The Climate Change Act (2008) made the UK the first country to establish a long-term legally binding framework to cut carbon emissions. The Climate Change Committee has an important role in monitoring the actions taken by the UK Government to tackle and adapt to climate change.
How we monitor progress
To assess the UK’s progress in reducing emissions we created a framework to monitor progress, see our first progress report to Parliament (2009) and our Monitoring Framework, which sets out our updated approach to tracking UK progress.
- Please see our most recent progress report to Parliament (2024).
To assess the UK’s progress in adapting to climate change, the Adaptation Committee uses a variety of indicators that measure changes in the environment’s and society’s exposure and vulnerability to climate-related risks, and the uptake of adaptation actions. The Committee also analyses decision-making in key organisations to assess if the amount of adaptation occurring is sufficient to address climate risks, now and in the future. In 2023, we refreshed our approach to monitoring adaptation progress and updated how we monitor adaptation delivery, this can be found in the Adaptation Monitoring Framework (2023).
