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Evaluating preparedness for a future climate
UK

Purpose: The 2008 Climate Change Act introduced a framework for independent scrutiny of the government’s adaptation programme. It included the establishment of the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an independent body created to fulfil a number of statutory responsibilities. One of these is to “assess the preparedness of the UK to meet climate change risks and opportunities”.

Approach: The ASC developed a monitoring and evaluation Framework based on the “adaptation preparedness ladder” which has three components - desired adaptation outcomes, policy to enable delivery and delivery of outcomes. The current approach is based on lessons learned to date and this process of learning is likely to continue in the future. The ASC’s annual reports have focussed on different risks e.g. flooding, water scarcity and ecosystem services/managing the land. (ASC 2012) The annual assessments are intended to facilitate mid-course corrections to adaptation priorities, but they do not directly assess the cost-effectiveness of the UK government’s national adaptation programme.

The ASC has developed adaptation indicators organised under key themes. Figure 21 illustrates those indicators for flooding and includes information relating to the current trend for that indicator (increasing, decreasing or no significant trend) and the implication of the trend. Each headline indicator is underpinned by quantifiable data.  Some of these indicators can be considered as proxy process indicators e.g. ‘planning applications approved by local authorities despite Environment Agency objections’.

Challenges addressed:

• The assessment was carried out by an independent body.
• The framework covers the horizontal, vertical, cross-sectoral, other (e.g. interdependencies, emergency, and security) and unexpected aspects.
• The indicators used to measure progress are quantitative (where a baseline and data is available) qualitative and process (to ensure the context is understood).
• The process is continuous and encourages ‘learning’ with different aspects covered in the annual reports to allow regular adjustment to both the approach and the measures.
• The outcomes of the evaluations have, and will continue to feed into the development of the National Adaptation Programme (NAP 2013).

Further details are available at: ASC 2012 (http://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/climate-change-is-the-uk-preparing-for-flooding-and-water-scarcity-3rd-progress-report-2012 ),

NAP 2013 (https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/adapting-to-climate-change/supporting-pages/national-adaptation-programme ). Adaptation Indicators (http://www.theccc.org.uk/charts-data/adaptation-indicators)