Sustainability and policy - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 517

spend nearly $1 billion on a programme called ARK (which translated from the Dutch
stands for Adaptation Programme for Spatial Planning and Climate) to generate a
comprehensive agenda to deal with climate change across several sectors of society
and economy. As with other low-lying areas, the Netherlands faces a number of
climate adaptation questions. First, how to identify and cope with increased risk.
Second, on what timescale will the adaptations (identified from answering the first
question) need to be implemented: when does acting later become too late? Third, what
are the comparative costs and benefits of alternative strategies? Such adaptations are
not just restricted to enhancing conventional sea defences (dykes, etc.) For example,
the 2003 summer was the hottest in Europe for some 500 years but it is thought that it
will represent a normal summer in the middle of the century. During the 2003 summer
the low discharge of the Rhine resulted in seawater seepage into the ground water
that in turn affected agricultural and horticultural activities. One option therefore will
be new canals to bring in extra fresh water. However, with low river flow securing
an extra volume of fresh water is likely to prove difficult. Another option therefore
would be to increase the area of land devoted to freshwater reservoirs. However, this
will take land out of alternative use and income generation. A compromise therefore
may be to build the reservoirs but to house large floating rafts, or hydrometropoles,
on them to provide an area for, say, greenhouses (Kabat et al., 2005).
Of course, just as overall in a warmer world there will be more ocean evaporation
and hence precipitation, so on land there will be more evaporation and some areas will
see significant water shortage. So, global warming will incur costs to address water
shortages and costs of surplus (floods). Even some wealthy countries, where politi-
cians recognise climate change, ignore the full implications of the costs associated
with such change, especially if such costs fall outside of government departments
whose remit relates to climate and energy matters. The UK provides a typical example.
Although the UK Government has plans to build homes for some 500 000 people,
mainly in the area of Milton Keynes and north Kent, it ignored many of the major
implications of climate change, about which its own agencies warned (see Hulme et
al., 2002). In 2005 it launched a public consultation into Proposals for Introducing a
Code for Sustainable Homes that would be used in the construction of these new (and
any other government-funded) homes (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2005).
However, the proposals did not take into account the broader landscape and regional
issues for the areas in which the homes were to be built. (Nor were the independent
UK learned scientific - biology, chemistry, geology and physics - societies on the
initial consultation distribution list.) Yet the areas in which nearly all the new build
was to take place are already experiencing water shortages in the form of lowering
water tables, and stream and river flow, and are forecast to see less rainfall with
21st-century climate change. Further, there were (at the time) no plans to enable
water to be routinely transferred from parts of England and Wales predicted to see
an increase in rainfall. Even the Kyoto-supporting government of one of the planet's
leading economies was ignoring costs. And indeed, when the Code for Sustainable
Homes was implemented by the Department for Communities and Local Govern-
ment in 2006 it was voluntary and did not raise minimum standards. Although it did
bring all the sustainability criteria for dwelling construction into one document it was
hardly the 'step-change in sustainable home building practice' its subtitle suggested.