The Nottingham Declaration Action Pack

Introduction

Laurie Newton, Local Authority Project Officer at UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) writes,

“NDAP is a web-based tool offering guidance on the development of local authority climate change action plans covering both mitigation and adaptation.  It is structured around a standard project management approach, in particular that used in the Carbon Trust’s Local Authority Carbon Management Programme (LACMP).  The 5 stages of NDAP are: getting started; assessing current and likely future situation; developing a strategic approach; preparing an action plan; and implementation. NDAP is organised around the 3 main roles of local authorities: estate manager (for adaptation this is assumed to include all corporate functions); service provider; and community leader. All the adaptation guidance is based on a common risk-based approach with advice on how this can be applied to each of these roles.”

The Nottingham Declaration Action Pack

Background

The Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change is a voluntary pledge that English local authorities can sign demonstrating their commitment to tackling the challenges of climate change. Launched at a conference hosted by Nottingham City Council in 2000, this was an initiative by local rather than central government.  A revised version of the Declaration was launched in November 2005 by which time one hundred councils had signed up. More than 300 of the 440 English local authorities have now signed the Declaration and equivalent statements have been signed by all the local authorities in the devolved administrations of Scotland and Wales.

The original Declaration focussed primarily on the mitigation of GHG emissions, but the 2005 revision gave greater weight to the challenges of adapting to the impacts of a changing climate. The Nottingham Declaration is now managed by a partnership (NDP) of all the major organisations involved in local government and climate change work in England, including: the Energy Saving Trust (EST), Carbon Trust (CT), Environment Agency (EA), Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA), Local Government Association (LGA), ICLEI and UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) as well as Nottingham City Council.

One of the commitments of the Declaration is to ‘develop plans with our partners and local communities to progressively address the causes and impacts of climate change...’ within 2 years of signing. To support this commitment, the NDP launched the Nottingham Declaration Action Pack (NDAP) website in July 2006.

Nottingham Declaration Action Pack

NDAP is a web-based tool offering guidance on the development of local authority climate change action plans covering both mitigation and adaptation.  It is structured around a standard project management approach, in particular that used in the Carbon Trust’s Local Authority Carbon Management Programme (LACMP).  The 5 stages of NDAP are:

1. Getting started
2. Assessing current and likely future situation
3. Developing a strategic approach
4. Preparing an action plan
5. Implementation

NDAP is organised around the 3 main roles of local authorities:

1. Estate manager (for adaptation this is assumed to include all corporate functions)
2. Service provider
3. Community leader

All the adaptation guidance is based on a common risk-based approach with advice on how this can be applied to each of these roles.

The structure of NDAP is schematically represented in Figure 1.

The adaptation components of NDAP were authored by UKCIP based around methodologies developed in the Risk framework and Adaptation wizard. Although NDAP is described in terms of a simple linear sequence, the guidance recognises that in practice there will be extensive iterations as the process proceeds.  For instance, in stage 2: Assess current and likely future situation it is expected that more analysis of impacts and a more detailed risk assessment will be undertaken for those risk identified as significant on the first pass.

Stage 1: Getting started

Guidance on getting started is essentially common to all three local authority roles and across both mitigation and adaptation.  It consists of 4 basic steps aimed to set a firm foundation for developing the action plan:

• Obtain Senior Management and Political Support
• Appoint climate adaptation lead and team and agree approach
• Allocate Resources
• Undertake initial training

Stage 2: Assess current and likely future situation

The aim of this stage is to identify threats and opportunities to a council’s services, operations and the local area from projected climate change and to prioritise risks requiring adaptation responses. It consists of six steps:

Identify the significant climate variables for the locality

This step introduces the UKCIP02 climate scenarios and provides a broad summary of national climate trends.  It also suggests the use of a Local Climate Impact Profile (LCLIP) to develop a greater understanding of the area’s current vulnerabilities to extreme weather events as a basis for identifying the key risks from a changing climate.

Identify potential threats and opportunities

This step provides guidance on the identification of the potential threats and opportunities for a local authority area based around a set of ‘business areas’ derived from research originally undertaken for the business sector (BACLIAT). This has proved a useful framework for the public as well as private sectors and encourages people to think about a wide range of potential impacts rather than simply the most obvious ones. The factors suggested are:

People – including residents and visitors; clients for council services and the staff delivering services.

