Climate Change Adaptation Plan

The government is committed, through Public Service Agreement (PSA) 27, to ''leading the global effort to avoid dangerous climate change'. The Foreign Office is at the heart of work on this, mobilising our overseas network to argue internationally for a radical transformation of the global economy and to help create the political conditions for a legally binding global climate deal. We capture this work under our Departmental Strategic Objective (DSO) 7, which aims ''to promote a low carbon, high growth, global economy''.

In addition to our existing work on mitigating climate change, we recognise we also need to focus on adapting to it. Whatever we agree internationally, there will be inevitable changes in the world’s climate. The impacts on our foreign and security policies will be real. As an organisation we need to think now how to adapt our objectives, policies and practices, to take these challenges into account.

How climate change impacts on the UK will depend in part on the decisions and policies of other governments and international institutions. Our network across the world will be instrumental in helping the UK to adapt to climate change, by understanding and influencing what happens overseas.

The need to transform to a low carbon economy and the need to adapt to changing climatic parameters will also create opportunities. Low carbon goods and services already represent a significant market globally. We believe that the more decisively we seize the early mover advantage, the greater the opportunities the low carbon transition will afford.

 Climate Change Adaptation Plans