Improving accessibility of the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment Evidence Report

The second CCRA (CCRA2) was published in 2017 and was supported by a comprehensive Evidence Report from the Committee on Climate Change's Adaptation Committee. As required under the Climate Change Act, Defra has subsequently published an updated National Adaptation Programme in response to the risks and opportunities set out in the report, and the devolved administrations are likewise using the results of the CCRA to update their own programmes.

The third CCRA (CCRA3) will be published by the Government in January 2022, and Defra have asked the CCC to again produce an accompanying Evidence Report by summer 2021.

The CCRA is a complex, three-year project, involving dozens of organisations and hundreds of experts. The scope of the CCRA is broad, in that it needs to bring together all of the latest evidence on current and future climate risks and opportunities to the UK, including under different climate change scenarios and taking account of the extent to which adaptation actions now and in the future will manage those risks and opportunities. It is important for the CCRA to be carried out in a robust, independent and transparent way, and for all supporting evidence, assumptions and rationale to be provided. The Evidence Report and supporting analysis exceeded 2,000 pages for both the first CCRA Evidence Report (published in 2012) and the second in 2016.

It is clear that, to be of use to Government, the key findings of the CCRA need to be summarised, and this has been done in various ways in the past:

*** See Specification for more detail ***