Searching for meaningful impact on climate adaptation

The UK is not making enough progress in adapting to climate change. In some ways the country is going backwards. That is the stark message from the progress report from the Parliamentary Group for the Environment in their latest report.

The committee concluded there has been limited delivery of adaptation actions, disjointed planning, and no improvement in delivering the change needed across various sectors. They have called on the government to prioritise adaptation and improve coordination across departments, policies and sectors.

I used examples from Zurich’s work to demonstrate how businesses, cities and communities can become more resilient. Increasing resilience to climate change is a ‘no brainer’ action for all businesses and organisations.

Climate adaptation needs to be co-ordinated and visible

A common theme ZRS sees in how organisations manage climate risk is having too many people involved or too few. Too many people can lead to a lack of prioritization and focus. Too few and there isn’t enough resource to make progress and execute the plan.

While there are established ways to manage it in a co-ordinated way, climate risk still worryingly lurks in the shadows and silos. Effective deployment of climate risk management requires it to be a core topic that permeates all areas of the organisation, with shared climate data points; not done in a piecemeal fashion across different functions and teams with competing agendas.

It could be the case there are adaptions being implemented that are not recorded. At ZRS we often find organisations where adaption is happening as part of an ongoing retrofit or climate mitigations programmes, responses to flood or storm events through insurance claims or in the construction of new assets.

Climate adaptation and resilience needs to be a collaborative and cross functional effort; from the top down to the bottom up in order to have the necessary effect.

Climate resilience is often as important as climate mitigation

The report might seem like more negative mood music to progress on the UK’s net zero target. The data and lived experience in the UK point to more severe and frequent weather events, often being compounded by cumulative events in quick succession.

We do need to accelerate action and finance for net zero, but the same pace and scale of support is needed for climate adaptation to maximise impact.

When working with our customers there is often a pivot towards adaptation and resilience after considerable efforts and investment in mitigation priorities. However, this can lead to inefficient use of funding or a failure to realise the ROI that business cases were approved on.

Some organisations raced ahead to install solar panels and EV charging infrastructure, without doing a data led risk assessment that would have identified the proposed locations to be highly exposed to extreme weather hazards. This leads to ‘spending twice’ and actually set these organsiations back on their environmental sustainability journey.

What does more extreme weather mean for people, infrastructure and communities?

The report reiterates the unambiguous state of the climate in the UK, both now and what projections and models are telling us about the likely future impacts.

Starting from the baseline of increased flood, storm, heat and drought events in the UK we need to understand what this means for people, infrastructure, buildings, food, the economy and nature.

Vulnerabilities and exposures must be understood at an operational level, getting into the detail and nuances of local environments, policies and preparedness plans and strategies.

ZRS gives clear advice to customers: a proactive approach to climate risk management is more essential than ever. As we noted in a recent Zurich publication, resilience can be one of the best forms of insurance.

What does the latest climate report mean for UK organisations?

There is plenty of work to be done at a UK policy level – which we will continue to support – but understanding and taking action at a local level for organisations, local government and business should be seen as a no brainer, and immediate, action. The driver for doing this should be disassociated with sustainability reporting or environmental plaudits – the lack of progress on climate adaptation is a risk that transcends a single topic issue and will be core to the resilience of communities and the UK economy in the years to come.