Climate change is the biggest threat to our natural world and will have huge implications for the way we live our lives.
Predictions for the future
Figures released by the Met Office show that the last ten years have seen nine of the ten warmest years on record, with only 1996 not making the top ten.
The evidence is damning and predictions for the future horrifying. At the latest meeting of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, more than 200 scientists and government representatives unanimously accepted that climate change in the 20th Century could be attributed to human activity.
Average temperatures worldwide have increased in the last century by 0.6°C, but are now predicted to rise by up to 5.8°C by 2100. The UK Climate Impacts Programme suggested in 2002 that Britain and Ireland will experience temperature increases varying from 0.1-0.5ºC per decade with increased drought in southern England affecting water availability by the 2050s.
Effects on nature
We saw unprecedented loss of wildlife habitats in the last century from agriculture and development. Those that survive are often isolated islands in a sea of intensive land use. Climate change is likely to require many species to move location. Species typical of ancient woodland have poor powers of dispersal.
Nature's Calendar, the study of the timing of natural events in relation to climate, is already revealing staggering trends in the responses of species to temperature change.
Leadership from Government needed
The Climate Change Act was passed in 2008, which was a good step but strenuous efforts are now required to ensure its rapid implementation or our natural world could face catastrophic consequences in coming decades.
There is an urgent need to redouble efforts to cut carbon emissions drastically and to create sympathetically managed landscapes that allow wildlife to adapt and move in response to unavoidable climate change.
Governments need to think big and ensure that all ancient woods and other wildlife habitats are conserved and restored, new wildlife habitats are created alongside them for protection from damaging land uses and where nature is best-placed to survive, and that the wider countryside is used less intensively. By focusing on whole landscapes rather than individual sites, such actions will also help society to cope with climate change, contributing to air and water quality, flood alleviation, high quality food and timber, our health, soil conservation, employment opportunities and recreation.