Climate adaptation policy is too focused on short-term economic development and severely reduces local capacity to plan for longer-term climate impacts, according to a study.
The research, by a group of geography and planning professors from Cardiff and Cranfield universities, examined how closely local policymakers are approaching climate change adaptation in the way prescribed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC says climate change adaptation should be transformative, and result in fundamental changes both in and across systems that allow for responses to future impacts to be made.
However, the academics found that local-level debate on the issue in the UK subsumes adaptation planning into a framework of ‘resilience’ that prioritises growth. This has enabled local authorities to involve a wider network of stakeholders, including local businesses, but has resulted in climate adaptation measures being reactive rather than proactive, which severely reduces local capacity to plan for long-term climate impacts.
‘In UK national policy frameworks, adaptation needs to be framed within a different model to ‘growth’ to avoid transformative adaptation being solely viewed locally as an opportunity for economic development,’ said Dr Andrew Kythreotis, the study’s lead author and research fellow at Cardiff University.
The study involved in-depth interviews with professionals working on climate adaptation issues in several UK cities, including Glasgow, Hull, Cardiff, Leeds and London.
Recommendations contained in the report include:
- The Climate Change Act and the Localism Act need to be strengthened by mandating local authorities to make changes, rather than just providing the opportunity to make them.
- Responsibility for climate change at a national scale should lie with a single department, rather than the current arrangement where one department looks after adaptation (Defra), while another covers mitigation (BEIS). Adaptation and mitigation are not mutually exclusive, the researchers noted.
- Local approaches need to more closely align expenditure with local social, political and environmental knowledge, rather than money being channeled into large-scale infrastructure projects. The academics believe that this would leave communities better prepared to limit potential damage of climate-related impacts such as floods.
‘Legislation needs to ensure that local authorities can statutorily plan for longer term climate impacts and not just react to impacts as they happen,’ Kythreotis said.
For local adaptation to become transformative, scientists, government, policymakers and local communities should work more closely with each other to develop locally-specific adaptation plans, he added.
