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2. Evolving our approach to produce the CCRA4-IA
For the fourth cycle of the CCRA-IA we are seeking to evolve our approach in several ways:
- Building on previous assessments: to ensure continuity with earlier CCRAs and add growing depth and richness to the assessment over multiple iterations, we will seek to explicitly build on the starting point of the CCRA3-IA in further developing the evidence base on UK climate risk.
- Best supporting adaptation policy delivery: CCRA4-IA will aim to provide evidence that best sets out the case for, and value of, taking adaptation action within and beyond government. This includes working closely with government teams to ensure that the evidence base speaks to their needs and ensuring that other important stakeholders beyond government are appropriately engaged in the evidence-production process.
- Improving the visualisation of climate risk information: CCRA4-IA will aim to produce simple and, where appropriate, spatially disaggregated presentations of climate risk and adaptation, to help make a compelling case to a range of stakeholders.
We aim to deliver on these aims through two key products which will form the core of the CCRA4-IA: the Technical Report and a new Well-Adapted UK Report. As in past CCRA-IAs, these key products will be supplemented by a set of supporting products aiming to provide accessible routes to the most relevant information on climate risk for particular sectors and parts of the UK.
Our plan for each key product is described in turn below.
2.1 CCRA4-IA Technical Report
As in the CCRA3-IA, we will produce a technical report that will provide a synthesis of the most up-to-date evidence on the range of risks and opportunities facing the UK from climate change, and their ‘urgency’ for additional policy to address them.
The CCRA4-IA Technical Report will seek to build on the CCRA3-IA assessment by focusing on how the evidence on UK climate risk has continued to evolve over the five years since the CCRA3-IA.
Key elements of the CCRA4-IA Technical Report approach will include:
- Taking a literature synthesis-based approach to distil insights from the full range of academic and wider technical literature on climate risks and opportunities to the UK.
- Maintaining an urgency scoring approach aligned to that employed in the CCRA3-IA. This will help transparently assess how the evidence on the magnitude and urgency of climate risks to the UK is changing over time.
- Providing an assessment that identifies differences in risk and urgency between the UK as a whole and for each devolved administration in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
- Seeking to include evidence from the most recent sources of information on UK climate risk. We will be seeking to identify insights from the increased uptake of the latest suite of UK Climate Projections (UKCP18); information from the third and fourth rounds of the Adaptation Reporting Power (the fourth round is due to conclude in late 2024) and the new NAPs responding to the CCRA3-IA.
We have commissioned an expert consortium, led by the UK Met Office and including representatives from across the UK’s adaptation community, to undertake this assessment in a robust and transparent way.
A call for evidence to help inform this assessment is made available alongside this publication to help identify the most relevant and up-to-date evidence. A draft version of the CCRA4-IA Technical Report will be published for expert review in 2025.
2.2 CCRA4-IA Well-Adapted UK Report
As part of CCRA4-IA, we will be developing a new output to complement the CCRA4-IA Technical Report. This Well-Adapted UK Report will focus on providing policy-relevant evidence on how best to address some of the most urgent risks. This report will seek to inform actions that can be taken in the subsequent set of NAPs around the UK.
Key elements of the CCRA4-IA Well-Adapted UK Report approach will include:
- A focus on a sub-set of key adaptation challenges to respond to risks identified as some of the most urgent and critical by the CCRA3-IA and CCRA4-IA Technical Reports.
- A bespoke set of research projects developed together with decision makers to help make the evidence as useful and accessible as possible. These projects will help evidence cost-effective long-term levels of resilience, the near-term adaptations required around the UK in the period of the next NAPs and the associated levels of investment that will need to be mobilised. These projects will take an explicitly spatial approach where possible.
- An adaptive approach, recognising the need to balance early action against the inevitable uncertainties about longer-term (mid-century and beyond) adaptation requirements.
- Consideration of key cross-sectoral themes relevant to delivering a well-adapted UK. These will include an improved understanding of aspects of cascading climate risks, interactions between adaptation and other key policy priorities such as the delivery of the legally mandated Net Zero and nature restoration targets, and the distributional and spatial implications of climate risk and adaptation.
The Well-Adapted UK Report will seek to help adaptation policy move beyond considering adaptation only within planning towards a needed focus on on-the-ground delivery. This is required to ensure that the CCRA-IA continues to evolve to best serve the changing needs of UK adaptation policy.