pick this
up and say, yes, here is something we can make a profit from or
we can avoid real losses. The very big companies, multi-nationals,
believe they have got it all sorted, and indeed they may have.
It is very hard for us to find out about that level of company.
They tend to say we have got very good risk management processes,
we have covered this. I have had one or two instances where they
have missed the notion entirely. A big multi-national chemical
company reduced their emissions of solvents, which was hugely
trumpeted in their corporate sustainability report, but they had
missed the point that most of their plants around the world were
sited in flood plains and they had not recognised the link from
corporate social responsibility to the possibility that the environment
through climate change might have an impact on their profitability.
Q55 Colin Challen: Following on from
that, who might actually be studying or auditing the resilience
of major plants in this country, which is important to our economy?
It might be in private hands but nevertheless it is part of our
critical infrastructure.
Dr West: There is a private sector,
I guess you would call it, initiative of business continuity,
which for companies above a certain size it is effective because
they can address it, they can see the reason for it, and issues
like flooding are well covered by it. I think a lot of them do
not see it in terms of climate change and indeed when I have talked
to companies about this, they say, "No, it is much more important
to worry about the present than the future." If I then come
back and say, "I am talking about the present, you may be
running risks right now," they do not see them as climate
change related. They say, "It is always like this. This is
part of what we do every day."
Q56 Colin Challen: Who is taking
the lead for this? Who is helping businesses understand the issues?
In mitigation terms we have the Carbon Trust of course. A lot
of people understand what a carbon footprint is but on adaptation
I am not really clear in my mind who takes the lead on this kind
of thing and helps businesses adjust.
Dr West: All right, I think if
we look just for comparison to the local authorities, they now
have a very strong requirement in National Indicator 188. They
have to adapt and they have to report on how they are doing it.
For the business sector, there is a lot of pressures each of which
is very small and none is in the lead, so we can engage some people,
that business continuity agenda engages others. Investors, especially
the ethical investors, local authority pension funds, university
pension funds, things like that, are interested in the power they
might have to put pressure on companies but they are not yet doing
it.
Q57 Colin Challen: Is it not an obvious
job for the RDAs[18]
perhaps?
Dr West: Some of them are picking
it up. Some of them have got other things that occupy the front
of their minds. There is a whole range of possible pressure points.
None of them are really very effective at the moment. We have
talked to trade associations picking the ones really that had
a history of providing services to their members. We are now talking
to the British Standards Institute to see if we can put an adaptation
annex on to the ISO 14001 and the other ones. The Department for
Business, Innovation and Skills are interested but they have a
tradition of not legislating. The business sector is difficult
because there is a whole raft of small carrots rather than any
one big one.
Q58 Colin Challen: Is that because
they are lobbying against any intervention and saying they will
just take care of it themselves and that self-regulation is always
best? That is what they always say.
Dr West: They always have said
that. Certainly the CBI is now looking at adaptation. They have
an adaptation working group but that will be in terms of providing
guidance rather than asking government to legislate, I am sure.
Q59 Dr Turner: Are we going to need
more people working in adaptation? Have we got enough people with
the right skills to respond to the agenda?
Dr West: Yes, we do need more
people. No, we have not got the skills. We have not got the skills
in the general population to understand climate risks and therefore
a whole area of pressure on government and on utilities to adapt
is not there. The public are not requiring this. Everything the
Government has done on adaptation has been done without reference
to the electorate and I think that is an education issue. Within
local authorities, again, the planning process is much more about
drawing lines on maps than thinking about risk. I think that is
an educational issue. I could talk about schools. I would rather
talk about professional training where we are talking to a number
of organisations. The Institute of Environmental Management and
Assessment are interested in providing professional training for
their people. We would like to access some of the local authority
specialists, so the planners and the risk managers, but I think
there is a big area of—it is not ignorance but it is a way
of looking at things slightly differently from the way we do now.
Q60 Dr Turner: The Civil Service
has a traditional career development pathway by which people are
shuffled around from department to department. Is this compatible
with establishing a long-lasting adaptive capability?
Dr West: It makes it harder.
Q61 Dr Turner: Do Defra and other
departments have enough people with good understanding of adaptation
in positions where they can influence decision-making?
Dr West: I do not think so. I
think they are getting there. They have brought in a raft of very
smart people who are picking it up. However, despite the number
of training days that we have run, the number of people who should
be knowledgeable about adaptation but are not is growing.
