The Politics of Climate Change (26 page)

Political and economic convergence are as important to the politics of adaptation as they are to mitigation – they are likely to influence how far citizens accept whatever policies are proposed. The limitations of the politics of fear and anxiety are just as pronounced here as elsewhere. ‘The polluter pays' principle is also just as relevant as in the case of mitigation, both within nations and among them. The richer countries must shoulder the lion's share of responsibility for adaptation, as far as the developing world is concerned, just as they have to do in limiting the progress of global warming. The developing countries are much more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than the industrial ones, partly because many are located in climatically volatile regions and partly because they haven't got the resources that the developed countries have to prepare.

As with mitigation, the state will have to play a lead role in policy formation and enactment. However, all the points made earlier in the book apply. To promote adaptation, governments must help stimulate innovation and creativity in the diverse worlds of business and civil society. Citizen involvement is necessary, with a distribution of rights and responsibilities across the different levels of governance. A major political problem is the fact that funding for adaptation projects will inevitably compete, to some degree, with investment needed for mitigation.

What a country needs to do in order to adapt will vary greatly depending on its existing climate patterns and geographical location. The US has one of the most volatile climates in the world; extreme weather events will become even more pronounced and frequent. In countries with more temperate climates, such as in Northern Europe, climate change may initially produce some positive effects. The edge will go off winter, while the other seasons will, by definition, be warmer, although with greater day-to-day temperature fluctuations than before. However, if global warming proceeds unchecked, the adverse effects will quickly overwhelm these temporary benefits.

In the UK, as the frequency and intensity of storms increase, large volumes of rain will fall quite suddenly, resulting in flash floods. Yet, at the same time, summer droughts will put pressure on water supplies. As temperatures rise, there will also be wider implications for health; existing ailments, such as skin cancer or cataracts, will increase, and subtropical diseases previously unknown in the country could also make an appearance.

The first premise of adaptation policy for any country is to do a detailed mapping of vulnerabilities, local and national. Adaptation could promote innovation in much the same way as mitigation strategies can do. At least some such changes could be valuable in and of themselves, whatever happens to the climate – for instance, actions to promote more efficient use of water, improved systems of weather prediction, or the introduction of crops hardy enough to thrive under adverse circumstances.
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Adaptation brings us back to the issue of planning, since it involves thinking ahead in a systematic way. It should be understood not only as looking for vulnerabilities and blocking them off, but as investigating also what the knock-on consequences of mitigation strategies are likely to be.

In the rest of this chapter I shall look at issues of adaptation in Europe and then consider in some detail a case study from the UK – adaptation to risks of flooding. I will then switch gear to consider the formidable problems that adaptation poses in the developing world. The role of insurance is likely to be crucial in adaptation – although most current discussions seem to ignore it – and I shall consider it in some detail. The insurance industry has done a great deal of work on climate change, as well it might; yet that work does not seem, thus far, to have been integrated with the rest of the climate change literature.

Europe is diverse climatically and geographically. Adaptation will rarely be straightforward because of the combination of that diversity with the inherent complexity of the effects of
climate change. This observation is even more apposite if one accepts that ‘Europe' doesn't end at the boundaries of the EU, but stretches over to central Asia. The average temperature in Europe defined in this way rose by a full 1 per cent over the course of the twentieth century, more than that for the world as a whole.
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I shall concentrate here on effects that are either being felt now, or are almost certain to happen regardless of how far climate change is successfully controlled from here on in.

A warmer atmosphere contains a higher proportion of moisture, and means more rainfall, but new patterns of precipitation will vary from one region to another in their frequency and intensity. Rainfall and snowfall have increased in Northern Europe, while in the south droughts are becoming more common. There are several main areas of especial vulnerability as global warming takes hold. Not just Southern Europe, but the whole of the Mediterranean basin will suffer from the combined impact of high temperature increase and reduced rainfall in areas already facing water shortages.

The effects of rising temperatures are more marked at higher altitudes than lower down and will affect the Alps in particular, leading to melting of the snow and changing river flows. Coastal regions will suffer from more storms, and in some areas increased erosion. Floodplains holding large populations will be at greater risk of flash floods. In Scandinavia, much more rainfall is expected than in the past, most of which will actually take the form of rain rather than snow – major changes will occur in particular in climatic patterns in the Arctic Circle, where temperatures are rising more rapidly than anywhere else.

A very large range of activities will be influenced in some way by these changes. They will affect businesses of all shapes and descriptions. Agriculture, forestry, fishery and tourist industries will be in the front line. In parts of the subcontinent, where rainfall will decrease, water flow for thermal and nuclear power plants, as well as for hydroelectricity, might be affected.

Possible adaptation measures are many, as are the levels of governance at which they would take effect. Inexpensive measures could make a significant contribution – for example,
improving water conservation, making changes in crop rotation, changing the dates at which seeds are sown and introducing crops that are able to survive periods of drought. Other sorts of strategies that could be contemplated are much more demanding and expensive. New early warning systems could be introduced, perhaps on a pan-European level, such as flood and forest fire warning systems. Whole communities could be relocated away from low-lying coastal areas and floodplains. Poorer groups will be most vulnerable and systematic policy innovation will be needed to ensure their protection.

Flexibility in most cases is the key to resilience, since it isn't normally possible to predict in detail what will have to be confronted and when. Wherever possible, mitigation and adaptation should be combined. For example, insulation for buildings could be provided in such a way as to make them sturdier.

