Recognising climate risks

The WEF Global Risks Report was published last week, and as ever contains plenty of things to keep you up worrying about at 3am. The report notes the increasing interconnectedness of risks, and the potential for societal polarization and inequality to produce political outcomes which reduce our ability to deal with global risks. Strikingly though, climate-related risks account for 4/5 of the highest impact risks, and 2/3 (arguably 3/3 if we include a climate-migration link) of the most likely risks.

While this is not necessarily a surprise to anyone reading this, the prominence of these risks in a WEF report (no climate cheerleaders here) is important recognition of the scale of the challenge we face. And the presence of ‘failure of mitigation and adaptation policies’ as 5th highest impact is an explicit recognition that if we don’t get to grips with these issues now, they will increasingly drive global risks.

The economic case for businesses to identify and manage the risks posed by climate change is clear and immediate, and is something we see time and again in our work both with the multi-lateral development banks and the private sector. At the risk of blatant self-promotion, we’re very excited about the development of our Business Process Models for climate resilience, and strongly believe that simple approaches which fit within existing procedures for managing and assessing risks to projects and investments will increase climate resilience and can be widely adopted. Watch this space!