Securing a green, climate resilient future

On climate resilience and a green future

The UK's climate is changing at a rapid pace. Recent decades have been warmer, wetter and sunnier than the 20th century. The effects of climate change are already being felt across the country with increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events and impacts including floods, heatwaves and droughts. To address this, developers and local planning authorities (LPAs) need to build climate resilience in the round. Nature-based solutions represent a great opportunity to do so, while generating wider benefits including carbon sequestration, habitat creation, air quality improvements and place-making.

In this article we present a brief definition of climate resilience, the opportunities for nature-based solutions and key opportunity areas where the Delivery Associates Network can help through our network of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).

Why do we need to become more climate resilient?

Climate change and climate hazard events adversely affect people, places and the economy. The climate is already changing, and we have already started seeing impacts - some of these are[1]:

Climate Impacts	Description
Extreme Heat	Increased energy demand for summer cooling
Health	Increased risk to health from heat stress
Heavy precipitation	Increased risk of river and surface water flooding
Transport	Increased disruption to transport due to heat. E.g., rail buckling
Drainage	Increased disruptions to urban drainage system
Energy	Infrastructure such as gas pipes are at high risk from flooding events.
Drought	Risk to water supplies from drought
Environment	Increased risk to biodiversity (plants and animals)
Sea Level Rise	Increased risk of coastal flooding

In terms of future changes, the UK Climate Projections indicate the following headline trends[2]:

There is an increased chance of warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers.
Hot summers are expected to become more common. By 2050, every other summer may be as hot as the record-breaking summer of 2018.
Although the trend is for drier summers in the future, there may be increases in the intensity of heavy summer rainfall events.
Sea level will continue to rise in the 21st century even if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced rapidly.

For the current hazards and the future climate projections that the country faces, it is important to build resilience to their impacts - by building capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from these adverse events[3]. This can include a wide range of climate resilient approaches – from nature-based or hard engineered solutions or upgrades, to driving behavioural or institutional changes.

Government policy that promotes climate resilience

The Climate Change Act 2008[4] sets out a requirement on the UK Government to conduct a Climate Change Risk Assessment every five years to identify climate risks, followed by a National Adaptation Programme (NAP) to address those risks. The latest NAP, published in 2022, identifies the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and Building Regulations as the key frameworks for embedding climate resilience into new development.

Updated in 2021, the NPPF requires local planning authorities to have a holistic understanding of climate adaptation, ranging from flood risk, coastal change and water supply, to increased temperatures and heat stress. Local development plans and resulting development should play a part in building community resilience to a changing climate[5], [6]. Approved Document O (Overheating) was recently added to the Building Regulations, taking effect in June 2022. This sets out the requirements to manage the risk of overheating in new residential buildings[7].

Meanwhile, the Flood and Water Management Act (2010) sets out the various authorities who contribute to managing flood risk, including Lead Local Flood Authorities – county councils and unitary authorities. Schedule 3 of the Act, while yet to be implemented, mandates sustainable drainage (SuDS) for new development, to alleviate potential increased flood risk[8]. Current planning policy requires SuDS to be included in all new major developments (over 10 homes), unless there is clear evidence that this would be inappropriate. This is in addition to requirements that SuDS should be given priority in new developments in flood risk areas. More detail about SuDS is provided below.

Bringing in nature

“Nature-based Solutions” (NbS) is an umbrella term for climate resilience measures that are designed with nature at their centre – they can restore ecosystems, reverse biodiversity loss, and help manage water. NbS can be tailored to local biophysical, socio- economic, political and cultural conditions[9], making them well-suited for interventions by local authorities and at the development scale. However, it is important to consider spatial and temporal scales, as well as the context, when deciding which NbS to implement, as this will influence their effectiveness in line with resilience ambitions.[10]

The table below presents some examples of nature-based solutions and how they help to build climate resilience:

