Adaptions for climate change: we are not ready
- robball6
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
A few weeks ago, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) published a report on England’s progress in adapting to climate change. Verdict: we aren’t making any.
“We have seen in the last couple of years that the country is not prepared for the impacts of climate change. We know there is worse to come, and we are not ready – indeed in many areas we are not even planning to be ready,” said the chair of the CCC’s Adaptation Committee, Baroness Brown.
In launching the report, Baroness Brown warned the Government not to make false economies by cutting funding for adaptation in its June spending review. “We are seriously concerned that resilience and climate adaptation may be cut in the spending review. Government needs to recognise that this is not a future problem, this is today’s problem,” said Baroness Brown.
The CCC must report every two years on how England is progressing on plans and on actions which will help us to adapt to climate change impacts. It looks at several areas: land, nature and food; infrastructure which includes road and rail; built environment and communities; health and wellbeing; and the economy.
Only two areas out of 36 within those categories received a ‘good’ or green rating: policies and plans related to the rail network and the strategic road network. The CCC assessed policies and plans for local roads as insufficient and action as limited. Action on the strategic road network is also limited, it says.
In terms of planning for adaptation on roads, the report mentions proposed actions by National Highways which include improving drainage, trialling nature-based solutions, taking remedial action at high-risk structures, and investing in new road surface materials that can better respond to extreme temperatures.
Commitments to adaptation on local roads have stalled, says the CCC, with an update to local transport plan guidance which will include expectations on guidance still under review. It also notes that the carriageway maintenance backlog alone has increased from £106.0 million in 2022/23 to £124.9 million in 2023/24.
The report also flags up the need to map out interdependencies between transport modes; for instance, how problems with rail can have knock-on effects on road networks. Transport for London has carried out a comprehensive assessment of how all its transport modes depend on each other, which could be replicated nationally, says the report.
Climate change is here
The report starts by evidencing some of the impacts of climate change which we are already seeing in the UK. Since its last assessment on progress in 2023, we have experienced the wettest 18 months on record. This followed the Summer of 2022 when temperatures rose above 40 degrees C for the first time, with drought and record numbers of wildfires, it says.
Flooding is already a huge risk for our road networks. Over a third of our roads and railways, by length, are already susceptible to flooding and that is predicted to rise to half by 2050, says the report.
Heavy rainfall and flooding cause multiple problems for those managing our road networks. Road surfaces and foundations deteriorate more quickly; floodwater can erode bridge foundations and the risk of landslides on slopes and embankments increases.
Increased temperatures create different impacts. Some types of asphalt used on roads can become softer, leading to bleeding and rutting, shrinkage of materials increases which can affect elements such as expansion joints in concrete roads or in bridges.
To help mitigate against these impacts – and those that affect all the other aspects of life covered in the report – the CCC recommends four areas of action for the Government:
· provide an actionable framework
· coordinate across government departments and spending decisions
· integrate adaption into all relevant policies with relevant resources
· implement monitoring and data collection
While there may be political differences in opinion on how much impact the UK’s efforts to cut carbon will have on climate change, there can be no argument against the fact that the climate is changing. Although action to adapt our roads and other infrastructure will cost money now, doing nothing will cost us much more in the long run, warns the report.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thermal Road Repairs: Decarbonising the asphalt repair industry
High output. Low emission. Zero waste. Permanent solution.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources:
Comments