On 13 February 2009, the Institution published “Climate Change: Adapting to the Inevitable?" a groundbreaking report that presented the results of research we commissioned to examine potential changes that might occur in climate over the next few centuries.
The study assumed that attempts to obtain a legally binding global agreement for a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would fail at the landmark UNFCCC COP15 meeting later that year and a ‘business as usual’ scenario would subsequently be followed - an assumption which today looks largely valid. The purpose of the work however was to consider what society needed to do to adapt our engineered world to the conditions that might emerge. The projections had suggested that the UK would be exposed to more frequent heavy rainfall events in the winter, increased summer temperatures and droughts, sea-level rise and, in combination with more intense storms, an increased incidence of storm surges.
Our engineering response made recommendations to Government, engineers and the public at large for adapting the UK's energy, water and transport systems, as well as the built environment in which our homes and livelihoods are located, to meet these challenges of more extreme weather. Amongst the risks identified were those of an increased possibility of flooding, water shortages, urban heat island effects and structural damage.
Five years later, the recent flooding seen in many parts of the UK, together with widespread infrastructure failures across the country in January including the collapse of the Dawlish railway sea wall, illustrates just how farsighted our work and recommendations were at the time. Despite numerous other subsequent studies, including a major one conducted on behalf of Defra by the Institution in collaboration with our sister professional bodies and the Royal Academy of Engineering (published as the "Infrastructure, Engineering and Climate Change Adaptation" report in February 2011, it is readily apparent that the urgent need for substantially more work to be done on increasing the resilience of the country’s infrastructure, though recognised, has not been acted upon.
Extreme weather events are on the increase and predicted to occur more frequently in the future. This, combined with rising sea-levels, presents a range of significant threats to our infrastructure which has largely be designed and engineered for past conditions. The sooner we adapt the systems that provide our energy, water, drainage, transport and communications, as well as our villages, towns and cities, to build a more resilient UK the better. Not only will this potentially help save lives and livelihoods, as well as reduce the widespread failures and disruption we’ve seen recently, but could also prove cheaper in the long-term.
In order to help adapt our country to these changes, there is a need for tough government regulation that demands all new, and existing, critical infrastructure are engineered to standards that can cope with the anticipated extreme weather events and sea level rises. In cases where this is not possible or viable, the infrastructure should be replaced and if necessary relocated. The UK does have a statutory National Adaptation Programme (in which the work of the Institution was emboddied) that was published in July 2013 as a requirement under the 2008 Climate Change Act.
However, the programme is a largely voluntary initiative based on a “collaborative partnership” approach (the fact that the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, decided at the time of publication not to exercise his powers to ‘direct’ reporting on progress on adaptation from key organisations effectively rendered the programme toothless), but Government cannot solely rely on companies and organisations voluntarily spending money and resources on adapting their infrastructure to be more resilient without regulatory intervention. In essence, a fear of overdesign and overprotection in the face of climate change uncertainty leads to adaptation carrying large investment risks that investors are not willing to take in the absence of regulation.
Regulating for adaptation of existing and new infrastructure will however translate into added costs and it is unlikely that society will be prepared to bear the expense of a fully resilient country. There needs to be an honest dialogue with the public that future-proofing our country against heavy rainfall, increased storminess, rising sea-levels and higher temperatures, while cheaper in the long-term, comes with substantial associated up-front costs. In some cases they may not wish to pay this, but instead accept relocation of communities and critical infrastructure by way of 'orderly retreat' and prefer to tolerate periods of reduced service from infrastructure during times of extreme weather or sea-level related disruption. For example longer, slower transport journeys, power outages and temporary loss of water supply may be acceptable if levels of personal and community preparedness are increased alongside improved communication of event forecasts and warnings.
Politicians have been saying that money is no object and claiming that all that needs to be done will be done; rather we need an open and honest debate with the public on the costs and limits to adaptation and on how to create a better prepared a more resilient nation. We need to be realistic.