Professor Neil Adger - EPA Climate Change Lecture Series - Cork City Hall

[00:00:00] Ella McSweeney: A very good evening to all of you and a welcome to this EPA climate event coming to you live from the majestic beautiful Cork City in this wonderful Cork City Hall. Thank you so much everyone here for joining us this evening. To those who are in person it is great to see you here and see some familiar faces as well but also to people who are watching virtually. I gather there are people, many many people from various parts of the world such as the nature of course of the climate crisis that we are in. It brings us together but there's people watching from Canada, from New Zealand, from Pakistan so we are very grateful that you're you're joining us this evening. My name is Ella McSweeney. I'm very delighted to be your chairperson this evening and I think it's going to be a really really interesting talk that we're going to hear from Professor Neil Adger adapting to climate risks to make us happier and healthier. I'm very much looking forward to it. We will have plenty of time to talk after Neil's talk where you at home, the virtual audience, you can also get involved as well so please have a look at the ask a question tab on your screens. Everyone here very much want to hear your voices so just raise your hand, give me a nod. There's two superb people who will bring a microphone to your to your mouth and we'll be able to all hear you as well. If you prefer not to talk and just use Slido please go ahead and do that. The code is EPA lecture and we also have a question for you to answer during Neil's talk and we're interested in in that poll so please do give your own response and it may be a talking point after Neil's talk. So my goal here this evening is to hear as many voices as possible. We're here to engage and we're here to take advantage of Neil's expertise and experience and I really hope at the end of this session Neil is exhausted from talking to give us as much of his knowledge as possible this evening. But first just to get things going I'm very delighted to welcome Sharon Finnegan who is the director of the Office of Environmental Sustainability in the Environmental Protection Agency. Sharon's going to say a few words. [00:02:12] Sharon Finnegan: Thanks Ella and you're all very welcome to our second climate change lecture of 2022 as Ella has said which is on tonight is on the topic of climate adaptation and as Ella said I'm my name is Sharon Finnegan I'm the director of the Office of Environmental Sustainability with the Environmental Protection Agency and firstly in partnership with Cork City Council I would like to welcome you all here tonight to Cork City Hall which is a new venue for the climate lecture series we were keen to take the lecture series out of Dublin and and we're delighted to be here in Cork and Cork is of course a very fitting location to host a lecture on the topic of adaptation as this city has first-hand experience of the impacts of climate change and I suppose with flooding heat waves storms all of those things affecting communities and businesses in the recent past yet Cork is really increasing its resilience and leading the way on climate action by becoming one of Europe's first climate neutral smart cities by 2030. The EPA climate lecture series is a really important part of the governments of Ireland's national dialogue on climate change and climate action and the EPA is really delighted to be partnering with Cork City Council in relation to this lecture building those relationships with environmental partners is an ongoing priority for the Environmental Protection Agency because it allows us to engage with audiences create that awareness and really promote that active engagement in climate action locally nationally and indeed across Ireland the EPA climate change in the Irish mind report which is a publication that we we issued at the end of last year and has other elements which we'll be publishing shortly but that report indicates that 85 percent of Irish people are worried about climate change in addition it says that nearly half of people in Ireland are being that Irish people think that all half of Irish people think that um Ireland people in Ireland are being harmed right now by climate change well 95 percent believe that future generations of people will be harmed by climate change I think they're quite startling figures and I suppose what the lecture series allows us to do is present some of the world's leading climate scientists decision makers and influencers to encourage this wider discussion on climate action it's really great to see so many of you here tonight and as Ella said so many people joining us online from from across Ireland and indeed around the world and the EPA is very active and engaged in climate climate adaptation across its work programs including international engagement climate science work leading nationally on developing capacity in climate related research which has informed the development of both national mitigation and adaptation policy we also participate in the adaptation committee on climate change and the in the climate change advisory council our work on environmental monitoring and reporting including the work of our water program and evidence programs is a very very important contribution in this area most recently the EPA's climate services role has been strengthened through the assignment of responsibility for the delivery of Ireland's national climate change platform climate Ireland so these are all hugely important parts of the work that the EPA has done and I suppose this underscores the fact that there has never been I suppose a greater need for action in relation to climate change the status of Ireland's climate 2020 report which was funded by the EPA met Aaron and the marine institute and produced for by researchers based here in Cork University College Cork tells us that Ireland's climate is getting warmer and wetter rates of sea level rise are projected to increase and the frequency of extreme weather events are expected to increase climate projections for Ireland indicate that these trends will continue and intensify into the future and these climatic changes countries and their impacts pose significant threats to the resilience of Ireland's environment society and economy planned adaptation across sectors and regions are required to protect us from the worst impacts of climate change it's absolutely imperative that we develop and implement coordinated and prioritized adaptation plans now in order to be able to realize the future benefits there's a real need to be able to do that there's a real need to be decisive to be courageous and to be meticulous in implementing policies plans and programs to ensure the resilience of our villages our towns our cities like Cork and also along with ensuring that our services and our agriculture and environment are resilient into the future I think failure to do so is going to have a profound impact on health and the well-being of people in Ireland so tonight to move on to the discussion for tonight I would like to welcome our speaker for tonight Professor Neil Adger and to thank you Neil for accepting our invitation to present what promises to be a very insightful and timely lecture on adapting to climate risks to make us happier and healthier Neil is a professor of human geography at the University of Exeter he is an ISI highly cited researcher on the social sciences and one of the few geographers whose work is widely cited across several disciplines Neil acted as the commissioner and author of the Lancet Commission Climate Health Commission in 2015 he's on the editorial board of several well-respected academic journals and his research is widely supported in the UK and in across the EU and I would also like to welcome our chair for the evening Ella McSweeney Ella as many of you will know is a food and farming journalist and reporter she's worked for BBC RTE and the Guardian newspaper I think you'll find her work in the area of climate change is both insightful and thought-provoking and I'm sure that under her chairpersonship she will bring a real richness to the discussion tonight so thanks for joining us Ella as Ella mentioned at the outset we upload these lectures onto our YouTube platform and onto the EPA website and I'd really encourage you to go and have a look because it is a really rich resource so again thank you all for joining us and I'm going to hand you back to Ella who's going to get things kicked off many thanks [00:08:32] Ella McSweeney: Sharon thank you thank you very much indeed and you know the urgency there you can hear it I mean this morning we heard from the world world a meteorological organization about atmospheric greenhouse gases being at record at record levels uh the head saying we are heading in the wrong direction so we know what needs to happen but I'm very delighted that we have a talk now with the words happier and healthier in the title as well and if you are using social media just to ask you all here and at home please use the hashtag climate lecture 2022 I am delighted to introduce now Neil Adger professor in geography at the University of Exeter in England and you know when I was looking at sort of getting a bit of hinterland a bit of biography about Neil it was not um what I found out it was subsequently the climate change coming up first where the fact he's one of the most cited researchers in the UK or that he's been awarded