A Local Resilience Act is needed to mitigate the impact of climate change and extreme weather conditions, think-tank has urged.
Writing in The MJ this week, chief executive of Localis, Jonathan Werran, said that ‘even under the most minimal of warming scenarios, infrastructure, public health and GDP will all worsen’.
Localis said legislation was needed to streamline laws and guarantee local infrastructure funding.
It argues that a Local Resilience Act would streamline existing legislation to allow the absolutely necessary changes to happen at the local level.
Localis head of research, Joe Fyans, said: 'Whole place resilience is vital. It has been predicted that without suitable adaptation measures and mitigation, the country will see extraordinary costs as communities struggle to keep up with the changes forced upon it by climate change.
'If action is not taken, the UK might see damages of up to 7.4% reduction of its potential GDP by the end of the century, alongside devastating shocks to its agricultural sector and to the health of its population. However, with suitable upstream mitigation and preventative measures in place, that figure would drop to a predicted 2.4%.'
