The Climate Science Behind Managing Disaster Risks

This oped originally appeared on Triple Pundit

https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/disaster-risks-climate-science/773221

It has become de rigueur for companies eager to reduce their climate-related disaster risks to sign up with groups that focus on assisting corporate clients with their climate change challenges. 

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), for one, helps the private sector set science-based emissions reduction targets. It’s a partnership between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, the World Resources Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Another, the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, offers guidelines for how companies can report their exposure to physical climate-related risks, among other things.

The assistance these groups provide is timely. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which protects investors and regulates publicly-held companies’ disclosures, is considering rules to require public companies to provide climate risk-related financial data. And most (if not all) U.N. agencies and other international climate change-related programs recognize the need to address disaster risks and other forms of climate risk worldwide. 

But do these groups follow climate science? That question arose last month when a distinguished engineer openly questioned climate science in a presentation to the U.N. Disaster Risk Reduction Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies (ARISE) and its growing membership of U.S. corporate leaders. “We don’t know if climate change is happening now, and we don’t know if it will happen in the future,” he contended.

Peruse any legitimate climate source, and it’s nigh impossible to question climate science, whether our planet is warming and the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. The U.N. has a growing set of resources, among them:

• Race to Resilience, a global campaign that convenes non-government actors to build climate resilience in vulnerable communities.

• The A2R U.N. Climate Resilience Initiative, a global multi-stakeholder effort to strengthen climate resilience for vulnerable countries and people.

• U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) online course on Nature-based Solutions for Disaster and Climate Resilience, which has extended nature-based solutions certificates to more than 60,000 leaders worldwide. 

• New Urban Agenda’s World Cities events, with “Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience” themes

• Annual agreements from the U.N. Conference of the Parties, of which the Paris Climate Agreement is the best known

As the U.N. plainly asserts: "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred." 

ARISE, whose U.S. arm I co-chair, follows the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The latest documents of the Framework — the 2015 U.N.-adopted document that calls for assessing and reporting progress on disaster-reduction plans — emphasize that disaster risks “are growing at an unprecedented rate globally, inflicting damage across sectors and vital systems for human societies and economies.”

It also maintains: “We are living outside the boundaries of what our planet can sustain, to the detriment of future generations. Radical shifts are needed to change course toward a more sustainable and risk-informed pathway, as the world is facing a projected 40 percent increase in disasters during the lifetime of the Sendai Framework to 2030.” 

The Framework cites climate change on over half of its 140 pages, and the No. 1 commitment of the U.N. Plan of Action on Disaster Risk Reduction for Resilience is to take a risk-informed approach. 

We must also heed another distinguished engineer, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, who earned a degree in the field from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal back in 1949. “Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible,” he told CNBC last year. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” 

And we must promote companies looking to the SBTi and others for assistance in mitigating disaster risks.  Onward with this important work!

Image credit: Jonathan Ford/Unsplash

Why the Private Sector Must Heed the COP26 Message on Climate Action

This article on COP26 and the private sector was written with Debbra Johnson.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, that begins on October 31 in Glasgow (at the venue shown above) will mobilize participants to step up their actions on resilience to global warming. Indications are the private sector will get the message and accelerate its slow, uncoordinated and graceless dance toward helping achieve net zero carbon emissions.

Arguably, COP26 should serve as a wake-up call to the private sector, seen as being both principally responsible for causing the global warming predicament and for fixing it. As for fixing it, the private sector has an essential role to play. A 2018 assessment by two Vanderbilt University climate change specialists estimated that private actions can close 10 to 30 percent of the so-called “Paris Gap,” the difference between the 2015 Paris climate accord and what that agreement will achieve by 2030 if all countries comply with their commitments.

A growing number of companies are moving to achieve their own climate- and risk-mitigation strategies and objectives. Roughly 300 global companies, for instance, are members of the RE100 initiative and aligned with that commitment to using 100 percent renewable electricity across their global operations. Climate warriors gaining kudos for leading the way to combat climate change are companies such as 3M, IKEA, John Deere, Patagonia and Unilever – and industries, notably agriculture, apparel and logistics.

