An adaptation wish list for 2025 – for UK Government
As we enter 2025, SWM continues its work on climate adaptation. We watched as Government changes took place in 2024 leading to, as yet, no change to the acceleration of climate adaptation action and implementation that is needed to deal with the climate crisis that is going on outside our patio doors.
So, what needs to happen this year to finally bring about a coordinated, committed, at-scale and investible pipeline of adaptation activity, driven by enforced policy and legislation? Based on our work with numerous learned stakeholders, these are our 10 calls to action on adaptation for 2025 – with our primary audience being the new(ish) Government.
1) Government responsibility on adaptation should break away from Defra. For this agenda to be taken seriously, a new Government department spearheaded by adaptation experts in policy and implementation should be set up that is properly resourced and can ensure that the fourth National Adaptation Programme is credible and transformational, and not much maligned like the others. Many of the following suggestions would not be feasible within the current Government structures. One could consider setting up a new body that deals with both adaptation and Net Zero given the necessary dovetailing of the two, but either way, just avoid calling it the Department for Climate Resilience and Adaptation Planning.
2) The Adaptation Reporting Power (ARP) should be made mandatory and apply to a wider-range of organisations. This is the only mechanism on adaptation reporting and it currently applies to a limited and specific collection of organisations, mostly pertaining infrastructure. It is voluntary and, while most of these companies choose to respond, some do not. Moreover, councils, the NHS and other key climate risk owners are not invited to report at all. Defra are currently trialling an ARP pilot with some councils; assuming a good return rate, it needs to be rolled out and expanded quickly, and made mandatory.
3) The above should then lead to a trickle down of resourcing and greater capacity for public bodies who currently have a lack of both to be able to adequately assess their climate risks and propose adaptation options at the local or site level (depending on the organisation). The complexity of responsibility for local issues, along with the lack of resource, often leads to a barrier to place-based action. As such, we welcomed the recent announcement by Government that they may be making all two-tier councils into unitary authorities, but in equal measure fear that the chaos and confusion this will inevitably cause will delay action even more.
4) Aligning with all of the above is that responsibilities on adaptation action need to be more (pun intended) streamlined. On the issue of flooding, for example, many people are often unsure who is responsible for the flood risk, which varies depending on the ‘type’ of flooding, the source of the flood and the area/land it has affected. Is it your local council? Is it the Environment Agency? Is it your local water company? Is it the landowner? There’s probably an answer to where the responsibility lies for each flood, but by the time you’ve found out who it is, the damage has been done. And that’s all before considering issues of insurance and the complexities when looking at wider-scale issues such as coastal flood risk.
5) Strategic working groups must be set up to tackle the issue of risk interdependency. Upon reading the latest Climate Change Committee’s adaptation progress report, few organisations have considered how climate risks and impacts on other sectors are likely to affect their own. The only way this can start to be addressed is if key organisations from (e.g.) the energy, transport and telecoms sectors regularly meet, with representatives from relevant Government departments, including Defra as it is presently (see point 1), to share progress and enable collaboration.
6) New funds and acceleration programmes should be launched, focusing on adaptation. Funding for adaptation is piecemeal and bit-part at present, and requires expert knowledge or support to have a chance of accessing relevant monies to drive action. This needs to change. There are many public and private funds that support Net Zero ambitions; these ambitions now need to extend to adaptation to turn the intent contained within ambitious and potentially transformational adaptation plans into reality.
7) Climate Ready should be reinstated, working alongside the new Maximising UK Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC) Hub programme as a vehicle for implementation. While the MACC represents the most adaptation-focused national programme for some time, ultimately the programme’s main outputs is likely to be further research. Working alongside a Climate Ready type model would allow a focus on user need and practical outputs that can result in lasting change at the local and community level.
8) In the absence of a new Climate Ready programme, the outputs of the aforementioned MACC must be useful for the practitioner and/or policymaker wherever possible. This is the primary reason why SWM, LCRP, Sniffer and Climate NI are involved in the programme, otherwise we risk the outputs of the Hub to only be research-focused which, while useful, don’t necessarily lead to action on the ground. We are under pressure to deliver here, but we are up for the challenge.
9) Resource should be provided to roll out, update and promote adaptation guidance and tools that already exist. Many of these have been produced using piecemeal funding by SWM and our close partners, but we lack the resourcing required to extensively make the right people aware of them, and update them annually to ensure they remain current. We have done much of the hard work where national actors have failed, and most of the outputs are publicly available, so back us and we’ll do what we can to help!
10) Lets share the love. Despite the various barriers and sluggish progress, there are some brilliant examples of projects and actions that are taking/ have taken place. We’re very good at keeping the intel on these to ourselves, and part of the reason for SWM’s existence is to share good practice and cascade success across our networks. Why? To prove success can happen and to help others replicate and scale projects up that have resulted in positive change. Please share your successes with us and others to help accelerate action in spite of the hurdles currently in front of us.
But let’s be clear; this is all preamble to the hard facts, which are that people’s lives are at stake. Ultimately, we recognise that few of the above actions, if implemented, would be rolled out quickly. Time is not on our side, and we should be many years ahead of where we actually are.
I started my career in 2008 and many of the conversations we’re having now we were having then. Pace is (sorry about this) glacial and the climate is changing much faster than we are currently prepared for. What we must remember is that this is real life we’re talking about, not some fantasy future filled with desolate promise and spaceships. People living with long-term health problems, people living below the poverty line, people working for a pittance in poor conditions. Life is hard enough for many people as it is, and climate change will affect these people the hardest. My suggestions may contribute to allowing us to ‘get on with it’ quicker, but I fear still not quickly enough.
Action on the ground needs to happen yesterday, not tomorrow.
SWM can help your organisation to at least make a start on this; you can find out more about our work here.
Alan Carr, on behalf of the SWM team.
