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A record number of heat-related “emergencies” have been triggered by councils this year to help rough sleepers in England and Wales, Carbon Brief analysis reveals.

As climate change drives more heat extremes, there is a growing recognition that homeless people face a higher risk of illness and even death when temperatures soar.

This summer has been the hottest on record in the UK, with official warnings about heat-related health threats issued across every part of England and Wales.

The main tool councils have to help people sleeping rough during dangerously hot periods is the “severe weather emergency protocol” (SWEP).

Freedom-of-information (FOI) requests submitted by Carbon Brief to 93 local authorities across England and Wales with significant rough-sleeper populations reveal that SWEP use has surged this year.

Many councils have used the protocol to provide water, sunscreen and “cool spaces” for rough sleepers.

However, at least 20 councils said they have never triggered a SWEP during the summer months and others failed to provide any information when asked.

Dangerous heat

Climate change is increasing the severity of dangerously hot weather in the UK and these conditions harm certain groups more than others.

People sleeping rough are both more exposed to heat due to their living conditions and more likely to experience heat-related illness, due to underlying health conditions and other issues.

Councils shoulder much of the responsibility for helping homeless people in England – the part of the UK that faces the most extreme heat – as well as in Wales.

The main mechanism councils have to deal with weather extremes is the SWEP, which can involve giving emergency shelter to rough sleepers, among other things. There is no legal obligation to use SWEPs, meaning their implementation is not consistent or universal.

SWEPs have traditionally been a response to cold weather, but there has been growing awareness in the UK of the risk posed by heat, particularly since the extreme temperatures of summer 2022.

Charities and researchers have highlighted this issue and argued for hot-weather use of SWEPs as a necessary precaution to protect rough sleepers during heatwaves. In 2023, the UK government issued its first guidance for helping homeless people during hot weather.

Record SWEP

To investigate how local authorities are helping rough sleepers deal with heat extremes, Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to 90 councils in England and three in Wales.

This covers all areas with a sizable rough-sleeper population (see: Methodology). It also includes 33 London boroughs, which together are home to a quarter of the homeless population in England and Wales, plus the Greater London Authority.

Carbon Brief asked whether councils had been using SWEPs, how often and on which dates, during the summer months from 2022 to 2025.

This period saw the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announce around 40 “heat-health alerts” across different parts of England, indicating temperatures that threaten public health.

The council FOI results reveal a surge in SWEP usage in 2025, as the UK faced its hottest ever summer. Just half way through summer in mid-July, councils had already collectively triggered SWEPs at least 149 times – up from 93 in the entirety of summer in 2024, as the chart below shows.

Bar chart showing that this year (2025) has seen councils declare a record number of heat-related emergencies for rough sleepers
Total annual number of SWEP activations by select councils in England and Wales with significant rough-sleeper populations. The data for 2025 only includes dates up to 17 July, whereas the other years cover the whole of June-September. Source: FOI responses.

Not all SWEP activations are the same, with some councils using it for single days and others triggering it for longer stretches.

Nevertheless, roughly the same trend emerges when looking at the total number of days that councils have activated SWEPs since 2022. By mid-July, 2025 had already seen the longest period of SWEP activation, as the chart below shows.

Bar chart showing that heat-related emergencies for rough sleepers have also been in place for longer than ever before
Total annual number of days on which SWEPs were activated by select councils in England and Wales with significant rough-sleeper populations. The data for 2025 only includes dates up to 17 July, whereas the other years cover the whole of June-September. Source: FOI responses.

The surge in SWEP activation mirrors both the record UK heat in 2025 and the growing salience of this issue, with more councils making use of it during the summer months. By July, 48 councils had triggered heat-related use of SWEPs this year, compared to just 36 two years earlier.

The increase may also reflect the numbers of people sleeping rough, which have surged in England over this time period, while remaining relatively steady in Wales.

‘Inadequate’ assistance

Previous analysis in 2023 by the Museum of Homelessness, a London-based organisation that researches homelessness, concluded that SWEPs were “inconsistently applied” and “inadequate”. It highlighted particular shortcomings in heat-related use of SWEPs.

Despite the surge in SWEP use this year, the data provided to Carbon Brief suggests that some councils are still not responding urgently to periods of extreme heat.

Of the 93 councils that Carbon Brief requested data from, 59 – or 63% – confirmed that they had activated SWEPs at least once during the summer months between 2022 and 2025, as shown in the figure below.