Nature-based solution	Climate hazard(s) addressed	Climate resilience benefits	Wider benefits	Scale and context
Green roofs and living walls	· Pluvial Flooding · Extreme Heat	· Reduces rainfall runoff from buildings · Reduction of urban heat effect	· Carbon sequestration · Biodiversity · Air quality improvements · Can support localised sustainable agriculture, i.e. rooftop farming · Reduces energy needed to cool or heat buildings.	· Mostly urban · Building scale
Sustainable drainage (SuDS, e.g. rain gardens, swales)	· Pluvial Flooding · Fluvial Flooding · Extreme heat	· Retention of runoff water, reducing flood risk and improving water quality · Reduction of urban heat island effect ·	· Collect runoff water to allow solids to be removed, helping control environmental degradation. · Carbon sequestration · Biodiversity · Air quality improvements	· Mostly urban · Commonly building to development scale
Tree planting	· Extreme Heat · Pluvial Flooding · Fluvial Flooding · Erosion and Landslides	· Reduction of urban heat island effect · Intercepts rainfall and promotes additional infiltration into the soil. · Shade and evapotranspiration reduce heat at the ground level · Root systems reduce erosion and slope stability issues	· Carbon sequestration · Biodiversity · Air quality improvements · Health and wellbeing improvements	· Rural and urban · From site to landscape – although climate and wider benefits vary depending on spatial scale
Coastal dunes and wetlands	· Coastal Flooding · Pluvial flooding	· Creates a barrier that can buffer waves from coastal storms	· Carbon sequestration · Biodiversity: supports native vegetation and species · Health and wellbeing improvements	· Mostly rural, although wetlands can also be a form of SuDS · From site to landscape – although climate and wider benefits vary depending on spatial scale

How to play your part in creating green, climate resilient places:

Local planning authorities and developers help to shape the places and spaces of tomorrow, across various spatial scales and contexts. Using a top-down approach, they should start planning with city-wide initiatives, and then move onto more local aspects of neighbourhood and streets, people and communities, and finally built assets. Local planning authorities must ensure they have thought about climate resilience and the opportunity for NbS in their planning and projects. Some key considerations to help ensure future places are climate resilient include:

Understand your key climate risks: a climate risk assessment can be a useful preliminary step to identify where to focus climate resilience efforts

Build climate resilience considerations into development as early as possible: the most effective way of managing climate risks is to design them out.

Prioritise nature-based solutions where appropriate: consider whether grey infrastructure could be replaced with green alternatives.

Going ‘beyond code’: standards and requirements relating to climate resilience are lagging behind the scale of the challenge. Producing additional Planning Policy Guidance is a common strategic, council-led approach to prioritise climate resilience in development. A good example of a Climate Change Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) has been developed by Cheltenham Borough Council[11], which tackles key climate risks like flooding, overheating and water scarcity.

Figure 3 shows an example diagram from this SPD, which provides clear and practical guidance on how climate resilience measures can be embedded when designing a new development. Examples of building-scale measures include considering site orientation and form for overheating, using water efficiency and rainwater harvesting measures and permeable surfaces.

Empower local residents to take action: community resilience is an essential pillar of climate resilience, to allow residents to support one other. Ensuring residents know the climate risks they face allows them to better prepare for future impacts.

Understand local needs and context: some climate resilience measures will work better in some places than others. Local engagement can provide essential insights to inform decision-making, while a good understanding of local geographical characteristics (e.g. land cover, geology, river catchment) is often required to ensure the right NbS are implemented.

Maintenance is key: nature-based solutions can often require maintenance to work effectively – it is important this is fully thought through and adequately funded.

It is vital that LPAs ensure climate adaptation is considered strategically. This includes during the early stages of the development process so climate risks can be designed out (e.g. by careful site selection, building orientation and form), and at larger spatial scales beyond individual development sites so that smaller scale projects are mutually supportive within a larger strategic plan.

A diagram with an example of a new build house with ideas of how to design it to enhance climate resilience at the building scale. — Figure 3: Climate resilience at the building scale (Source: Cheltenham Borough Council – Climate Change SPD).

Emma Lancaster is a Climate Change Consultant. She specialises in climate risk, resilience and adaptation, having supported local authorities and infrastructure organisations to better understand their climate risks and take climate adaptation action. She has experience across the UK context and beyond, and brings in her water resources and flood risk management background to help understand and tackle water-related climate risks.

Shrey Sood is a Consultant working across their spectrum of climate services (mitigation, finance, policy, risk & resilience and digital). He has worked across geographies in India, South-east Asia, Egypt, US and UK with a range of stakeholders to further the cause of advancing the energy transition.

If you have any questions on this topic, or would like support, please contact your Delivery Associate, or email DeliveryAssociatesNetwork@Arup.com