Policymakers at home and abroad need to stop conflating climate change and climate resiliency, and start doing more to ensure our infrastructure can cope with extreme weather, say Prof David Schultz and Dr Vladimir Janković, High-impact weather events, such as the UK floods earlier this year, are often accompanied by discussion of whether the events were associated with or enhanced by climate change. This view […]
Back to the future; the recurring patterns of flooding in the UK
Flooding is not new in Britain, with major floods recorded throughout history. But with predictions of climate change suggesting such deluge conditions may become more common, Dr Anna Carlsson-Hyslop argues that policymakers must heed some important lessons from the history of flooding. History tells us that central government involvement in flood defence has swung first […]
Pickles-Paterson floods spat highlights true top-down nature of UK policymaking
A top-down centralised decision-making process and government functions working in silos are not new features of UK politics, writes Dr Daniel Fitzpatrick. But as communities across the UK experience misery due to flooding, it seems these deeply entrenched pathologies of policymaking are increasingly out of step with the ‘wicked’ issues that society is facing. The […]