Climate change: adaptation

Some climate change is now unavoidable even if carbon emissions fall dramatically. Our historic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the time lag in resultant climate change, make this inevitable. This section looks at the role of local authorities in strengthening the resilience of their services and local communities to a changing climate – adapting to climate change.

• The role of local authorities
• The UK Climate Projections
• Policy
• Benefits to local authorities
• Taking action
• Climate change directory
• Floods
• Links and resources

Adaptation addresses the impacts and opportunities resulting from a changing climate. Adaptation therefore includes effective measures to minimise, adjust to and take advantage of the consequences of climate change.

The role of local authorities

Local authorities have two critical roles in tackling climate change:

• strengthening the resilience of local services and local communities to extreme weather – adaptation
• reducing carbon emissions from their own operations, services and the local community – mitigation.

This page focuses on adaptation. You can read about mitigation in our climate change and energy section.

Climate change and energy

Councils can support adaptation measures through their functions as:

• community leaders – persuading and helping local people and organisations to adapt to climate change
• service providers – local services can influence how well local communities are prepared for climate change and adapt their own provision to cope with climate change
• estate managers – ensuring that council property is resilient to the impacts of climate change.

The UK Climate Projections

New UK Climate Projections 09 (UKCP09) were launched in June 2009. The key changes that are expected are:

• warmer, drier summers
• milder, wetter winters
• rising sea levels
• more very hot days
• more heatwaves especially in the south and east
• more rain on the wettest days of the year
• fewer frosty nights.

Climate change projections are inherently uncertain due to:

• uncertainty about the course of future emissions
• limitations in our ability to model the climate precisely
• the effects of natural variability year-to-year fluctuations in the overall trend.

Because of this, UKCP09 uses three emissions scenarios – high, medium and low.

As a result of the lag in how the climate responds to emissions, the alternative scenarios do not result in a significant variation in the projections up to 2040, but after 2040 the projections start to diverge noticeably.  

The UKCP09 website presents overview information such as:

• key findings for the whole of the UK and for administrative regions
• UK maps of how seasonal mean precipitation and temperatures are likely to change.

Users can also use the customisable output available from the user interface to view projections for their locality and generate maps and graphs.

The UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) website

UKCP09 presents information on temperatures, precipitation – rain, hail and snow – cloud, humidity, sea level rise, storm surges, waves and sub-surface changes.

It does not interpret how these changes might feed through into other impacts that will be crucial for councils such as floods, storms, high winds and coastal erosion and inundation.

Research is now underway to use the new projections in impacts studies. In the meantime, information on flooding and coastal erosion may be obtained from catchment flood management plans and shoreline management plans.

Catchment flood management plans – on the Environment Agency website

Shoreline management plans – on the Environment Agency website

Policy

The Local Performance Framework includes a national indicator (NI) on climate change adaptation – NI 188. Because of the nature of adaptation, NI 188 is unusual in being a process, rather than outcome-based indicator.

You can read more about NI 188 and other policy drivers that affect local authorities' responsibilities for climate change adaptation in our 'policy drivers' section.

Adaptation: policy

Benefits to local authorities

Action on adaptation can bring many local benefits. For example:

• reduce household and business costs by improving buildings so that they can withstand severe weather
• reduce disruption of households, local services, businesses and agriculture by preparing them for the impacts of climate change
• create local jobs – the Local Government Association (LGA) estimate that 150,000 new jobs can be created from climate change measures including building resilience to climate change
• save the council money by reducing damage to council property from severe weather
• access new resources – there is a range of support and funds for councils for work on climate change.

The LGA has produced ‘Cutting through the Green Tape III: The economy or the environment – do I need to choose?’ This is to encourage the view that local authorities are key players in the effort to reduce carbon emissions. It also aims to convince councillors of the importance of the climate change agenda. You can download it from the LGA website. You will need to log in with your council email address first.

The economy or the environment – do I need to choose? – on the LGA website

Taking action

It is essential to prepare a climate change action plan – or plans – that sets out how your council intends to improve the resilience of council services and local communities to the impacts of climate change. Taking a systematic approach will ensure that the right people are involved and have the backing of senior management and elected members.

Almost all council functions will need to prepare for the impacts of climate change. Guidance on how local services can respond is still in the early stages. You can use the Nottingham Declaration website to find out what advice is available in this area for specific council services and corporate functions.

The Developing an Action Plan section of the Nottingham Declaration website also offers guidance on how to develop a Climate Change Action Plan, with examples of what other local authorities have tried.

You can also find links to local climate change strategies and plans, although the majority of these focus on mitigation.

The Nottingham Declaration website

Climate change directory

Do you need support for your work on climate change? This directory will guide you through support available at the national and regional levels on both mitigation and adaptation.

Climate Change Support for Local Authorities: A directory of the national and regional support

Floods

The floods in summer 2007 showed us how vulnerable we are to the scale and nature of future weather events. To find out more about the risks of flooding and how to meet the challenges it poses, see our dedicated resouce.

Flooding resource

Links and resources

Adaptation: resources and links

Page updated May 2010.