'Signals' from pre-crisis discourse: Lessons from UK flooding for global environmental policy change?

This paper evaluates policy accelerations after past flood crises in the UK (in 1947, 1953, 1998 and 2000) and explores their value as surrogates or metaphors for how governments might respond with policy changes to the local expressions of global climate and environmental change in the future. We find that these past policy change accelerations were, in general, not based on the development of new ideas but on bringing forward existing ideas that were already the subject of widespread professional or public discourse. We suggest, therefore, that we may be able to detect now, as 'signals' within current policy discourse, the embryos of the policy shifts that are likely to come about as part of any crisis-response adaptation to future climate change. If this is the case, then we believe that those with policy responsibilities now may be able to begin carefully and proactively to prepare the ground for such policy changes ahead of the crisis events that will alone trigger their acceleration and adoption. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.