Government resilience: extreme weather

Written Evidence submitted by Professor Rowena Hill and Rich Pickford, Nottingham Trent University

1. About the authors

1.1. Rowena Hill is a Professor of Resilience, Emergencies and Disaster Science at Nottingham Trent University. She was a 2021-23 ESRC Policy Fellow in the Department of Levelling Up, Communities and Housing with a focus on the psychology/behavioural science of Climate Change. She is the embedded scientist for the Climate Security National Foresight Group and has advised both the National Police Chiefs Council and the National Fire Chiefs Council regarding climate resilience, climate security and climate change.

1.2. Rich Pickford runs Nottingham Civic Exchange is Nottingham Trent University’s pioneering civic think tank with a primary focus on issues relating to the city and the region. Nottingham Civic Exchange enables discovery by creating a space where co-produced approaches are developed to tackle entrenched social issues. Alongside this role he has worked on a number of climate related projects at NTU which include his role on the Climate Security National Foresight Group. He has also worked with LRFs during and after the Covid-19 pandemic on risks.

2. Evidence

2.1. Does the UK Government have a clear vision and well-defined roles and responsibilities to manage national risks, such as extreme weather events, and the generic capabilities to deal with emergencies

2.1.1. In our view, this is a mixed answer. There are certain changes, mostly as a result of learning from the Covid-19 pandemic, that contribute to a clarity of understanding of how on paper the resilience system, and the roles, responsibilities, accountability, communication and decision making lines within it, are defined. On paper there is clarity of who and what structures are responsible for the planning, preparedness, management and recovery of extreme events (including extreme weather events). These changes include the new Resilience Framework, the Strengthening the LRFs programme, and the further development of climate adaptation such as the National Adaptation Plan. They are all positive steps to establish how the resilience structures would work at different geographical impacts (local, regional or national impacts) or different levels of complexity (such as a regional geographical impact which then leads to Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) being significantly compromised). However, we have observed through every part of local and national civic leadership clear evidence that there is a lack of attention to adaptation in comparison to climate mitigation which itself is receiving significant political undercutting over recent months and that the development of clear plans does on its own create resilience to risks.

2.1.2. Ongoing work to translate NSRA risks to local contexts is valued and critical and the UK local resilience structures are practised at contextualising the NSRA to their locality and communities. However there needs to be support and resources to map the climate risks identified in the work of the Climate Change Committee to this process of localising risks. In addition, work on chronic risks (rather than acute or climate risks) should also be included in this work in order to continue to respond and articulate the context that will continue to grow and become more problematic as we continue to experience the effects of a changing climate.

2.1.3. The development of the National Adaptation Plan 3 (NAP3) and work underway by colleagues across the Met Office, NPCC and the Climate Security National Foresight Group (of which we are embedded scientists) highlights that many people understand the need to do additional work in this space.

2.1.4. The major challenge facing the UK (and others) is the fragmentation of responsibility across this arena and the level of fatigue that many C1 and C2 strategic responders are facing with very little in the way of systematic support. Many of the resilience structures have had significant challenges to manage since 2018 (EU Transition, Covid-19, flooding, wildfires, London Bridge, storm damage). This challenges the ability for the structures to build additional capability and capacity when they are consistently in use and busy.

2.1.5. Learning from previous disasters and emergencies means we need to fully develop and prepare for upcoming incidents. Recent changes in the frameworks surrounding the UK approach to resilience and civil protection have introduced a ‘whole of society’ approach to identify, prepare, plan, manage and recover from risks. This requires communities, organisations, public services, the voluntary and community sector, and civic leaders to understand, contribute, and jointly respond to natural hazards and risks. This concept of distributed civil protection applies to all risks, and consequently includes climate risks such as adverse weather. However to date there has been very little to appropriately co-design, develop and implement this approach across society. It also cannot be left to emergency responders and emergency planners to implement as this would require a negotiation of the psychological contract with the public of what they can and cannot expect of their public services. This would take a carefully constructed public narrative to explain that there are possible risks that the UK is facing that are so interwoven and interconnected with supply chains, critical national infrastructure, and consequences (from things such as large geographical impacts), that it is unrealistic to expect the public services to cover all of the resulting impact management. Consequently, the private industry, community and voluntary sector must all play a part with the public services. The upskilling, coordination and supporting infrastructure for this should be developed and lead by national leadership. This is not yet in place as we are currently transitioning to the ‘whole of society’ approach. So this needs careful management in the interim.

2.1.6. Recommendation: The UK needs more support for those planning, preparing, responding and recovering from disasters and emergencies. Currently these experience a pulse of attention, funding and support, depending on the rhythm and public narratives of major incidents and their timelines. This investment should become more sustainable and facilitate the growth of capability and capacity of these resilience structures, as well as starting the investment of the ‘whole of society’ approach.

2.1.7. Recommendation: New ways of communicating with and engaging the public are required that provide action rather than fear to allow people, groups, organisations and sectors to understand and prepare for climate extreme weather risks, and to ensure they are supported to develop ways to adapt to our changing situation.

