 We're just waiting for participants to arrive in the seminar and we'll start in the next minute or so. Good morning everyone, we'll start very shortly. Right, good morning. I'm Julia Brown, the chair of the adaptation committee of the climate change committee and I'm really delighted to welcome you to the last of our series that's been running for about the last six weeks. Looking at climate risk and adaptation and this final one in the series is looking at the international risks. This series has been taking a deeper dive into the huge body of work that forms the technical report which is the evidence base for the third climate change risk assessment. It's been a huge piece of work involving over 200 experts and scientists across the UK over the past three years or so and as I say today is the final one in our series looking at international risks to the UK. I think a subject which really emphasizes how interdependent we all are now, in particular of course are highly interconnected international supply chains for many things, for example much of our food coming from overseas. I think it's also an opportunity for us to think about how at COP26 we integrate adaptation into the global efforts to tackle climate change because we have to recognize that even if we achieve the goal we want to, which is that we're all on a Paris compliant path towards net zero globally, we will still see significant climate change into the 2050s and beyond. So we do need to be prepared for it. So we've got a great cast of speakers for you this morning. We've got Professor Tim Benton and Professor Andy Chalena from Chatham House and the University of Leeds respectively. They are the authors of the independent technical report chapter seven about the international risks. We've then got Miriam Kennedy who's one of the climate change committee secretariat who will talk to you about the committee's advice to government that was published in June on the basis drawing the evidence from the technical report and then we've got a response from Dr Kersti Lewis. Kersti is currently seconded to the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office but she's a climate scientist from the Met Office and the University of Exeter and then we'll have time for questions. So questions are always a very popular part of this series so let's move on very promptly and let's hear from a double act from Tim and Andy. Thank you. Thanks very much Ernest Brown for that really nice introduction to the topic. So Tim and I are going to do a double act flipping back a little bit between us to talk about the chapter and you can read the names probably just about of all the contributing authors of the chapter. So lots of contributors behind that and of course a wealth of research behind that that's enabled this report to be produced. Thanks James. So first of all just a brief introduction to risk. So if you're thinking about what is the risk of suffering some damage due to flooding then we have that as a product of a hazard which is a lot of rainfall. The exposure will you get flooded? Do you live near a river? Do you live low down for example? And then what is your vulnerability? Do you have flood defences or can you in spite of the exposure and the hazards still actually survive without suffering any ill effects? So that's the kind of part of the framework which we'll use to present the results of our report. Thanks James. So and I think we can skip this so we're going to think first of all about the risks. So what are the risks of these international dimensions of climate change? Thanks James. So there are a number of general classes of these hazards when thinking about climate. So climate change we can think of as the gradual change in average weather, gradual warming. I'll give an example of that in a minute, drying for example. Then we can have changing weather patterns so particularly extreme events, floods I've already mentioned, droughts of course. Then thirdly we can have tipping points in climate. So this is a change in the large-scale behaviour of the system. So if the permafrost for example thaw out and give a feedback towards a tipping point towards even greater climate change then that's a large-scale systematic change in the behaviour of the climate system. And then fourthly there's land use change which is habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation. So these four classes of environmental hazard and when you put these together this leads us to the concept of a kind of ecological rewiring which has been written about in the literature. So local changes in species destabilisation of ecosystems, deigning to extinction, cascades, outbreaks. In other words all of these hazards interrelating as the earth system has done for a long time to produce hazards. Thanks James. So an example of a gradual hazard and the way in which this plays out in our social systems to produce an ultimate risk. So this is an example that the two plots here show the time taken for the signal of climate change to emerge with respect to the maize crop in Africa. So it's an example. It shows that for two different scenarios, RCP 2.6, so lower climate change on the upper panel and where you can see more of the colours on the lower panel, RCP 8.5. This shows when this signal of climate change emerges as far as the maize crop is concerned. I won't go into detail. So what you can see is these greens that indicate quite soon within the next 20 years that the maize crops that are being planted essentially feel the effect of this gradual warming and yields are reduced. Now if you put that together with the fact next to the arrow, the fact that it takes about 20 years for the case of maize in Africa to develop a new variety of crop to get it approved to get it into the field, then this essentially means that crop breeding isn't keeping pace with climate change. So this is gradual warming, which in and of itself isn't the problem. When you combine it with the not keeping up with climate change, then it becomes, that's when it becomes a problem. Thanks James. Next slide. So the climate, another point is that the climate system is now, these aren't just isolated events in particular places, regions, continents even. The climate system is now presenting globally coherent hazards that lead to extreme events. And I think we're all now familiar with this more or less. We sort of know that the pole of vortex moves around, the jet stream moves around and it causes these changes that we experience, but not just us, these changes that are