Speech by Joan Ruddock MP to the EU Adaptation Green Paper Conference, London - 29 October 2007
I am delighted to be able to join this conference and I am grateful to the Commission for organising it.
Europe has taken a clear leadership role on mitigation – setting out ambitious targets at Spring Council earlier this year and driving forward efforts to develop a post-2012 framework. But as we all know, reducing our emissions is not enough to tackle the problem of climate change.
We need to adapt to the changes we are already experiencing and will continue to experience. Our ambitious 2*C target, while helping us to prevent dangerous levels of warming, will still lead to very big changes.
We will see some species become extinct, threatening the viability of ecosystems. Vector borne diseases are likely to increase and there will be more flooding and drought.
This year in the UK we had the worst floods in over 200 years, followed by an outbreak of bluetongue disease, which of course can be linked to increasing temperatures. And we all know about the serious forest fires in Greece, heatwaves in central Europe, and severe storms in France.
As the IPCC have said, climate change is already affecting human and natural life and the publication of the Green Paper marks an important step in the development of the EU’s approach to adaptation.
We know that it is the poorest and most vulnerable countries who will be hit hardest so I’m very pleased to see that the Green Paper’s proposed approach recognises the importance of our continuing to support them.
But in our own nations too there will be serious threats to our environment, to our economies and even, I think, to social justice – we need to establish how we deal with those impacts while continuing to maintain our commitments to the least developed.
I believe that two aspects of the Green Paper will be particularly key to achieving this – pillar 1, how the Commission can mainstream and embed adaptation in its own work, and pillar 3 – continued support for research and knowledge transfer.
Our main goal is to ensure that adaptation is embedded in all our work: on regeneration; in our agricultural policy; and to promote and enhance biodiversity.
To help us achieve this, the EU can play an important role supporting research into the impacts of climate change and ways we can adapt.
Two recent projects I think are very useful in demonstrating this.
The first project, ESPACE (European Spatial Planning, Adapting to Climate Events) has provided some valuable lessons on how we can integrate adaptation into spatial planning – a key tool to managing climate impacts on both built and natural systems.
The second project, BRANCH (Biodiversity Requires Adaptation in NorthWest Europe under a Changing climate) looks at how spatial planning systems can be used to help biodiversity adapt.
We need to work to share research and ideas. So a Europe-wide approach to adaptation is vital, but at the same time we must remember that there is no “one size fits all” solution. The impacts of climate change will hit at the local level and responsibility for adaptation begins at home.
In the UK we already seeing the variation in impacts – the northwest is getting wetter, the south-east is getting drier. More starkly the IPCC report highlights that we are seeing increasing disparity across Europe - for example, flooding in Northern Europe and increased forest fires in the South.
We need to manage these impacts from the bottom up – on the principle of subsidiarity – which of course is one of the cornerstones of the Union. The challenge is how – how do we ensure that our response maximises opportunities and minimise conflicts across sectors, but is also suited to the local nature of the impacts that we face?
Here in the UK we are starting to address that challenge – building up adaptive capacity at the local level and at the same time developing a national framework which will support local level activities.
The East coast of England - running from the Wash to the Thames - is probably the most vulnerable part of the UK in terms of sea level rise, coastal erosion and flood risk. It is also home to some of the region's more deprived communities.
So for this reason, partners and colleagues in the East of England, led by the Government Office, are working together to develop a programme of action. It seeks to use the coast's natural and cultural assets, to build economic opportunity, whilst minimising the threats and maximising the options that are presented by a changing, and largely receding coast line.
We will, early next month, introduce the Climate Change Bill to our Parliament. This Bill will make the UK the first country in the world to set out a long-term legal framework for reducing CO2 emissions and also establish a legislative framework for adaptation.
This will provide a mechanism for co-ordinating action on adaptation across the whole of Government, and will require us to assess the risks that climate change poses to the UK. Our adaptation will also have to be based on principles of sustainable development- a healthy environment, social equity and strong economic development.
To take this legislative action further, next year we will publish our vision for ensuring that the UK can successfully adapt to climate change. This will be followed in due course by a more detailed action plan.
But we cannot adapt well if we don’t have support from the sub-national and local levels. In the UK we are very fortunate to have regional climate change partnerships which work with a wide range of organisations to develop locally appropriate adaptation solutions.
Here in London, for example, the regional partnership has worked with neighbouring partnerships to produce guidance for developers on how to build adaptation into their plans. Another example is the work of our Building Research Establishment (BRE) on the development of low carbon homes to reach Level 5 and 6 of our Code for Sustainable Homes. Since many new homes will be built in the South East it is essential they are adapted to water scarcity and achieving very low water use targets is part of our Sustainable Code.
The East London Green Grid is another example, an example of a cross-borough programme to promote and aid the delivery of green infrastructure. Climate change adaptation is core to the Green Grid, with aims to improve flood risk management and potentially reduce the urban heat island.
In addition to the Climate Change Partnerships it is important that all parts of local government become completely involved in adaptation. For a number of years we have set performance indicators in England for Local Authorities to help push up standards of local delivery – we’ve done it for schools and in waste management. Now, for the first time I am pleased to say we will have an indicator on adapting to climate change.
Local Authorities will be vital in making adaptation happen on the ground through their roles in environment, housing, spatial planning, social care and education. And I know they will have much to learn from continental experience, particularly on retrofitting existing buildings.
We are also very lucky to have the UK Climate Impacts Partnership (UKCIP) who I am sure many of you know. They are strong supporters of local action, building capacity across a wide range of sectors and regions. They recently produced guidance for local authorities which I know has been translated into French – which I think is an indication of the usefulness of their work.
UKCIP, Defra and the Met Office Hadley Centre are also in the process of developing a major new climate-scenarios programme for the UK, using probabilistic modelling techniques. The UKCIP08 scenarios are going to be launched in October next year and follow on from previous sets released in 2002 and 1998. We believe the programme represents the first national set of probabilistic scenarios. It will allow users a much greater consideration of the level of risk they face by associating probabilities with different levels of climate change and taking into account both model and natural variability uncertainties.
One of the key questions for you to discuss over the next two days is the role that different organisations need to play to ensure we are adapting to the best of our ability. Where can each of us - Europe, National Governments, Regional and Local Governments, private business and stakeholder partnerships, make a contribution?
As I said, there is no one size fits all solution to adaptation. We need to clearly define who should act at which level – and this will change from country to country and from sector to sector. But we do need to share our collective experience, knowledge and resources and EU offers us a forum in which to do this. It can also show leadership by mainstreaming adaptation into its own work, which will, in turn, make our own individual adaptation efforts easier.
I look forward to continuing to work with the Commission as it develops its own adaptation framework, and I particularly look forward to working with colleagues from other Member States, sharing experiences and learning from your examples
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29 October 2007