Twenty-eighth Report Adapting Institutions to Climate Change Cm ...

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Secondly, much decision making is focused on the relatively short term and is often constrained by
traditional ways of thinking and working. But the full extent of changes to the climate will emerge
only in the longer term (over several decades). The opportunity to be proactive has to be taken,
in order to begin to build adaptation capacity into policies and as future infrastructure is planned.
But a longer-term perspective may not fit easily with shorter-term electoral and budgeting cycles.
The challenge is: how much should the UK and local communities invest now to solve a problem
that future generations will face?
Thirdly, there will be difficult issues of equity. The impact on some places or groups will be more
severe than others. This is perhaps most starkly seen in the case of coastal erosion, where higher
sea levels and more frequent storms will mean some homes will be at increased risk of destruction.
This issue relates not only to who should bear the costs and consequences of climate change but
also to considerations of fairness in governance processes and substantive decisions.
We examine these challenges in Chapter 4, and suggest how organisations should approach capacity
building to cope with climate change. Finally, in Chapter 5 we set out our recommendations to
help institutions to prepare for adaptation.
This report cannot be a blueprint for adaptation, for the reasons just described; but we do know that
anticipatory and flexible approaches will be essential to cope with an uncertain climate future. The
report is intended to shape attitudes and practices and we therefore concentrate on the challenges
faced by the institutions responsible for essential adaptation policies. The Commission believes
that many institutions are ill-prepared for the changes that will confront them, and that society
as a whole is remarkably and worryingly complacent about the challenges posed by adaptation to
climate change.
CONCLUSION
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This report is about moving institutions towards anticipatory, planned but flexible adaptation
responses. We hope that it will stimulate a wide range of organisations to consider urgently
and more thoroughly the potential implications of a changing climate for their work and the
importance of building adaptive capacity. We repeat our conviction that the scale of the challenge
has not yet been sufficiently appreciated. The potential costs of ignoring adaptation have not
been sufficiently considered, and the potential benefits of adaptation have not been sufficiently
explored. If institutions at all levels now address the need to build adaptive capacity, there is still
time for the UK to be well positioned to cope with a future climate which will be considerably
more challenging and disruptive.
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Chapter 1