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The Environment Agency report how low income households are particularly vulnerable to flood risks, and may struggle with impacts:
“Worryingly, low income households are eight times more likely to live in tidal floodplains than more affluent households, but 61% of low-income renters do not have home contents insurance, meaning they’re more susceptible to a financial shock as a result. According to data from insurance company Aviva, most low-income renters would struggle to meet typical insurable losses with nearly three quarters (73%) unable to meet an unexpected bill of £500 without help.”
This concerning analysis also highlights the risk of substantial, long-term impacts to people’s mental health due to flooding:
“Experiencing damage caused by extreme weather such as storms or flooding can increase the chance of facing mental health problems such as stress and depression by 50% while a quarter of people who have been flooded still live with these issues at least two years after the event.”
In the face of rising climate impacts, UK-based researchers are calling for more measures that simultaneously tackle the root causes of climate change, while enabling society to adapt.
Efforts to tackle climate change have tended to prioritise mitigation (reducing emissions) over adaptation efforts (reducing vulnerabilities), and these two broad types of measures are often split across government departments, such as Defra and DESNZ in the UK.
But new research, using the UK’s record-breaking 40C heatwave in 2022 as a case study, has found clear demands for national and local governments to roll out measures that combine mitigation and adaptation.
Policy-makers, climate organisations, and those working in emergency response felt that approaches – such as creating climate-resilient neighbourhoods, tree-planting and other nature-based solutions – should be a priority, given their dual benefits. They felt efforts to combine emissions reductions and adaptation have challenges, but were feasible, with better coordination.
The new analysis also suggests that framing these efforts as part of working towards a ‘climate resilient net zero’ can be a useful way of engaging a range of relevant audiences and decision-makers – building on existing support for net zero.
The study findings are supported by Climate Barometer tracker insights, which shows that both the public and MPs feel mitigation and adaptation are equally important. It also echoes previous work which found that the public view mitigation and adaptation as “two sides of the same coin”.