Demand – potential changes in the demand for council services.

Premises – impacts on council buildings and estate, and more broadly to built environment of the area.

Processes – impacts on council operations and the delivery of services.

Finance – financial risks arising from the impacts of climate change, including reputational risks to the council.

Logistics – indirect impacts on council operations from disruptions of utilities, transport infrastructure or supply chains.

The guidance stresses the need to engage a wide range of staff in the identification of threats and opportunities.  Experience suggests that operational staff are often more aware of weather and climate impacts on their operations than higher level managers.

Estimate the likelihood and consequence of impacts

The section provides guidance on undertaking a basic risk assessment of the threats and opportunities identified in the previous step.  The primary purpose of this stage is to identify priority impacts that require further investigation. It therefore suggests a simple approach based on a largely qualitative assignment of the likelihood of occurrence and magnitude of consequence to one of the three categories of low, medium and high.

Identify the most significant impacts

This step is the largely mechanical ranking of all the risks in order to identify the most significant impacts for which adaptation responses need to be considered.

Compare estimated climate impacts with other risks

In order that any adaptation responses are reasonable and proportional, it is important to consider climate impacts in relation to other, non-climate related risks confronting the authority.

Identify impacts that may require adaptation responses

The final step of this stage is the bringing together of all of this work as a rank order list of climate impacts that need to be considered for adaptation measures.

Stage 3: Develop a Strategic Approach

This stage is concerned with developing adaptation response to the priority risks identified at stage 2.

The guidance suggests that adaptation responses to climate change can be divided into two broad categories: Building Adaptive Capacity (BAC) and Delivering Adaptation Actions (DAA).

Building Adaptive Capacity involves developing an institutional capacity to respond to climate change effectively.  Examples of BAC could involve activities such as:

• undertaking research, institutional change, education and training;
• creating standards and legislation, changing management systems, and developing personnel, or other, resources to cope with, or benefit from, climate changes; and
• developing appropriate policies, plans, strategies

Delivering Adaptation Actions is concerned with practical responses to climate change and could include measures such as:

• building flood defences or managing retreat
• putting more nails in a roof tile, increasing the diameter of a drain
• creating ‘siesta’ times in a business or locality

Given that adaptation is a relatively new issue for most English local authorities, it is recognised that at this early stage many of the responses are likely to fall into the BAC category as an authority starts to build its institutional capacity to tackle the challenges of a changing climate.

There are some differences between the advice offered for the three council roles, but the suggested approach consists of 3 steps:

• Identifying adaptation options
• Appraising adaptation options
• Confirming adaptation responses

The guidance recognises that there are a wide range of possible types of adaptation strategies and a wide range of criteria for selecting any given option.  These may include:

• attitudes to risk;
• costs both financial and in terms of social or environmental impacts;
• conflicts and synergies with other policy objectives; and
• consideration of non-climate factors.

It suggests a number of generic categories of response:

• The most basic option is to do nothing. This may be an appropriate response to low priority impacts or situations where climate risks are outweighed by non-climate factors.  In some cases, it may also be appropriate for more significant impacts where no obvious adaptation response can be clearly identified, or where there are prospects that other factors may change future circumstances, for instance new research findings.
• ‘No regret' options will deliver benefits that exceed their costs, whatever the extent of climate change. These should always be implemented if they exist. For instance, if you are already experiencing weather-related problems, then cost-effective actions to deal with them should be 'no regret' options.
• ‘Low regret’ options are relatively low cost actions that may deliver significant advantages in future.  Typical examples could include over-specifying drainage specifications for a new development in order to avoid the higher expense of having to upgrade them in future.
• Win-win options are ones that contribute to desired outcomes (be they environmental, social or economic), and also improve your ability to adapt to climate risks. Typical examples include the use of ‘green roofs’ or tree planting in urban open spaces that offer multiple benefits.

The guidance stresses the need to avoid adaptation constraining decisions that:

• make it more difficult to cope with future climate risks; or
• make it more difficult to manage climate risks in the future.

One obvious example is inappropriate development in a flood risk area.

This section also provides guidance on:

• the timing of adaptation responses; and
• minimising the costs of responding

The output of this stage will be a set of preferred adaptation responses to the risks identified at stage 2 for inclusion in an Action Plan.