internationally renowned prizes for his work or indeed that he grew up on a farm in county Antrim it was first and foremost uh that he's run a multitude of marathons and his results for his marathons are online and I gather he was to be gearing up to run the Dublin marathon this Sunday uh unfortunately he can't do that but hopefully in the future he will come back to Dublin and run that marathon next year but as I said he was brought up on a farm in county Antrim he went on to study economics um uh specifically agricultural economics in Edinburgh and London and then ended up doing a his doctorate in environmental scientists uh sciences um 1992 uh for those of you who were around then was a huge year in terms of the climate crisis and climate action because it was when the UN climate change convention was signed by 154 nations committing them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but it was also the year that Neil started his own work in on climate change working with colleagues across the world and that is work that he continues and his body of work includes long-standing contributions to the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change and more locally to us here in Ireland he has collaborated with the brilliant academics in Maynooth University on EPA funded research on the flood and climate risks and his knowledge of case studies in Ireland I think will be a very interesting maybe to explore in his talk and afterwards in the discussion uh Neil is highly influential uh social scientist he's recognized globally as elite as being in the leading one percent in that discipline and it is for that reason I think that we are particularly um lucky to have him here this evening to hear his thoughts so I'm very much looking forward to this talk please put your hands together [00:11:12] Speaker 3: for professor Neil Adger thank you Sharon and thank you Ella for that uh introduction and when Ella and I were briefed about uh this session um lots of people said this is a very very serious topic so see if you can entertain the audience and keep it a little light and I'm not sure I can do that at all and because this is a very serious topic so I'm not promising any jokes funny or otherwise in this talk um but I do think uh that I have a good news uh story uh to tell um that uh that we can adapt to climate change and it has the potential to make us happier and healthier if it is well designed um Ella's already referred to this this is the climate change report season it's two weeks till cop 27 um in uh Egypt and just starting at the end of next week and we'll have seen today the world meteorological organization reporting on record uh emissions record atmospheric concentrations um and we've seen uh the lancet countdown and the health community also reporting today on evidence on singular um increase in uh mental health and in terms of uh mortality and all sorts of health risks associated with climate change globally and so this is serious climate change risks are significant they are increasing and they're going to be felt in these parts of the world through floods through droughts through economic disruption and and ultimately through the well-being and through the health at the population level and of people everywhere including here and so if that's the sobering news what's the good news story the good news story is this really gives an impetus to decarbonizing the economy the benefits of decarbonizing the economy are huge and and they're only increasing the second uh part of this is that the benefits of effective adaptation to these risks of dealing with these risks that we're now observing and coming in the future are also extraordinarily high and i would say there is uh also there is a high public demand and uh sharon's just uh referred to this just in terms of survey work here in ireland but this is globally there's a high public demand for adaptations and things that are actually going to uh insulate us from the worst consequences of climate change and and these are you know universal as is finding everywhere and and there is certainly a high public demand for adaptations in the context of flood risk and the other part of the good news story i'm going to try to talk about is that carefully designed adaptation strategies and interventions can potentially enhance overall well-being uh you know a sense of security a sense of place and and actually make us ultimately happier and healthier now i'm a social scientist and so i'm not scared about talking about these types of things like pride in place and well-being and the rest of it and we do go some way to try to measure these phenomenon they sound possibly slightly abstract or slightly fuzzy but that's part of our job to try and make sense of these and of these phenomenon and the rest of it so i'm going to be talking principally on adaptations to about flood risk and i think for the obvious reasons uh here we are in cork we're sitting about 100 meters i guess from uh where we're sitting tonight from uh the lee river and when i arrived at the hotel this afternoon they were putting up temporary barriers outside uh the hotel which is also just on the river now that's either to keep the jazz festival goers inside in the hotel for the weekend or to keep the flood waters out or perhaps uh both so these are live issues um clearly here and but uh also across the country and globally and what are the principal adaptations that we can make to to uh flood risks uh which i'm going to be talking about tonight well first of all there is the sort of engineering and there is the sort of building defenses building sea walls building defenses in rivers to make sure that floods don't happen uh then there are strategies much more about living with risk and um working with people and working with nature not necessarily to reduce the risk altogether but to become aware of those risks and be able to live with them to become more resilient with them and then there are other options which are actually moving away from that risk relocation people and infrastructure away from risk now all of these types of adaptations uh to flood risk have their own consequences and i'm going to now talk through some of those uh just with some evidence of studies that i've been involved with and research that has been going on here and in other parts of the world and so first i would first thing i would say is that all of these adaptations have the potential to really reduce the worst impacts of of flood risk and the consequences of flood risk are high if you've experienced these flood risks you'll know this and but actually we're getting a much greater understanding of the multiple dimensions of what being flooded does and what and what those consequences might be and some of this evidence uh in long-term studies has come from uh large-scale floods that have happened over the last decade or so uh and this is uh uh rainfall anomalies from chris huntingford uh and colleagues at the uk vet office uh exeter center for ecology and hydrology and elsewhere looking at the winter of 2013-14 many of you will remember it's just seven or eight years ago and where basically um we had the west winter on record in 175 years uh within the uk and you'll see these are three maps of december january and february the three winter months uh from that and you'll see that the all the areas in blue are possibly double annual rainfall double expected monthly rainfall for those particular areas you'll see that the whole of southern england southeast england and southwest england in very dark colors uh basically had very very high rainfall but what was unusual is it persisted all winter persisted um right for uh right through uh three or four months causing floods everywhere this resulted of course in incredibly high flows in the rivers uh that you can see there those numbers are just um monthly average flows in many of the major catchments across the uk and in places in rivers like the medway the thames the severn these were three times what they would have been before and this rainfall basically led to national emergency style flooding across southern england and and various parts of england and but particularly across the south and the thames and the rest of it and this had huge economic costs and those have been quantified but for the first time and there was an attempt to actually look at how that affected people directly in terms of their health and well-being and this was uh you don't have to read any of this this is just to highlight the scientific work that went on to try and um highlight this and this is called the english national flood cohort study led by public health england before they had to deal with covid or any of the rest of it they designed this groundbreaking study uh that basically talked to people whose houses had been flooded or people who had been directly uh affected by floods right across uh england they recruited about 2 000 um households and all the adults within those households and they asked them up there about their experience of flood and they asked them up uh to report on their symptoms of anxiety depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and for those sorts of places that for that experience of being flooded and they asked them again every year for five years so this was the first major study to uh look at the mental health consequences of um uh widespread a study to look at the mental health consequences of uh flood risk and they found that