Buildings for the right climate is a question asked by the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) in its major independent report published on 20 May. The report warns that Britain was “built for a climate that no longer exists” and calls for urgent adaptation strategies to handle inevitable global temperature increases, extreme heatwaves, water shortages, and severe flooding. It is the fourth independent assessment of the UK’s climate risks.
It is also clear from the report that a rethink is needed on how and where we build homes and infrastructure, with buildings for the right climate being critical. Creating and retrofitting compact sustainable towns and cities, rich in green spaces that support natural cooling and flood management, should be the norm, not the exception.
The countryside has a vital role to play in how we prepare for the impacts of climate change. The report demonstrates the urgent need for joined up and long-term thinking about how we use our finite land to sustain us all into the future. Land use changes as a result of climate change will be inevitable and profound. If we want to prepare for this, feed ourselves, and deliver the government ambition to restore nature, then a more integrated approach to the role the countryside plays in this transition is essential now.
The report sets out eight priority areas for action and calls on government to act urgently across all of them. The recommendations include:
Protecting people from extreme heat, particularly the elderly and vulnerable, through cooling in homes, hospitals and care homes
Managing flood risk through sustained investment and stronger planning rules to keep new development out of flood-prone areas
Securing water supplies against drought
Supporting nature to adapt by making habitat protection forward-looking rather than rooted in past baselines
Supporting farmers to shift practices and diversify crops
Stress-testing food supply chains against climate shocks
Maintaining insurance availability as flood and wildfire risks grow
Future-proofing critical infrastructure against to improve resilience
Underpinning everything is a call for government to establish meaningful adaptation targets with clear ownership, backed by delivery plans and proper investment — and to stop treating adaptation as an afterthought.
While this report is aimed at the UK Government, and the devolved administrations the authors hope many other organisations will find it useful as a guide to setting targets and measuring progress in a complex area. Governments cannot deliver adaptation alone, but they can set clear objectives and targets, supported by policy, regulation, and standards.
In our region, the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority is currently preparing its ‘Strategy for a Sustainable Future’, which you can find out about here. ACE has contributed to the consultation (which closes at midnight today), commending the Strategy’s ambition whilst raising concerns that more needs to be done to plan for the ‘milestones’ and funding needed to reach carbon neutrality by 2040. Towards some of the funding needed, details were released last week about the Local Net Zero Accelerator (LNZA) programme which will see North Yorkshire Council and the City of York Council collaborating with the Combined Authority to attract investment in low carbon energy projects, backed by £2.8 million in national government funding.
Governments must engage in open debate about the costs and the benefits – and about the limits of the role of the state. As businesses, communities, and families, the rest of us want to know what we need to do for ourselves.