experienced, different changes across the globe that are coherently connected with each other. So the example here of a study showing that this kind of process is related to increased risk of concurrent heat waves in the main brake basket regions, the main growing regions, so that you might get crop failures in multiple regions that are due to this coherent pattern of climate changing. So thank you James and over to you Tim. Thanks Andy. So this is our kind of traditional view of looking at risk next James, but when it comes to the sorts of hazards that Andy's been talking about, we have had, we're getting better at predicting the climate change, slow on set issues, our skill at predicting what the climate will be like in general is getting better, changing weather's extremes, we are getting better, but still far from perfect and being able to predict ahead what extreme weather will happen. The spatial synchrony through teleconnection such as the wavy jet stream that Andy's just talked about, we're not yet able to predict in any really strong way. Tipping points are very much a probabilistic thing that we haven't got to handle on yet and we have absolutely no idea on how to predict climate change impacts on ecology. So thinking about the risk and this risk equation, we have these certainties and uncertainties in the way that climate will actually create hazards. But when it comes to societal risks, we have to start moving away from the direct, will you get flooded, do you have flood defences thinking, next slide please James, and start thinking about the potential for risk cascades, so next and next. You can often imagine and we have seen quite a lot with CO2 and turkeys getting not killed in time for Christmas. You can see that something that happens can create a chain of dominoes falling type impacts, the impact chain, and sometimes these cascading chains of impacts can lead to large scale cross society, cross economy, systematic risks that are really of considerable concern because they are not linearly related to a simple climate change impact but they are related through the way that things cascade through our economies. Next slide please. So if you think about our risk equation moving into a kind of globally interconnected world, the exposure is not so much are we going to get flooded, but how much does our institutional national financial national security rely on, for example goods from overseas that could be disrupted by the hazards above. And our vulnerability is not just are we able to build a big flood wall, but are our systems able to deal with the sorts of exposure and hazard combinations that we might see. So for example in the case of supply chain disruptions we are made much more vulnerable if all our supply chains are just in time supply chains with no internal redundancy at all, because if something goes wrong in that supply chains we see it immediately because goods are not in the shops. And exposure and vulnerability are inherently very difficult to understand from a quantitative perspective because they are shaped by political economic social factors and also the perception of the risk, the impact of the hazard itself. Next slide please. So within CCRA 3 international risks here is our summary diagram, the climate change impacts on the left hand side can directly hazard, create a hazard in the UK, the blue bar at the top, but they can happen somewhere else and create a risk to us in the UK through a range of transmission pathways such as interrupting energy flow, interrupting financial flow, interrupting governance, information spread, the movement of goods, the movement of people and even they can impact on the UK population well-being through climate anxiety from seeing relatives trapped in wildfires elsewhere. And the UK risk and response is also subject to a range of social amplification that can occur through poor policy decisions and a whole range of other things. Next slide please. This is a figure from a EU Cascades project that just highlights some of the range of climate impacts, the hazards at the top and the way that they can impact trade stability and conflict finance and business to lead to cascading climate impacts within Europe or any other country. And a key point from this is that the response to the risk is not a climate response, it's not belonging to a single government department, but it's often to do with trade policy, diplomatic relations and a whole range of other things. Next please. And just as an example we wrote about this in CCRA too, in 2010-11 we had the heat wave in Russia and Eastern Europe that led to a rise in serial prices, global markets panicked, that led to poor policy decisions, global food prices went through the roof, that impacted us in the UK through rising food prices but it also sparked off the Arab Spring, that in turn led to destabilisation of the fragile economies in Northern Africa, it also helped spark the movement of people into the EU which has led to various political effects. So this is the sort of risk cascade that we're talking about, this one played out over a decade period. Next slide please James. And the key point is that the disruption caused by the risk cascade can be orders of magnitude greater than the direct cost of the original hazard. So if you think back to the tsunami for example for Kashima, although that's not a climate change hazard, that the supply change disruptions that resulted from that were something like 150 times greater in economic cost than the actual cost of the tsunami itself in wiping out villages and houses and infrastructure and so on. So next slide please. So going back to this equation, from a hazards we know the extremes are increasing, from the exposure we know we're getting more exposed because of global interconnection of economies, interconnectivity of the risks, slow action on climate change and so on and our vulnerability is also increasing all of the time from a range of geopolitical and social things increasing, undermining of the international architecture of cooperation, polarizing societies and so on. And the sorts of hazards across the top that we've seen over the last year are increasingly going to be thrown at us. So our overall risk is going up in all of these dimensions of the risk. Back to you Andy. Next James. Thanks James. So just to reflect on some some key points so far before the last couple of slides, the evidence for transmission of risks across sectors and across borders has increased since ECRA2 and that's a number of reasons. I think as Tim just just