|
Memorandum submitted by the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change (ACC36)
Summary
· The Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) welcomes the Government's efforts to prepare the UK for climate change, as exemplified by the Climate Change Act. · The policy framework for adaptation is logical. Its objective should be to embed adaptation in all climate-sensitive aspects of decision making in the public and private sectors. This will take time and learning will continue for many more years. · The Committee has some concerns, for example the exclusion of electronic communications companies from the Adaptation Reporting Power. And many Local Authorities score poorly against the adaptation indicator - NI188 - implying a lack of adaptive capacity. · The success of the framework will depend on commitment from bodies other than Defra, such as other Government departments, Local Authorities, businesses, especially parts of the national critical infrastructure, and individuals.
About the ASC
1. Established under the Climate Change Act 2008 the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) is required to: provide independent advice to Government on the preparation of the UK's Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA); assess progress towards implementing the Government's National Adaptation Programme, due to be laid before Parliament in 2012; and respond to requests from national authorities on matters relating to adaptation. Committee members were appointed by Defra between May and October 2009. The Committee is supported by a secretariat of six analysts.
2. Since its appointment last year the ASC has published a work programme outlining its key objectives for the future. These are:
i. to scrutinise the development of the first CCRA by providing ongoing, independent advice; ii. to assess the preparedness of the UK to meet climate change risks and opportunities; iii. to promote effective adaptation actions by society as a whole.
The Committee has already delivered two rounds of substantive advice to the Secretary of State on the development of the CCRA method. It has responded to the BIS consultation on proposed new powers for Ofcom and has advised on guidance for the implementation of the Secretary of State's new Adaptation Reporting Power. All of these documents are publicly available on the ASC website (http://www.theccc.org.uk/reports/asc-reports). Members of the Committee and secretariat have developed links with a range of stakeholders including Defra, the Environment Agency, UKCIP, Natural England, the Forestry Commission, the Tyndall Centre and others.
3. The ASC welcomes this
enquiry into the preparedness of the UK for the inevitable effects of climate
change. Even if the world achieves rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,
then there is at best an evens chance of keeping global average temperatures
below 2oC. Many aspects of society today assume an unchanged
climate, and for this reason it is vital that Government creates an effective
framework for promoting and enabling adaptive action. How well does the
overall statutory framework set out in the Climate Change Act fit together? 4. The adaptation framework as set out in the Climate Change Act is among the most comprehensive in the world. That said, the process of developing policies which take into account climate change is still very much in its infancy. The Adapting to Climate Change team, based in Defra, have championed the adaptation agenda, though the commitment of others is less clear at this stage. Successful adaptation will require sectors to help identify and take ownership of their own climate change risks. In particular, businesses, local authorities and government departments responsible for long-lived critical infrastructure have an important role to play.
5. The objective of the statutory framework
should be to ensure that UK society adapts effectively to climate change.
Adaptation should become progressively embedded in all climate-sensitive
aspects of decision making in the public and private sectors. In other words,
adaptation is not regarded as a separate process but is integrated within
broader planning and risk management activities. This will take time. Learning
will continue for many more years as the framework is deployed, monitored and
assessed. It may also mean resolving conflicts in organisational objectives,
for example between short-term cost reduction and long-term risk reduction. 6. The Committee is at an early stage in its work, but its first impression is that the coverage of the framework is logical and reasonably comprehensive, although there are areas of concern:
i. Departments are required to produce Departmental Adaptation Plans (DAPs) setting out their preparedness for climate change risks to their policies, capabilities and estates. However the Committee notes that the time to produce these plans is short and that inevitably the quality will be variable; ii. Parts of the critical national infrastructure will be covered by the reporting powers framework, which will require organisations to set out their preparedness for climate change. However the Committee believes that this power should be cast more widely. For instance, electronic communications are now vital for society's ability to monitor and respond to extreme events, yet the reporting power does not cover these companies; iii. Local Authorities in England can choose to report against indicator NI188 which measures their progress on assessing and managing climate risks and opportunities. Currently we understand that around a third of all authorities choose to report against this indicator under the new performance framework for local authorities and local authority partnerships. Many local authorities score poorly against this indicator, implying a lack of adaptive capacity.
What are the challenges
to implementing the framework effectively? 7. There are several challenges, which affect the private and public sectors, to making the right adaptation decisions.
i. The timescales over which climate change occurs are long and the
extent of climate change is uncertain.
Climate is inherently variable and projections of climate are more
uncertain when looking at local scales rather than the global scale. It is very difficult to predict changes in
the incidence of extreme events, e.g. storms. The impacts of climate change
also interact with wider changes, such as socio-economic trends and changes to
natural ecosystems. ii. Efficient decision making requires the use of
more complex techniques than those used in standard appraisal processes. This
has been recently reflected in the supplementary guidance to the Green Book produced
by Defra, for example the emphasis on real options techniques. In effect,
decision makers need to adopt strategies which are robust to a wide range of
climate outcomes. This is particularly true for owners of very long-lived
assets. iii. There may be institutional difficulties to ensuring that organisations are sufficiently committed to assessing their preparedness to climate change, given the long term and highly uncertain nature of the risks. Whilst legislation and regulation can help, it may not deliver an increase in preparedness if compliance becomes a box-ticking exercise without any associated change in behaviour. The drivers of behavioural change at institutional and individual levels are not well understood. It is necessary therefore for Government to assess whether its adaptation messages are taken up by senior decision makers.
iv. There is also no commonly agreed metric for measuring success (unlike mitigation where success can be quantified by the mass of carbon-equivalent emissions avoided) since it is very difficult to measure, say, the number of floods avoided. It is important to recognise that climate variability means that even well adapted societies will suffer some disruption from climate change.
v. Some of the most significant impacts on the UK may
arise from impacts in other countries which then have secondary impacts on the
UK. For example, changes in global agricultural production caused by climate change
will have an impact on the UK mediated through global markets. 8. The Government has already launched the UKCP09 projections to communicate the uncertainties associated with projecting future climate. UKCIP has followed this up with a range of events to encourage organisations to use the projections correctly. The CCRA will also set out the main risks and opportunities that climate change will bring to the UK and this should take account of the uncertainties caused by wider biophysical, social and economic trends. It will be important to ensure that the use of external consultants to deliver the first CCRA does not prevent the development of institutional memory, within Defra and others, which would allow the knowledge gained to be effectively maintained and distributed to end users beyond project completion.
9. Despite the challenges, broad guidelines can be adopted to identify appropriate adaptive measures. Flexible plans should be developed, which can be adjusted in the light of new information and do not reduce options for the future. Resilient measures, which perform well under a range of possible futures, are to be encouraged. 'No regrets' options, coming at little or no extra cost but potentially having ancillary benefits (e.g. reduced running costs, increased biodiversity) can be employed.
10. Ensuring current and future climate risks are mainstreamed into the legislative framework is necessary so that critical services do not become maladapted in the future. Priority should be given to addressing decisions made in the near future which will have implications over long time periods (e.g. location and design of housing, energy infrastructure, transport links and forest growth). Land use decisions should also recognise the full range of services provided by land, for example peat bogs can reduce run off and the extent of flooding and act as carbon stores. Finally, there may be issues of whether and how the costs of climate change should be shared across society, for example in the case of properties abandoned to sea level rise.
14 January 2010 |