But most private sector companies aren’t yet embracing an overall program to shrink their environmental footprint. Marsh & McLellan Companies’ Global Research Center concluded in a study that most companies focus narrowly on passively mitigating long-term climate risk while meeting short-term environmental or sustainability compliance standards. This approach fails to build climate resilience to gain a competitive advantage. A smaller, savvier group embeds climate risks in strategic assessment and operational planning to leverage resilience to their advantage.    

Private sector blind spots toward climate risk are surprising since practically every company is vulnerable and likely already experiencing global warming’s impacts, whether from disrupted output, higher operational and maintenance costs, or scarcer natural resources like water.

COP26 may prove most valuable in illuminating why the private sector can no longer shilly-shally. The 13-day conference is expected to identify at least six powerful forces already moving to require the private sector to play its critical role – or else. Those forces are investors, regulators, customers/clients, competitors, suppliers and employees.

Consider the potential clout of each group of stakeholders attending COP26:

Investors: Late last month (September), over 50 members of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which manage over $10 trillion in assets, urged 50 major at-risk companies – including energy companies as well as noted brands such as Nestlé, Clorox, Swatch and Campbell Soup – to identify and respond to climate threats and issued guidelines it expects all companies to do to address the issue. And in the 2021 proxy season, shareholder proposals submitted on environmental matters and climate-related proposals in particular climbed for the second consecutive year to 115 from 89.

Regulators: Watchdogs worldwide are signaling they plan to make climate-related disclosures mandatory – from U.S. banking regulators and the Securities & Exchange Commission to stock exchanges in Hong Kong, London and South Korea and regulators in Britain, New Zealand and Switzerland. Many are taking their cue from the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, a global group of regulators that has recommended a reporting standard comprising 11 broad climate-related categories that focus on material risks rather than environmental impacts.

Customers and Clients: Consumers increasingly communicate they want companies to take action on environmental issues. A Deloitte survey found that nearly one-fourth will switch to buying products from an organization that shares their environmental values, and 21 percent have encouraged others to switch, with consumers ages 18 to 24 three times more likely to switch brands based on values.

Competitors: As resource scarcity surfaces, companies that don’t innovate around climate resilience may falter behind direct and indirect rivals. Already, companies are factoring in climate change and resource supply into their business strategies, explaining why companies like Google and Apple are among the largest buyers of renewable energy.

Suppliers: Early adopters of climate resilience strategies are collaborating with suppliers to enhance their overall operational resilience. In May, for instance, Apple published its annual supplier responsibility report for 2021, outlining the progress it and its suppliers are making to further environmental protection goals. Apple partners that don’t meet the selection criteria face being dropped from the partnership. Walmart and others also make climate protection a requirement in selecting suppliers.  

Employees: The pandemic has sparked a new Employee Value Proposition with a stronger focus on employee well-being rivaling pay and advancement. In a recent study, Edelman, a longtime reporter of the link between brands and trust, concludes that today’s employees are belief-driven, with more than three-fourths expressing higher expectations of employers and 61 percent choosing their employer based on beliefs, especially about social issues. A growing number of companies that encourage employees to take action on climate and other issues find this approach helps during the current war for talent to attract and retain younger generations. And the nonprofit Drawdown has just published a guide, “Climate Solutions at Work: Unleashing your employee power.”

Which brings us to the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction to 2030. It serves as a roadmap for how to make communities safer and more resilient. More specifically, it underscores how the private sector must collaborate in partnerships with the public sector to reduce disaster risk with a heavy emphasis on prevention.    

Indeed, while fading, a misperception continues to exist that climate risk prevention is the sole responsibility of governments and the public sector. The Sendai Framework and COP26 will help shatter that myth and emphasize the vital role of the private sector. It is essential to keep a fire under the private sector. The planet depends on it. 

