Why do we keep failing to adapt?

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Joseph Lewis

What does the latest report from the CCC include?

The CCC’s climate risk report emphasises that “climate change is undermining the UK’s security and prosperity” and it makes clear that the impacts of climate change are not a future uncertainty. They are here already and they have real consequences for the country today.

Some of the key messages from the report include:

How fast is the world warming? The report includes projections of temperature rises above pre-industrial levels of heat, based on the Met Office Climate Dashboard. The report says that the global average for surface air has now risen by 1.4°C, just shy of the critical 1.5°C threshold. The same projections show the world on a path to reach a 2°C rise by 2050, with a rise of 3°C by the end of the century and the prospect of a 4°C rise still very possible without more action.
Should we be concerned? Yes. The report builds on evidence we already have of the substantial risks associated with climate change. Increasingly hot summers will put more stress on agriculture and food security, while wetter winters make rain and flooding more intense and more common. Between the bursts of heavy rain, the country will be drier, with more risk of wildfires and drought. We are facing a world of extremes, especially as we get closer to a world that is 2°C warmer.
What is it going to cost us? All these risks come with costs. We can either invest in resilience now, or we can pay the price of failing to adapt. The report estimates that we need to invest at least £11 billion per year to adapt. That’s a sizeable investment, but only represents ~2% of the total existing UK investments each year. We also know that doing more costs less. If we don’t act, the report says that “the cost of climate change could rise to the equivalent of around 1-5% of GDP per year by 2050 … an estimated cost of £60-£260 billion per year.”
Are we doing enough? We need to do much more to adapt to the effects of climate change. Positive progress is being made, but nowhere near quickly enough. The report highlights eight sets of recommendations, including actions for: protecting from heat, managing flood risk, avoiding water shortages, supporting nature to adapt, keeping farming viable, understanding the risks to food security, maintaining access to insurance, and adapting infrastructure to avoid cascading destruction.

The report also sets out ten principles for effective adaptation:

Understand the risks from climate change
Agree objectives supported by measurable targets
Prepare for 2°C climate change by 2050, consider 4°C by 2100
Account for co-benefits
Account for vulnerabilities of people, places, and nature
Account for cascading risks across sectors
Embed adaptation into relevant decisions
Assign clear roles and responsibilities
Enable funding and finance
Monitor and evaluate progress and adjust ambition and action

For more information and all the details of the CCC’s policy recommendations, read the full report: A Well-Adapted UK.

How can we get adaptation back on track?

Fortunately, the report is not focused on compounding on the woes of the present. It focuses on solutions, with clear recommendations for how we can get adaptation back on track.

The headline message is that much more investment is required, especially in cooling, flood risk management, and water management, which are the areas where adaptation funding is most urgently needed.

The report emphasises the importance of cooling public service infrastructure like hospitals, schools, and care homes, as well as protecting the people who are most vulnerable or least able to protect themselves, like older people and those on lower incomes. It also recommends setting maximum working temperature regulations to keep workplaces safe and encourage businesses to adapt their workplaces proactively.

For flood risk, the report estimates that flood damage is already costing £3.3 billion each year. With many more places likely to become high-risk in the coming years, the report encourages the Government to adopt long-term flood defence programmes with large-scale programmes for building and maintaining natural and traditional flood protections. It also recommends keeping new buildings fit for the future by building in the right places, rather than “undefended areas at risk of existing and future flooding”.

The other side of the coin for water management is preparing for water shortages during increasingly dry weather. With ongoing reforms to the water sector in England and Wales, one of the main recommendations in the report is for regulators to keep drought in focus. There are also recommendations to ensure that new developments are drought sensitive.

In addition to those priority areas, the report also calls for the Government to invest public money in nature restoration in a way that is compatible with future climate change. With a view to unsustainable forms of land use, the report calls for nature-friendly investment and a joined up approach to safeguarding the natural environment alongside addressing climate change through policies like the Land Use Framework.

