It is a real pleasure to be able to launch our new ‘Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Guide’ today. This project was initiated by our Sustainability Advisory Group and delivered on the association’s behalf by Arup. In membership workshops that ran this spring, universities were able to feed into our thinking – around process, obstacles, finance, planning and more. We are very grateful to all that have contributed to this new publication.

The direct, download links to the three guides are available to members and the public:

1. Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Guide
2. Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Guide: Appendices
3. Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Guide: Catalogue

The theme is a large one, and it gets ever more important. The headline of our climate position is relatively simple to understand. The UK should expect warmer but wetter winters, and warmer but drier summers. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 asked governments to commit to actions which would keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The current trajectory is a rise of 2.7 degrees, with worst case scenarios of around 4 degrees. This isn’t theoretical, it is happening now. The climate we knew as children is not the climate we have now. Readers in the UK and Ireland will recognise this description and those elsewhere in the world will have their own trajectory of change even if the specifics are different.

So what do universities need to do?

1. Read this guide and understand the local context and variation to the likely challenge. For instance Scotland (as shown this summer) is more prone to wildfires than elsewhere in the UK. In Wales it is sea-level rise and in England’s North-East, storms. What issues does your university actually face and how can you adapt to the likelihood of greater challenges?
2. Broaden their understanding of the challenge. For instance, hotter summers with higher temperatures could lead to issues around subsidence as well as the more obvious concerns about additional energy spends (in cooling buildings) and the health impacts of working in higher temperatures.
3. Invest in their climate change resilience under ‘business-as-usual’ protocols. Don’t allow this to become ‘a sustainability spend that can be endlessly delayed’. This is about spending (relatively small and often) now, in order to avoid greater cost later. There’s a cross-campus conversation to be had on this theme. Finance colleagues and strategic planning colleagues need to be brought on board.
4. Understand the wide range of comparatively low-cost interventions that can make a difference now. See part 3 of the guide for a catalogue of adaptations, many of which could be implemented on a short timescale with a concerted plan – raingardens and internal water efficiency measures, tree planting and green walls, insulation and the installation of cool surfaces, attenuation tanks – and many more ideas.

The guide acts as a repository of ideas and resources, from a glossary (to make sure we are all using sometimes new terminology to mean the same thing) to related materials from aligned sources.

Speaking on launch of this guide, AUDE Executive Director Jane Harrison-White said: “We think carefully about the way we invest AUDE member monies in AUDE projects. But the choice to invest in this specific project did not seem a hard one. As private individuals we all see this task becoming clearer, and as professionals in university estates we should act now to ensure this theme is firmly on the radar of all within our HE communities with responsibility for the long-term health of these institutions. The winning argument for me is around avoidance of cost. Spend now to avoid a worse spend later. We are far behind the Paris Climate Agreement target for minimising climate change and so must do correspondingly more to future-proof the estate. And it isn’t too late to do this affordably. Build climate change adaptation and resilience into every estates plan. Use the guide to help you find ways to do that. This is a winning argument on campus but estates teams need to go out and deliver the case.”

Sophie West, Senior Sustainability Consultant at Arup, said: “Climate change is already reshaping our university estates - and the reality is stark: even if we stopped producing all emissions today, the climate would continue to change. Universities must act now to adapt, embed climate thinking into everyday decisions, and build estates that are resilient, safe, and prepared for the future. We are proud to have partnered with AUDE to consider this complex challenge in the launch of the ‘Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Guide’.” 

We hope this is a resource that many will benefit from and find personally interesting. We all know the misery-making effects of flooding and fire; or the sheer operational difficulty of keeping campuses (and homes) comfortable during summers that are far hotter in the UK than we have been used to. Using the Met Office information available to understand your local position is one way to start engaging with this document. Or consider this as an aspect of your integration with local authorities, businesses and other organisations – how do you reduce ‘urban heat island’ effects together for maximum impact, for instance?

Now really is the time to think about these issues at a level that may be new to some AUDE member universities. There is a ‘launch webinar’ dealing with the issues raised by the new guide and all members are welcome:

• Climate Change Risk, Adaptation & Resilience with Arup, 19 August at 11am

You’ll also be able find the two other guides we have published in the last twelve months on different aspects of the climate crisis and our response as estates professionals to dealing with these issues. In addition to today’s new document these other documents are ‘A Guide to Decarbonisation’ (August 24) and our ‘Legacy Buildings Guide’ (October 24).