This article was written with Debbra Johnson.

The Next 100 Days Will Be Crucial for Securing Climate Resilience

This second article on climate resilience policies within the Biden administration was written with Laurie Schoeman and first published on Triple Pundit.

Last week, we discussed how President Biden’s first 100 days in office has helped us as a country reset and ensure that the 2020s will be known as the resilience decade. So far, the very early scorecard on climate change risk disclosures and the financial markets is one that rates favorably. But the next 100 days will be crucial as we anticipate what the Biden White House can achieve to bolster climate resilience across the U.S.

The Biden administration’s American Jobs plan proposes to stimulate the U.S. economy by creating jobs; capitalizing infrastructure, housing and services; and investing in education and training of millions of Americans in dozens of industries.

It’s an ambitious range of policies: $213 billion in support of housing; $621 billion in transportation infrastructure; $50 billion to improve infrastructure resilience through additions to FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program; $111 billion for water infrastructure improvements; and $100 billion to improve the nation’s electric grid and investment in clean energy.

Linking equity and climate resilience

A slate of executive orders from President Biden signal a vision and drive to build social equity. The executive order focused on tackling the climate crisis creates an environmental justice council and sets a goal to deliver 40 percent of climate investment benefits to disadvantaged communities, referred to as Justice40.

Another executive order on advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities prioritizes a “comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality” in federal government programs. These executive orders will need to be turned into active programs so that they have permanency and longevity moving forward.

The administration’s removal of "onerous restrictions" that have been preventing full deployment of more than $8 billion dollars in congressionally approved Hurricane Maria recovery funding to Puerto Rico unlocks funding dedicated almost four years ago to help Puerto Rico recover and build protection from future storms.

The president’s ”30 by 30” U.S. lands and oceans climate goal envisions teaming with various state, local, tribal, and territorial governments’ agricultural and forest landowners; the fishing industry; and other key stakeholders” to protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and ocean territories by 2030.

A focus on environmental justice is a must

The American Rescue Plan bill includes $100 million for environmental justice grants – a step in the right direction to address disproportionate climate risks to vulnerable populations and, hopefully, not too little, too late. The bill recognizes the nation’s strength depends on American households having access to fundamental services and on states and cities possessing funding to support critical functions and maintain a dynamic public transportation network.  

Exemplifying an early impact of these executive orders is the Transportation Department’s Infrastructure for Rebuilding America program. For the first time, it will support projects aimed specifically at fighting the effects of climate change and environmental racism to ensure equity in infrastructure and clean energy investments. Further, the department has rebranded TIGER and BUILD as Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE). 

For America’s communities, look to leading initiative such as Resilience 21 (R21), a coalition of 50 leading U.S. practitioners, of which we are part of, that works with cities and communities of all sizes and types to build resilience to current and future shocks and stresses with an emphasis on the disproportionate risks faced by marginalized communities. A chief recommendation of the R21 includes the development of a “Future Visioning” Task Force to address communities threatened by climate and human-caused displacement, including sea level rise, wildfire, flooding, environmental degradation and pollution and civil unrest. This task force must support the free will and mobility of communities to determine their own futures and address funding for proactive action.

Samantha Medlock, senior counsel of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis told Resilience 21, “a lot of efficacy will come through implementation. We need to consider the needs of America’s communities.” She suggested setting a goal post that embeds resilience into infrastructure, housing and disaster response and recovery bills.

What does the next 100 days and beyond hold?

The hard work must continue, with as much urgency as the first 100 days, to make up for a lack of climate resilience effort in the last decade and to rebuild the nation’s economy and spirit. The new administration will need to build and train teams to implement policy and vision and ensure staff has subject matter expertise and a      proven track record in climate resilience, adaptation and equity. Policies and programs created, designed and deployed need to be informed by practitioners to yield  permanent structural changes that can resolve the deep systemic challenges that impact many low- and moderate-income communities and communities of color that are now in the direct path of natural hazards and risks.  

