Climate Change Adaptation

The Climate Change Act 2008 introduced the Adaptation Reporting Power which allows Government to ask public sector organisations and statutory undertakers - such as water companies and electricity distributors - to report on their assessment of the risks climate change poses to them, and their proposals for adapting to climate change. The Risk Centre played an important research role for Defra during the first round of the Adaptation Reporting Power.

To ensure that each Reporting Authority's risk assessment met the direction, each one was independently evaluated by the Risk Centre to demonstrate that:

  • The risk assessment and the methodology used were well-evidenced;
  • The risk assessment was completed by referring to existing good practice; and
  • The adaptation measures were focused on key risk priorities identified.

An evaluation framework was  developed to ensure consistency in the assessment process, and was used to assist the overall evaluation of the Adaptation Reports submitted by Reporting Authorities to Defra. This comprised of a qualitative evaluation against eight key attributes and an overall assessment of the report, highlighting areas of good practice and areas for possible further work. The overall evaluation provided an assessment of the report based on the following headings (referring to Box 2 of the Statutory Guidance): 

  • Functions impacted by climate change
  • Approach
  • Summary of risks
  • Actions proposed to address risks
  • Uncertainties and assumptions
  • Barriers to adaptation and interdependencies
  • Monitoring and evaluation
  • Good practice examples within the report
  • Areas for further work

The results from the evaluation of the Adaptation Report’s risk assessment were reported to Defra’s Adapting to Climate Change (ACC) Programme team, who alongside relevant Government Departments and Devolved Administrations (where appropriate) with an interest in each particular plan, assess them from a policy perspective. Cranfield’s research is also being used by the ACC Programme team to inform feedback from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to Reporting Authorities on their Adaptation Report.

 

In addition, sector summaries provided Defra with details of each sector’s (e.g. energy generators) risks from climate change and strategies to adapt. They included a description of good practice (including concrete adaptation), any common risks, barriers and interdependencies that may affect the sector, and are expected to be published in early spring 2012. 

The Risk Centre has also produced a document for Defra summarising lessons learnt from the first round of the Adaptation Reporting Power, organisations’ preparedness/adaptive capacity from the risk assessments, as well as highlighting current risks for future climate change and any areas for future research. This will feed into Defra’s planned document in early 2012 publishing the sector summaries and cross-sector findings.

 

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