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Programme objectives

The Programme's objectives are to:

  • develop a more robust and comprehensive evidence base about the impacts and consequences of climate change.
  • raise awareness of the need to take action now and help others to take action.
  • work across Government at the national, regional and local level to make sure the need to adapt to climate change is embedded into Government policies, programme and systems
  • evaluate progress and take steps to ensure effective delivery of the Programme's objectives.

Phases of the Programme

The Programme is divided into two phases:

Phase 1: 2008-2011

The first phase is made up of four workstreams, each aimed at fulfilling one of the objectives set out above:

  1. Providing the evidence
  2. Raising awareness, and helping others take action
  3. Ensuring and measuring progress
  4. Government policy and process: embedding adaptation

View a summary of these workstreams and key projects.

Phase 2: 2012 and beyond

Following the groundwork in Phase 1, we will be able to move forward with Phase 2 - the National Adaptation Programme.

One of the requirements of the Climate Change Act is to produce a statutory National Adaptation Programme, based on the results of the National Climate Change Risk Assessment.

We expect to have these results in 2011, so aim to start the National Adaptation Programme formally in 2012. The National Adaptation Programme will report to Parliament on a regular basis.

Measuring success

To assess progress the UK is making in adapting to climate change, as well as the effectiveness of the work of the Adapting to Climate Change Programme, we need to have ways of measuring adaptation.

This is a complicated task, because some of the most important outcomes won't be measurable for decades to come. Sector interdependencies will also make it hard to attribute results to any specific action. So we will need some intermediate measures too, and will also need to measure progress on a local level.

Existing indicators

The Government has already made "Leading the global effort to avoid dangerous climate change" one of thirty cross-government priorities (PSA 27). The existing six indicators for this overall climate change priority include one measure of success related to adaptation.

Under this indicator, the Government measures the increase in the proportion of areas which have sustainable abstraction of water. This measure captures efforts to reduce demand and use water efficiently, as well as long term planning to ensure resilience of water supply.

We have also produced an indicator to measure progress on adaptation in local government. This is the Local Government Performance Indicator (NI188). Further information is provided on the local authorities page.

These indicators will be a useful benchmark of success. However, because there are many other areas of life where we need to adapt, we will need to develop additional clear and relevant measures of progress.

Developing new measures of progress

The ACC Programme has engaged colleagues across government, including Devolved Administrations, in order to develop a high level framework that we propose to be used for measuring the UK’s adaptation status: “Measuring adaptation to climate change – a proposed approach (2010)”(PDF 175 KB).

Whilst continuing to develop this approach in 2010-11, substantial work will be needed to collate information which can contribute to our understanding of how the UK is adapting to climate change. This will include identifying currently available data sets, and also new data streams that may be required. Once identified, we will work with those who collect the data to explore the relevance, possible combinations, potential amendments and long term security of this information.

We aim to review, with our stakeholders, the proposed approach to measuring adaptation to climate change and put forward a progress report on work to develop adaptation indicators before the National Adaptation Programme is laid before Parliament in 2012.

Further information

 

Page last modified: 19 February 2010
Page published: 24 July 2008

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