The principles of no risk without opportunity and looking for climate change positives apply. For instance, tourism in some areas may decline – rising heat, coupled to water shortages, is likely to affect summer resorts in the south. Yet as a result of the same changes other coastal areas could be opened up as tourist destinations. New economic opportunities could be created as a result of technological innovation, such as in the case of building techniques, materials and products. The need to rethink health systems could be a driving force of new forms of preventative medicine or healthcare.

The EU precept of subsidiarity – that decisions should be taken and policies applied at the lowest appropriate level, and the closest to the citizen – should come fully into play. Many policies will be best forged and delivered primarily in local communities. Local knowledge will be important in how best to proceed. There are examples already to hand. For instance, in southern Spain, farmers have got together with local municipalities to create initiatives to save water through electronic management and distribution systems for the irrigation of crops.

At the same time, coordination necessarily will have to be pursued at an EU level. Climate change will have effects everywhere and these will not follow administrative boundaries.
This theorem applies to the EU itself, which must concern itself also with ‘wider Europe' – the North African side of the Mediterranean, and the Caucasus region – since coordination across these areas will certainly be desirable. Some sectors within the EU are already closely integrated – such as those covering agriculture, water, biodiversity, fisheries and energy networks – and adaptation policies will have to be tailored to this fact.

The European Commission is developing a range of programmes designed to apply to widely shared problems. In 2008 it set out a framework to tackle the impact of global warming upon human and animal health. The programme will consider different aspects of the effects of climate change on mortality and morbidity, including likely changes in the means of transmission of certain infectious diseases. The Water Framework Directive provides the opportunity for an EU-wide programme for water management that could incorporate adaptation objectives.

The directive includes measures for the prediction and management of floods that apply across all member–states. There are EU Action Plans on the safeguarding and restoration of biodiversity; Forest Focus programmes, which are concerned with tree stocks and soil monitoring across the EU; a forthcoming Sustainable Consumption and Production Action Plan; an Integrated Coastal Zone Management Programme; a Disaster Risk Reduction Programme; and more. The European Social Fund will be drawn upon to help raise consciousness about issues of adaptation and oversee other initiatives.

The EU is also funding adaptation policies and programmes in developing countries and has already set up partnerships with many of them. The Commission has published proposals aimed at sharing Europe's experience in creating adaptation measures with the developing world. It is examining the possibility of building a Global Climate Change Alliance that will promote dialogue and cooperation between the EU and developing countries.

Lots of impressive-sounding programmes: will they add up to much? Many pro-Europeans hope that such initiatives, as with tackling climate change more generally, will help provide a new beginning for the EU, which of late has been
foundering. The thesis that the containment of, and adaptation to, climate change for some purposes should be dealt with on a European rather than a purely national level is incontestable. Yet how effective the EU will be, as in climate change policy, will depend on how far it can bring its member–states into line.

As a type case of issues about adaptation within countries, I shall take the example of flooding, storms and coastal erosion in Britain. Flooding in the UK involves a diversity of hazards. The value of property in the London floodplain alone is some £160 billion. The Thames Barrier has proved effective protection so far, but is coming into use with increasing frequency. Most of the occasions it has had to be closed have been over the past 10 years. During the winter of 2001–2 it was closed a record 24 times, as a result of historic highs in the freshwater levels of the river. Of the total stock of domestic dwellings in the UK, 10 per cent is currently at risk of flooding. In the summer of 2007, the UK experienced the most intense rainfall known since records began, giving rise to widespread floods.

The strongest storm to hit Western Europe so far occurred in Shetland in the early 1990s. It was as violent as a category five hurricane, and continued on and off for more than three weeks. Because of the normal rigours of life in Shetland, buildings there are constructed to a higher standard than in other parts of the UK. Were such a storm to occur in densely populated areas further south, there could be massive property damage and widespread loss of life.
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Another major worry concerns dams, likely to be affected if intense downpours increase. Dam failures have become more frequent in recent years. About two million properties in the UK are potentially vulnerable to flooding alongside rivers, estuaries and coasts; and a further 80,000 from flooding resulting from heavy rains with which urban drains cannot cope.
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Recent studies have been able to demonstrate a link between increasing flooding risk in the UK and global warming.
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group of scientists studied the floods that happened in the UK in October and November 2000. The floods damaged some 10,000 properties and created insurance liabilities of some £1.3 billion. The researchers ran several thousand computer simulation models of the weather patterns, both under normal conditions and conditions as they might have been had greenhouse gas emissions not existed. In 90 per cent of the simulations the results showed that humanly induced global warming increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales by more than 20 per cent, and in two out of three cases by 90 per cent. In other words, the probability is high that the floods were influenced by climate change.

For about 40 years, from 1961 onwards, the UK insurance industry had an agreement with the government that cheap flood cover would be provided for all homes without regard to risk.
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The result was large-scale moral hazard. State projects proceeded as though flood insurance could be taken for granted. Governments felt able to proceed with major building programmes in areas of flood risk – such as the Thames Gateway – without reference to insurability.

The agreement was abandoned by the insurance industry in 2002, and a new partnership between government and the industry was introduced in its stead. Private insurers agreed to provide cover to home-owners and businesses where the annual risk of flooding is put at no more than a 100:1 chance. Beyond that level, the state has to pick up the costs. The insurance companies agreed to the plan on condition that the government reciprocated by taking on board a range of preventative measures for the future. These include, for example, new investment to counter flooding, especially in areas of high vulnerability; placing restrictions on new building in areas without adequate flood protection; and improving programmes providing information to the public about local flooding hazards.