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Climate Change

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) on securing this Adjournment debate on adapting to the effects of climate change. I am grateful to him for raising this subject, because I agree that it is one about which we do not speak often enough. I assure my hon. Friend that the Government are in no way complacent about the issue. On the general point that my hon. Friend made about the number of pages devoted to adaptation, as opposed to mitigation, in the Stern report or the climate change programme review, I would point out that some of the most complex mathematical proofs are elegantly short. Some of the best books are not the lengthiest. Similarly, one cannot judge the quality of a speech by its length. We all know and understand why it is vital to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. The science is increasingly widely accepted. Even countries that have been sceptical about climate change are starting to listen. In the United States, for the first time ever, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is now saying that greenhouse gas increases are causing climate change—a marked change from just a year or two ago. The publication of the EU’s climate change and energy package last Wednesday shows how effective the UK’s leadership has been in getting action to cut emissions across Europe. But tackling climate change requires more than just mitigation, as my hon. Friend has rightly argued. Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is vital to ensure that we avoid future dangerous climate change, but we also need to adapt to the unavoidable impacts caused by past emissions. Adaptation does not signal a failure in our efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Carbon stays in the system for around 100 years, and because of inertia in the climate system, the warming effects peak about 40 years after emission. So the climate change that we are experiencing now is caused by our past emissions. Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped completely tomorrow, a certain amount of further climate change is inevitable. So we need to adapt to the impacts that we are already seeing, and those that we expect to see in the future. I do not propose to recount the evidence in detail, but impacts such as the 35,000 excess deaths across Europe during the 2003 heat wave, and the £6 billion worth of insurance claims for flood and storm damage between 1998 and 2003 here in the UK, could become more severe and more commonplace in the future. Certainly, the weather over the past few weeks has not been what any of us expect in January. We may not have been sunbathing as they were in New York, but last night I saw people sitting out on the Terrace of the House of Commons in what should be one of the coldest months of the year. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West rightly pointed out that last year Sir Nick Stern set out the challenges that we face. Adaptation can be complex, and there are many constraints that we need to overcome. In particular, we need to deal with uncertainty about how our climate will change and what level of risk we need to plan for. At the same time, however, Stern also argues that in many cases adaptation options will provide benefits in excess of the costs. Early action to deal with the impacts of climate change will reduce damage to the environment, property and quality of life. A study by the Association of British Insurers showed that for new developments in east London, proactive measures to prepare for climate change could reduce the annual costs of flooding by almost 80 to 90 per cent., a saving of almost £1 billion. Adaptation can also provide benefits that go beyond those relating to climate change. For instance, incorporating green space in urban environments helps keep surrounding buildings cooler, improves water management, supports biodiversity, provides local recreation facilities and helps foster sustainable communities. My honourable Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West has said on more than one occasion that we were not doing enough to deal with the impacts of climate change in the UK. He is right: we are not. Despite all the available information and evidence, only 10 per cent. of FTSE 100 companies say that they are taking into account the impacts of climate change when looking at their risk management strategies. The construction industry could be one of the sectors hardest hit by climate change, but it also has the opportunity to provide key wins on adaptation. However, more than 40 per cent. of companies expressed little or no concern about their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. We can—and we need to—do much more to ensure that the UK adapts to climate change successfully. Our objective must be to ensure that the UK is well adapted, in both the business and the household sector, and in government. However, it is not just a Government responsibility, it is a national responsibility. Everyone needs to factor climate change into their risk-management and decision-making frameworks. We all need to ask ourselves, ““In 10, 20 or 40 years’ time, will my objectives, investments or infrastructure still be viable in the face of a changing climate?”” However, although we can and must do more, it is important to recognise what we have achieved already, both at home and internationally. The UK is a world leader in impacts and adaptation work. Our climate impacts programme, UKCIP, will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year. It was set up by the then Department of the Environment in 1997, with just two people to co-ordinate impacts research. Now, it has a staff of 16 who work with a wide variety of organisations, including local authorities, planners, financial institutions, schools and public sector bodies to develop tools and methods to implement adaptation strategies. Well-adapted buildings must be a priority. One example is Redhill school in Worcester, not far from my constituency, or from that of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. By using UKCIP’s adaptation wizard, the architect and the local council have