Look for a draft executive order, focused on climate-related financial risk disclosures, that will insert climate risk into decision-making across the financial sector. Major industries such as housing, agriculture, lending and insurance will be asked to assess and disclose climate risks, identify solutions to manage those risks, and as necessary, fund the implementation of these strategies.  

Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, recently told world leaders that climate change is a national security issue at late April’s virtual climate summit. “It needs to be fully integrated with every aspect of our analysis in order to allow us not only to monitor the threat but also, critically, to ensure that policymakers understand the importance of climate change on seemingly unrelated policies,” she said. 

This is an admirable start to what promises to be an exciting and uncertain adventure in this resilience decade. We must continue to push to make decisions at all levels of government that strengthen our path forward for all and help us to acknowledge previous and historical inequities, plan for current and future risks, invest in affordable housing, transportation, water and other infrastructure and build capacity to create justice for all.

Co-author Laurie Schoeman is the co-founder of Resilience 21 and leads Enterprise Community Partners’ efforts to preserve and protect affordable housing across the nation from the risks and impacts of natural hazards and a changing climate.

Image credit: Nikola Majksner/Unsplash

Biden’s First 100 days: A Climate Resilience Appraisal

This article on the Biden administration’s plans and how they could affect climate resilience was written with Laurie Schoeman and first appeared on Triple Pundit

How has President Biden’s first 100 days in office helped us as we continue through this resilience decade? What’s the very early scorecard on climate change risk disclosures and the financial markets?

In a new CNN Poll, the president gets the highest rating for his performance during the first 100 days for his leadership on environmental policy, with a net positive rating of 54 percent. What is clear is his team has the social capital, vision, commitment and know-how to drive an agenda that builds an equitable, resilient and strong nation.

It’s encouraging that the new president’s climate action strategy includes important and valid emphasis on climate change mitigation. He has spoken favorably about decreasing greenhouse gas emissions primarily through increasing investments in renewable power, while increasing regulations to direct the private sector toward more efficient technologies and operations. Nevertheless, to connect this strategy to apply to all Americans, the White House must emphasize climate resilience. So far, the administration’s policies are trending in a positive direction.

Here is our top seven list of the administration’s most impactful efforts to build a climate-resilient nation.

Seven key steps the new administration has taken toward climate resilience

President Biden has reinstated America as a leader in domestic and international climate action by rejoining the Paris Agreement, committing to both decrease global greenhouse gas emissions and boost climate resilience in our communities.

The administration has so far positioned seasoned and respected leaders to champion the international and domestic climate agenda and put climate action into practice, including Cecilia Martinez, Senior Director of Environmental Justice at the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Department of the Interior; Michael Regan, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Gina McCarthy National Senior Climate Advisor; and John Kerry, International Climate Envoy.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen committed her department to examine the financial risks of climate change; to wield Treasury’s broad powers to tackle potential risks to the financial system posed climate change imposes; and to the appointment of a senior official to lead climate initiatives.

The Federal Reserve has launched a climate committee to assess the implications of climate change risks on the U.S. financial system, including banks, corporations and infrastructure.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued a “Request for Input” on integrating climate risk management for its regulated entities that include Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Bank to investigate housing finance system climate risks disclosure and management.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun work on potential regulations that would require companies to disclose exposure to climate risk; it is evaluating climate disclosure guidelines, and it has prepared a detailed questionnaire seeking industry feedback until mid-June.

And finally, the Commodity Future Trading Commission has announced a new Climate Risk Unit that follows on its groundbreaking 2020 report, Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System.

So what's next?

These all are significant advances. But at a moment when the nation is emerging from the economic and community disruption of the century’s largest health crisis, every move the Biden Administration makes must be related to supporting both Main Street and Wall Street. Next week, we will discuss several initiatives on which the new administration can lead that we believe can bolster climate resilience along with the economic infrastructure of the nation.

