London scoping - ukcip

8.3 Tolerance and Equity
8.3.1 Tolerance
Final Report
206
With 27% of the population of London being Black and Ethnic Minority, tolerance, positive
acceptance of difference and a notion of equity is a highly important ‘glue’ which keeps
London working as a multi-cultural city. In the year ending April 2000, race crime levels in
London were as high as the rest of the UK put together (at 63 incidents per day) (Livingstone
2000) noting that London is home to about half the Black and Minority Ethnic polulation in the
UK. We cannot, however, identify any direct impacts of climate change upon equity and
tolerance. A possible indirect impact would occur if climate change led to a change in
migration into or out of of the capital. This effect might be experienced through less tolerance
of inward migrants from the UK or elsewhere, due to over-crowding. Such intolerance can also
be influenced by the political response. Political pressure may increase to address the issue of
increased numbers of inward migrants.
8.3.2 Equity
Climate change impacts will, to some extent, affect different communities in different ways.
Clearly those who live in a flood plain are potentially more vulnerable to flooding, but the
actual risk depends crucially upon the standard of protection that is provided. It also depends on
the ability of the community to adapt to and recover from the flood. A highly detailed analysis
would be required in order to determine the actual flood risk in specific parts of London and
hence it is not possible in this study to claim that particular areas or communities are more
vulnerable to increased flood risk from climate change than others.
There is little, if any, evidence to suggest that the direct impacts of climate change will be
greater for some communities than for others. It is not clear why climate change impacts would
differentially affect individuals or communities on the basis on their gender, ethnic origin or
socio-economic group. Clearly, there are physiological differences between human beings, such
that some will be more affected by high temperature extremes than others. However, such
differences occur more at the level of individual physiology than at the community-level. Older
and less healthy people are generally more vulnerable to high temperature extremes than
younger and more healthy people for example. As we have noted elsewhere, however, the more
important effect of climate change upon individual health is the significant benefits for the
elderly which arise from fewer very cold spells. Given that it is the less well off who suffer
most from fuel poverty, climate change will reduce those inequalities which arise from the
inability to heat homes properly in the winter.
What is much more important in terms of equity considerations than the direct effects are the
indirect effects of climate change upon communities. Indirect effects arise because of the
knock-on repercussions of climate change and invariably involve some response or adaptation
to the perceived impacts of climate change. The notion of ‘adaptive capacity’ has been
developed to describe and understand the ability of different social agents to respond to impacts
(Adger 2001). Those agents with a high adaptive capacity will be able to respond more
effectively, i.e. with fewer social, economic and environmental costs. Adaptive capacity cannot
be defined in a single way, but possession of a sufficient stock of resources is an underlying
theme of the concept. Those resources may be financial and material, but they may also be
social, intellectual and political. Hence, those with more resources will tend to be less adversly
affected by climate change, contra those with fewer resources, who have less adaptive capacity