Posted on 25/10/18 by Kristen Guida
News and Past Events
IPCC Special Report on Global Warming This month, the IPCC released a special report on global warming of 1.5°C at a meeting in South Korea. The report says that we are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming in the form of more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice. It highlights a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC, or more.
For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2ºC.
The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. It acknowledges that action to limit warming is already underway, but this will need to accelerate, and likely be combined with technologies to remove CO2 from the air.
See an interview with our own Chris Rapley about the report:
Supporting the next UK CCRA LCCP is delighted to be part of a team, including AECOM, Sustainability West Midlands, Climate Northern Ireland, and Adaptation Scotland, selected to produce a research report that will support the next UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. Commissioned by the Adaptation Sub-Committee, the study will examine how behaviour affects climate change risk—in households, communities, and businesses and across different UK geographies. LCCP will convene the project’s expert review panel and contribute to the research through a regional workshop.
Considering interdependencies and resilience On October 9, LCCP convened a group of representatives from utilities, regulators, London Resilience, and the Environment Agency to discuss what work is currently happening to understand vulnerability to cascading failures due to interdependent infrastructure systems. This meeting was prompted by a request to the Mayor’s Infrastructure High Level Group (IHLG). We will be reviewing the major points of the discussion and reporting back to the IHLG at its November meeting with recommendations for further activity to improve resilience.
London Flood Awareness Week, 12-18 November GLA research finds that most Londoners say they would know who to call if their house was flooded from a burst water pipe (68%), but only a minority would know who to call in the case of flooding from heavy rain (33%) or from a river bursting its banks (27%).
London also has a large and growing proportion of renters with little or no control over outside spaces. Nearly half of Londoners surveyed by the GLA say that permission is the biggest barrier to action against surface water flooding.
London Flood Awareness Week aims to raise awareness of flood risk, particularly among disadvantaged groups, and encourage simple and low/no-cost actions to reduce the impacts of any flood events that do occur.
This campaign, coordinated by the GLA, will provide coordinated public messaging in London about flooding through a social media campaign supported by community group-led activities. Resources that can be used beyond the campaign period will also be produced.
First TCFD Status Report The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) has presented its first status report to the Financial Stability Board (FSB). For this report, the Task Force reviewed disclosures of nearly 1,800 companies. The review focused primarily on identifying information that aligned with the Task Force’s recommended disclosures in fiscal year 2017 reporting.
Findings from the report show that most companies already disclose information in line with elements of the TCFD recommendations. However, further work is needed for disclosures to contain more decision-useful climate-related information.
To date, relatively few companies disclose the financial impact of climate change on the company. Information on the resilience of companies’ strategies under different climate-related scenarios is also limited. Disclosure is most prevalent in sustainability reports and not yet integrated in financial filings as recommended by the Task Force. The report concludes that although climate-related financial disclosures are still in their early stages, it is both possible and practicable for companies to disclose baseline climate-related information today.
The full list of companies and organizations supporting the work of the Task Force is here. Companies considering implementing the TCFD recommendations are encouraged to visit the TCFD Knowledge Hub to access more than 400 relevant resources and the newly launched case studies and events sections.
The full 2018 Status Report is available on the TCFD website.
Green Great Britain Week 15-19 October The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is introducing the first even Green Great Britain Week, to highlight the opportunities that clean growth offers the UK and raise understanding about how businesses and the public can tackle climate change. Find out about the week and the events happening across the country here. LCCP is hosting or taking part in three events during the week. Find out more at the following links:
Forward Look
for more information about any events, contact Kristen unless otherwise specified.
November
15: Resilience First breakfast briefing: Keeping our feet dry: being resilient to urban flooding.
2019:
January 10: UKCP18 briefing. Join LCCP partners and others at City Hall for a briefing on the new climate projections, including data and supporting materials. You can register here.
May 28-31: European Climate Change Adaptation (ECCA) conference, Lisbon. Details about the themes of the conference, how to submit sessions, and how to register are available here.