\n Often, it feels distant: graphs, melting ice far away, or disasters in other countries.\n<\/p>\n
\n These images make it seem abstract, not real, not here.\n<\/p>\n
\n This feeling that climate decline isn’t tangible right now is a huge problem.\n<\/p>\n
\n Because it feels unreal or far-off, it’s hard to get people motivated to act.\n<\/p>\n
\n Most efforts focus on pressuring governments to cut invisible gases (emissions).\n<\/p>\n
\n Let me be absolutely clear: Cutting emissions is vital\u2026 but it’s not the only solution nor the first solution, for it’s tough to rally people around something so invisible.\n<\/p>\n
\n *Adaptation fixes this.*\n<\/p>\n
\n Adapting means getting ready for the damage that’s already happening, and getting worse.\n<\/p>\n
\n When we take action to protect ourselves, we’re showing we understand the reality.\n<\/p>\n
\n We make human-caused climate change real to ourselves through our human actions in response.\n<\/p>\n
\n When we start meaningfully adapting to climate impacts, then suddenly any felt abstraction to climate reality dissipates.\n<\/p>\n
\n *Our luck is running out*\n<\/p>\n
\n Countries like the US and UK used to feel shielded from the worst climate impacts.\n<\/p>\n
\n That’s changing fast.\n<\/p>\n
\n The US faces massive hurricanes, wildfires, and floods: think Texas.\n<\/p>\n
\n Europe suffers severe droughts, fires, and floods too: think Valencia.\n<\/p>\n
\n The UK has been lucky so far, avoiding truly massive disasters.\n<\/p>\n
\n But that luck won’t hold.\n<\/p>\n
\n *Climate chaos is already hitting the UK:*\n<\/p>\n
\n * *2024 saw the 2nd worst harvest on record* due to water saturation, and the wild swings between drought and floods.\n<\/p>\n
\n * *Flood alerts hit record highs* early in 2024.\n<\/p>\n
\n * *Flood insurance claims reached over \u00a3650 million* last year \u2013 the highest ever.\n<\/p>\n
\n Increasingly, home insurance is being refused, or involves severe premium price increases.\n<\/p>\n
\n * *Spring 2025 was the hottest and sunniest on record.*\n<\/p>\n
\n Records keep breaking.\n<\/p>\n
\n The climate is, self-evidently, getting worse, more chaotic.\n<\/p>\n
\n Right now, we’re heading into our third summer heatwave.\n<\/p>\n
\n While it might not hit 40\u00b0C like the record-breaker three years ago, every heatwave kills vulnerable people, especially the elderly.\n<\/p>\n
\n And such heatwaves are of course now becoming more frequent and more extreme.\n<\/p>\n
\n *East Anglia’s specific risks*\n<\/p>\n
\n Different places face different climate threats.\n<\/p>\n
\n For us in East Anglia, the biggest danger is *flooding.*\n<\/p>\n
\n Our low-lying land is highly vulnerable to both coastal flooding (rising seas) and river flooding (rivers like the Ouse, Nene, Stour, Waveney, Wensum, and Yare).\n<\/p>\n
\n Almost nowhere here is truly safe from flood risk, once you take into account \u2018flash-flooding\u2019 too.\n<\/p>\n
\n *Wildfire* is another growing threat, especially in dry summers like this one.\n<\/p>\n
\n If not this summer, then soon.\n<\/p>\n
\n East Anglia (and England generally) is very vulnerable to this threat because we have little experience dealing with large wildfires compared to places like Greece or California.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ultimately what is at risk is our water- and food-security.\n<\/p>\n
\n In other words, will we have enough to eat?\n<\/p>\n
\n The stakes are that high.\n<\/p>\n
\n *How do we adapt?\n<\/p>\n
\n *Adaptation means taking practical steps now to reduce these risks:\n<\/p>\n
\n 1. *Build natural defences:*\n<\/p>\n
\n * *Restore wild woodland:* Trees help absorb water and slow potential floods.\n<\/p>\n
\n * *Protect river banks:* Use natural shrubs and hedges instead of concrete walls, where possible.\n<\/p>\n
\n * *Restore wetlands & peatlands:* Norfolk and East Anglia drained many salt marshes and mudflats, not to mention inland marshes and peatlands.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bringing them back creates huge natural sponges that soak up floodwaters and slow them down.\n<\/p>\n
\n * *Or look at what they do over the water in the Netherlands: Consider the wonderful \u2018tile-flipping\u2019 (tegelwippen) annual competition between municipalities for who can take the most tiles out of public and private spaces and replace them with greenery.\n<\/p>\n
\n A brilliant way of \u2018gamifying\u2019 the endeavour to make towns and cities flood-proof, climate-proof.\n<\/p>\n
\n 2. *Build stronger communities:*\n<\/p>\n
\n When disasters hit \u2013 and they will hit \u2013 the most crucial factor for survival is *community.*\n<\/p>\n
\n Neighbours who check on each other, sharing food, water, and shelter, make all the difference.\n<\/p>\n
\n Building strong local connections isn’t just nice; it’s a vital form of climate adaptation.\n<\/p>\n
\n A strong community can mean life instead of death.\n<\/p>\n
\n *Why adaptation is essential*\n<\/p>\n
\n In the 1980s, when we first widely learned about “global warming,” preventing the worst through drastic emissions cuts (mitigation) was still possible.\n<\/p>\n
\n We’ve largely missed that chance.\n<\/p>\n
\n A significant amount of climate change is now unavoidable.\n<\/p>\n
\n The impacts will hit our communities.\n<\/p>\n
\n It’s our collective responsibility to adapt.\n<\/p>\n
\n We must prepare for the reality of climate breakdown so we are ready when disasters strike.\n<\/p>\n
\n *Join us*\n<\/p>\n
\n At the Climate Majority Project, we’ve launched this week our *SAFER campaign (Strategic Adaptation for Emergency Resilience)* to finally put adaptation into widespread action.\n<\/p>\n
\n This is about making our communities safer against the climate impacts already here and those on the way.\n<\/p>\n
\n For climate vulnerability is now, here.\n<\/p>\n
\n Let’s stop just talking about invisible gases.\n<\/p>\n
\n Let’s get ready.\n<\/p>\n
\n Join us in building real resilience for East Anglia and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Often, it feels distant: graphs, melting ice far away, or disasters in other countries. These images make it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-11465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}