Our response to climate change

These changes pose risks, including flooding, drought, subsidence, structural damage and ecological degradation of our canal network.

With most of the canal network built more than 200 years ago, using the traditional methods and materials of the day, it is vulnerable to the changes in climate and extreme weather events of the 21st century. Responding to these new climate scenarios is challenging, requiring research, innovation and funding.

The Climate Change Act 2008 (Act 2008) establishes the basis for the UK’s approach to tackling and responding to climate change. It puts in place a legal duty to act and sets out a framework for how the Government and other organisations should respond to climate change.

The Act 2008 gives the Government powers to require infrastructure providers and bodies with functions ‘of a public nature’, such as the Trust, to provide reports on how they manage climate risk. This is known as the Adaptation Reporting Power (ARP). 2024 is the fourth round of this five-yearly cycle of reporting.

The Trust and Local Authorities were invited by the Secretary of State for the Environment to report in this fourth round. This enables canals to be included in the national climate change reporting frameworks covered by the Act 2008. The Trust is required to upload the ARP4 report onto our website.

Our report is the Trust’s response to the ARP4 requirements and presents our understanding of how climate change affects our canal network, its associated structures and habitats now and in the future. It shares our top 12 biggest risks and describes how we manage those risks in relation to our assets today with case studies to tell the story of how climate change impacts us. It also covers how canals and rivers may play a part in being part of the solution to climate change. Our action plan highlights what we are doing to manage this impact as well as what we would like to do if more funding were available. It concludes with a section on what we see as the biggest challenges and opportunities to managing our canal network with the threat of climate change.