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Resilience to climate change: who pays (and who benefits)?

Raising awareness & improving understanding Human welfare Security, emergency planning and response Conservation

Challenge

The first Climate Change Risk Assessment (2012) revealed the significant implications of climate change for the health and wellbeing of the UK population. Direct risks to health include increased flooding and heat. Impacts on business through flooding, for example, affecting supply chains and productivity, on water and energy supply and demand or on the built environment and infrastructure, all have implications for the wellbeing of communities and individuals.

One objective of the UK Government’s National Adaptation Programme (2013) is to ‘minimise the impact of climate change on vulnerable groups in society by strengthening their resilience to better prepare for, respond to and recover from future climate risk.’ Other objectives highlight the importance of promoting community resilience to severe weather related events through preparation, response and recovery.

Yet whose responsibility is it to deliver this resilience and preparedness to the challenges posed by climate change? With large cuts expected across Government budgets in the Spending Review, being announced on 25th November, who will pay to deliver adaptation and build resilience, avoiding the large social cost to us all, and particularly to the most vulnerable in society, through a failure to meet the climate change challenge?

Response

The Society convened a Policy Forum event to explore:

How the risks posed by climate change to the UK may have changed since the first Climate Change Risk Assessment in 2012. What does this mean for the National Adaptation Programme and the measures required by central, local government and communities to address these risks?
What lessons can we learn from civil society, local and central government in building community resilience and preparedness to climate change?
Who will pay, financially, to deliver resilience and who will benefit from this investment?
The importance of considering space and place in delivering climate change adaptation and resilience.

This event was aimed at all interested professionals, including policy-makers, practitioners, academics, business leads and representatives of NGOs, and the expert panel included:

(Chair) Alex Nickson: Strategy Manager, Climate Change Adaptation, Greater London Authority
Daniel Johns: Head of Adaptation, Committee on Climate Change
Dr Clare Twigger-Ross: Technical Director, Collingwood Environmental Planning Ltd.
Kit England: Policy and Information Officer, Newcastle City Council and Chair, Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation Working Group, Core Cities UK
Professor Neil Adger: University of Exeter

About the Event

This event took place on 16 March 2017 and was part of the Society’s 21^st Century Challenges Policy Forum series, which brought together members of the geographical community, practitioners, policy-makers and other interested parties to discuss and debate, build professional networks, and encourage critical thinking and informed debate on some of the biggest issues and challenges facing the UK.

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How to cite

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (date) 21CC - Resilience to climate change: who pays (and who benefits)? . Available at https://rgs-rebuild.netcprev.co.uk/resiliancetoclimatechange Last accessed on: <date>