18 July 2023 – The government has released its latest climate change adaptation plan on Monday. While it includes measures to deal with overheating and flooding, critics say that preparing for climate change is still not an important priority for the UK.
On Monday the UK government has released its third National Adaptation Plan (NAP3). In this five-year programme it sets out how it will prepare the country for climate change.
The pan aims at making the UK more resilient to extreme weather and sets out what the government will do to protect people, homes and properties.
However, critics have warned that the plan makes clear that preparing for climate change is not an important priority for the UK.
Government Hails NAP3 As “Step Change”
The third National Adaptation Progrogramme was initially meant to be released today, but after it was leaked to the Guardian on Monday, it was released a day earlier.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Thérèse Coffey, hailed the new five-year plan as a “step change”, that focusses on three main themes: action, information and coordination.
By combining these, the plan promises that the UK will become better-informed, more closely coordinated across government and more action-focussed.
The actions in the new plan cover a wide range of areas. The government aims at creating a resilient infrastructure that will safeguard water supply and ensure transport is adapted appropriately for climate change.
NAP3 also includes actions to protect the natural environment, which include identifying hazards that affect local areas, promoting resilient and sustainable land management and farming practices and focussing on supporting net zero, protected sites and wildlife-rich habitats.
The government pledges £5.2bn for flood and coastal erosion prevention schemes to protect communities and businesses. Weather health alerting systems will continue to be employed.
New building regulations stipulate that new buildings have to be built in a way to keep them cooler. Local authorities will be supported in adaptation planning to cope with heatwaves and flooding.
Business and industry also feature in the plan. The government will implement actions to protect the financial system from climate-driven impacts. In autumn a new strategy to make the supply chains and imports resilient to threats such as climate change will be announced.
Businesses will be surveyed in terms of their climate readiness and supported to adapt to deal with heatwaves, droughts, storms and flooding.
Combating international impacts is also part of the plan, with the government pledging £1.5bn in 2025 to help vulnerable communities to adapt and become more resilient.
Experts Warn Plan Not Sufficient
Preparing for climate change should be a major priority for the UK. However, experts who advise the government have warned that the government is not treating it as such.
NAP3 has been criticised for not containing any substantial new money or new legislation, which will leave the UK unprepared. Before the release of the report, the UK Committee on Climate Change (UKCCC) demanded that the third plan should be fit for purpose.
But after its publication, the UKCCC’s Chair of the Adaptation Committee expressed her disappointment.
This is progress on previous plans… but we are disappointed the government hasn’t used this opportunity to go further,” she said. “In another summer of gruelling hot temperatures, water shortages and wildfires, it’s hard to make sense of that decision. We are at the stage where promising further action is not enough. The scale of the climate impacts we are seeing make clear that resilience to climate change should be a much greater national priority.
Baroness Brown, Chair of the Adaptation Committee of the UKCCC
Experts have lamented the lack of new announcements, with many actions already announced in the past. Former leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, criticised the lack of actionable measures to solve the issues present.
We’ve got the government talking about doing research to work out why and how buildings overheat instead of actually putting in place the measures to address it.
Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party
Another criticism levelled at the government is that the plan wants that new schools and hospitals are built with cooling measures. However, no new legislation or funding is included in the plan to update existing buildings.
Equally, NAP3 includes a section about the government planning to undertake research into how homes and workplaces overheat. Experts said this work should already have been done.
The plan should include a national heat risk strategy as well as an urgent retrofit programme to improve existing buildings, but doesn’t.
Experts have detected a lack of urgency in the plan that some have called “very weak”, which shows that the government does not think preparing for climate change is a high priority.
Some of the announced measures have been seen as positive, most of all the creation of a new cross-departmental climate resilience board to drive forward actions in future.
But if the government wants to prove it is serious about climate change and the environment, it has to put this high up on the agenda.