actually outlined very well. So there's greater observed evidence of of events. For example, we didn't talk about this but the there was a solid supply change in 2017 around about the time the government was writing its response to our last report, the last chapter of this nature which were climate events in the South of Spain where most of our solid is grown ultimately through supply chains impacted people's ability to buy solids in supermarkets. Greater evidence of those occurring, greater evidence from more complex risk analysis such as the bread basket examples I mentioned and there's also these background changes in state, changes in geopolitics that favor the risk amplification mechanisms that we've been talking about. EU exit is an example altering trade patterns and just in just in time supply chains. There's greater evidence also of climate change acting as an amplifier of risk and there were examples of that from violent conflicts and both directly and indirectly via food. There are examples of that in our chapter as well and major institutions which aren't famed for sensationalism such as the US Army taking it seriously. So next slide please James it's just briefly on this. This is a report published by the US Army which we cite in our report saying that in the light of these findings we need to we need greater cooperation is what the US Army was saying to the United States inter-organizational cooperation which is one of our main conclusions also and we need to proactively prepare for conflict and mitigate impact so you know as I say US Army not not famed for sensationalism and yet coming out with these clear conclusions. Back to you Tim. Next please James so we're used to thinking in terms of managing risks by looking at looking out for our high impact low probability events but if you think about food disruption for example there are literally thousands of ways that a weather event could impact on the supply chains some of them are listed there. So if you have a thousand potential causes of disruption and you're looking for the one in a thousand events next please James then actually it's very probable even if you can't predict which event is going to happen that something is very likely to happen and that leads to the kind of notion that the world is increasingly tuna as in the fish turbulent uncertain novel ambiguous you can't predict what's going to happen it's changing very fast new things are happening all the time and there's no right thing to do in any one circumstance so that leads to a focus on resilience building. Next slide please and the properties of resilience that are needed for our interconnected economies are listed here in the blue boxes but the issue is that many of them have been stripped out of our system in the name of efficiency and economic growth and profit chasing. So if we can't predict the risks we have to build back resilience but building back resilience requires us to do things in different ways that often cost. So back to you Andy for the final slide. Thanks Tim thanks James so you might need to click on for the conclusions thanks James I think just put them all up because I can see we're kind of coming to the end of our time and I'm told that there's been a lot of engagement in questions and discussion which we're really looking forward to at previous sessions on the CCRA results so I'd like to leave plenty of time for that and I can leave you to kind of read these rather than through talking through all of them. I think this issue of communication coordination this is what's needed in order to kind of deal with this issue and I think that's the main thing to focus on greater cooperation collaboration within across government departments, business, society, internationally this is how we build resilience but you can see the other parts of the conclusions still above and I think I'll let you maybe read those maybe those will prompt some questions and I'll make sure I'll leave time now for plenty of questions and discussions which we're looking forward to. Thanks you're on mute Julia. Thank you thank you Tim and Andy for reminding us how interconnected we are and of course reminding us it's not just reducing emissions we have to do together globally actually it's in all our interests that everybody is able to adapt so I forgot to mention before Tim and Andy spoke that we are keen for you to put your questions into the Q&A and we're very keen for you to upvote the questions that you're really interested in to make sure we pick up those that the majority of the audience would really like to see answered so please use the voting on the questions in the Q&A so let me now hand over to Miriam Kennedy to take you through the climate change committee's independent advice to the government based on the the technical report and the detailed work that the team have done for us Miriam. Good morning everyone I'm now going to talk you through the high level findings from the relevant sections of the committee's advice report to government next slide please James. So this slide represents all of the materials that underpin the full climate risk assessment and which the committee's advice report draws on so there's the technical reports with seven different technical chapters one of which Tim and Andy just spoke about on the international risks there are also national summaries for each of the four nations of the UK there are 17 fact sheets which summarise the assessment findings for different subject themes and then there was inputs from six research projects and a number of additional supporting reports next slide please James. So in total the assessment identified 61 risks and opportunities and the majority of them were given high urgency scores so those are the red and orange boxes you can see appearing on the slide. There were only seven that scored as sustained current action or watching brief which is where the committee assessed that there was sufficient adaptation action being made at the moment next slide please and what we can see from our previous risk assessment in 2017 is an increase in the urgency so more of the risks are now categorised as more action needed some of that is down to better evidence becoming available in the future size of risks like Andy spoke about but part of it is also due to the slow pace of action being taken on adaptation which combined of producing this widening gap between the actions and the level of risk that we're seeing next slide please so from that list of 61 risks the committee has highlighted eight key priorities