Making resilience count: the economic value of climate readiness

The impacts of climate change on people, places, the economy and nature are becoming more apparent.

Extreme weather events are increasingly commonplace and are expected to worsen in the decades ahead.

Infrastructure systems present a huge opportunity to create a more climate-resilient future. The services resilient infrastructure enables create economy-wide benefits.

Yet, infrastructure resilience and adaptation are consistently undervalued in investment decisions.

As a result, more and more assets are failing or at risk of doing so, affecting key systems on which people and businesses depend.

The costs of maintaining, adapting and reconstructing those assets will only rise with climate change – acting early will cost less.

But government departments and asset owners need the evidence to make the case for appropriate funding.

The ICE’s new policy paper makes the following recommendations for achieving that:

• The government should commission a review of the economic value of climate adaptation and resilience.

  This would focus the debate around economic choices and value created to address the systemic undervaluing of climate readiness in investment and regulatory decisions.

• The review should adopt a whole-system, cross-sector approach and cover multiple timescales.

  Infrastructure is an interdependent system of systems. Understanding the interdependencies and the potential for cascading risks between sectors will improve the economic case for adaptation and resilience.

  Delivering adaptation and resilience depends on coherent frameworks across all sectors and levels of government.

• The review should map who owns relevant datasets, how accessible they are and what would be required to make them useful for resilience planning.

  While a lot of data already exists, much of it is fragmented across multiple bodies and there are gaps in understanding climate impacts and interdependencies.

  Data users need the skills and tools to apply data effectively in decision-making.

• The review should explore innovative methods to assess the value of climate adaptation and resilience.

  This should draw on existing tools, methodologies and guidance, developed by the Climate Change Committee and others, for valuing adaptation, assessing the cost of inaction and managing uncertainty and complex scenarios.

• The review should evaluate the role of regulators in embedding climate adaptation into infrastructure decisions.

  This includes how well regulators currently value and incentivise adaptation, what role they should play and whether they have the remit, tools and incentives to carry out this role.