00:00Well, the extreme weather comes at a financial cost to Europe.
00:03The most recent European heat wave happened back in summer 2022
00:07and caused an estimated $47 billion in economic damage.
00:13Parts of Europe saw significant declines in crop yields as the droughts took hold.
00:18Olive oil production plunged by over 30%, while output from French vineyards fell 18%.
00:26Productivity fell in outdoor industries like construction and transport.
00:31German car manufacturing dropped by 20% during the peak of the 2022 heat wave.
00:37And tourism, of course, suffered in European countries, in places like Croatia, Greece, Italy and Spain,
00:43with losses of between 1% and 3% of GDP.
00:48Well, let's talk now to Joanne Beckford from the environmental policy think tank Green Alliance.
00:53Joanne, welcome.
00:54Just put this in perspective, if you would.
00:56Europe taking this walloping in economic terms back in 2022.
01:00What's this year going to be like?
01:02The same?
01:03Bad?
01:03Worse?
01:04OK?
01:04Better?
01:07Well, the full extent of the economic impacts will be really difficult to tell
01:11until we've kind of seen through the rest of the year.
01:14And that's really largely because of the length of the heat wave and the extremes in temperature.
01:19I really have a big impact on what the outcome will be.
01:22But clearly, there is a much longer term trend that the number of high heat days are becoming more frequent and much more severe.
01:31As your package just showed, the economic impacts are really widespread.
01:36And one that maybe wasn't focused on as much, though, is really around productivity.
01:40So where I'm sitting here in the UK, it's estimated that 11 million labor hours were lost across the UK economy in 2022.
01:49And in London alone, it's estimated that, you know, over half a billion pounds is lost each year just from heat-related productivity losses,
01:56which is a really significant amount.
01:58But the impacts are broader as well, as you mentioned.
02:01So infrastructure can be shut down.
02:04So things like roads and railways can't really cope.
02:07And many crop yields as well, obviously, are impacted.
02:09And that can feed through to our pockets, really, in the inflation that we see and the products that we're trying to buy.
02:14So the impacts are going to be very, very significant.
02:17And are governments taking this seriously in terms of incorporating these climate-related GDP shocks?
02:27Well, I think there's a view that governments would like to be taking this seriously,
02:32and they're sort of paying lip service to this, but there's an awful lot more that needs to happen.
02:38Essentially, adaptation and resilience have to become national priorities for governments at this stage.
02:42So that means it needs to be embedded into our policy decision-making processes across the board.
02:48So we need all of our decision-making when it comes to infrastructure, house-building, urban planning, agriculture,
02:55and, of course, the financial system as well.
02:57They have to be designed with adaptation in mind.
03:01At Green Alliance, we're actually calling for an adaptation test when it comes to policymaking.
03:06So public spending needs to consider adaptation to the future climate risk when it's being made.
03:13But at the moment, whilst that happens in theory, we're not actually seeing it played out on the ground.
03:18Obviously, companies have their role to play as well, so they can proactively account for climate risk across their assets.
03:24They can look at their own processes that they have in place where needed.
03:27But there really needs to be a sort of government leadership role here, and I think that hasn't come through yet.
03:32So what we need to emphasize, though, is that adaptation and resilience planning is really an invest-to-save agenda.
03:40I think governments might be nervous around the kind of amounts of money that are often talked about when it comes to climate risk.
03:46But actually, if we are able to reduce the productivity shortfall that we were just talking about or make sure that our infrastructure is resilient to extreme weather,
03:55then our economy can continue to function through these kind of events.
03:59But if we don't sow that kind of leadership at this stage, then those kind of consequences that fall out through our economy,
04:05but also our health and social systems are going to be very severe.
04:09You can forgive politicians, though, and ordinary people for forgetting about this.
04:15I mean, there's a number of wars to worry about, cost-of-living crisis, tariffs we never stop hearing about.
04:20It's low on the agenda, isn't it?
04:24Unfortunately, that is the case.
04:26But I think, ultimately, it's going to be rising up that political agenda very, very quickly.
04:31We often see in these kind of events, obviously, there being a really big sort of peak in public interest around climate
04:38and politicians often rush to sort of follow that.
04:41But what we need to see is a kind of more sustained approach to climate adaptation and resilience planning.
04:47And you only have to see some of the impacts that we've talked about, you know,
04:51even if we just rewind a year and some of the devastating floods that we saw in Spain, for example,
04:56that more needs to be done.
04:58So, again, on sort of specific policies, I'm only best placed to really talk about the UK.
05:04But for too long, we've sort of not recognised the level of climate threat.
05:10The independent advisors that the government here in the UK has,
05:13has suggested that we've actually had a lost decade when it comes to climate adaptation planning,
05:17which is, you know, really disappointing to see.
05:20And so we need to accelerate that action now.
05:23But we can do quite a lot in the short space of time,
05:26as there are many, many things that are on the ground.
05:29Our infrastructure is being updated.
05:31We're looking at building homes.
05:32If you embed adaptation and resilience into those processes,
05:35then we can really turn the corner.
05:37Johan, good to talk to you.
05:38Thanks so much for coming on the programme.
05:39Johan Beckford from the environmental policy think tank Green Alliance.
