The reality of climate change has not hit home in Downing Street, it seems. “There is now unequivocal evidence that climate change is making extreme weather in the UK more likely and more extreme,” wrote the Climate Change Committee (CCC) this week as it raised major concerns about the country’s ability to adapt to heatwaves, heavy rainfall and wildfire-conducive conditions.
For example, over half of England’s top quality agricultural land is at risk of flooding today, with a further increase in total agriculture land at risk expected by 2050. Climate change also poses a major threat to UK biodiversity, at a time when it is degrading rapidly.
The Adaptation Committee is required to review the UK’s progress on adaptation every two years, and the vast majority of the assessment outcomes for this year’s report have the same low scores as in 2023.
Land, food and nature is an area of particular concern, with many of the assessed policies and plans “insufficient”, according to the committee’s analysis. This includes preparedness to minimise disruption to food and feed import supply chains. There are also limited plans or policies to help the UK deal with vulnerability to food price shocks.
“We can see our country changing before our eyes,” said Baroness brown, chair of the adaptation committee. “People are having to cope with more regular extreme weather impacts. People are experiencing increasing food prices. People are worried about vulnerable family members during heatwaves.”
However, the country’s ability to be “future-fit” is being held back by “ineffective and outdated ways of working within government”, she explained, adding: “Is this government going to face up to the reality of our situation?”
The committee urged the government to “integrate its approach to adapting to climate change across Defra’s forthcoming foundational strategies”.These Land-Use Framework, Environmental Improvement Plan, 25-year farming road map, and food strategy “should recognise the need for adaptation measures to ensure their goals are met. They should set out how these adaptations will be funded, have clear objectives, delivery targets, responsibilities and milestones”. And following the spending review there should be “certainty about how farmers and land managers will be supported to adapt their land for production, nature and wider resilience”.
In February, a report prepared for the National Preparedness Commission, an independent, non-political body that promotes policies and actions to help the UK prepare for and recover from major shocks, threats and challenges, also raised concerns about the adaptation plans that are (not) in place across the food sector.
Although the UK does have an official Government Resilience Framework, it has “next to no focus on either food or the role of the public in civil food resilience”, the report warned. The 2023 National Risk Register, meanwhile, only conceives of one direct food impact, that of food supply contamination.
Professor Tim Lang from City University and author of the report, called ‘Just in Case’, suggested raising food production, not just anyhow, but sustainably, is “again a matter of national security”. Paying farmers more would be a “canny” place for politicians to start, he explained: “It would rebuild burned bridges and make it clear that deals with even ‘cheaper’ US food are fantasy politics, just when we need security. We need to start building shorter, more diverse food chains, more regionalisation and better food cultures. At a time when environmentalism is being attacked for putting net-zero or climate above people, by putting feeding people at the centre of agri-food politics, environmentalism could again champion joined up politics,” he added.