that people whose houses had been flooded were five to seven times more likely to have experienced the symptoms of anxiety post-traumatic stress uh and even depression uh than the control group people who lived in those towns who uh weren't affected or hadn't been flooded and so those are very significant levels quite you know increase in risk compared to the baseline and what they found whenever they looked over over the five years is that these effects didn't just go away and on you know the weeks after the floods actually disappeared they went on for two or three years so these consequences on population health on basically how well people felt and were actually quite uh significant and this is a major study that has been very influential with the authorities with the government in the uk in prioritizing adaptation to flood risk in all sorts of ways um in parallel to that or my own part of this was that uh that we that that study found how those um uh what those effects were this increased odds ratio but but why what what is it about being flooded that actually uh causes uh people to um exhibit this mental ill health or increased risk of mental ill health and so in this study we looked at well-being in the aftermath of floods and we did something that was complementary but rather but slightly different to try to come up with the answer of what it is and so what we did is we looked at what we called ground zero for these floods which was the area in somerset called the somerset levels where there were scores of villages that were basically underwater for the whole of the winter people were evacuated as far as scotland went to stay with relatives in scotland there were hundreds of people affected and they were affected for a long time and so we talked to uh talk to these people we got their stories and we asked them to narrate their experience of it and we did some other things we did some group discussions and we did our own survey work and uh but i'm going to talk just about what people told us this is giving voice to um to what people actually said and what those uh impacts are and but they um they confirm really that those impacts are very significant and but what were the mechanisms well it turns out actually it's about lack of agency it's about feeling of being out of control uh both directly because of the floods but also being directly out of control in the in the weeks and months after the floods and it's about the violation of your home it's about the violation of that safe space and this uh perception of safety and lack of perception of safety and it's also about a sense of place and a disrupted place and a disrupted future the idea that the future might not be what it was and and those are what uh people told us so uh they they said things to us like i find these floods hugely threatening and oppressive but also hugely dominating everyone had their shoulders hunched there was a tension all winter people not knowing if it was going to get worse so they confirmed to us that these impacts on how people actually felt and their well-being was very significantly uh and disrupted but also this idea of what we refer to as secondary stressors in the time afterwards it's not just dealing with flood water it's dealing with everything else in this case dealing with builders and i hope there's no builders in the room and but basically you know people told us that once you once you flood uh you deal with it that's the worst part but when you dry out and when the builders come in that's really really stressful and they also uh you know talked about evacuation about being evacuated and being out of their houses for a long time and you can hear them and we had to go and stay in this temporary accommodation it's so horrible i can tell you it's just vile compared to my own home it's really horrible so these um these experiences directly affected their uh well-being but they also talked about disruptive futures about really concerned you know it's a drop in house prices we don't know what's going to happen it's a real worry not just for me but for the whole village and it's very strange uh we were getting close to retirement we wanted to move we wanted to uh we thought about downsizing to a smaller garden a smaller house obviously that's not really on the cards now so disrupted sense of uh people's future led to these um negative uh consequences and also this idea of uh where they lived and whether or not it was still the same place that they recognized it's getting back to normal but it doesn't feel the same because it's different we did change the kitchen around but it doesn't feel the same all the old plants died or hedge which was an old hedge completely died you don't get money for that and people referred to the loss of personal artifacts family photographs and uh concern about other people's health concern about their pets and uh and other uh and other animals as being something that actually has disrupted their whole uh sense of being their sense of place but i have to say those negative mechanisms were really really offset by how by people actually pulling together um and i think this is an important lesson from this research that um you know people told us that the community spirit and the community on the reaction was sensational they talked about you know uh you know the the blitz without the bombs um communities getting together and you know uh the these uh self-help groups that grew up in these villages like moorland and foregate the keep in touch groups they were so supportive and helped everyone to get through this crisis and and going back to that uh image you know this was you know it was an awful nightmare and but it was the best time i've ever spent in this village with wonderful breaks of comedy when someone packed uh through their front door and came in for lunch um so these are important findings for actually what we do about uh flood risk whenever it happens so these findings suggest both these large-scale studies the cohort studies but also these smaller studies that we've been involved in and uh is that there are actually multiple impacts on well-being well beyond just the material impacts of uh flood risk on people on their houses and their property and the rest of it um and it also suggests that all that that can be offset to an extent or is offset to an extent by collective action solidarity and people working together both during floods and in the aftermath of floods and in helping each other now this is actually quite important this is part of the institutional response certainly the mental health teams in somerset county council and elsewhere you know take these sorts of results and have used these and now focus on community resilience in flood aftermath they actually ensure that there are village champions that people are kept in touch that they don't feel this lack of agency and of being completely out of control and they feel that they are um uh kept well informed and these things make a huge difference just in terms of um how um uh how that overall mental health negative consequences uh play out uh over time so there are ways to ameliorate this whenever floods happen but what this work shows uh is you know i'll emphasize this that there are multiple impacts on well-being associated uh with flood adaptation and therefore there are multiple benefits in actually intervening and adapting and doing something about it and so what are the options i've already referred to these there are options around hard engineering there options around working with nature and sort of living with the risk and uh you know in some senses uh what we might call nature-based solutions and then there are planned relocations moving people and infrastructure away from it and in a recent study we've we've taken what we've learned before and uh about these multiple impacts on well-being and say well what are the multiple impacts on well-being of these types of adaptation interventions what is it how does it feel to be somewhere where these things uh are being implemented either with your consent or without your consent or with your knowledge or without your knowledge and and we're doing that um in um in a uh three country study we're doing that uh in the uk we're doing that here in ireland and we're doing it in ghana in west africa where we're looking at these different uh options options here in ireland uh a lot of the data uh relates to two uh adaptation interventions uh which are uh in clontarf uh just on the outskirts of dublin and uh the contested sea wall there and uh the uh flood defenses on the dargal river through uh the middle of bray and all the data that's been collected on this has been done as ella referred to uh by our great team and colleagues uh led by connor murphy at maynooth university i understand connor is online hi connor and uh so what did we do uh again you don't need to read this we did the same sort of thing we say that there are multiple areas of life multiple domains where these impacts of these might actually occur and they're about health they're about you know social identity and community uh they're about the environment a sense of place access to green space and and they're also about the process of these adaptations being implemented and what people do about them so we measure we try to measure those and then we measure some well-being outcomes uh positive emotions and positive and negative emotions associated with these uh adaptations uh what we refer to as