Abstract
This paper explores the use and perceived usefulness of the 2012 and 2017 United Kingdom Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) reports to identify potential areas of improvement for UK adaptation policy. We conducted interviews with key stakeholders and analysed each CCRA in the context of objective, audience, budget, frame, key findings, dissemination, and how they informed policy. We found that stakeholders used the CCRA in three main ways: (i) to make a business case for their work; (ii) to shape direction of policy or work; and (iii) practical applications. Our findings suggest that the way in which both CCRAs have been operationalized are symptomatic of the UK state reinforcing scientific reductionism in adaptation assessments for policymaking. Recommendations from interviews for future CCRAs included (i) adopting more innovative methodological approaches, (ii) developing more effective mechanisms for operationalisation of the CCRAs, and (iii) improving communication of the CCRAs, their risks and recommendations. This would enable better alignment with user needs and more robust inclusive decision-making processes in the assessment of future UK climate risks and impacts. We discuss how a new framework is needed in which evidence assessments such as the CCRA can be further developed utilising methods of co-production.
Highlights
As the human and physical effects of climate change continually increase, so has policy attention to climate adaptation (Massey and Huitema, 2016; Vogel and Henstra, 2015). This has significant spatial planning challenges and scientific uncertainties attributed to it (Bell et al (2018); Vij et al, 2017) and the UK has arguably been a significant forerunner in implementing robust adaptation policy in comparison to other countries, given the implementation of the 2008 Climate Change Act (Benzie, 2014; Biesbroek et al, 2010; Brown et al, 2018; Lorenz et al, 2017; Massey and Huitema, 2013)
Other work has cautioned against overusing social and cultural local knowledge, arguing for greater hybridity between different forms of knowledge – scientific and lay – to determine appropriate adaptation responses to flooding (e.g. Haughton et al, 2015; Lane et al, 2011). In light of these complex science-policy arguments, we examine the use, usefulness and potential for improvements in respective 2012 and 2017 Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) to reconcile some of the major disparities between using the correct and best available evidence to meet end-user needs and requirements for future adaptation policy and practice in the UK
Using a combination of research methods we found that the 2017 CCRA was still underpinned by highly reductive science like modelling and riskbased analyses, there were qualitative judgments made by experts through the peer review process of the 2016 evidence report
Summary
As the human and physical effects of climate change continually increase, so has policy attention to climate adaptation (Massey and Huitema, 2016; Vogel and Henstra, 2015). The process in which CCRAs have been compiled and the way climate information/knowledge has been utilised is significant given the emergence of a literature grounded across the social sciences and cognate disciplines that questions the types of knowledge used in formulating climate policy, the most significant being the prevalent use of more globally reductive forms of scientific knowledge to determine future climate projections (Demeritt, 2001; Hulme, 2011, 2010) It has been argued such epistemic knowledge use has prevented more reflexive, communicative local knowledge that is co-produced through relevant governance systems being used. This in turn will catalyse more effective, evidence-based adaptation policy and practice in the UK
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