where action is needed at the highest levels of government in the next two years this was to try and help government departments decide which of those urgent risks they should focus on now and to create that list the committee looked at few different things so they looked at the urgency of action they looked at where the largest gaps in adaptation policy exist they looked at the delivery of major policy objectives how to avoid lock-in risks and finally where there are clear opportunities for progress during the current parliament several of these priorities are around the natural environment and agriculture there's one on overheating risks and there's one on risks to infrastructure but there are two that are particularly relevant for the discussion today so one on risks to supply chains and that's both domestically and internationally and then a specific priority on the multiple risks to the UK from climate change impacts overseas next slide please James so I'm just going to talk through those two specific risks in a bit more detail now the first one on resilient supply chains so as we've already heard you know we're already experiencing disruption in supply chains now and we're seeing some of the consequences of that so loss of access to key goods and services potential price increases generally higher uncertainty businesses and consumers which affects people's everyday lives we know that today's supply chain disruptions are not due to climate related causes but we do already experience disruption from extreme weather in our supply chains both in the UK and domestically so some of the adaptation actions we can take are things like mapping out interdependencies within and between sectors providing better information and advice particularly for smaller businesses diversifying our supply chains and strengthening the reporting requirements for businesses and infrastructure providers next slide please moving on to that priority for multiple risks from climate change overseas so extreme weather events can create cascading risks that spread across sectors and countries with impacts in order of magnitude higher than impacts occurring within a single sector as Tim said there's a growing potential for climate hazards to spark those kinds of cascading impacts globally and the conventional model of risk governance which focuses on single events single sectors and reasonable worst case scenarios does not adequately capture those types of risks there are some adaptation actions that can be taken so things like increasing global capacity on climate resilience for example across supply chains health systems and early warning systems for extreme weather integrating adaptation into international climate projects to deliver a resilient net zero and to ensure that low carbon development is not undermined by climate risks and increasing our international cooperation for example through clear commitments at COP26 to leverage increased financing for adaptation and to support developing countries to implement their national adaptation actions next slide please James so I've spoken a bit about the adaptation actions that needs to be taken but for adaptation to be effective the committee have also identified 10 principles of good adaptation policy I've touched on some of these earlier but some of them are about long good long-term planning so integrating adaptation into other policies assessing for two and four degree levels of warming preparing for unpredictable extremes others about others are about making good decisions so avoiding lock-in where possible and looking also to address inequalities to reduce underlying vulnerability and all of these principles need to sit within a vision for a well-adapted UK and to be properly funded and resourced that's everything that I wanted to cover in this presentation so I'll hand back now to Baroness Brown thanks very much thank you very much Miriam and reinforcing that point that we heard in the first presentation that adaptation is is just not keeping up with the increasing level of risk so now I'm delighted that we have Kersti Lewis who's going to make a short response before we start the discussion session Kersti it's good morning everyone thank you so much to Tim and Miriam such compelling presentations there on the risks that we face from climate change and that international dimension I think it can really be a struggle sometimes to conceptualize what climate change means in risk terms and I think this has really helped us to understand what priority adaptation is particularly when we look when we look when we look globally if like I think the findings of this chapter the CCRA3 and the sort of compelling narratives of how climate change can disrupt global systems and how risk can cascade is really it's a tangible illustration of the necessity the urgency and the scale that we need to apply to climate change adaptation of course climate change will hit the most vulnerable the hardest but I think what we've seen today shows us really that adaptation isn't just about the most vulnerable in isolation you know that all countries are exposed to climate impacts and that we need adaptation to manage risks at home but we also need investment in global adaptation as much to protect those most vulnerable but also about protecting ourselves here in the UK so I think we've heard today we don't know exactly how these complex and cascading risks might play out but we do know that in a complex and globalized in connected world that climate change hugely increases the global risk of these catastrophic system failures and it's been really interesting to see the illustration of that today so maybe we can't say where the next big crisis will come from related to climate but and without those predictions maybe we can't say what specific technical adaptation action we need to invert those crisis I think what we can take away from this is that in response we need to increase our ambition and action around adaptation across the board so we need to increase system resilience and reduce risks associated with climate change globally so this means action on climate adaptation I think particularly in vulnerable regions as our best hope to avert or to manage or limit some of these risks associated with climate change today so we know these climate risks are systemic and their experience will be on the local level you've seen that really nice diagram showing how they cascade but at the same time we also know that these global shots do have local origins and that the scale of the challenge