positive affect affect and negative affect and these are psychometric scales that are used and quite commonly to to measure emotional response to these sorts of things and other ways to and we've measured other ways of looking at these well-being outcomes people's perceptions of their quality of life and we've done this in six communities as i was talking about uh here in uh in ireland in clontarf and in bray and in uh the southern part of on the coast in ghana in two uh settlements called totope and ketta which are on the vault of delta where people have actually been relocated away from the coast and and some uh projects in devon and in somerset in southwest england um where they're about restoring wetlands and living with risk and informing people about risks of uh adaptations so i'll just flash through some new results now these results are unpublished so ooh this is the first time that they've been actually put out in um in public um so uh i hope you enjoy them uh and i hope they're robust and they haven't yet been through peer review that's the usual caveat of a scientist before they put these things um put these things uh up uh so uh that's just a pictorial representation of what i've just said uh we've looked at these three different types of adaptations we've tried to measure all those domains of impact and things that people are concerned about and the likely impacts of uh of those adaptations on their um on their physical health their mental health uh their access to nature their access to green space their sense of community and the rest of it and then in this bottom part uh subsequently we then try to see how that um uh what the consequences are how did that how does this relate to their uh well-being outcomes in this case positive emotions positive emotional response and negative emotional response so you would want adaptations that actually that that that led to positive positive emotional responses pride joy enthusiasm and you'd want to minimize those or you'd want adaptations to reduce those negative uh affect such as fear anxiety anger yeah so you want those to go up on one side and down on the other side so do uh so what do the results say well first of all it says that all of these adaptations here nature-based solutions hard engineering and planned relocation really affect the people who live there um and planned relocation everything's high apart apart from private insurance that wasn't relevant in this particular case and but basically everybody was aware of it because everybody had been relocated or everyone this just affected everyone's lives uh in terms of uh bray and clontarf you can see and uh in uh in uh in the cases in england um that actually it's the that people's uh greatest impact is actually about access to nature by access to public space and about uh the uh impact they think on community and how communities uh feel about these things so some impacts are greater than others and i think what we need whenever we're planning adaptation is to try and capture the full range of what these consequences of these adaptation interventions are so whenever we so for those people so not everyone is affected more than some people are completely unaware that these adaptations are going on in their town or in their village and that's fair enough um but when we uh whenever we look at people who are most directly affected you would imagine they would have greater positive response and hopefully lower negative response to these um uh lower you know higher positive uh uh emotional response and lower negative emotional response to these sorts of adaptations and what do we find so we should see these ticking up and you can see these lines just about tick up so the more that you're impacted the uh greater that um uh the greater the positive emotions the positive effect like enthusiasm joy uh and the rest of it um and people's feeling you know sort of positive about those adaptations and you'd want to see these ones ticking down and you can see in the terms of uh for the cases on the right in terms of planned relocation they do but for the others it's actually much less certain uh and they seem to be level or even potentially ticking up uh so how do we interpret these uh what are these uh well-being outcomes and these just in terms of perceived well-being well it seems uh and again this is preliminary analysis here that planned relocation works quite well it makes people feel more positive and it also reduces their negative emotional response to these things and so they feel less fear and less uh anxious at least in those particular cases in ghana and in england in terms of those nature-based solutions people feel more positive about the places they live and these adaptations and they start working with nature and being positive but they don't feel any less fearful or anxious and that's something that's actually quite concerning i guess if you're trying to design uh these adaptations and in terms of the irish examples in terms of hard engineering it is to use that americanism all the fields people feel both positive and negative about these things uh they feel that these are really good things but they're actually their anxiety and their fear and uh is also being enhanced so i'll say these so this just says this in words uh the more people are impacted by flood management activities the more positive they feel across doesn't matter which interventions you know types of interventions we looked at but the more negative they feel in the engineering uh condition so in other words people are actually a bit more anxious and a bit more fretful uh and potentially angry so they're not that enamored with the process perhaps that's what you might guess from this and and they feel less negative in the relocation condition which is what you'd want to see now we have other ways to measure these well-being outcomes and we have i think similar results with the these alternative measures but what does this mean um or what do we learn from this i think what we i've already said this that actually if you're going to design adaptation interventions what we need to do is to recognize these multiple dimensions of well-being health happiness access to green space uh and life that is really affected by these uh interventions and i think the more that we can provide evidence on this uh the better uh just in terms of making those and designs more um more effective more legitimate more um accepted in society and there is a challenge to us in in measuring these things i've skipped over all those methodological challenges uh but uh but if we want to have these metrics how can we put this into planning how can the environmental protection agency um authorities around the world actually begin to look at how people feel and their positive and negative outcomes associated with uh these adaptation interventions not forgetting of course that actually reducing flood risk and avoiding those traumatic impacts of um climate change on health and well-being in the first place are all incredibly uh important so overall what would i uh what am i trying to tell us what is the good news story here and flood events we can see are traumatic and they affect multiple areas of life and that's from studies all over the world and including those that i have alluded to and referred to uh this evening there is a public demand for to reduce these risks because people realize this and they realize the anxiety uh and the negative consequences of being flooded and of living with those sorts of uh risks i would say that designing uh flood risk adaptation needs to account for these health outcomes so if we're going to do it we need to get into these outcomes in terms of well-being and health but also issues like access to green space how people feel attached to the places that they live i think the good news is that all this information is feeding into the processes and the outcomes on in planning at least for flood risk at least we can see this over the last decade or so and that carefully designed interventions can enhance and will enhance overall well-being pride in place sense of security and all the positive things uh that actually come with that and climate change is real and uh those cut the the risks are increasing and so i think this is an opportunity for us uh because these adaptations will be required to design these very carefully uh so that we can make the most of this opportunity to actually adapt and to meet other benefits uh of um uh population health well-being and sustainability thank you very much [00:40:00] Ella McSweeney: you know thank you thank you so much we're going to get two chairs set up uh ladies and gentlemen and then start the um the discussion so um i invite you all to um at home as well anyone watching to log on to slido um or use the ask a question button um and the hashtag is epa lecture if you want to submit a question i am going to be um not looking like i'm texting my mother i'm actually going to be reading them on my phone here in case you're wondering so i'll put any questions to neil as they come through and and here in the audience here in cork just wave at me and and we'll we'll get the discussion going neil thank you so much that was really interesting and and thought-provoking um i just wanted to pick at the threads a bit of comparing we'll say what was going on in brae with what happened in clintarf can you just for people who don't know the flood situation there explain what happened and