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.