Common provisions resulting from this activation included the distribution of sunscreen, bottles of water and sun hats, as well as making “cool spaces” available and providing extra welfare checks. Most councils did not mention providing emergency accommodation.

Bar chart showing that two-thirds of councils said they had triggered SWEPs during the summer months
Number of select councils in England and Wales that indicated they have or have not used SWEPs between June and September, since 2022. Source: FOI responses.

Among the remainder, 14 councils either did not hold the data requested or never responded.

This leaves 20 councils that stated they did not trigger SWEPs at all during summers over this period, including those in Manchester, Nottingham and Cornwall.

All of the regions covered by these local authorities were issued with heat-health alerts in 2025.

Some of these councils said they were mindful of hot weather and mentioned other actions taken during these periods, some of which overlapped with SWEP responses.

Other councils, including Plymouth, Hastings and the London boroughs of Waltham Forest and Barking and Dagenham, did not mention any provisions for rough sleepers during periods of extreme heat.

Matthew Turtle, co-director of the Museum of Homelessness, tells Carbon Brief:

“These findings, like our own research, show that many councils opt not to help people who need it the most when there is extreme weather…This is not just smaller councils, but includes major towns and cities across the UK, who simply have no emergency protocol in place to protect people who are homeless during spells of extreme weather.”

Turtle argues that the use of SWEP should be made a legal duty in order to guarantee protection from extreme weather for those sleeping rough.

Researchers have argued that extreme heat should be taken more seriously by authorities when dealing with rough sleepers, with one study finding that homeless people in London were 35% more likely to be hospitalised at 25C compared to 6C. The authors suggest this is because people are better prepared for the threat of cold weather.

Dr Becky Ward, a researcher at the University of Southampton who is investigating how climate change interacts with homelessness, tells Carbon Brief that “the conversation is changing and awareness is building” about this issue. She adds:

“There’s a more fundamental need to improve the provision of shelter for people experiencing homelessness, alongside providing psychological support to address the causes and maintaining factors for people who are rough sleeping.”

Methodology

Carbon Brief obtained the list of 93 local authorities with significant rough-sleeping populations in England and Wales from the Museum of Homelessness. The criteria for this included being in one of the top 50 most populated cities in the UK, having a rough sleeping count of at least 15 people and/or being a London borough. These councils make up 28% of the 317 local authorities in England and 14% of those in Wales.

FOI requests were sent to these councils, asking for details of when SWEPs were activated and for how long over the summers of 2022-2025, as well as information about what activities this involved. (These requests were sent in mid-July, meaning data for 2025 is only for half the summer period.)

Carbon Brief asked for SWEP activations between June and September, mirroring the timescale used by the UKHSA and the Met Office for their heat-health alert service.

The results demonstrate the ad-hoc nature of SWEP use, with different councils using it in different ways and some relying on third-party organisations to coordinate their responses. Nevertheless, the combined results capture overall trends.

Some 20 councils said they did not record SWEP activations, or only kept partial records. Another five never responded to Carbon Brief’s FOI request.

In this article, Carbon Brief has used the term “rough sleeper” when referring to people sleeping outside or in other spaces not designed for people to stay. When referring to studies or datasets that cover the wider homeless population, the term “homeless” has been used.

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Analysis: Half of nations meet UN deadline for nature-loss reporting

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Half of nations have met a UN deadline to report on how they are tackling nature loss within their borders, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

This includes 11 of the 17 “megadiverse nations”, countries that account for 70% of Earth’s biodiversity.

It also includes all of the G7 nations apart from the US, which is not part of the world’s nature treaty.

All 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty were due to submit their seventh “national reports” by 28 February, of which 98 have done so.

Their submissions are supposed to provide key information for an upcoming global report on actions to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, in addition to a global review of progress due to be conducted by countries at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia in October this year.

At biodiversity talks in Rome in February, UN officials said that national reports submitted late will not be included in the global report due to a lack of time, but could still be considered in the global review.

Tracking nature action

In 2022, nations signed a landmark deal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030, known as the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF).

In an effort to make sure countries take action at the domestic level, the GBF included an “implementation schedule”, involving the publishing of new national plans in 2024 and new national reports in 2026.

The two sets of documents were to inform both a global report and a global review, to be conducted by countries at COP17 in Armenia later this year. (This schedule mirrors the one set out for tackling climate change under the Paris Agreement.)

The deadline for nations’ seventh national reports, which contain information on their progress towards meeting the 23 targets of the GBF based on a set of key indicators, was 28 February 2026.