from your own perspective in light of what you're saying how you assess both of them because i understand that one is good and one is better one is bad should i say and one is is a good example of what you're [00:41:13] Speaker 3: talking about um yeah i mean those uh examples were chosen uh very carefully in consultation with our colleagues in vain news because they are clearly contested i mean i don't think any of these these we can these you know interventions building sea walls in clontarf you know uh the uh the major engineering works through the middle of uh bray um and uh they all are pretty effective actually at reducing flood risk and that's the absolute priority and absolute objective and but they are very contested and i think the key is to find ways to take on board the the public perception of these not after they've happened but actually in the design of them uh and the rest of it now that is a uh time consuming uh and and in many ways expensive um undertaking to have those types of consultations to you know and listen to people you know we get concerned that this is going to you know just drag on for years or you know uh lead to to um uh you know sort of uh some sort of inertia in the process and but i think these are particularly important and you know to do in advance and certainly the um the town of bray were very upfront about being about providing information uh communicating about the history of the town and you know communicating about uh historic floods uh and um telling people what they you know what to expect and because some of the findings that we have for lots of people it's actually about lack of agency and lack of you know perception of lack of control or not knowing what's happening and not uh both in terms of um whenever you're flooded but also in terms of not knowing what what's coming down the track in terms of what authorities are going to do in terms of adaptation so there's you know i suppose two [00:43:10] Ella McSweeney: two audiences here aren't they right there's the policy makers the people who have to are responsible for making the decisions to about as to what's going to happen and then you have the communities that are living there and as you say in bray am i correct in saying there was a greater sense of sort of bottom-up consultation and bringing those communities along with you even if what had to happen no one i don't know in bray if they wanted it or not but in in bringing people along you're you [00:43:36] Speaker 3: can get these things over the line yes um absolutely but also um certainly from experiences in norfolk in the east of england from our work that we've been doing in observing what's been happening and in taunton and at other places and the early consultation also leads to design changes and that people have local knowledge about what's going on and uh know where places can be accessed they know that you know uh having defenses here or flooding um yeah local floodplains there you know that's where people walk their dogs or that's where you know that are particularly important spaces uh for communities or have some historic um significance to them and so i think those early design changes then um give people a sense of agency but also actually can improve uh you know some of the flood risk based on uh you know sort of local knowledge so it's sort of getting into [00:44:33] Ella McSweeney: those sorts of areas as well and i presume also you get better outcomes in terms of mental health in [00:44:38] Speaker 3: terms of well-being if there is that involvement uh well that's really what we tried to do in this uh survey work which is try to see well are people actually aware of it does it really make any difference and the places the parts of life that seem to be affected most uh for those places where you just continue your everyday life this is not your you know your bread and butter issue and are about access to nature are about uh access to green space uh are about sense of place so those are the things that are particularly important to people whenever they know how these adaptations are occurring and that's common i guess across lots of different places and i suppose given the fact that adaptations are [00:45:21] Ella McSweeney: happening at such a rate and will increasingly happen because of the urgency of the situation we are in is there a blueprint that the authorities that policy makers can look to in terms of getting [00:45:31] Speaker 3: the kind of outcomes you're talking about or is that the problem there is no there is no uh blueprint i'm not sure um uh i mean part of our you know uh research collaborations is about trying to find some principles and finding some blueprints for what constitutes effective adaptation or at least how to bring in these ideas of uh health and well-being and uh identity into uh decision making um but it might be a fool's errand because you know many of these are questions are place based it really depends on where we're talking about and we have this stark contrast between hard engineering and living with nature and property level resilience for most situations you need a mix of all these and and they [00:46:19] Ella McSweeney: all need to be negotiated in the round and are you talking about the best outcomes coming from very local governance where it's a local solution for a local problem the scale of you know the scale of these [00:46:32] Speaker 3: things as is an irresolvable issue about what's the right scale to look at of course hydrologists and water managers what they really want to talk about are rivers and they love rivers and they love watersheds and they want to talk about the tops of watersheds and the bottoms of watersheds and people quite often don't even know which river which watershed they're living in um but unless they live right next to a river and they may not know where that river rises but these solutions need to be integrated across watersheds so you need those working with nature in the uplands making you know attenuating holding water in the uplands to make sure that you know it doesn't flood it doesn't come down through uh lower settlements really quickly so i think resilience of whole catchments is a principle and an ideal um but our governance we don't really govern by river catchments by catchment indeed the nature-based [00:47:29] Ella McSweeney: solutions interesting you mentioned earlier before the lecture we were talking about taunton sponge can you talk a little bit about that it's down where you live down in exeter yeah um so uh taunton is one of [00:47:41] Speaker 3: the main town in southern uh somerset um the areas around uh so it's right on the edge of the levels the areas have been uh flooded extensively uh flooded historically historically they were wetter than they are but drainage ditches put in over hundreds of years have you know sort of dried out the land but with increasing climate change increasing risk uh those risks are increasing and of course there is demand for increased housing as there is uh everywhere and development on the edge of these towns so the taunton sponge is an attempt by the environment agency somerset rivers authority and others and to create localized uh holding of water in local flood plains creating wetlands to try to stop the floods happening at source and but of course the scale of what they're doing in the you know at that part of the of the watershed is never going to stop um everything so it's actually also informing people it's creating a natural sponge in the areas around it but it's also um informing people about the risk to themselves the risk to their properties encouraging people to um act together to actually do property level resilience the sorts of uh flood barriers that people have you know across their front doors and just making people more aware so that you know part of that um uh anticipation of uh these sorts of events and knowing these events gives people much more of a sense of agency and as we say these uh as the findings are that these um uh as where people are aware of it they're actually pretty positive about this so they're not asking for big you know big defenses through it they are actually very positive [00:49:25] Ella McSweeney: about this way of working with nature and we have a question over here is the microphone thank you [00:49:32] Speaker 4: please could you just say your name kian mincu university college cork thanks so much um so a lot of your work has to do with adaptation and it also goes beyond that what we sometimes call beyond adaptation or losses and damages so i was interested because um in cop we know that this is on the agenda in a big way we know that loss and damage is one of the major parts of discussion so my question is um in the upcoming cop negotiations in terms of outcomes what do you think personally would be a very positive outcome in terms of loss and damage the reasonable outcome what would be a negative [00:50:05] Speaker 3: outcome sort of give us an idea of what range as much um uh for the non-informed audience uh there is a this idea within the global climate negotiations it was confirmed in the paris agreement in 2015 um that there is this uh idea of loss and damage so things that we can't actually adapt to so that there are parts of the world where and parts of every country where the the consequences of climate change are going to result in real irreducible irreversible loss of land loss of resources loss of place loss of all sorts of things and real damage