Adaptation Strategy

This is the post consultation Climate Adaptation Strategy of the Devon, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Climate Impacts Group – it details the risks the region might face in future as climate change increasingly affects the UK and identifies how we can adapt to these changes.

1.1 Background

The Devon, Cornwall, and Isles of Scilly (DCIoS) Climate Impacts Group (CIG), currently chaired by the Environment Agency, was formed in 2019 by the DCIoS Local Resilience Forum in response to declarations of climate emergency across the three areas.

The climate emergency requires a dual approach:

  • Climate Change Mitigation: Actions to reduce the region’s contribution to climate change (i.e. reducing greenhouse gas emissions) and offset remaining emissions through carbon sequestration and storage.
  • Climate Change Adaptation: Actions to become more resilient to the changing climate by anticipating the adverse effects of climate change and taking appropriate action to reducing the risk from its impacts (e.g. sea level rise, heatwaves, flooding, drought etc.).

Further detail on key terms and their definitions can be found in Appendix 1 – Glossary of terms. This report focuses on the adaptation element of the climate emergency only. Information on the DCIoS region’s response to mitigation can be found in the relevant county-level plans: the Devon Carbon Plan (Devon Climate Emergency, 2022), the Cornwall Climate Change Plan (Cornwall Council, 2019), and the Isles of Scilly Climate Change Action Plan (Council of the Isles of Scilly, 2022).