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Under the Climate Change Act 2008 there is requirement for the UK Government to carry out an assessment of the risks to the UK of the current and predicted impacts of climate change to the year 2100. HR Wallingford led a large team of experts covering science, economics, stakeholder engagement and communications to produce the assessment. As this was the first assessment to be undertaken under the Act, a major aspect of the project was to develop a method and seek wide-spread agreement on the risks that needed to be considered. This required the management of a large consortium, to capture a wide range of technical expertise, along with an extensive programme of stakeholder engagement.
The project helped the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) to:
- Identify and characterise the impacts of climate change on 11 sectors: health, energy, transport, built environment, business/industry/services, agriculture, forestry, water, floods and coastal erosion, marine and fisheries and biodiversity including ecosystem services
- Consider cross-sectoral consequences of climate change
- Assess current vulnerability of the different sectors including a consideration of current policies, equity issues and adaptive capacity
- Assess the current and future risks for the 11 sectors, using the UK Climate Projections 2009 as well as projections of socio-economic change
- Assess the current and future risk for the Devolved Administrations and English Areas
- Provide the monetary estimates of the potential consequences of climate change where possible
- Produce a number of reports to meet different stakeholders’ requirements.
The project was started in September 2010 and was completed in the spring of 2012. The report on the risks currently faced by the UK was laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State for Defra on 25th January 2012, as required under the Climate Change Act.