Q62 Dr Turner: One of the other problems
in planning for adaptation is the wide range of probabilities
incorporated in climate change scenarios. There is a 50% chance
of getting down to two degrees if we do what the Climate Change
Committee says but 50% is a pretty big margin of error. What are
the implications of this extreme range of probabilities for the
robustness of adaptive planning processes?
Dr West: Too big effects. First
of all it makes the whole process of looking at the future very
much more daunting. It would be nice to be able to say, "This
is what the future is going to be", but we are not in that
position now and it may well be we do not get any closer to that
position. This knowledge of the uncertainty is in fact a disincentive
because people say, "Unless you can tell us the future, we
cannot adapt to it." I think we can but we have to acknowledge
that it is very much more difficult than that simple model would
suggest, so we are saying you have to look at this range of futures.
You have to look at your own operation and examine your own attitude
to risk and then you may be able to look sensibly at this wide
range of possible futures and say, "Yes, we can cope with
all of these. Up at this extreme end we cannot cope at present
and we may have to do something different, but how important is
it to us that we do not fail at that extreme?" It does put
this extra burden on people to think not only about the climate
but about their own operations.
Q63 Dr Turner: Do you see a role
for the Met Office in addressing this issue, helping you?
Dr West: The Met Office will do
their best to reduce that uncertainty and to describe it, and
we can work with the Met Office in helping people understand that
description, but, as we learn more about how the climate system
itself operates, it is wishful thinking to think that we will
reduce the uncertainty about future climate. It may well be that
this extra knowledge will actually increase the uncertainty. We
are vociferous in saying to people, "Do not sit around waiting
for a more exact description of the future; it is not going to
happen. You have got to get on and deal with these multiple futures
right now. "
Q64 Dr Turner: Are you keeping up-to-date
with publishing predictions?
Dr West: Yes, I think we are.
I do not like the word "prediction"; I would rather
say "projection" because it brings to the fore all the
assumptions that lie behind there.
Q65 Dr Turner: I meant projection;
I do apologise.
Dr West: I think what we have
in the 2009 projections is the best science in the world right
now. There are other groups in Australia and the US who are following
different paths towards the same thing—a description of
that modelling uncertainty. What I think we have in the UK is
a very high quality, future proof methodology. It is hard to understand.
I fail to understand it myself. You need to understand Monte Carlo
modelling and the difference between emulation and simulation.
It is complex but we have had an international peer review that
said this methodology is robust.
Q66 Chairman: Do you think that the
reliability of those projections is important in influencing the
doubters? You said earlier on you have given up arguing with doubters,
and I know exactly how you feel about that, but nevertheless one
way in which doubters may be convinced is if projections are made
and they come about, and indeed that is why, sadly, some of the
very severe weather recently has been perhaps in some ways helpful
in addressing that group of people. The preparation for adaptation
and then the confirmation that those preparations were needed
may be quite important in getting people to accept tougher mitigation
measures. Would you accept that?
Dr West: Yes, I think as a thesis
that works. In practice, I think we have to recognise that the
adaptation agenda has reached the broadsheet-reading professional
decision-makers quite well. The majority of the rest of the population
do not believe this is a real issue so why would they worry about
adaptation? Increasingly, we have very good evidence of the recent
past of places, times, incidents where actually we cannot say
that a civilised Western European country has managed its climate
adequately. I think that evidence base is very important. It is
often not recognised as part of the projections, but the first
bit we published was that current climatology.
Q67 Joan Walley: In response to that
you are a scientist and you have got evidence-based projections.
What do you say to the climate change deniers?
Dr West: I say look at the recent
past, look at what has happened and then use the precautionary
principle and just address the possibility that this might be
a real occurrence. Again, for professional decision-makers that
makes sense. If there is a possibility that this is happening,
you must deal with it. As the evidence for this being real increases
then the argument for dealing with it increases as well.
Q68 Chairman: You are probably right
that this is still an issue which is more for the broadsheets
than a wider public. Those of us who have taken a close interest
in this, in my case since the middle of 1993, can take some satisfaction
from the fact that it was not even anywhere near the broadsheets
16 years ago, so very considerable progress has been made.
Dr West: Yes.
Chairman: Thank you very much for coming
in. It was very helpful.
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