is tremendous but it's critical I think that adaptation is locally led it needs to be sensitive to the needs and vulnerabilities of communities in the context in which those impacts are directly felt and then indirectly the global change we face but there's no one single one size fits all solution relief global adaptation but as we come into COP26 this is really an exciting opportunity to move for greater action on adaptation it's a chance for us to mobilize our efforts around stronger national action supporting countries with their individual adaptation plans but also stronger international collaboration and we need to focus I think on practical challenges we share that we all share really and informed by the kind of research that we've seen here and an understanding of the risks so we need urgent adaptation action we need it to be locally led but it needs to be globally in scale we need to protect not only the most vulnerable but I think we've heard today really is to manage the risks that we all face as a shared panel so thank you very much for presentations today and I'll hand back to Baroness Brown look forward to some questions thank you very much Tessie and sorry to hear that you're you're struggling with the sore throat it sounds quite painful so we get on to the questions and the first question I think from Hayley Warrens is a very good one it says does this not highlight that we are acting too late and does this late action is this not pushing us to high levels of socio-economic inequality which in turn make it more difficult to decarbonize and to reach two degrees so Andy let me let me throw that one to you as a starting point thanks very much Baroness Brown yeah I think it's a really really interesting really important question and I think without wishing to sound too wishy-washy as an answer I think there are different perspectives on this and and I think they're all they're all important some people feel very you know upset understandably not enough has been done and feel not it's too late and and and some people might take more forward-looking views and and so you know I think we can take forward-looking views that are very productive there are some some win-wins in terms of for example changing diets in a way that is that that is healthier for the planet that also helps us to to deal with some of the the impacts and maybe supply chain issues as well and that also resulting in healthier you know in healthier healthier people healthier diets healthy populations so this is all about that that sort of coordination cooperation message which I think is is so important and it speaks I think to some of the other questions that have been typed in also you know there was a very interesting point about competition for resources for adaptation versus mitigation and and is that going to cause problems but if if we if we coordinate what we're doing with regard to transformation versus versus resilience and we we we do that in a way that that that takes on board these these different important perspectives then that's when I think we can we can actually adapt whilst also reducing the risk and also mitigating so there are some win-wins from from from coordination and cooperation I think is my main main sort of response to that thanks okay and Tim you'd like to come in on that one yeah so I think this is this is a really good question and it's a really difficult one to get to grips with because effectively although you can see a nirvana at the end of a transformation where everybody could be better off it is inevitable that it's going to be costly and disruptive to go from here to there in some way shape or form and you know as as I talked about briefly at the end as though we were running out of time building resilience for example in the food system requires putting back food stores it requires increasing diversity it requires reducing our just-in-time nature of supply chains and it inquires people to accept that food food is not always going to be available when they want it in the way that they expect it and it might cost more now that's a politically difficult thing to get across that resilience building costs money and so we can only kind of proceed at the pace that people are willing to accept accept a shoulder that sort of sort of burden and whilst many of us would want us to be making faster efforts in this regard it does come at an economic cost that for some people is just too big and so we are in a better place now than we were five years ago six years ago at paris we're not in as good a place as we want to be fossil fuel extraction is still going up according to the production gap report this morning and it is unfortunate but as it does so our risks will increase but we absolutely have to accept where we are and move as fast as we can do politically and socially from this point on. Thank you very much Tim I'm going to move on to a question from Helen Jenkins Knight she wants to know can we suggest some best practice examples of taking into account international and cascade risks at the local level and that particular local level in her case sounds like a local authority context so I'm going to ask Miriam if you have any thoughts on best practice examples to kick us off. So I'm not sure I've seen any at the local authority level but I would say within the UK so after the risk assessment is is published by the CCC the government responds with a national adaptation program and the most recent England national adaptation program did not have any actions on international risks but interestingly in Scotland they do have a section on international risks so I guess you could call that a kind of regional level where they are thinking about their connections particularly with things like places where they export to particularly food and drink in Scotland they have large exports so thinking about how they might be affected as a result of disruption to those supply chains but I'll have a think about local authority level as well. But you're recommending a look at the Scotland the Scottish Government climate change risk assessment report. Tim any quick comments from you on that? Yes so there is a lot of contingency planning under the Civil Contingency Act about thinking about how local government and clearly the devolved governments have got an extra level of thinking in terms of what would happen if there was an interdiction in food supply or some other issues and covid is a kind of example a microcosm of the sorts of risks that ecological rewiring might throw at us in the climate