In an article on the Public Service website, Chris Smith (Lord Smith of Finsbury), the new chairman of the Environment Agency, talks about the challenges facing him and his agency is to relate the giant, global issues surrounding climate change to the grassroots level, connecting to local communities and involving them in decision making.

“The environment and our stewardship of it is quite simply the most important issue facing our generation,” he says. “The Environment Agency stands at the point where environmental change has its greatest impact on the lives of ordinary people. It’s where floods and water quality, and planning and handling of waste and a whole range of other issues are both directly relevant to people and have their greatest impact.”

It is vital that the agency works alongside communities, rather than imposing solutions on them, Lord Smith argues.

On coastal issues he says:

But he concedes that no amount of public consultation or joined-up governmental response will succeed in pleasing everyone, particularly in contentious areas such as coastal flood defence spending. Rising sea levels are putting parts of the UK coastline under serious threat, with debates raging over which merit all-out defence against the waves or a managed retreat.

“We will do what we can to defend as many communities as we possibly can,” Lord Smith says. “We are already working to make sure that even with climate change, rising sea levels and greater unpredictability in the weather we can defend these locations for the next 25, 50, or 100 years. We won’t be able to do that everywhere; the resources aren’t there and sometimes the cost of building the defences will be astronomical compared with the benefits.”

But he adds: “We have to recognise that for the people whose houses are under threat that sort of cost-benefit analysis is irrelevant: it’s their home. We must try to be as open and transparent, clear and sensitive as we can in discussing with coastal communities how we deploy limited resources.”

There is, he says, also a need for “serious discussions” with the government about what compensation or other assistance that could be made available to the people whose homes fall victim to climate change. Meanwhile, the chairman says he will make the case for extra resources for the Environment Agency whenever he can.

Read the full article by Alison Thomas on the Public Service website