Monday 24 November 2014

(Un)clarity and responsability

Three weeks ago (on 31 October 2014), I was in Utrecht, the Netherlands, to attend the PhD defence by Heleen Mees, and a symposium about “The Governance of Adaptation to Climate Change”. Heleen Mees’ thesis is titled “Responsible climate change adaptation. Exploring, analysing and evaluating public and private responsibilities for urban adaptation to climate change”. One of the points Heleen brings forward in her thesis, is that clarification of responsibilities among actors involved is expected to help climate change adaption in urban settings. In response, Andy Jordan raised the issue during the discussion, that responsibility tends to be something that is continuously renegotiated, Something that seems to shift rather than something that stays put. In addition, Dave Huitema added to the discussion that unclarity of responsibilities may help to keep stakeholders engaged. For if a task is clearly assigned to someone else, a stakeholder who it is not assigned to, may be less inclined to bother.

This discussion got me thinking about one of the case studies we are studying for the BASE project, climate change adaptation at the South Devon Coast around Dawlish. Thinking whether increased clarity of responsibilities would help climate change adaptation in this setting. Or whether unclarity would help to keep all stakeholders somehow engaged in the process.

In the case of the South Devon Coast around Dawlish, the main issue appears to be unclarity about a decision about how to enhance the resilience of the current sea wall and railway line, about who will make that decision, and who will pay for the measures decided upon. In short, Network Rail owns the sea wall at the Dawlish coast, and is mainly interested in maintaining the seawall at a level to minimise train service interruption. They are currently investigating what the costs will be of maintaining the current state of the sea wall, and what the costs will be to enhance the resilience of the sea wall (after having decided that rerouting inlands is apparently not an attractive option: http://www.networkrail.co.uk/publications/weather-and-climate-change-resilience/west-of-exeter-route-resilience-study/). The Environment Agency (which answers to DEFRA) is usually in charge of dealing with storm surges and erosion, but is not pro-actively involved here. As it is not the owner of the main defence in this case, for the sea wall is in hands of Network Rail. They have stated they will follow the development of the proposal by Network Rail, but will not attempt to get actively involved. DEFRA states that the local authorities are in charge of coastal management, including dealing with erosion and storm surges. The local authorities state that it’s up to Network Rail to decide on how they want to enhance the seawall. One representative from the local authority stated they have very trust in Network Rail that “they will do what’s necessary to maintain the seawall”. Another representative stated that they will closely follow the decisions and plans by Network Rail, but do not aim to actively influence the decision making process. Network Rail answers to the Department for Transport, which seem to have mainly delegated the task of preparing a decision to Network Rail (…) – Are you still there my dear reader? – Oh, and just to add: a deliberative liaison has been recently initiated (just before the summer), between Network Rail, the local authority and the Environment Agency about the future of the Dawlish Coast. It will be interesting to see how this liaison develops, and whether it will influence the proposal by Network Rail for the Dawlish seawall. And, I think it’s also interesting to see that Department for Transport (which is responsible for infrastructure) and DEFRA (responsible for coastal and storm surge management) do not seem to be coordinating any decision about investment in the seawall.

Now, dear reader, what do you think? Would enhanced clarification of responsibilities help in this situation? I think it would, but especially in the sense of clarification of possible climate change impacts, and who is responsible of taking care of which impacts. And also, or perhaps moreover, there seems to be a gap between impacts at local level (at the Dawlish coast), which may affect the regional level (last winter the railway was out of service of two months, disconnecting Plymouth and the whole of Cornwall from any train services), and likely needed investments which have to be decided upon and funded by national government (perhaps a co-funding by Department of Transport and DEFRA?). So, wouldn’t it also help to clarify who is responsible of addressing which impacts at which geographical and institutional scale level? And, as costs – and particularly who should pay for them – are an important complicating factor in this setting, clarification of how to calculate costs of climate change impacts, of measures to address these impacts, of which time scale should be taken into account, and who is responsible for which costs and why?

Of course, I do not expect that it will be realistic to clarify all these kinds of unclarity (among others about responsabilities), but I do think that these unclarities help to explain why climate change adaptation is so difficult at the Dawlish coast. Dear reader, if you have any thoughts on this, let me know! I would be happy to hear your view on this.