What is the effect of climate change in Sussex? Read our strategy and see how we plan to encourage conditions to allow our wildlife to adapt to a change of climate.

Weathering the Changes

• Summary (3MB pdf)

• Full Report (2MB pdf)
  

There is now a great scientific consensus that our climate is changing and human activity is the most likely cause . . .

Predictions are for warmer, drier summers, wet winters, more storms, intense rain and windstorms and continuing sea level rise. But this is a global picture; the effect on Sussex is less clear.

What will happen in our own county is highly unpredictable and will probably be extremely variable, potentially flipping our current climate into a new and unknown state.

Nevertheless, uncertainty about how climate change will unfold must not prevent us from taking action. It is imperative that we expand our landscape boundaries allowing nature the time and space to avert a disaster that could otherwise accelerate the decline of wildlife and damage habitats irretrievably.

Sussex Wildlife Trust has identified four key areas to combat the effects of climate change:

• Conserve our current wildlife and wild places
  
• Create large areas for wildlife and establish ecological networks
  
• Increase variety in our landscape
  
• Reduce damage to nature from sources other than climate change