Anna Beswick explains the need for brave, bold leadership on flooding that goes beyond responding reactively once crisis events happen and commits to ambitious action to enhance climate resilience – emphasising the role of innovation in adaptation finance and involving local communities.
With major floods affecting large areas of continental Europe, including Austria, Poland, Romania, Italy and the Czech Republic – and now the UK – over the past few weeks, we once again see people devastated and lives in ruins. We know that flooding is one of a wide range of risks that are now much more likely because of climate change. Yet time and time again we see leaders on the back foot on this issue: failing to take decisive action to address known climate risks and waiting for crisis events before releasing funds and making commitments to act. By taking this approach they miss opportunities to increase climate resilience in ways that can reduce harm when crisis events happen and, crucially, deliver much wider benefits – which in the UK include opportunities to reduce health inequalities and attract inward investment.
The focus must shift from inaction to increasing ambition and seizing these wider benefits of climate resilience. Innovation in adaptation finance and a shift to involving communities in identifying and addressing climate risks are both crucial.
How serious is the situation in the UK?
The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) reports that action to increase resilience and adapt to climate risks, including flooding, is not keeping pace with the level of risk we face. Successive governments’ National Adaptation Programmes have failed to put in place measures to fully address risks and in many cases have not delivered on the limited commitments made. This includes major gaps in action to address heat risk (as well as flooding), as described in our recent Turning up the Heat evidence report. The CCC’s independent assessment of the third National Adaptation Programme (NAP3) notes that the programme lacks the pace and ambition to address growing climate risks.
England’s flood risk problem is getting worse, not better. In 2023 the National Audit Office reported that investments committed for 2021–2027 which were originally intended to enhance flood resilience of 336,000 properties are now likely to benefit only 200,000 properties due to rising prices and delays with procurement. In addition, the report identified budget shortfalls for the maintenance of existing flood defence assets meaning that an additional 203,000 properties are now at increased risk of flooding. The existing pace of change and level of investment is far short of what is needed.
Innovation in adaptation finance is essential
While upfront investment in action to increase resilience is needed, and should come from a range of sources, our work with the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance shows that the benefits of making investments and taking action to adapt before a disaster can be significant. The economic case does not just rely on avoided losses, where the cost of implementing resilience measures is offset by costs avoided when disasters happen. There is strong evidence that investment in climate resilience provides wider economic benefits such as increasing the viability and attractiveness of locations for development. Wider health and environmental benefits are also common: for example, investment in green infrastructure such as street trees and rain gardens provides health co-benefits for people and nature. These ‘triple wins’ are explored in our research on the triple dividends of resilience and a paper with the World Resources Institute.
The challenge of building support and financing action in the absence of a crisis ‘trigger’ event can be addressed by developing a wider suite of finance mechanisms for climate adaptation. This requires commitment and capacity to innovate. Action to build climate resilience typically delivers a ‘public good’, meaning that benefits can be difficult to monetise which makes it challenging to secure private sector investment.
At the forefront of addressing this challenge are projects like Naturance, which is exploring opportunities for harnessing innovative forms of public, private and blended finance to implement green infrastructure that can contribute to addressing flood and heat risk in cities. Projects such as Pathways2Resilience, which recently announced Greater London and Greater Manchester among the first cohort of regions it will cover, are also crucial in providing the support and expertise needed to enable cities and regions to develop integrated investment programmes for climate adaptation. This type of innovation and support needs to be upscaled in order to rapidly increase the depth and pace of action for climate resilience.
Involve people and value local knowledge
The challenge of building climate resilience is not just a technical or financial problem. Climate impacts strike at the heart of communities, deeply affecting people and places, with long-term consequences. While science, engineering and financial models hold many solutions, in the UK efforts to understand climate risk and enhance climate resilience frequently fail to take account of or value the vast and deep knowledge and lived experience of local communities. Research commissioned by the Government into public awareness and perceptions of climate change and net zero tells us that 83% of people in Britain are concerned about climate change but only 14% are concerned that climate change is affecting their local area a great deal. Many people are unaware of the very real risks right on their doorstep.
Local communities across the UK are a huge untapped resource. Novel approaches to democratic innovation, such as the Hackney Citizens’ Climate Jury, and expertise from networks such as the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies are making inroads at creating spaces where local people can be part of developing actions to reduce the risks they face, contributing to climate justice and community empowerment.
We also have much to learn from the pioneering approaches developed by the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance. Our work as part of the Alliance in the town of Lowestoft, East Suffolk supported East Suffolk Council to involve community members in assessing various aspects of resilience to flood risk and inputting to the design of new flood protection measures in Lowestoft and longer-term work across the region. This success story is repeated across Alliance Countries, where community programmes and advocacy have beneficially impacted 3.14 million people and influenced US$1.26 billion being allocated in funding towards resilience.
The Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance approach is now being upscaled in the Global South. By 2027, alongside like-minded organisations, the Alliance aspires to positively impact 5.5 million people vulnerable to climate change, significantly expanding this number to 70 million by 2035. The UK could learn from the Alliance’s work, including by placing a much stronger focus on involving communities in developing local climate resilience and creating innovative approaches to funding action.
Work is picking up pace on the fourth UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, due in 2026. It will be important to ensure that communities across the country can contribute to and benefit from this assessment, which informs UK-wide and devolved administration adaptation plans.
This article was originally published by The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment on 27th September 2024, you can view the original here.