Living With Environmental Change

Background

New science and research for a secure future

Our planet faces unprecedented change. If we continue on our current path, by the end of this century, or earlier, our environment will be in a state that modern humans have never experienced. In parts of the world, supplies of food and water will be at risk and flood defences stretched.

Photo: Thames Barrier, completed 20 years ago to protect the capital

The UK will not be immune. Already we know that tens of thousands can die in European heat waves and that severe storms cause billions of pounds of damage to the economy, disruption to society and individual distress.

We are confident that we can avoid many of the most seriously damaging consequences of a changing climate and environment, but only if we act with sufficient urgency and make the right choices about the future. Failure to act is likely to be very costly.

The Living With Environmental Change programme, LWEC, is the response of the UK's major funders of environment-related research to this urgent situation.

How will LWEC help us?

Living With Environmental Change will provide the knowledge and tools that are needed by people, government and business to make informed choices about the future. This research will help to make better predictions and analysis of environmental change so that we can adapt and become more resilient. Together with the Research Councils' Energy Programme, LWEC will help people to mitigate or avoid the worst impacts as our environment changes.

Solutions in line with the economy

This programme will provide results and tools at local-to-regional and seasonal-to-decadal scales. These are scales at which social and economic development take place. Such information will enable people, businesses and governments to make the right decisions and choices about their lives and the economy.

Photo: cars and trains

The drivers behind LWEC

The Fifth Treasury Challenge focuses on global change and the pressures this will bring to natural resources. Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) is the response by the major UK funders of environmental research to this challenge.

LWEC has been developed with the Environment Research Funders' Forum (ERFF) and already has various partners from amongst the Research Councils, Government, business and other stakeholders. Not all partners are members of ERFF.

LWEC will meet many of the needs identified by the Stern Review, the United Nations' Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the recent reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The programme will also contribute to delivery of the UK strategy for sustainable development, Securing the Future.