Guidance on how to define a taxonomy to help the UK economy adapt to climate change has been published as part of the Land, Nature and Adapted Systems (LNAS) Advisory Group’s second and final report.
The report — Framework to develop a UK Green Taxonomy for adaptation and resilience — outlines a five-step framework to define adaptation and resilience, in order to encourage the mobilisation of capital into adaptation investments.
It comes after the group published its first report in October outlining how disclosures in relation to sustainable agriculture, fisheries, and aquaculture could be structured in a UK Green Taxonomy.
“To date no country has yet developed an adaptation taxonomy that starts with the outcome we need to see, which is a real economy adapted to the climate change that is already here and yet to come. The first principles-based approach described in this paper aims to do just that, providing a framework to support the mobilisation of finance into resilience and adaptation-focused investment,” said Robert Bradburne, chair of the LNAS Advisory Group and chief scientist at the Environment Agency.
The LNAS group, spun off from the Green Technical Advisory Group (GTAG), was launched with the task of advising the UK government on identifying environmentally sustainable economic activities.
“As climate change impacts intensify, the UK faces escalating risks across all sectors of its economy. While building a net zero economy remains crucial, adaptation and resilience must be elevated to be a parallel priority. Yet, adaptation investment continues to lag and current financial frameworks are not mobilising capital at the scale needed,” the report stated.
Currently, the UK government is asking for feedback on whether it should create a taxonomy to support investment into the climate transition and clamp down on greenwashing.
Five steps
Even if global temperature rise is limited to 1.5°C, the UK will face increasingly frequent extreme weather events and chronic risks from rising sea levels, the group stated.
As such, it advises that the UK government create adaptation and resilience objectives that emphasise critical vulnerabilities, hazards, and investment timeframes.
The framework also proposes expanding the EU Green Taxonomy to include a comprehensive list of adaptation activities and enabling measures, addressing systemic barriers to adaptation, adding that GTAG had identified key gaps in its adaptation approach, citing “a process-over-outcomes” ethos.
“Green taxonomies have become useful tools for directing capital towards environmentally sustainable economic activities. However, their primary focus on mitigation to date has left the adaptation opportunity underdeveloped,” the report added.
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