A city adapting well to climate change
This section is about making sure the city is able to plan for the risks and opportunities that climate change brings. It draws mainly from work undertaken through the council's Overview and Scrutiny Commission on Adapting to Climate Change.
Our climate is changing. Across the country, winter rainfall has increased in recent years and summer rainfall has decreased. There has been an increase in average temperatures and mean sea level has risen. Climate projections are telling us that we will experience hotter drier summers, warmer wetter winters, disruption in usual weather patterns and more frequent or intense weather events (e.g. heat waves, droughts, and flooding) and continued rising sea level. This is likely to have an adverse impact on people, agriculture, water quality and availability, biodiversity, human health, buildings and infrastructure, public spaces, soils and the economy. [B&HCC OSC report “Monitoring Outcomes of the Scrutiny Review of Climate Change Adaptation” 19/7/11]
Altering our behaviour to respond to the impacts of climate change is known as ‘adaptation'. It means not only protecting the city, its residents and businesses against negative impacts, but also making us better able to take advantage of any benefits.
The Sustainable Community Strategy sets out the background and intention for adaptation in the city, and showed progress to 2010. Building on this, the council's Scrutiny Review of Climate Change Adaptation, established in March 2010 has investigated what work needs to be done to make good progress in the city in planning for a changing local climate. The scrutiny review provides an effective platform to encourage progress in building the city's resilience; and this strategy provides the city with the opportunity to address climate change as a whole, including adaptation.
