Climate Impact Group Meeting 16th September

Attendees

anchor link

Apologies

anchor link

1. Minutes of the Previous Meeting

Minutes ACCEPTED as a true record

Actions carried over:

ACTION: Emily to arrange with Penny for a version without specific figures in the LRF tables and make it available to the group for public dissemination, including through the Devon Climate Emergency website.

ACTION Penny to complete updates to draft two of the Met Office regional climate change projections.

ACTION Tom to update the map in the flood risk narrative to include the Isles of Scilly.

anchor link

2. Progress Since 10^th August on Initial Climate Risk Review:

a) Health Narrative

Sara Gibbs reported that the Devon Public Health Annual Report has been used to prepare the health narrative. Over the next two weeks it will be finalised with Nick Young and Katherine Mchale at Public Health England.

The Cornwall annual Public Health Report is very similar to the Devon piece, so it shouldn’t need too much work to make it relevant to cover the whole peninsula and the Isles of Scilly.

Helen will feed it into Cornwall via the Cornwall Strategic Infrastructure Group for their comment.

ACTION: Sara to give Helen the draft health narrative to share with Cornwall via the Strategic Infrastructure Group.

b) Flood narrative

ACTION Tom, Helen and Dave Watkins to speak further to ensure the impacts outlined in the flood narrative are correct for Cornwall, but Dave advised that this should not prevent progress to the next stage of the project.

c) Natural environment narrative

Conversations about extending the narrative to include Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have been delayed due to local COVID issues.

Peter suggested that incorporating the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly specific risks should be an ambition, but we don’t need to document those in detail as many of the Devon risks extend over the remainder of the area. This shouldn’t be a reason not to move to the next stage.

Helen said she will share the natural environment narrative with the Cornwall Local Nature Partnership and offer them the opportunity to identify specific additions that are necessary.

ACTION Laurence and Helen to share the natural environment narrative with the Cornwall LNP.

Rob Scarrot from South West Water has provided information about water resources to add to the natural environment narrative.

anchor link

3. Pulling the Narratives Together

Becky Mitchell is extremely busy at the moment but is wanting to follow up on her previous offer to bring the narratives together, add the social and economic context and cross-reference with the UK adaptation plan.

Helen advised that national Environment Agency colleagues do have resource to look over the narratives, so in the meantime this can be taken forward through the EA.

Sara highlighted the importance of achieving consistency of the overall document given that the narratives have been produced by several organisations.

It was AGREED that the Environment Agency will combine the narratives with a cross reference to the UK adaptation plan, and then Becky can provide the social and economic context.

ACTION: Emily to liaise with Liz at the Environment Agency to take this forward.

It was AGREED that the final document needs to include a register of all of the risks that will become the Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Climate Risk Register, which the EA will draft as the narratives are being brought together.

Elliott suggested that the risk register could be structured in the same way as the Community Risk Register to enable easy information sharing in the next stage of the project. It was AGREED that this would be a good solution.

anchor link

4. Next Steps

Once the narratives have been brought together and a Climate Risk Register produced, it was AGREED that this Group will apply the magnitude and likelihood scoring to the local risk register with Elliot’s guidance at a workshop/meeting. Following this, a gap analysis will commence to understand our preparedness levels for the risks identified.

anchor link