Professor Briony McDonagh and Professor Larissa Naylor of the Coast-R Network were invited to speak at the opening session of the Flood Resilience in England Inquiry on Wednesday 22 January. The Inquiry was called by the UK Government’s Environmental Audit Committee, focusing on how flood resilience can be strengthened in response to increasing risks from extreme weather, rising sea levels, and evolving flood hazards.
Briony and Larissa attended the first of five sessions, presenting expertise from a broad range of University of Hull and University of Glasgow flood risk and resilience research activities. Briony also drew on her own experience of building community flood resilience through the Risky Cities project, which utilised arts and humanities approaches to build community engagement around flood resilience and climate.
Briony spoke of the urgent need for action to help coastal communities facing varying threats from climate change:
“It’s not in a future we don’t know about, it’s a future that’s happening now. We need to understand better how we can support our communities in terms of education and awareness and their own personal flood resilience at community level.”
Larissa made a challenge to the committee to consider Parliament’s legacy, asking:
“Can Parliament work with risk management agencies and the public to create those legal and financial frameworks that we need, so that we can take bold transformative actions together across all of society to have just adaptation … that adaptation piece is what really needs strengthening in the strategy.”
The Environmental Audit Committee is a cross-party Commons Select Committee, chaired by Toby Perkins, Labour MP for Chesterfield. Committee members will be exploring current Government policy and flood resilience approaches, and what may be needed as climate change increases future flood risk. They will be considering nature-based solutions vs grey infrastructure, as well as potential issues around England’s monitoring of flood risk.
A University of Hull team, including Coast-R Network members, Prof Briony McDonagh, Prof Stuart McLelland and Dr Kate Smith also submitted written evidence to the Inquiry in advance of the oral evidence sessions.
Following completion of the oral evidence sessions, the Environmental Audit Committee will publish a report and submit to the UK Government for a response.
View the Inquiry session (invited speakers questioned from 15:44:20): https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f9116e0e-6d78-495b-b284-2ec2c1342acf
