News

LCCP News July 2017

Posted on 19/07/17 by Kristen Guida

News and Events

Adaptation Sub-Committee progress report to Parliament On June 29, the Climate Change Committee published its second statutory report on the progress of the UK in preparing for climate change. The major findings are:

• Some action has been taken to address the risks from climate change, including important steps to fund and improve river and coastal flood defences and to improve the resilience of energy, transport, and water infrastructure to severe weather.
• The overall state of the natural environment is worsening, reducing its resilience to climate change.
• Recent storms show that national infrastructure remains vulnerable to severe weather
• Risks of surface water flooding in towns and cities still have not been addressed.

It also finds that the next National Adaptation Programme:

• Will need to be strengthened in the first half of 2018
• Must address priority areas, including flood risks to homes and businesses, risks to the natural environment, including to soils and biodiversity, and risks to human health and wellbeing from higher temperatures
• Must be more ambitious, with policies that make a measurable difference and with clearer mechanisms to track progress.

An accompanying report charts the UK’s progress in meeting its carbon targets. Read the summary and recommendations covering both reports here.

LCCP is currently contributing to Defra’s response to the report (due mid-October) and its consultation on the first stages of the next National Adaptation Programme, and the next Adaptation Reporting Power strategy.

Safe as Houses review  Sustainable Homes has released its brand new review of the current sustainability of housing stock in all tenures. A first in the UK, the assessment includes flood risk, water stress, and overheating, as well as carbon emissions, waste, biodiversity, and other environmental impacts of UK housing. Overall, Sustainable Homes finds that housing stock is only 49 percent sustainable compared to long-term, science-based targets. The exercise will be repeated annually to monitor progress. Download the report here.

 London First and Arup host Singaporean delegation As part of Singapore’s Executive Development and Growth Exchange programme, a delegation from the Centre for Liveable Cities came to London on July 11 for a seminar with experts to explore London’s experience of the challenges and opportunities for resilience. Speakers from London First and Arup discussed economic competitiveness, rail and transport, housing, and energy, and Kristen from LCCP presented the climate change adaptation challenges, and how London addresses these through its partnership approach.

European Climate Change Adaptation Conference 2017  LCCP and partners including the Environment Agency and UKCIP, took part in the 2017 ECCA conference in Glasgow in June. The conference brought together practitioners and academics from across Europe and beyond. Kristen co-chaired a session on adaptation pathways with colleagues from Tecnalia in Bilbao (with Tim Reeder presenting), and presented about the challenges of communicating about climate change adaptation. The US administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement just days earlier seemed to lend a sense of urgency and determination to the proceedings, and delegates from New York City affirmed their commitment to the Paris targets.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation closing climate justice programme  JRF held a final stakeholder workshop in June to explore the future agenda for climate justice action in the UK as the Climate Just programme draws to a close. Attendees acknowledged the tremendous advances that the programme (and especially Katharine Knox) has made to increase understanding and awareness of climate justice issues, through its excellent research and its training and engagement around the Climate Just web tool. A synthesis of the programme’s outputs will be disseminated in due course. See the latest research on flood disadvantage here.

 Climate-related financial disclosure: final recommendations  The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) published its final report and recommendations in June, and presented these to the G20 summit in July. The TCFD shaped its findings through extensive stakeholder consultation, and the recommendations were endorsed in a statement of support by more than 100 business leaders, demonstrating the importance of disclosing climate-related risks and opportunities.

Care provision fit for a warming climate: new paper  Rajat Gupta and Matt Gregg of Oxford Brookes University have published this journal paper in the Architectural Science Review. It uses a building simulation approach to explore current and future risk of summertime overheating and potential adaptation in four care and extra-care settings.

Forward Look

September

12-13: Public Health England Annual Conference 2017, Warwick University. More than 1400 delegates are expected to attend and share knowledge and experience to improve health outcomes around three key themes: promoting science and evidence, making the economic case for prevention, and working toward a healthier, fairer society.

19: LCCP Heat Risk group meeting, location Defra Nobel House, London.

22: Briefing on the 2018 UK Climate Projections (UKCP18), City Hall, London.

27: Looking ahead: the future of sustainability and housing. A one-day conference exploring a number of themes—delivering value for money through technology, better scrutiny of contractors and maintenance supply chains, delivering effectively on modular construction. Find out more and register here.

November

20-22: International workshop on data science for high-impact weather and flood prediction. University of Reading, Henley Greenlands campus. The workshop is being sponsored by the EPSRC funded project DARE (Data Assimilation for the REsilient City), based at the University of Reading, and being carried out in collaboration with the University of Leeds, University of Bremen, Aston University, UK Met Office, Environment Agency, JBA, CH2M, Institute for Environmental Analytics and London Climate Change Partnership. (http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/dare/)

 To find out more or register for LCCP events, contact Kristen.