and a very significant block of countries within the un framework convention on climate change you know 50 or more countries are really pushing this and saying well actually this affects us most these climate vulnerable countries and many of them are low-lying states that are going to lose things lose land lose places where people are living and and and therefore we need to be compensated in any standard civil law if i harm you you need to compensate me so why should these countries not be compensated for this loss and damage over and above what they can't adapt to and so this is a live issue has been a live issue for the last seven years in the uh the negotiations coming up for the first time last year in uh cop 26 there was a um which happened in glasgow in uh the uk and this was uh uh countries uh parties which are countries to the convention actually first put forward the idea of a loss and damage fund to compensate these countries and the government of scotland independent of autonomous to the government of the uk uh actually contributed to uh this fund for the first time through nicholas sterling so your question is what would be a good outcome uh i think a good outcome is to actually minimize loss and damage what we really need to do is to decarbonize the world economy as absolutely fast as possible and to stick to a 1.5 degree world even then there will be loss and damage but we absolutely need to minimize it because that what what what is captured in that very anodyne idea of loss and damage is the most catastrophic consequences of climate change like places just not being there places becoming uninhabitable to live either through being completely desiccated just no water or places being underwater and and as well as a whole other coast of uh damages so my first and absolutely priority for cop would be to recognize that loss and damage and to make sure that we avoid it by um uh significant decarbonization by phasing out coal by doing all sorts of things uh that's not quite the answer probably you were hoping for uh just in terms of the you know technicalities but i think this is part of the problem i think in climate change uh in general is this lexicon we talked about this um uh that it it's it comes from the science and it sort of turns people off and it's not really that easy to understand so if you talk about loss and damage you think what's that and so i've had to give talk for five minutes to try and explain really what it is but lawyers and diplomats and they you know put it forward we were talking about this before ella and i that that uh in a survey on this topic of adaptation in the u.s they ask teenagers what's the first thing that comes into your head when you talk about adaptation and they think it's turning a book into a film uh so a film adaptation of a book or whatever so it's you know a million so we use this language i don't think we communicate it well of you know these uh sort of rather stark and really real world issues and we're communicating it in rather dry and technical language that's not really an answer to your question either question behind [00:54:10] Speaker 5: there my name is donald carlhan thank you professor for your talk just one question on the survey that you did um did you look at the impact of adaptation on different socioeconomic groups [00:54:28] Speaker 3: uh so the question on you know do we differentiate by different types of socioeconomic groups in this case that wasn't the primary uh aim of this particular study but there's lots of evidence um that shows uh mapping uh studies for you know the uk from all over the world and that there is a um let's say that there's a very significant disproportionate impact of um flood risk and of other climate change risk heat wave risk and the rest of it on people of lower socioeconomic status and so if we look at north american cities uh whenever we look at heat wave risk it tends to be poor people who live alone who live in high-rise apartments who don't have access who've already subject to health inequalities who are the people who are most likely to be directly affected by heat wave risk in flood risk that picture is slightly different because of the geography of it and you know there are big flashy houses and properties on on promenades around the world or you know in in uh on seafronts that are being lost but even then even in flood risk and there is a disproportionate consequences on people who don't have the resources to you know look after you know to um make their properties um and much more flood resilient and or um live in those areas of cities or in towns where they're actually more likely to be subject to risk because ultimately there's a market signal to make those places um cheaper or uninsurable and that's where people tend to live and they tend to be higher density areas in many cities around the world so i didn't we didn't measure it measure in this particular case but there is perhaps unsurprisingly to you a huge differentiation that it tends to be poor people who are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change if we just look across the piece [00:56:30] Ella McSweeney: thanks um we know that the dominant flow of people is from rural areas to cities and cities are i suppose these sort of crucibles for climate change adaptation just out of interest with covid and with in some countries the move away into rural areas do you see any change in that dynamic at all [00:56:52] Speaker 3: it's too early to tell i mean but that is a you know that urban flight or that movement towards you know back to you know a um a more even spread of population associated with you know people telecommuting and working and probably will make a difference and i think that also makes difference in terms of the demand for uh where we want to protect at the minute a lot of effort and most adaptation flat adaptation money is spent in cities because that's where the property is that's where the infrastructure is that's where it makes economic sense to do so and but increasingly people are you know living in more isolated places or in small villages uh and they're you know the consequences to them are just as stark [00:57:36] Ella McSweeney: i guess we've got a an awful a lot of questions coming through on slido i'd like to just put them to you um one question do you think the governments are doing enough to prepare people for these increasing risks and the deep physical and psychological damage that they may be facing [00:57:52] Speaker 3: um i think many countries in the world um are planning for adaptation there are national adaptation plans the epa clearly is the responsible agent in ireland are doing a fantastic job uh you know the national adaptation plans across government in the uk and many other european countries are very sophisticated we sort of know what these risks are um and uh they're coming down the track but the rubber hits the road as it were whenever these these decisions about adaptation meet the you know imperatives for growth and housing and the rest of it and so you know agencies that say we cannot adapt to this there's no point in building millions and millions of houses on floodplains or thousands in you know particular localities whenever that's an imperative coming down you know another arm of government saying well actually um we need housing we need economic growth and and that's just putting more people in harm's way so we are doing a good job in understanding the risk and uh the other part of the question was about you know preparing the sort of preparing us for the psychological the psychological trauma and anxiety of this uh i think this is also something that's been realized oh just over the last couple of years um this idea of eco-anxiety that for young people in the world the future doesn't look quite as rosy as it perhaps did in our youth um perhaps in our youth we were worried about nuclear holocaust and thank goodness you know we that didn't come about but that you know there is a lot of um research a lot of um uh polling at the minute to show that young people are very concerned about the future concerned about it and therefore in some senses they need to be given agency and brought into these decisions because these decisions are long term for their future and you know obviously in some ways it's [00:59:45] Ella McSweeney: the most important thing isn't it to speak about younger people it is the generation ahead um you mentioned earlier about the word adaptation and the survey of teenagers and their understanding of that do you have any understanding for for younger people now how do they think about adaptation because for people of an older generation of course you're you're thinking of of a past that was [01:00:07] Speaker 3: different whereas people born into this world yes clearly the the youth uh advocacy movements and the rest of it are are having a very clear and stark message for politicians for leaders and for all of us which is let's not worry about adaptation let's avoid let's decarbonize the world economy let's get out of fossil fuels you got us into this mess you need to get us out of it and you have the power now we may be in positions of authority in 20 or 30 or 40 years time but let's get into it and that's a very clear message uh coming from and i think that's um uh highly appropriate um [01:00:47] Ella McSweeney: john sweeney i presume it is i'm going to take a guess this might be professor john sweeney but i don't know he asks what