2.1.8. Recommendation: All of society needs to be engaged in a debate about taking a ‘whole of society’ approach otherwise we risk being wholly unprepared if our plans expect understanding, engagement and action from everyone affected in ways they have never been prepared for.

2.2. What are the risks from extreme weather events

2.2.1. The Met Office Climate and Attribution Services, and Copernicus have a shared public understanding of the likely changes to the climate and the resulting extreme weather events. The impacts we need to manage from these events are not only in the physical domain (damage to buildings, degradation of agricultural land, threats to our infrastructures), but they are also to our psychological and social as well as our economic domains. The likely scale (geographically larger than local impacts – such as the regional scale) and complexity of extreme weather brings with it a change in consequence management and demands the scaling up of the response due to the interwoven nature of society. This means that our resilience structures, as well as being more active than they are already, are likely to need to coordinate across regions more. This is currently a missing layer within the resilience structures, particularly in England, as the local levels dock to the national. The regional layer is on a mutual aid basis, or it a locally supported arrangement.

2.2.2. Risks focus on an individual, community, business, society, public service and governmental levels but they need clear lines of decision making, communication, accountability and coordination. There is currently a gap in the longer term planning on how these resilience structures need to look like to be able to cope with the future demands from extreme weather events.

2.2.3. We need to prepare for significantly different weather experiences, in their scale and complexity, alongside the impacts from extreme weather experienced in other parts of the globe and how they will affect us i.e. crop failures in Asia due to extreme heat affecting our ability to feed ourselves in an affordable way, mass migration of populations from uninhabitable locations due to flooding and heat. Currently these are cognitively accepted by some, but are not visible in longer term planning and preparedness. Although the Supply Chains Resilience Framework and Integrated Review Update goes some way to explore this.

2.2.4. The communities, groups and individuals most at risk from climate related extreme weather, are also those who are most in need when identified through the levelling up agenda and the six capitals within it. This demands that we focus our preparation, consequence management and recovery on these at risk groups, especially those who experience intersectionality of these risks and vulnerabilities. Current methods of impact assessments and humanitarian preparation and aid are limited to identifying protected characteristics rather than vulnerabilities associated with other ‘hidden’ characteristics such as geography, community cohesion, climate worry, community and personal resilience and loneliness.

2.2.5. The psychological impact of our changing climate is also a risk, but is a natural response to a threat. Consequently evidence suggests that we should not pathologise people’s climate worry or anxiety, but provide ways to support this through action and agency. Drawing on concepts such as moral or ethical injury and perceived proximity to power are also aspects important to consider.

2.2.6. We have witnessed an increasing concern surrounding the growth in conspiracies and climate apathy.

2.2.7. Recommendation: Enhanced communication and support for local risk analysis and support – see cost of coal tip monitoring and remedial work as one example, better more honest communications with the public about preparedness for change, developing a clear narrative about self-sufficiency and community support. Enhanced debates about how the weather is affecting our lives with the public. Deeper research into the psych impacts of extreme weather on populations directly and indirectly affected

2.2.8. Recommendation: Vulnerabilities and ‘hidden’ characteristics such as geography, community cohesion, climate worry, community and personal resilience and loneliness need to be better factored into impact assessments and humanitarian preparedness in the UK.

2.2.9. Recommendation: Longer term planning on how resilience structures need to prepare and plan for the future demands from extreme weather events are required.

2.3. What is the Government’s understanding of risks and any gaps in its knowledge

2.3.1.The updates to the method by which the NSRA is worked out and the Climate Change Committee reports, means that the UK government has a good understanding of risk likelihood and consequences, however most sectors and governance levels are lacking in understanding complex risks and how the interwoven nature of society can cause cascade or compound risks. We are aware of the chronic risk work that was outlined in the Autumn Statement, which is an important missing contribution in the risk landscape. Investment in the mechanisms to localise and regionalise these risks, to enable all scales of geographical likelihood and consequences, is needed.

2.3.2. Work to understand cascade risks is also required alongside leading practice on how to communicate these risks to the broad sets of audiences for these messages both within society, in sectors and within government.

2.3.3. Additional work is needed to understand how to support people to take on the ‘whole of society’ approach that is widely discussed. Developing resilience with people, groups, communities, sectors, agencies and organisations needs detailed and enhanced work to clearly understand where, how and who will be most adversely affected through detailed community risk mapping, impact assessments, consequence management, humanitarian assistance impact assessments and climate risk modelling.

2.3.4.Extreme weather events are typically not bounded by administrative geographical boundaries. This means that these will typically cross administrative, sector, community, organisational and governance boundaries. The whole of society approach would aid in ensuring that those most at risk and with the least resilience can be identified and aid brought quickly and efficiently, however, as evidenced by the lack of preparation for societal wide whole system risks such as a pandemic, this also needs to be addressed through the national planning and exercising regime within the Emergency Planning College and Resilience Academy, as well as within sectors, organisations and society.

2.3.5. Recommendation: Investment in the mechanisms to localise and regionalise these risks, to enable all scales of geographical likelihood and consequences, is needed.