change world and we have learned a lot going through the processes of Brexit planning for disruption to supply chains and we've learned a lot through covid so I think there are pockets where you can look and say well London's done it well Birmingham has planned a lot about food disruption and so on but very little has been put in the context of this is not an emergency this is a likely thing to happen over the next few years it is still seen as a something that happens in extremists rather than something that is likely to happen with a monotonous regularity over decades to come. Thank you we've now got a whole raft of questions about resilience resilience is clearly a term that not everybody is very comfortable with first of all one of our attendees suggests this is a term that is used but often poorly explained especially how we put it into practice and another Paul Boddenham has said is it actually the right category for policy planning doesn't it imply strengthening of existing systems when in fact those systems need to be replaced so he feels it's an expedient word politically but it perhaps underplays the systematic transformation that's needed. I don't know Andy whether you'd like to kick us off on that one. Yeah thanks yeah I mean it's a really good question and once you're getting to really trying to get to really precise definitions with these things you can get into muddy water my view of resilience is that it can include doesn't doesn't have to mean protect everything that exists it means it also means allowing things to shift you want the system to be resilient you're not insisting that particular parts of the system have to remain what you're saying is parts of the system or perhaps even the whole system may need to to transform in order for there to be resilience in our overall food systems and our food security so you have to it's how we apply the words I think that really matters are we trying to protect existing structures no that's not the main aim are we trying to to ensure that there's a kind of bouncing back of some system and if so yeah well what is that system we are trying to ensure the longevity of and that system may require some transformation as part of that so I would take that broader view of a resilience just conceptually and and you know yes it can be interpreted different ways in different places but ultimately we do need a word on which we can which we can hang and talk about what our next steps and what our changes and responses are thanks. Thank you I'm going to move on to one question from Vicki Daniels who says how can we increase the imperative and the focus on addressing inequalities and climate justice to transform people's life chances and create a just transition and Kirsty I wonder if your voice is up to it whether that's one you'd like to to talk about um yeah I think um this is such an important challenge and so I think actually in some ways we have an opportunity here as we're as we're focusing on adaptation and we looked at these as components of risk around exposure and vulnerability the fact that we need to focus on that vulnerability in order to manage overall climate risk I think goes hand in hand with our existing sustainable development goals and actually this is a real opportunity to look at our efforts around climate change to also put greater effort into supporting I guess of course and the most vulnerable to meet those sustainable development goals and I think just transitions and bringing an equity are all critical to good adaptation so I think if you're going to be successful in adaptation then we need to address those issues at the same time and I think this is really an opportunity here particularly around the COP to get the world's focus on addressing some of these inequities that have existed so long thank you we've got some interesting two interesting questions I think which I'll link together one from Anonymous and one from one from David Vincent one saying are there synergistic benefits with resilience and mitigation or are we actually in a phase where mitigation and adaptation are in competition with each other and the particular context is in competition with each other for resources such as money in skilled skills and what can we do to ensure that we get the right focus on both so Miriam let me start with you and then I'll come to some of the others on that one yeah I think it's a really important point and it's something that the committee highlighted in the advice report as well but adaptation is really critical for achieving other societal goals like net zero so we can't achieve net zero without having resilience systems and adapting to the risks that we're seeing and I think internationally you know some of the climate finance projects that happen in developing countries that often they focus on mitigation and transitioning to renewable energy systems but really it has to be coupled with adaptation and climate resilience projects as well and I think the UK government recently said that they they're looking at having a more balanced split between financing for climate mitigation and climate adaptation projects but yeah we have yet to see what that looks like I think it's really important that the both of those things are addressed at the same time and clearly we need more funding for both I think is absolutely key but Tim you want to come in on that one yeah so the traditional framing is often that they are in conflict with each other in competition for money but they need not be because you know as Andy slightly implied building resilience often requires transforming systems which can also be mitigation led so in my neck of the woods where I do a lot of work on on food and the the supply of food you can imagine that a mitigation impact on food would be changing diets to move towards diversified plant-based largely plant-based some locally grown etc and that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions it would also be healthier and if we also wasted less food it would be doubly mitigate mitigative but having a food system that was based around diverse supply eating less would reduce pressure on supply chains and a whole range of other things that could also build resilience into the system as a whole so they need not be into intention and I think we ought to think about where we can have win-win investments that do both simultaneously over thank you I'm Kersti did you want to come in on that yeah well I just want to say that the the aims the the climate finance and the the climate spend on overseas