differences in attitudes to reliance on agency especially local and central government were observed between the three communities uh that you studied in ireland england [01:01:02] Speaker 3: and ghana interesting question yeah so this is a very live question um uh from john and others which is what are our expectations of what governments are going to do for us and in many ways you know a lot of frustration or um negative responses to adaptation interventions come about because our expectations may be for more and and this sort of failing to meet expectations over promising and under delivering to use a phrase of the day might be you know uh actually part of the root of this we didn't look at this uh specifically but clearly um you know the the adaptations that we looked at in ghana were very very stark they were basically you know setting back and you know massive seawall saying that people couldn't live on one side of it now and that this whole areas were going to be abandoned and that is something too difficult to come to terms with and and uh and something that people didn't have any agency over and those types of relocations are happening everywhere and there's a village in north wheels fairborn just uh near bangor where uh the sea defenses are being let go and uh the authorities have said well actually we can't guarantee that these won't be flooded and these properties won't be here in 25 years and a sort of 25 year plan in effect to move the whole village and so um [01:02:26] Ella McSweeney: and one imagines that that is only going to be more of the future ahead yeah indeed and we have a question can planned relocation be thought of as a straightforward undoing of the mistakes of poor past planning such as building in places that should never have been built in the first place [01:02:42] Speaker 3: um in some cases yes um but in some cases um uh that where this has taken place around the world i've mentioned fairborn but this is happening in alaska where villages are falling into the sea in you know across asia in uh all sorts of places um we didn't know these risks in the past we only beginning to understand how sea level is changing how you know the meteorology is changing how these flood risks are happening and so uh it may be reversing things that happened in the past but many of those decisions you know in places where people live in settlements are hundreds of years old so um and i don't think we can blame you know sort of necessarily current planning and then immediate reverses indeed uh [01:03:26] Ella McSweeney: question uh sorry question here yes i think it's me and then the gentleman in front of you [01:03:33] Speaker 6: neil um since you're in cork uh robert devoy professor of physical geography here in ucc um since you're in cork uh i thought you could have a cork question when you raise it an issue of the floods um flooding has been topical for 30 odd years in terms of how we might adapt and change and engineer in some senses engineering with other adaptations but the heel marks you can see from committee rooms right the way across the city there is a strong inertia for change amongst the population generally people do not often get the ideas of adaptation and they don't take to them very readily and i think this is not just a local scale issue it's a global scale issue from the big scale adaptations that are needed in society to meet carbon through to the smaller scale ones what is your response about how we really uh in given the the idea of a happy healthy society and the way in which we can fashion people to be more willing to adapt how do we get over inertia and into the core of really [01:04:39] Speaker 3: being wanting to make a change uh very good question i think um one of the um uh most effective ways and and that's perhaps implied in the uh title is to almost to reframe this question which is what sort of places do we want what sort of you know life do we need to have what will make us healthier wealthier and happier and happier and and to um uh to put the risks of climate change in ways that people understand in terms of their personal sense of themselves and their identity and people around them and one of those um ways is really about people's health and uh so today the lancet uh commission the lancet countdown report reports on all these negative things but actually i think the having that discourse and you know what what will give us better health what will give us you know longer and happier lives what will actually make the places that we live more habitable more green uh and all these types of uh things is the way to reframe these risks around these discussions around adaptation rather than simply being about um risk reduction uh and avoiding bad things i think we need to be looking at how do we um uh create a healthier and better future for ourselves and i think that includes the carbon question the decarbonization uh question because it's always portrayed as we have to sacrifice we have to give up but in fact we can have mobility we can have energy we can have and transport we can all sorts of things in a fairer and happier world if we um go down a positive and just transition path [01:06:30] Ella McSweeney: is there a somewhat of an information deficit between policy makers who may want to go in one direction and then the communities themselves who have to be subjected to whatever the adaptations might be i mean is information deficit a really important question here um certainly to an extent i mean [01:06:50] Speaker 3: i think the the study that i alluded to um the english national cohort study i think this was a real eye opener for um for policy makers this is a hidden cost these mental health burdens the anxiety and and the rest of it is a hidden cost of floods no one really realized it before and uh and so there was the information just wasn't there now it is we know that you know there is a greater impetus to avoid these things and to be you know and to build on community and solidarity to um make sure that people have access to green space so the adaptations you know work with nature all these types of things and clearly that's my day job we as scientists are trying to provide that information we will always say we will always say there's an information deficit um but um uh i think the realization of the sort of principles is well understood now in people doing flood management and in uh in these types of risks um that information deficit is contracting it's getting smaller um but actually ways to engage with public to get local knowledge and to get you know sort of uh local sense of you know um uh where these risks are and what would lead to a more acceptable and more uh positive outcomes is always going to be right down [01:08:14] Ella McSweeney: at that scale i was getting at it looking at for example the comparison between the seawall in contarf and what happened in bray from the way you spoke about it bray was more bottom-up where the community were brought along clatar a bit more it happened and the community then had to react two models two examples presumably always you're going to say the bottom-up one is the best i just wonder how nerve-wracking is it for policy makers and you know people in local councils to ask the local community what they think what they want to happen and to bring them along like that and and [01:08:47] Speaker 3: does it also cost more money um i think um policy makers tend to get fantastic insights whenever they do it and you know there is there are structural issues there's governance issues not every you know authority you know not every agency has the authority to go out and do consultations and so there's various barriers to have it you know to this happening but in the main and we've got some policy makers in the room maybe we should ask them um no let's not put you on the spot um uh in the main from what people tell us when we've talked to these types of policy makers uh the benefits of doing so [01:09:25] Ella McSweeney: tend to far outweigh the costs i'm just interested about you know essential governance here i mean i suppose you would say yes to this question but do we need more social sciences in in governance i mean do we need more units where actually their their their whole raison d'etre is to do this kind of work with [01:09:42] Speaker 3: communities on mass yes um it is of course you know hugely encouraging to see that many of the agencies in countries like ireland the uk scotland you know across the board are you know hiring professional social scientists but actually more importantly are working across and working across agencies that have this you know type of knowledge with public health and in various other areas of planning and so i think the you know this information devs that the knowledge of what needs to happen is certainly there or thereabouts and of course we can always have more a gentleman here hi um my name is connor capas i'm a [01:10:22] Speaker 7: theorist with the arid examiner um you talked about the three sort of types of solutions with mitigating flood risks risks um cork obviously has a historic issue with flooding um is hard engineering the only sort of viable option for the city or how might other solutions work are we just gonna have to leave cork [01:10:44] Speaker 3: is hard engineering sea walls the and you know river defenses the only option for cork you're asking me to sit here at the stage and answer that question uh i have no idea um that's the um or no comment