Severe drought could hit 45% of UK by 2035

Alison Brown in edie.net (UK): The Committee for Climate Change has said the country could be hit by severe droughts in 45% of the UK's resource zones by 2035 if mitigation against climate change is not planned for now. A new report published by the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) says that the water sector is near its limit in being able to cope and climate change could push it over the edge.

In almost all of the nine local authorities studied in the report, development in the floodplain had increased, and four of them the rate of development was higher than across the locality as a whole. Three of the four coastal authorities studied saw an increase in development in areas of eroding coastline, and in two of them, the rate of development on unprotected coastline was higher than across the authority as a whole

Five of the six urban authorities studied had recently increased the area of land paved over, which -exacerbates surface water flooding risk and the urban heat island effect. The ASC recommends a series of actions to improve water efficiency in households such as upgrades to taps, showers and toilets, which should be installed for free....