The Thames Barrier in the evening Photo by Tom Wheatley on Unsplash
UKRI and Defra are investing £1.9 million into LSE’s Creating The Enabling Conditions for UK Climate Adaptation Investment (ATTENUATE) research project.
ATTENUATE will build the business, economic and financial case for public sector investment in enabling environments for unlocking public and private climate adaptation finance. It will also focus on identifying pathways to overcome structural and behavioural barriers to implementing these investments in multi-scale UK governance contexts.
The project will involve case studies on flood risk and extreme heat, working with local and national government levels to develop climate adaptation options. ATTENUATE will quantify costs and benefits, improve enabling conditions, and develop a UK Climate Adaptation Investment Framework to support future adaptation plans.
Funding for the project has been awarded as part of the “Maximising UK Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC)” programme. MACC looks at how all four UK nations can better address current barriers around public awareness, policy, legislation and climate data currently hindering the UK’s ability to adapt to the effects of a changing, warming climate. MACC is also helping to deliver the ambitions of UKRI’s Building a Green Future and Building a Secure and Resilient World strategic themes.
ATTENUATE Principal Investigator and Head of Climate Adaptation and Resilience at the Grantham Research Institute, Dr Candice Howarth, said: “The UK is already exposed to and being impacted by climate impacts and hazards such as flooding and extreme heat, and analysis has shown that addressing all 61 risks in the third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment could cost £10 billion per year.
“Adapting to the impacts of climate change, at national, regional and local scales, requires financing dedicated adaptation investments, yet there is a large gap between the costs of adaptation and current adaptation finance flows.
“The ATTENUATE project will investigate how to overcome challenges to financing adaptation action in the UK and explore this through three case studies looking at flooding and extreme high temperatures.
“Adaptation finance is an investment, not a cost, and the ATTENUATE project is crucial to ensure this message becomes clearer. We have a fantastic team at the Grantham Institute working on ATTENUATE, as well as Paul Watkiss Associates, the Environment Agency, the Green Finance Institute, Love Design Studio, the University of Bath, West Midlands Combined Authority, the London Borough of Hackney and selected government departments.”
Defra Chief Scientific Advisor, Gideon Henderson, said: “Tackling climate change not only means accelerating progress towards net zero, but also strengthening the resilience of human and natural systems to the changes that a warmer climate brings.
"Projects like those announced today give us ever better data and insights to help us safeguard our natural environment, protect human health and ensure food security, as we seek to maximise our adaptation to a changing climate.”