2.3.6. Recommendation: Funding is required for further work on communication with a specific focus on how the ‘whole of society’ approach can be implemented

2.3.7. Recommendation: Prioritisation of support around modelling risks is required that allows all departments, agencies and local government services to prepare and adapt to extreme weather.

2.4. How the UK Government can develop resilience?

2.4.1. Resilience can be developed by the UK Government through a number of ways. The careful development, planning, implementation, education, negotiation, support and coordination to implement the whole of society approach.

2.4.2. There is a lot of learning that the UK research councils are trying to capture through funding calls relating to resilience and adaptation, where the UK can learn from countries that live with natural disasters more regularly, typically this is the global south, where extreme weather is experienced more frequently and infrastructure and protective systems (such as insurance) are not as ubiquitous.

2.4.3. Evidence suggests that we have not used and incorporated knowledge and evidence from social sciences about the way in which disasters and emergencies, particularly climate related events are experienced. Incorporating our evidence base of understanding from the social sciences would increase our communication between responders and with the public, and would inform our plans and assumptions about what might happen in different scenarios.

2.4.4. Evidence from a range of sources and reviews agnostic of risk (in other words, learning from other events that are not related to the pandemic) suggest that we have two systematic failings that would make a significant impact if addressed. The first is to ensure there are standards developed for the civil protection and resilience structures, to improve practice, to ensure accountability and to improve consequence management. The second is to ensure that learning from events has a mechanism to inform the plans and assumptions, training and learning for future events. Currently, the reviews and debriefs from a range of different risks all follow similar themes and findings. Which leads to the question, why don’t we learn from previous events and emergencies? This is particularly poignant for ‘slow rise’ risks such as those known risks associated with a changing climate.

2.4.5. Recommendation: Ensure there are standards developed for the civil protection and resilience structures, to improve practice, to ensure accountability and to improve consequence management.

2.4.6. Recommendation: Ensure a true multi-disciplinary focus is brought to extreme weather and civil contingencies preparedness and response that draws together social and physical sciences alongside arts and humanities.

2.5. What is the appropriate pace and scale of adaptation required to fully prepare the UK for climate risks.

2.5.1.It is clear from the National Adaptation Plans and the Climate Change Committee narrative that the pace of adaptation is too slow. This is in relation to adaptation of our physical environment (e.g. shade banks), our climate resilience (e.g. the integration of our resilience structures with the needs to prepare for climate related risks), and our climate security (e.g. readiness for the consequences of geopolitical impacts from a changing climate). More political attention, energy, leadership, narrative, accountability and public championing should be shown. Alongside this a suite of time, energy, coordination, incentives and funding should be implemented.

2.5.2.By implementing a ‘whole of society’ approach the underlying principle of our civil protection structures (subsidiary) will be enhanced with clear bidirectional support and reporting. This will also require a significant upskilling and coordination between our communities, groups, individuals, sectors, organisations and administrative layers to support the whole of society model.

3. Recommendations

3.1.1. The UK needs more support for those planning, preparing, responding and recovering from disasters and emergencies. Currently these experience a pulse of attention, funding and support, depending on the rhythm and public narratives of major incidents and their timelines. This investment should become more sustainable and facilitate the growth of capability and capacity of these resilience structures, as well as starting the investment of the ‘whole of society’ approach.

3.1.2. New ways of communicating with and engaging the public are required that provide action rather than fear to allow people, groups, organisations and sectors to understand and prepare for climate extreme weather risks, and to ensure they are supported to develop ways to adapt to our changing situation.

3.1.3. All of society needs to be engaged in a debate about taking a ‘whole of society’ approach otherwise we risk being wholly unprepared if our plans expect understanding, engagement and action from everyone affected in ways they have never been prepared for.

3.1.4. Vulnerabilities and ‘hidden’ characteristics such as geography, community cohesion, climate worry, community and personal resilience and loneliness need to be better factored into impact assessments and humanitarian preparedness in the UK.

3.1.5. Longer term planning on how resilience structures need to prepare and plan for the future demands from extreme weather events are required.

3.1.6. Investment in the mechanisms to localise and regionalise these risks, to enable all scales of geographical likelihood and consequences, is needed.

3.1.7. Funding is required for further work on communication with a specific focus on how the ‘whole of society’ approach can be implemented

3.1.8. Prioritisation of support around modelling risks is required that allows all departments, agencies and local government services to prepare and adapt to extreme weather.

3.1.9. Ensure there are standards developed for the civil protection and resilience structures, to improve practice, to ensure accountability and to improve consequence management.

3.1.10. Ensure a true multi-disciplinary focus is brought to extreme weather and civil contingencies preparedness and response that draws together social and physical sciences alongside arts and humanities.

3.2. Professor Hill is happy to speak to committee members confidentially about aspects or his research. She is also happy to present oral evidence to the committee or individual committee members.

Professor Rowena Hill, Psychology, School of Social Sciences, NTU. 

rowena.hill@ntu.ac.uk. 0115 84 85532.