designed a building that includes a number of adaptation features, including sustainable drainage, a green roof to help reduce run-off and cool the classrooms, and overhanging eaves and canopies to prevent the school from overheating in the hotter summers that we are expecting, and are already experiencing. Last week I met the co-ordinators of the regional climate change partnerships. They work with people from a wide variety of local sectors, raising awareness of adaptation and building capacity to implement adaptation strategies. They have set up a number of excellent projects. I mentioned the example of Redhill school, but another is the urban redevelopment project at Bilston, a borough represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. It is a classic example of what can be done. Climate change considerations were built into the project from the start, keeping extra costs down and ensuring better protection against increased rainfall and good environmental benefits. The south-west partnership is working with the tourist industry to develop an adaptation action pack. The London partnership has published a checklist for development, which gives developers guidance about how to minimise climate change impacts when designing buildings. Such guidance is being used more and more widely across the UK. I could list many other excellent examples of the work of those partnerships, supported by UKCIP. I want to highlight local government, which is of key importance. Local authorities are in a prime position to deliver adaptation on the ground. They manage a range of services and have responsibilities for a number of the functions that are being affected by our changing climate—for example, flooding, social services, housing, the environment and biodiversity. A number of local authorities are leading the way and we are working with them to raise awareness of adaptation among others. More than 200 local authorities have now signed the Nottingham declaration, committing them to take action on both mitigation and adaptation. To support their work, UKCIP, the Energy Saving Trust and the Carbon Trust have developed a web-based tool to guide local authorities through the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies. UKCIP continues to develop new tools for local authorities. It is piloting local climate impact profiles—a way to give councils real insight into the local impacts that may occur in a changing climate and also to look at lessons learned from past weather events. Our work is not limited to the United Kingdom. We are leading the way overseas, too. We have developed bilateral programmes with China and India to support them in assessing the impacts of climate change. We are also heavily involved in international negotiations under the UN framework convention on climate change, which produced successful agreement of the Nairobi adaptation work plan in November 2006 at the climate change conference in Kenya. That five-year programme of work will assist all parties, in particular in developing countries, to improve their understanding and assessment of impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, and to make more informed decisions on practical adaptation actions and measures, which will allow them to respond to climate change on a sound and planned scientific, technical and socio-economic basis. Meanwhile, the Department for International Development has ensured that its development projects are resilient to projected climate change. Its country action plans take climate change into account and it works with Governments to make climate change a real consideration in planning policy. Again, that echoes the approach that we are taking at home: adaptation must not be seen as a stand-alone policy, but as something that must be taken into account in all sectors. I want to say something about our work on phase 2 of the adaptation policy framework for the UK. As I have already said, our phase 1 consultation showed that there is much activity on the ground, but we need a national framework to give a strategic and coherent vision of what a well-adapted UK should look like. I realise that the Government need to provide strong leadership and clear direction. In phase 2, we are drawing up a cross-Government framework, which will identify priority areas for action, where Departments can work more closely together to ensure that effective action is taken. It will define Government roles and responsibilities, encourage each Department to draw up its own assessment of climate change impacts and ensure that the Government put adaptation into the mainstream across all their work. It is my intention that the framework will be published at the end of this year. As I have already said, we need to do much more. We cannot do this work alone. For the UK successfully to adapt to climate change, Government action alone is not enough. All decision-makers—in the public and private sectors, at national and local level—need to take climate change into account on a daily basis and to plan for the adaptation work that will be needed for the future. We are not just talking about a future event, however. Climate change is already happening, and we all need to take responsibility for dealing with the changes. Of course, we want action on mitigation so that we can lessen the future impact, but there is absolutely no doubt that winning the battle against climate change requires concerted effort both on mitigation and adaptation. Yes, we have to stop the rise in greenhouse gases, but we also have to face the reality of a climate that is changing and ensure that we are equipped to deal with it. Again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West on securing a debate on an issue of key importance to all our futures. He put a number of detailed questions about the climate change programme review. Given the limited time for the debate, I shall write to him about those, but I want to assure him again that the Government are not complacent and that we are committed— The motion having been made at Seven o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Madam Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order. Adjourned at half-past Seven o'clock.