aid is specifically aims to get a 50-50 split between mitigation and adaptation and that kind of flex is depending on the project in some context it makes much more sense that that we're spending money on on mitigation type projects and in other times actually adaptation is a priority overall the aim is to spend on both as we heard before they shouldn't really be in competition we just have to do both thank you I think you're right we just have to do both we've got a whole group of questions now about really about how do you get people to act how do we get people to take notice and and take action so it's about what so we've what's what's your advice about public messaging on risk cascades to ensure we are both honest and empowering how do we build on current experiences which has shown that people will actually shoulder a burden if we and how do we communicate the need for short-term sacrifices against uncertain long-term threats and then I think there's oops sorry they jump about as people vote for them so and how can we better communicate the extent of the risks that we face in a way that's comprehensible so I think all of those about communication and behavior and I'll come to all of you if you like about that one so we haven't heard from you lately Andy can we kick off with you on that one yeah thanks I mean I'm at risk of saying coordinate cooperate I do think that that is a useful thing to have at the heart of the messaging which is is the value of coordination and cooperation which I think puts people in the right frame of mind to to maybe you know panic less panic probably isn't isn't always productive and and to and to think about win-wins essentially I mean Tim's already and I think I also mentioned one of the the win-wins with regard to to changing diets so you know locally sourced food is an increasing component of food reducing things that are good for for mitigation and good and good for for diet so focusing on on things that are are going to be are going to be valuable in in more ways than one and I think if we have that at the the heart of the messaging and we're encouraging people to to discuss ideas that that that promote that sense of of coordination and well-being and then I think that's where where the messaging can can really have effect thanks thank you Miriam did you want to add anything on on behavior and how we communicate um yeah just I guess a specific point that I think committee previously recommended having a kind of climate assembly but focused on adaptation I think the general public awareness of adaptation is quite a bit lower so even just starting that conversation and increasing um awareness and and also like Tim was saying the positive messaging of like here's the problem and here are the actions you can take because there are actions that have been identified so it's really I think yeah increasing that in people's minds Tim did you want to come in there yes please um so I think as with any communication it depends who you're communicating to and whether or not it resonates and you know a lot of this communication about risk cascades is for uh decision makers who have a fiduciary or policy duty to manage risks it's not really about as an individual homeowner should you be worried about risk cascades but of course as the last year has shown us there are things that you can do to ensure resilience um within a household in terms of you know is all of your heating water pumps etc reliant on an electricity supply and you can't do anything else if electricity gets cut off in which case you need to buy yourself a some other form of heater or or get a stove that you can heat up a hot water bottle so it's really about communicating the risks to those that have the fiduciary duty to manage the risks and I think part of the the issue that we're trying to do here is in a sense analogous to what happened after the great financial disruption of 2007 or 2008 and if you remember banks were then mandated to think about their resilience to shocks and part of the process was to put in front of them their board on an annual basis a scenario for saying if this happened do you have the assets to deal with it and I think the way that we are uh thinking about in a sense taking this forward is to have some scenarios of what would you do as a company or a local authority or a nation state were there sequence of events to happen and are you ready are you planned ready to do to cope with that and of course it is part of the contingency planning and the nation state level that countries do all of the time you know we had contingency planning for an epidemic before covid it wasn't necessarily as good as it could have been but it's really about thinking through that process that it's not just will my house get flooded but will the country still be able to get its food supply if something were to happen to our east coast ports or something to happen in multiple bread bread baskets driving up the cost of food thank you for that I don't know Kersti do you want to add anything there or has everything been touched on well I suppose I just wanted to say like on a broader sense that as a climate scientist to be so communicating about the rest we do have to be absolutely clear and specific about what the risks are and I agree with Miriam that I think sort of the awareness of adaptation has traditionally quite low I think at the same time it's really important that we combine this with a positive vision of where we want to go that all of this still about risks and the threat of climate change is not disengaging and disempowering people that it's the opposite that we have shared view of where we want to go and what practical solutions we can actually do to get this I think we want to we want to be absolutely clear about the rest but we need to do it in a really empowering way that says what do we actually want and we don't want this what do we want thank you but a nice clear question here from Emma Richardson so I'd like each of the panel members to suggest one or two but don't go into a great list of which low or no regret adaptation measures should be deployed in the UK immediately so what would be your top picks Miriam I'll kick off with you well in the context of the international risks we've been talking about I think reinstating the 0.7% overseas development spending would be number one and number two I'd say strengthening the reporting requirements for businesses that are a risk from these international dimensions you've picked two really good ones there making it more challenging