Establishing the UK Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership; reporting progress, future direction and design lessons.

This paper disseminates information to the coastal management community on the establishment and progress of the United Kingdom, Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP). It is anticipated that the outputs of this partnership will be of practical use to coastal managers and that they will wish to take marine climate change issues into consideration in future programmes. The Secretariat for MCCIP has now been based at the UK Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) for almost two years1. This paper reflects on our progress to-date and communicates associated lessons learned. Specifically we discuss the background to the partnership, principle aims and objectives and the establishment of effective governance. We consider the current scientific evidence base, issues of communicating uncertainty and propose future directions.

The progress that MCCIP has made during its first two years has been impressive and provides a clear and effective way to address the needs of policy makers and advisors. The focus now is on expanding the scope and flexibility to enable MCCIP to get to grips with the ever-growing range and complexity of climate change information and process it effectively and in an appropriate (short) timescale.

• Introduction

• Getting established

• Governance and decision-making

• Communicating scientific uncertainty

• The Annual Report Card

• Marine Climate Change – the science base

• Dialogue and future steps