Stage 4: Developing an Adaptation Action Plan

The NDAP guidance recognises that there are likely to be considerable variations in the ways in which local authorities choose to implement adaptation measures and that most authorities will have existing procedures for developing action plans. It does not try to impose a particular approach, but offers guidance under a series of headings to help an authority decide on its preferred approach:

• Consolidate information and proposals from previous stages
• Consider how these fit with any relevant authority-level policy contexts
• Prioritise proposals and choose which to implement
• Develop an implementation strategy and timetable
• Develop means of monitoring the performance of plans
• Undertake a consultation process
• Revise plans in the light of consultation responses

Stage 5: Implementation

The final stage on implementation offers only very limited guidance on the assumption that authorities already have extensive experience of implementing action plans in other areas. However, given that this is a new issue for local authorities, it does stress the need for monitoring progress and for the periodic review of their adaptation strategy and action plans.

Commentary

NDAP was the first attempt to offer comprehensive advice on adaptation for English councils.  Various surveys suggest that it has been highly influential in raising awareness of the issue of adaptation in this sector.  However, to date, only a small minority of English local authorities have produced comprehensive adaptation strategies and action plans primarily because of the barriers mentioned below.

The role of the Nottingham Declaration and the Action Pack is recognised by central government, for instance, there are currently more than 80 citations to the Nottingham Declaration on the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) website and it is referred to in key documents such as the UK Climate Change Programme 2006.

There have been a number of barriers to local authority engagement with climate change adaptation in England, notably these have been:

• Lack of awareness of the issue
• Lack of policy drivers to encourage engagement
• Relatively short term planning and political horizons compared to the long term challenges of adapting to climate change
• Lack of both financial and staff resources to address the issue
• Lack of experience and expertise in adaption

Changing policy context

Until recently UK central and local government policy on climate change has tended to focus primarily on the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.  However, there has been a sea change recently with an increasing recognition of the need to adapt to the unavoidable climate change.  This is reflected in a number of policy initiatives by central government including:

• The Climate Change Act that came into law in November 2008. Although this continues to be mainly focussed on the mitigation, it does require the government to report on the risks of climate change to the UK from climate change at least every 5 years. It also introduces powers for Government to require public bodies, including local authorities,  to carry out their own risk assessment and make plans to address those risks.
• A significant increase in the Defra team involved in adaptation work, including a new section on adaptation on the Defra website.
• The publication of "Adapting to Climate Change in England: a framework for action" in July 2008

From the local government point of view, one of the most significant developments has been the inclusion for the first time of an indicator on ‘Planning to adapt to climate change’ in the new local government performance framework introduced in April 2008.  This requires all English local authorities to report on their progress in adapting to climate change over the next 3 years.  It also offers the opportunity for Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) to include adapting to climate change as one of their ‘stretch targets’ in their Local Area Agreements (LAAs).  Encouragingly, 56 of the 141 English LSPs have elected to adopt this indicator in their LAAs.

The way forward

The Nottingham Declaration Partnership (NDP) has recently launched a major update to their website.  This includes a revised version of NDAP and more detailed guidance on adapting local authority service area to climate change.  The partnership intends that the website should be the primary resource for English local authorities work on both mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

UKCIP and NDP are leading members of the recently formed Local and Regional Adaptation Partnership (LRAP) to support adaptation at a local level in England.  A major feature of this partnership’s work programme is support for local authorities work on the Planning to adapt to climate change performance indicator. This support programme will be strongly influenced by experience gained through the development of NDAP which will continued to be an important resource for local authority work on climate change in England.

Information about the author

Laurie Newton is the Local Authority Project Manager for the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) where he is responsible for developing guidance and tools to support local authorities’ responses to climate change. He is the principal author of the adaptation content of the Nottingham Declaration website – the latest version of which was launched in September 2008. Laurie was the Specialist Advisor for the 'Tackling Climate Change' theme for Round 9 of the Beacon Council Scheme. Currently he is heavily involved in developing a support programme for the new national performance framework indicator NI 188: Planning to adapt to climate change.

Originally trained in fine arts, Laurie has wide-ranging background including research and consultancy in food sector policy in sub-Saharan. For the 8 years prior to joining UKCIP in 2005 he worked as a freelance sustainability consultant. E-mail: laurie.newton@ukcip.org.uk

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