Abstract
Local government has a crucial role to play in climate change adaptation, both delivering adaptation strategies devised from above and coordinating bottom-up action. This paper draws on a unique longitudinal dataset to measure progress in adaptation by local authorities in Britain, comparing results from a national-scale survey and follow-up interviews conducted in 2003 with a second wave of research completed a decade later. Whereas a decade ago local authority staff were unable to find scientific information that they could understand and use, we find that these technical-cognitive barriers to adaptation are no longer a major problem for local authority respondents. Thanks to considerable Government investment in research and science brokerage to improve the quality and accessibility of climate information, local authorities have developed their adaptive capacity, and their staff are now engaging with the ‘right’ kind of information in assessing climate change risks and opportunities. However, better knowledge has not translated into tangible adaptation actions. Local authorities face substantial difficulties in implementing adaptation plans. Budget cuts and a lack of political support from central government have sapped institutional capacity and political appetite to address long-term climate vulnerabilities, as local authorities in Britain now struggle even to deliver their immediate statutory responsibilities. Local authority adaptation has progressed farthest where it has been rebranded as resiliency to extreme weather so as to fit with the focus on immediate risks to delivering statutory duties. In the current political environment, adaptation officers need information about the economic costs of weather impacts to local authority services if they are to build the business case for adaptation and gain the leverage to secure resources and institutional license to implement tangible action. Unless these institutional barriers are addressed, local government is likely to struggle to adapt to a changing climate.
Highlights
With some degree of climate change inevitable, climate policy is shifting away from its once exclusive focus on mitigating climate change to preparing for, and adapting to, the impacts to come
To underpin its National Adaptation Programme (NAP), the UK Government commissioned a Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), building on the latest UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) and parallel work done by a national network of regional climate change partnerships ‘to set out the main risks and opportunities from climate change for different sectors locally’ (DEFRA, 2014)
Adaptive capacity has been defined as ‘the ability of a system to adjust to climate change, to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences’ (IPCC, 2001; see Smit et al, 2001; Yohe and Tol, 2002), but in this paper we focus on the capacity of local authority (LA) to access and use climate science, because this usability gap continues to be framed as a key barrier for adaptation by local government in policy circles (Adger et al, 2005; Archie et al, 2014; Kuhlicke and Demeritt, 2014; Moss et al, 2013; Preston et al, 2015)
Summary
With some degree of climate change inevitable, climate policy is shifting away from its once exclusive focus on mitigating climate change to preparing for, and adapting to, the impacts to come. Adaptive capacity has been defined as ‘the ability of a system to adjust to climate change, to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences’ (IPCC, 2001; see Smit et al, 2001; Yohe and Tol, 2002), but in this paper we focus on the capacity of LAs to access and use climate science, because this usability gap continues to be framed as a key barrier for adaptation by local government in policy circles (Adger et al, 2005; Archie et al, 2014; Kuhlicke and Demeritt, 2014; Moss et al, 2013; Preston et al, 2015). The paper closes by focusing on why usable climate information might not always be useful or used and how institutional imperatives shape adaptation in practice
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