How can Guernsey prepare for a hotter future?

Guernsey recently had its hottest summer on record, with temperatures peaking at 36.4°C (97.52F) on 25 June.

In August, the Jersey Met Office said this was in line with evidence that climate change was driving hotter summers and increasing the likelihood of drier conditions.

Professionals and businesses have highlighted the actions they believe are needed from Guernsey in response to climate change.

According to the People and Nature Survey, run by the island's Nature Commission in 2025, of the more than 900 respondents 44% said climate change was a significant concern - making it the second largest concern recorded in the survey, after development and land use.

Ilan Kelman, professor of disasters and health at University College London, said: "Small islands need to be particularly concerned about changes to the ocean as well as changes to the air in terms of heat and humidity.

"At the moment, rising sea levels are not particularly that much and are not very rapid - the concern is right now it is definitely accelerating and we expect to see far more over the coming decades."

In 2020, the States of Guernsey set a target of a 57% reduction on 1990 emission levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez, President of Policy and Resources, said the States of Guernsey was on track to meet its 2030 goal.

She said: "We have reduced our carbon emissions by more than half since 1990 -which is a sort of internationally recognised baseline level for measuring your emissions reductions against.

"When we look at that pathway to 2050, that is a really challenging thing to do - we can't quite see a pathway all the way there yet, but we think it will come because of how rapidly technology is evolving and innovating."

De Sausmarez credited the interim goal's progress on the island's energy policy, electricity strategy and waste strategy.

"When we approved the electricity strategy, for example, moving to our lower carbon pathway was £200m less expensive than continuing with status quo."

She added it was not just the responsibility of larger nations to respond to climate change.

De Sausmarez said: "The whole world is made up of groups of 64,000 odd people.

"We are autonomous, we can move fast, we can make things happen and we can lead the way."

Jock Pettitt, co-founder of The Farm Shop and The Soil Farm, speaks regularly to farmers locally and overseas who are affected by climate change.

"We're having conversations with our farmer peers in the UK and Europe and we're all facing the same challenges," he said.

"There are knock-on impacts and so for food security I think we're going to see difficulties getting the volume of food we've been used to."

Pettitt said investing in local sustainable farming could improve the island's resilience to climate change.

He said: "When we farm right, we get the environmental benefits from that, we look after the insects and the pollinators and the plants, the water system and the beaches and coastal environments we enjoy.

"The biggest way to motivate a farmer to do this, to do more tomorrow, is to buy the product so I think farmers need their product on the shelf and customers buying it and supporting that."

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