The Challenge of Adaptation

Humanity’s activities are causing changes in our environment which are in turn affecting us. The most obvious of these is the impact of climate change on weather patterns.

In this video, we discuss the concepts of adaptation and resilience in the face of such changes, specifically the increased incidence and impacts of flooding in the UK, caused in part by the increased amount and intensity of rainfall resulting from climate change.

In this video, you’ll hear from two people involved in this. Richard Symonds works in the Incident Management department of the Environment Agency, based in Bristol. He works on the agency’s response to flood events, and has experienced the personal impacts of flooding firsthand when his home in the Somerset levels was flooded in the winter of 2013 to 2014. He speaks both of the agency’s work in England, and what he has learned from the agency’s connection with communities in Bangladesh.

Rich Pancost is the Head of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol, a cross-disciplinary research institute which includes extensive work on the impacts of Global Environmental Change and humanities response to it. He speaks more generally about the concepts of adaptation and resilience, and the personal and social factors which are involved in these.

• Have there been any moments in your life when you’ve faced the need to adapt?