Christiana Figueres (front row third right), the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) joins a group of hunger striking mothers, on the last day of their hunger strike over food poverty and climate change, at Carriage Gate outside Parliament in London
THE government has presided over a “lost decade” and failed to adequately plan and adapt to climate change, its advisers have said.
A new report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which advises the government on climate policy, concludes that the lack of planning and failure to implement adaptation policies where they exist could expose Britain to a host of climate-related threats.
CCC adaptation committee chairwoman Baroness Brown said: “The last decade has been a lost decade in terms of preparing for and adapting to the risks, the risks we already have and those that we know are coming.
“While we’ve seen some progress in planning for climate change, in fact there is still very little evidence of impact on the ground.”
The government’s National Adaptation Programme on preparing for climate change “fails to match the challenge facing the country,” the CCC said.
It lacks vision, is not underpinned by tangible outcomes or targets and has not driven policy or implementation across government, the committee added.
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