Facilitation of working groups to enable a sectoral approach to the fourth UK climate change risk assessment (Climate Sense)

The aim of this project was to improve understanding of key climate risks, adaptation actions and stakeholder information needs for delivery across a number of thematic groups. These groups were aligned with the CCC’s adaptation monitoring maps. This was delivered via a series of workshops, primarily with Government stakeholders from across the UK, but also key stakeholders from outside Government.

The insights from this project will be used to inform the scoping of the bespoke analysis programme for CCRA4-IA, as well as informing the design of policy relevant outputs.

The key findings of the project are:

• Many participants felt that a key challenge for developing evidence to support climate adaptation is not a lack of evidence but rather understanding and applying existing evidence to decision-making. Co-development of research and using systems approaches were some of the suggested mechanisms for making evidence more useful and actionable.

• Stakeholders identified the importance of interdependencies between different areas of adaptation and the potential for cascading risks across complex systems. For example, water was identified as an area on which many others, including agriculture, energy and health depend; a failure of water supply or water quality could trigger further risks in these other systems.

• A number of cross-cutting themes emerged as key considerations for implementing adaptation across all areas. These included effective regulation and planning, finance for adaptation, harmonisation of adaptation and mitigation actions, and building supply chain resilience across sectors. Similarly, several common barriers to adaptation were identified across the different workshops, including a lack of a clear vision for adaptation and a lack of effective co-ordination frameworks in many areas.

• Through analysis of the workshop outputs, several possible areas for further research in CCRA4-IA have been proposed. Some are sector specific, such as developing a vision for a climate resilient food system or identifying design criteria for infrastructure sectors to proportionately adapt to climate change. Cross-sectoral suggestions include improving understanding of the role of local authorities in implementing climate adaptation and building a deeper understanding of the dependencies between different sectors. These recommendations will be considered, alongside wider evidence, to inform the design of the research and analysis programme for CCRA4-IA.