According to Carbon Brief’s analysis of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s online reporting platform, 98 out of the 196 countries that are part of the nature convention (50%) submitted on time.

The map below shows countries that submitted their seventh national reports by the UN’s deadline.

Map of the world showing that half of nations published their seventh national nature reports on time
Countries that submitted their seventh national reports to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity by the deadline of 28 February. Data source: Convention on Biological Diversity.

This includes 11 of the 17 “megadiverse nations” that account for 70% of Earth’s biodiversity.

The megadiverse nations to meet the deadline were India, Venezuela, Indonesia, Madagascar, Peru, Malaysia, South Africa, Colombia, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Australia.

It also includes all of the G7 nations (France, Germany, the UK, Japan, Italy and Canada), excluding the US, which has never ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The UK’s seventh national report shows that it is currently on track to meet just three of the GBF’s 23 targets.

This is according to a LinkedIn post from Dr David Cooper, former executive secretary of the CBD and current chair of the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee, which coordinated the UK’s seventh national report,

The report shows the UK is not on track to meet one of the headline targets of the GBF, which is to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.

It reports that the proportion of land protected for nature is 7% in England, 18% in Scotland and 9% in Northern Ireland. (The figure is not given for Wales.)

National plans

In addition to the national reports, the upcoming global report and review will draw on countries’ national plans.

Countries were meant to have submitted their new national plans, known as “national biodiversity strategies and action plans” (NBSAPs), by the start of COP16 in October 2024.

A joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian found that only 15% of member countries met that deadline.

Since then, the percentage of countries that have submitted a new NBSAP has risen to 39%.

According to the GBF and its underlying documents, countries that were “not in a position” to meet the deadline to submit NBSAPs ahead of COP16 were requested to instead submit national targets. These submissions simply list biodiversity targets that countries will aim for, without an accompanying plan for how they will be achieved.

As of 2 March, 78% of nations had submitted national targets.

At biodiversity talks in Rome in February, UN officials said that national reports submitted late will not be included in the global report due to a lack of time, but could still be considered in the global review.

Funding ‘delays’

At the Rome talks, some countries raised that they had faced “difficulties in submitting [their national reports] on time”, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

Speaking on behalf of “many” countries, Fiji said that there had been “technical and financial constraints faced by parties” in the preparation of their seventh national reports.

In a statement to Carbon Brief, a spokesperson for the Global Environment Facility, the body in charge of providing financial and technical assistance to countries for the preparation of their national reports, said “delays in fund disbursement have occurred in some cases”, adding:

“In 2023, the GEF council approved support for the development of NBSAPs and the seventh national reports for all 139 eligible countries that requested assistance. This includes national grants of up to $450,000 per country and $6m in global technical assistance delivered through the UN Development Programme and UN Environment Programme.

“As of the end of January 2026, all 139 participating countries had benefited from technical assistance and 93% had accessed their national grants, with 11 countries yet to receive their funds. Delays in fund disbursement have occurred in some cases, compounded by procurement challenges and limited availability of technical expertise.”

The spokesperson added that the fund will “continue to engage closely with agencies and countries to support timely completion of NBSAPs and the seventh national reports”.

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DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? 

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Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Absolute State of the Union

‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.

COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.

OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.

SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.

Around the world

  • RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
  • HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
  • BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
  • ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
  • COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
  • SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.

$467 billion

The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.


Latest climate research

  • Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
  • Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
  • Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.

Spotlight

Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?

This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.

Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.

Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.

Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:

“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”

Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.

Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:

“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”

Conservative gear shift

For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.

Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.

Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.

Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.

Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:

“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”

Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)

Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:

“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”

But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:

“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”

UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Global ‘greenlash’?

All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.

At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.

Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.

She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.

Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:

“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”

Watch, read, listen

TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.

RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.

Coming up

Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

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Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding

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The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.

This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.

Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.

The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.

As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.

Flood defences

Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.

This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.

There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.

However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.

The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.

The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.

Map of England showing that Richard Tice's Boston and Skegness constituency is set to receive at least £55m for flood defences between 2024 and 2026
Flood-defence spending on new and replacement schemes in England in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The government notes that, as Environment Agency accounts have not been finalised and approved, the investment data is “provisional and subject to change”. Some schemes cover multiple constituencies and are not included on the map. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.

Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.

He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.

Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.

Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.

Chart showing that Conservative, Reform and Liberal Democrat constituencies are the top recipients of flood defence spending
Top 10 English constituencies by FCERM funding in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.

Reform funding

While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.

Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.

Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.

Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.

Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:

“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”

While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.

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