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’. This is certainly true of climate change. We don’t know how fast the 196 nations of the world will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. We also don’t know precisely what a changed climate will look like. There is a lot of uncertainty in the various climate models.
Having said this there is a strong consensus about the types of changes we will see, and the climate models the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses have tracked the change so far with a fair degree of accuracy.
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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.
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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.
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