adaptation

The climate change agenda has been dominated in recent years by the need to reduce carbon emissions to avoid or mitigate climate change. But increasingly, the debate is turning to adaptation.

Climate change scientists define adaptation as “adjustments in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities.”  In other words, it presupposes a degree of dangerous climate change is now inevitable and we must adapt our behaviour in response.

We are already seeing the effects of climate change at home and abroad; drier summers and wetter winters in the UK, freak weather events, rising sea levels, more floods and resulting damage to infrastructure. It should therefore be no surprise that, whilst most law and policy to date has been aimed at mitigation, legislative developments are underway in the UK and Europe to map out the changes required to respond to the changing environment.

Here in the UK, adaptation plays an important part in the landmark Climate Change Act. It places a duty on the UK government to identify objectives for adapting to climate change and create proposals and policies for meeting these objectives.

The increasing frequency and severity of weather events is certainly giving adaptation more prominence and many businesses and organisations are beginning to plan ahead. For UK businesses and organisations, the United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) offers help http://www.ukcip.org.uk UKCIP was established in 1997 to help co-ordinate scientific research into climate change impacts and assist adaptation efforts and is based at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University. UKCIP publishes climate change scenarios illustrating how the UK’s climate might change in this century.

The recently published UKCP09 projections provide a detailed analysis of how the UK climate is changing and is expected to change, by utilising recent developments in climate science to better quantify some of the uncertainties of climate modelling.  UKCIP has also produced the Adaptation Wizard, a step by step process for organisations to asses how climate change affects them and helps them work out how best they can adapt.

The Companies Act 2006 requires that directors, when fulfilling their duties, must consider the impact of their operations on the community and the environment. It’s easy to see how a pattern of regular local flooding caused by the operations of the company, perhaps construction of a new building, might place a director in breach.

Of course, planning policy statements already acknowledge the need to consider adaptation when reaching policy decisions, particularly in light of increased rainfall and its impact beyond existing flood plains to other flat low lying areas.

Insurance is another area that is already addressing adaptation. It has been widely acknowledged that climate change will lead to an increased demand for insurance and an increasing risk of extreme weather events occurring for which there may be no insurance cover. Mitigation of loss by taking adaptive measures will become critical.

For all these reasons, it is becoming increasingly important for individuals, businesses and organisations to keep abreast of predicted climate change impacts when going about their activities and businesses. It is significant that, in negligence cases, courts in England and Wales are likely to pinpoint documents and reports in the public domain when deciding on the extent to which a party ought reasonably to have had knowledge of a likely impact or adaptation action.

Adaptation is fast becoming an established climate change related sector which can no longer be overlooked.