for your colleagues Andy what would be after that what would be your top picks I I can't beat that ODA and it's one of these win-wins and many would argue there's many obvious elements to that but even irrespective of any obvious elements it's a clear adaptation to these to these cascading risks so yeah can't top that thanks Miriam Kersti have you anything you want to add there well Andy pins one of mine which was definitely sort of investment in overseas development to improve resilience globally into the UK I think the other one I would say is that we need to move to mainstreaming climate risk assessment in all our operations particularly where there's international exposure it should be just normal to have a look and evaluate what risks were exposed to particularly as we know as the hazards changing the past is not a good indicator of the present let alone the future we need to do more to account for these risks and our day-to-day activities and Tim for you I'm going to combine it with this next question because I think that they're quite closely linked which is what what can companies do to become more resilient from a business perspective great thanks well my my low-hanging fruit as everyone else has got the ODA one is to find some way of encouraging or mandating companies to understand their exposure to the risks and build resilience in and that might be a scenario's exercise it might be better internal transparency I mean some of the food companies I work with only have a view of where the middleman is where they're buying food they don't have a view on the length of the supply chain and as we found as I mentioned earlier with energy prices rising fertilizer plants shutting down CO2 no longer a byproduct we can't then stun animals impacts on meat supply for business decision makers understanding that complexity of their interrelationship between their supply chains and their end products and putting in place some plan B whether it is alternative supplies or whether it is a diversity of products or what whatever it might be in the particular context and I think there is a huge amount that businesses can do instead of only focusing on the good times the stable times and squeezing costs out in the name of economy recognising that there will be bad times and these bad times can come from the left field and what are their processes their systems to cope with that so that they can maintain some degree of functionality to avoid the long-term risk cascade amplifies thank you very much so here's a quick one you might be able to pick up for us Tim David Royal wants to know where can he find the government's resilient strategy yeah good question well let's pass that to Kirsty who's the only government employee here I can't answer that right now I think that's quite a challenging question really because it depends on what we mean by the government's resilience strategy if it's the the climate change if it's the government's climate change risk assessment and its response to that that's called the national adaptation plan and those are both on the DEFRA website but of course there are also emergency plans which I think will be found on the cabinet office website but I don't think we have anything as called the government's resilience strategy but I'll just check with Miriam whether she thinks that that's the right answer I think there has been a commitment to come up with one there isn't one at the moment in the integrated review that they did mentioned having a resilience strategy in future so we're looking for one in the future but we can't tell you yet where it's going to appear I'm afraid so a very good question and we'll look out we're looking out with interest on that one a quick one for you Kirsty I think here one of our questions is saying why don't we adapt to four degrees and assess the risks for six um to be honest I I think we need to adapt to we need to adapt to the the one degree that we've seen already we need to adapt to the 1.5 that we're aiming for and the two degrees um yeah I think we need to be assessing the risks at higher levels but really there's such a large adaptation gap I think we already what we can do to adapt to those lower levels would already be a huge advance on where we are now I think particularly when we're looking at the most vulnerable communities who are already struggling to cope with the climate that they have now so absolutely if we have the you know time and the money and effort we should be we should be really trying to adapt to higher degrees just in case but that's a risk approach but really at the moment just trying to keep pace with the climate change we've already seen it's a big challenge and something we need to be working on with urgency now well we've got uh just two minutes left so I'm going to have to draw the questions to an end there um thank you to all our questioners we've managed to get through quite a few but of course as ever not all of them um there were some very good questions so thank you very much they'll prompt I'm sure some further thoughts with the team as this is the last of our seminars I'd like to say a really big thank you to all of the authors of the technical report and indeed the other reports that Miriam showed you that form part of the the evidence base for the climate change risk assessment it's been a huge piece of work as they involved hundreds of people so many many thanks to all of them um thanks today to our expert panelists but thanks also to the expert panelists we've had on the previous six seminars a big thank you to the secretariat for all the work they've done um a thank you to the committee members who have both chaired these seminars but have also did an enormous amount of work reviewing the the inputs from the the 200 experts and of course thank you to this audience and previous audiences who've all been very very engaged and put in very thoughtful and interesting questions we'd love to hear your feedback so that we can improve these events in the future you will be getting a link in the next couple of days to ask you for feedback and we'd very much appreciate if you would provide that um also just to do a bit of advertising there are two climate change committee events at COP26 one on mitigation one on adaptation we'll be sending you more information about those in the near future so please look out for them but uh thank you so much for joining us today uh it's been a really interesting session and again thank you very much to our excellent presenters and panelists so thank you all and goodbye