Climate Adaptation and Housing
Whether we like it or not, there has already been a certain amount of climate change in recent decades and even with the best possible global climate policies this change will continue to some extent. This means that as well as doing all we can to limit our emissions we need to adapt to this change. For housing organisations, this involves choices about where we put our homes, how we design them and how we prepare for emergencies.
The physicist Neils Bohr is supposed to have said ‘prediction is extremely difficult, especially when it concerns the future’. However, despite a certain level of uncertainty we have a lot of knowledge about how climate change is affecting us now, and how it will affect us in the future, with the impacts more or less severe depending on how much hotter we let it get before we start taking the need to decarbonise seriously.
​
Following on from the previous section, if it’s possible you might be better off avoiding properties where there’s a risk of coastal inundation, flooding or bushfires. However, you may not have a choice – no-one will escape increased heatwaves, and if you are in the north of Australia you certainly don’t get a choice about cyclones!
Given this, there are some things you can do to reduce your risk.
​
Given that climate change is likely to lead to more frequent weather related emergencies – floods, fires, storms – it becomes even more important for your organisation, and your tenants, to be prepared for these emergencies and ready to respond.
​
To explore these issues further, here's a set of stories and articles about adaptation, including summaries of key research and writing, a set of articles about the main climate risks we face, and my own personal flood story.
​