Floods and extreme weather will become more intense, so Britain needs a long-term plan. The time for buck-passing is over.
The harrowing pictures of flood victims, ruined property and stranded stock have brought home the damage the forces of nature can wreak even in our gentle and temperate climate.
We must expect this extreme weather to become more frequent, made worse by the warming of the atmosphere. The UK’s floods, Australia’s record heat, the intense cold in the US, and the unparalleled force of Asian storms remind us that the real issue is intensity.
We have to prepare, not just for too much water, but too little; not just for rain but for record tides and winds. The cost of adaptation to the effects of climate change is significant and so far hardly recognized.
It’s all too typical of our short-term perspectives that so many have concentrated on easy answers and facile blame. We won’t solve our problems by indiscriminate dredging or sacking the chairman of the Environment Agency. Nor is it a simple matter of resources.
We have to have a programme of long-term adaptation that enables the UK to cope with these fundamental and irreversible changes.
Of course, some of that will involve increased spending on flood prevention and coastal defence. John Krebs, who chairs the adaptation sub-committee of the climate change committee, estimates a £500m shortfall in spending over the four years to 2015, if we are to avoid flood risk increasing over time.
It would be utterly unacceptable to take foreign aid funds from the poorest people on Earth, as some have now suggested, instead of finding the proper resources for flood prevention. I entirely support the prime minister in saying that we are a nation rich enough to provide the funds to deal with flooding.
However, beyond capital spending, we will need much more fundamental change. Both flooding and the effects of drought are made significantly worse by some modern farming practices. The compaction of the soil means less absorption of rainfall. When the rainfall is too little, the aquifers are not sufficiently replenished. When it’s too much, the run-off swells the rivers and makes flooding worse.
With so much more land being drained, the quantity of water driving down our watercourses is much increased and simply overwhelms their carrying capacity.
The historic methods of flood alleviation – of wash meadows and other soft defences – have largely been abandoned and we are not encouraging the kind of cultivation higher up our rivers that can help to hold back the water.
But the built environment too will be affected. All those front gardens concreted over and the fashion for hard landscaping mean the natural absorption of water in our towns is much reduced. The result is that sewerage systems are overwhelmed.
Worse still is our arrogant insistence of building on flood plains so that the natural mechanisms of flood alleviation are inhibited.
So, if we are properly to face up to the flooding threat, someone has to be in charge. At the moment, no one is ultimately responsible. Local authorities and the Environment Agency, Defra, the Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government all have a finger in the pie. The water companies, the Highways Agency, Network Rail and the internal drainage boards are also crucial to a solution.
Before people try to make party political points, it’s been like this for 20 years.
Back in Margaret Thatcher’s time, the Treasury resisted a single system for coastal defence and then the last government’s reorganization made a muddled system significantly worse.
No party has been prepared properly to count the cost of adaptation to climate change.
Nicholas Stern’s warning should remind this government – and all future ones – that the old ways are no longer adequate.
We have to act now to protect Britain against the effects of the changes – the flooding, storms and drought that will become more frequent and severe.We have to start anew.
From my experience both as minister of agriculture and secretary of state for the environment, I have long believed we should have a single department of planning and land use. This would take in all of Defra and add planning from DCLG.
The resultant department would directly take control of the coastal defence element in the Environment Agency and then use coastal local authorities as their agents, thus unifying the present fragmented jurisdiction.
The Environment Agency would remain as present, but it would report to the new department as it now does to Defra. Such a department would be responsible for implementing the necessary long-term programme. The buck would stop there and we might finally get something effective done.
GMA/AB
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