UK works for climate adaptation

By Alex Kirby
BBC News website environment correspondent

UK coasts are under threat

The British government says it is now working on a strategy to adapt to the effects of increasing climate change.

Efforts have till now been focused on trying to avert the prospect through reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases scientists say are responsible.

The environment department says it is committed to publish the adaptation strategy before the end of this year.

News of the strategy's existence came from the National Trust, the British heritage charity, in a press briefing.

Losing assets

Fiona Reynolds, director-general of the Trust, said it would make a major contribution to the strategy as one of its priorities for the year ahead.

She told the BBC: "In some areas where there is an increased risk of floods, we shall not be able to build our way out, and will have to adapt.

"There will be human hardship involved; with, in the worst case, people's homes being lost. There'll certainly be questions raised about the sustainability of some of the Trust's coastal infrastructure."

Tony Burton of the Trust said: "We'll be demonstrating the impacts of climate change on the Trust's land. It's not a tomorrow agenda, but more a somewhere-near-you-agenda.

"We're talking about tens or even hundreds of metres of coastline disappearing over the next hundred years."

Changing agenda

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) told the BBC: "We are developing an adaptation policy framework to bring together work on adaptation across government, and with agencies and the private sector.

"There is a commitment in Defra's five-year strategy to publish this before the end of 2005.

"There will be opportunities to feed into the development of the framework. We welcome the National Trust's interest on this issue and see adaptation as a key part of tackling climate change issues."

Damage is now seen as inevitable

Dr Steve Howard, of the Climate Group, told the BBC: "If you look at the current science on climate change, it suggests that if anything the impacts are likely to happen sooner and more severely than we'd thought.

"So some adaptation will be inevitable, and making a start on it is advisable.

"However, it mustn't distract us from the urgent task of reducing greenhouse emissions, because if we don't act quickly to turn the corner on cutting them, there won't be an adaptation strategy that can cope."

The Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, part of the UK Met Office, is hosting a conference from 1 to 3 February, entitled Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change.

It says: "The aim of the symposium is to advance scientific understanding of and encourage an international scientific debate on the long-term implications of climate change, the relevance of stabilisation goals, and options to reach such goals."

The government's decision to bring together a number of separate projects on climate adaptation in a single strategy may signal its acceptance that there is no way of avoiding at least some of the impacts.