UK government’s statutory adviser has said that the country’s plans for adapting to the effects of the climate crisis “fall far short” of what is required.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has examined the national adaptation programme published by ministers last July, intended to set out how people, buildings and vital national infrastructure such as water, transport, energy and telecommunications networks could be protected from the increasing severity of storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts that are afflicting the UK as a result of global heating.
In what many have described as a damning verdict delivered on Wednesday, the committee found that the government had no credible plan for making the UK resilient to the increasing effects of extreme weather.
Julia King, who is chair of the adaptation subcommittee of the CCC, said: “The evidence of the damage from climate change has never been clearer, but the UK’s current approach to adaptation is not working.”
The national adaptation plan published last July, known as Nap3, was the third in a series of five-yearly updates in response to an assessment of climate risks, required under the 2008 Climate Change Act, from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
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But the CCC found that although it was an improvement on previous efforts, the new plan was still inadequate and required improvement before the next scheduled update in 2028.
Reacting, King said: “Defra needs to deliver an immediate strengthening of the government’s programme, with an overhaul of its integration with other government priorities such as net zero and nature restoration. We cannot wait another five years for only incremental improvement.”
The CCC also found that most of Nap3 was based on existing policy or mechanisms, which were inadequate and ignored more than half of the short-term actions to address urgent risks from extreme weather that had been identified in the latest risk assessment.
The report sharply criticised Defra for failing to make adaptation a priority and to work closely with other government departments on the issue. Ministers had also failed to fund adaptation efforts sufficiently, or provide the incentives for private sector investment, the CCC found, and there was too little monitoring and evaluation.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
