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The United Kingdom is today better adapted to climate risks as a result of a sustained programme of research completed by the School into the impacts of climate change on ecological, social and infrastructural systems. This work has had significant and continuing impact on the design and implementation of UK (and international) climate adaptation strategies and policies, especially with regard to flooding, the built environment and water and coastal management. Decision-support tools (such as climate scenarios and options appraisal) and direct policy advice produced by the School have been used by numerous public and private sector organisations to inform and guide their adaptation strategies and investments.
Professor Caney's research addresses a fundamental concern that climate policies should be guided not just by economic considerations but also by ethical considerations. His research on human rights and intergenerational justice identifies ethical principles to guide climate change policy that have influenced major actors in the climate change field ranging from international organisations to governments and NGOs. His work has (i) shaped the acceptance of ethical concerns as a critical consideration of climate change policy, (ii) influenced policy initiatives, and (iii) impacted on the wider public debate.
Significant climate change is forecast for the Middle East by the end of this century, leading to — amongst other things — greater water scarcity and falling agricultural productivity. LSE research resulted in the development of the Palestinian Authority's first climate change adaptation strategy. This in turn led to the creation of a Palestinian national committee on climate change and, with the implementation of specific recommendations from this research, the strengthening of climate change planning within the Palestinian Authority. The research also shifted regional priorities for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which subsequently included climate change in its 2011-2013 Strategic Framework as a policy priority for development work in the occupied Palestinian territory.
A comparative methodology to assess the impact of climate change in different countries, implemented by Gosling for a report commissioned by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), informed EU negotiations at the 2011 UN climate change conference in Durban, South Africa. The conference concluded with the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action - a `road map' by which global legal agreement on climate change is to be implemented no later than 2015. For the first time, government ministers and their advisers attending an international conference were able to compare the impact of climate change in different countries, including those where scientific institutions have limited research capacity.
Research at the University of Exeter identifying potential climate tipping points and developing early warning methods for them has changed the framework for climate change discussion. Concepts introduced by Professor Tim Lenton and colleagues have infiltrated into climate change discussions among policy-makers, economists, business leaders, the media, and international social welfare organisations. Thorough analyses of abrupt, high impact, and uncertain probability events, including estimates of their proximity, has informed government debate and influenced policy around the world. It has also prompted the insurance and reinsurance industry to reconsider their risk portfolios and take into account tipping point events.
Professor John Broome's research on the ethics of climate change and on our associated responsibility to future generations has had a significant impact on those involved in policy decisions concerning climate change. Most notably, Professor Broome is serving as Lead Author for Working Group III of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), which is a unit of the United Nations and the leading international body for the assessment of climate change: its work is directed by, and approved by, governments. He is also a member of the IPCC's Synthesis Report. In addition, he has raised public awareness of the ethical issues with which he has grappled through a series of publications and lectures.
Lived experiences of ordinary people and how they rationalise events provides rich insights for several disciplines e.g. medicine. With climate change, whilst the value of anthropogenic activity is increasingly recognised, models based on positivist scientific rationality still dominate. What is yet unclear is how a global citizenery understands climate change through its own individual and group "lived experiences". This research is significant in that it seeks to conceptualise and theorise what is meant by the "lived experience" of climate change and how this shapes the "lay rationality" and actions of people in both the developed and the developing world.
Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. The net costs of climate change in the UK could be tens of billions of pounds per year in the 2050s, and tidal flooding alone could affect over half a million UK properties by 2100. Dr Jonathan Rougier worked with the UK Met Office (UKMO) to produce the climate scenarios for the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) 2009 report (UKCP09). His research and advice (funded as a UKMO External Expert) was critical in a key innovation in the UKCP09: a comprehensive uncertainty assessment. A Director of the UKCIP writes "The UKMO team with Dr Rougier [have] put the UK at the leading edge of the science and service aspects of providing climate information for users" [b].
The UKCP09 formed the basis of the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment and the recommendations of the UK National Adaptation Programme, which was submitted to Parliament as part of the Government's obligations under the Climate Change Act. The UKCP09 has been used for the assessment of the impact of climate change by hundreds of organisations, including agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), utilities companies, consultancies, and County Councils and Local Authorities.
Knowledge of the changing global temperature has contributed to an international political agreement being reached about the over-arching objective of climate change mitigation policies. The School's scientists have made a crucial contribution to one of only three datasets that reveal changes to the world's average temperature over the last 150 years. These data have been central to each of the five Assessment Reports of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), upon which successive rounds of international climate change negotiations relied and which led, in 2009, to the adoption of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius as an agreed international policy goal.
Hope's research in developing the PAGE2002 model of climate change has been used extensively by government agencies in the UK and US, as well as the IMF and the international community in order to improve their calculations for global carbon emissions and setting carbon emissions targets. The model was used in the UK government's Eliasch Review, in order to calculate the costs and benefits of actions to reduce global deforestation; by the US Environmental Protection Agency, in order to calculate the marginal impact of one tonne of CO2 emissions; and the IMF, whose calculations using the PAGE2002 model form the basis for their guidance on carbon pricing.