perhaps is the best answer to that um uh you know i i completely understand uh that these things are contested and uh you know highly contested and there's many of these are legacy issues going back over you know many decades and uh but in many senses it's good that these are subject to you know public consultation that are subject to public discourse because the risks are real i mean you know the risks are real because of the floods in the city and uh but you know but having that level of awareness is extremely positive uh even if solutions aren't going to please all the people all the time [01:11:41] Speaker 8: that's a definite no comment a question here thanks hi christy godsmark from ucc um i was just wondering would there be any anticipated additional um health co-benefits um from nature-based solutions to flood risk management in addition to abatement of flood hazard sorry in addition to the abatement of flood hazards yes there'd be any additional sort of health benefits anticipated from nature-based solutions um [01:12:09] Speaker 3: so what are the you know other benefits benefits to people i i guess you're talking about nature-based solutions are fantastic in uh in many domain you know many dimensions they're really good for biodiversity you know they're really good for local environment they you know they keep back you know creating wetlands and the rest of it one of the fantastic ones that we have in our part of devon on the otter river and the lower otter river is the reintroduction of beavers and uh and they have built dams all up and down the little creeks all around uh in the upper part of the river uh otter uh when we had a drought this summer the aerial photograph showed this everywhere else was baked dry but these the b where the beavers are were actually kept wet and the rest of it but that's creating all sorts of positive benefits people love the beavers and they love the beavers locally they may never have seen them may see their teeth marks in the you know in the uh trees and the rest of it uh there are tourism businesses that have set up to go out and you know on farms you know go and camp on the farms and go and see the beavers there's all sorts of benefits uh to these nature-based uh solutions both economic but also just in terms of you know people's a sense of pride and uh well-being in the economy that's just one example uh come and [01:13:27] Ella McSweeney: see our beavers um one question uh online in the nature-based solutions was the public perception affected differently by whether they could see the works people in a town can feel secure seeing a flood wall but it might still might still be initially worried uh if it's a new flood plain miles up river [01:13:47] Speaker 3: uh yes i guess that is a dilemma for you know agencies working in this area a lot of nature-based solutions happen in the upper parts of catchments i think you know planting trees uh having beavers um you know creating wetlands they're you know these are not always visible and not always aware you can see in our data that uh that even in those villages where settlements in uh somerset and in devon where these activities were going on everyone was aware of them and uh and you know these things sort of go on and you know people of their everyday lives uh to go on with so that is a thing and certainly in somerset previously when those floods happened in 2013 and 14 uh the most uh strident local reaction was we've got to drain the rivers we've got to dredge the rivers it was a lack of dredging that was seen or was perceived to be the cause of all that uh flooding so people love to see big diggers digging out the drainage um ditches drinking digging out the um uh you know digging out the rivers and increasing the flow through it although that would have made as all the modeling shows virtually no [01:14:57] Ella McSweeney: difference whenever half the county was under war indeed and and yet a very understandable reaction to the trauma of going through flooding in your house or wherever you live yeah to want to see action immediately where you perceive the problem to be which is right in front of you even though it may be as you talk about catchments much further upstream yeah quite a lot of that [01:15:17] Speaker 3: dredging actually went on quite um uh in places that were quite visible from the roads and so not necessarily in the places where you know uh where it may have been most effective but in places where people could see it so always then people could uh feel that something was happening a question here [01:15:33] Ella McSweeney: and i'm very mindful we are a little bit over time but we're okay to keep going i hope for a few [01:15:37] Speaker 9: minutes yeah uh this is darren mcadam o'connell i'm with the cork environmental forum and the cork transport mobility forum i have a question one question with two parts is um climate change isn't the only reason that we have to adapt and change so i'm thinking what can we learn for climate change adaption from other types of risks we see i'm thinking directly with the likes of mountain removals in west virginia um coal mining in germany where they move villages but also say in the goby where they use hard and nature-based solutions to halt uh dunes moving but then a little bit more of a reach i think we need to use the adaption and what we're learning from that to inform and you know our our judgment of risk for climate change in general because i think climate change we we we don't judge it the way we judge other risks in society like the way we would judge the risk of violence or accidents we don't say it's all right that we've let one terrorist on the plane because we're not 100 sure he knows how to make a bomb that will actually go off um quite often you know climate change we're thinking only about the the effects we can absolutely prove that happened rather than the risks that might happen so i was wondering do you have thoughts then on how the way we treat other risks and the way we adapt to other risks can you know forward and back inform the way we deal with [01:17:00] Speaker 3: the risks of climate change thank you so much for that uh two-part question i've got a two-part answer one of which is um you know uh first of all the one thing that we've all been through in the last couple of years that has actually shown that um uh that people like to be told what to do you know are completely compliant uh and the rest of of course is covered and also shows that what solidarity looks like what you know communities acting together uh looks like and also for the need for very good and very detailed and very up-to-date information so i think we can learn if we haven't done already and there's so much focus of course on did we do a good job anywhere and everywhere on covert but i think there's so much we can learn about how society can change and can actually see what's really important to them particularly in terms of health and well-being and community and those types of thing and the second part of my answer is that you know climate change is everywhere i mean we talk about it all the time we talk about is risks and it is somewhat um disempowering really just to talk about it being such a big thing and not something that we you know that it's coming down the track and it's going to be for our children or for young people all these sorts of things so i think we need to turn it around to be much more positive in terms of what sort of places do we want what sort of societies do we want and you know both adapt to the climates that are coming and the those you know negative consequences and risk but also to make our towns and cities and our settlements and our economies actually much more geared towards people towards active travel towards you know sort of community and all sorts of ways now i'm sounding like an idealist and but i think it's sort of integrating climate change into a broader conversation about [01:18:52] Ella McSweeney: sustainability one final question online there have been so many but we've got through as many as we can do you think that the co-benefits of climate action and healthy urban planning could be utilized more as a lever for community buy-in to mitigation measures perhaps health and environmental impact assessments are tools we could use in our planning processes and absolutely i think that's implicit in [01:19:14] Speaker 3: what i've been talking about tonight that just an understanding of the consequences of people not just in their pockets but also you know in terms of their personal sense of self-identity and well-being and so health impact assessments and all these sorts of things being brought into planning processes would be very [01:19:31] Ella McSweeney: positive we're going to finish the talk now because we're already over time but neil thank you very much indeed for such an interesting evening um thank you all to everyone who's here this evening everyone who joined us online we had questions from all over the world and we are very very grateful for that thank you to the city hall for hosting us here and to the epa team behind the scenes for making this happen you're going to receive an email to get some feedback on this event please will you make sure if you can to uh to give the epa your feedback and also this lecture will be put up on youtube in the not too distant future so you can uh share it and watch back but please can you most importantly put your hands together for neil [01:20:26] Speaker ?: you