Critical reflections on the UK National Adaptation Strategy

The UK Environmental Audit Committee is currently looking into the UK National Adaptation Programme. Here is a video with a snapshot of the hearing from last Wednesday:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=17047

This discussion includes some critical reflections on the UK National Adaptation Programme (NAP), in particular for England (the Scottish one seems somewhat better). Which is quite refreshing, as it is typically referred to as a front runner. The witnesses (Lord Krebs, Chair of Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change, Matthew Bell, Chief Executive, Committee on Climate Change, and Daniel Johns, Head of Adaptation, Committee on Climate Change) bring forward that the UK's current NAP is unclear in priorities, rather unmeasurable, does not initiate new actions (it only lists ongoing actions), and does not allocate financial resources. The witnesses assign a score of 2/3 on a 10-points scale of the level where the UK governments stands in preparing for climate change impacts (whereby a 10 would refer to fully prepared). They furthermore expect that the next NAP (scheduled for 2017) will be less bottom-up oriented, and more top-down. Although it's not clear yet how national government can or should better coordinate efforts to adapt to a changing climate - a cabinet subcommittee on climate change was suggested and DEFRA taking more leadership. The discussion further includes whether it's wise to keep building in floodplains, whether buildings such as hospitals are sufficiently prepared for heat stress, whether water supply is sufficiently covered (e.g. Birmingham relies on one water supply source only), and soft and hard coastal defences.The discussion in this snapshot briefly touches upon infrastructure and transport, but doesn't address dealing with impacts from extreme weather events such as storm surges. It may have been addressed elsewhere in the hearing.


(With thanks to colleague Julie Whittaker from the Business School for forwarding this video.)