Beyond funding, the other key message from the report is the need for an honest dialogue with the public about adaptation, led by government. The reason why is clear: there is nowhere near enough awareness of the need to adapt, which has contributed to making it such a low priority in many places.

Food security is another focus area for the report, with major challenges for agriculture predicted as the climate changes. The report recommends direct support to make farming viable in a future under climate change, which would increased water storage and a more nature-friendly approach to farming. It also recommends a government-led approach to adaptation, preparing for potential food shortages and including supermarkets and major food companies in adaptation reporting to increase the information available about climate risks to the food system.

There are several other recommendations in the CCC report, including the need for forward-looking nature protections, a clearer future for flood resilience, and a more structured approach to managing the connections and potential dependencies between different parts of critical infrastructure that might be put at risk by climate change.

Nature markets: A gateway to adaptation?

The business case for adaptation is easy to make. Doing more costs less, because unchecked climate change comes with substantial costs. The solutions are cheaper and are all likely to return more savings than the upfront costs. Indeed, the CCC report identifies some of the benefit-cost ratios, which range from around a 2:1 benefit all the way to a 30:1 benefit for the most rewarding actions.

Natural flood management is projected to provide between three and five times as many benefits as its costs. Proactively maintaining existing infrastructure, an often-neglected resilience action, could be even more rewarding, saving five to ten times as much as it costs. Heatwave plans for the 2040s could be some of the most beneficial compared to their costs, with ratios between 10:1 and 30:1 benefits to costs.

Public investment is essential, if for no other reason than to set the direction of travel. Yet with constrained budgets, rising costs of living, and stressed public services, it is clear that private finance also needs to play some kind of role in the adaptation transition. One of the key gateways to delivering that funding will be through nature markets.

Late last year, the Office for Environmental Protection commissioned research into emerging policy around the nature markets framework, recognising the need to mobilise green finance to ensure nature’s recovery in England. The existing framework, published in 2023, acknowledges the role of nature markets and nature-based solutions in “building resilience to climate shocks”. It also suggests that this could be a key motivator for private finance, helping to secure supply chains that could otherwise be at risk.

So why have government action and nature markets not yet delivered on private finance that draws the link between nature, climate adaptation, and increased economic security? There have been two substantial barriers, both linked to uncertainty.

Firstly, there has been uncertainty around how to get the right money to the right places: what counts as an investment in nature and how can it be measured? It may seem like an abstract problem, but when it comes to nature markets and delivering action through credits, it’s a necessary prerequisite to moving finance. It becomes even more important in the context of compliance or voluntary initiatives like the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).

Addressing the challenge, government has worked with business to set new standards with “market-specific requirements for biodiversity and nutrient markets that define exactly how credits must be measured and reported”.

The second challenge is the need for long-term certainty that the current direction of travel for policy will continue. Looking at the CCC report, it seems inevitable that more support for climate resilience will be essential. However, the complex connections between adaptation, resilience, and nature are not as well protected from the uncertainties of the political and policy landscape.

What next?

Where the evidence is clear, much of the challenge ahead is about delivery: carrying out the policies that support adaptation and moving the finance necessary to increase resilience. Our Environmental Policy Implementation Community (EPIC) takes a leading role in promoting the effective implementation of environmental policy, especially at a local level.

Over the coming weeks, we will also be publishing a report on reconnecting environmental targets with credible outcomes. In the context of adaptation and the latest evidence from the CCC, our report makes a crucial point: we can speed up the pace of action and catch up with the urgency posed by our changing climate.

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Read more about how we can act on climate change in our recent report, Delivering change in a complex world
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Find out more by reading the latest articles from Essential Environment, including insights on the Santa Marta Climate Conference and our analysis on the Land Use Framework for England

If you want to learn more about environmental policy or the training we offer for members, please contact Joseph Lewis, Head of Policy (joseph@the-ies.org).