Co-author Laurie Schoeman is the co-founder of Resilience 21 and leads Enterprise Community Partners’ efforts to preserve and protect affordable housing across the nation from the risks and impacts of natural hazards and a changing climate.

Image credit: Tabrez Syed/Unsplash

Why is the Climate Resilience Field so White?

This article originally appeared on Triple Pundit: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2021/resilience-field-white/717881

Joyce Coffee and Chauncia Willis co-authored this article

“In the days ahead, we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain questions about our national character.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Where do we go from Here: Chaos or Community?”

In early January, as our respective networks prepared to mix at a resilience reception to kick off 2021 and the resilience decade, we asked one another an obvious – but unanswered – question: Why is the climate resilience field so white? 

It’s not a new question in the U.S. environmental movement. The headline in a January 2017 article in the January 2017 issue of Quartz proclaimed: “The overwhelming whiteness of U.S. environmentalism is hobbling the fight against climate change.” And, a Nov. 21, 2019 post in The Gender Policy Report headlined “Diversifying Leadership Is a Necessity for Climate and Energy.”

At our reception, comprised of mostly white resilience professionals, different voices provided various thoughts on the issue: Many in the American climate resilience field have arrived here via the environmental movement, which historically has been white and racist; the primary feeders to the climate resilience field – economics and the physical sciences – are overly represented by whites; and climate action and climate change mitigation are often paired with solutions such as renewable energy, electric cars and net zero homes, which often are unaffordable luxuries for low-income, marginalized, and vulnerable communities.

To continue the resilience decade and beyond, this group of professionals must agree that solutions start with racial equity, especially since communities of color are disproportionately subjected to the impacts of the climate crisis.

Here are five solutions offered by the resilience reception guests:

• Create climate resilience by fortifying social infrastructure – which starts with education, jobs, investment, housing, healthcare and personal security.

• Cede power to BIPOC leaders and make it a priority to use white power to unlock social equity solutions.

• Encourage privileged knowledge and learning beyond the academic setting.

• Within the education system, encourage BIPOC students to pursue STEM fields, provide them with mentors and paid internships, and demand that higher ed include academics of color in proportions that accurately reflect America.

• Do not pigeon-hole BIPOC leaders into “environmental justice” or “diversity” roles. Create social equity and include career pathways jobs with upward mobility, with or without advanced degrees.

While listening to civil rights leader and writer Alicia Garza keynote a Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute, I found that she put a fine point on our quest when she recalled a Dr. King quote in which he noted that Black Americans “hold only one key to the double lock of peaceful change. The other is in the hands of the white community.”

We can expect progress on this front from one recent change: President Biden’s environmental team. It includes North Carolina’s environmental chief Michael Regan, on course to become the first Black American to head the Environmental Protection Agency; environmental lawyer Brenda Mallory to lead the Council on Environmental Quality; New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland to be the first Native American to lead the Interior Department; and Ali Zaidi, a former New York deputy secretary for energy and environment deputy, who happens to be Muslim, as national climate advisor.

We must remember, as Dr. King also maintained, “the ultimate measure is not where we stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where we stand in times of challenge and controversy.” It’s important to be encouraged to approach resilience with the power of understanding that we each play a role in a resilient future, and that resilience exists at the intersection of climate, hazards, and vulnerability.

We cannot solely advocate for climate, hazards, and resilience and exclude factors that contribute to vulnerability as this works against all that we aspire to achieve in the resilient decade.

Image credit: Niek Verlaan/Pixabay

Welcome to the Resilience Renaissance!

On the eve of 2020’s winter solstice, I reflected on the dawn of a Resilience decade a century ago – the 1920s with its economic prosperity coupled with a distinctive cultural edge. For America, it was the dawning of the “Roaring 20s,” a renaissance movement initiated by Southern Black Americans migrating north in increasing numbers.

Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong defined the era that also comprised the art of improvisation and a racial rethink. In an August 1991 commemorative article on Satchmo’s career, The New York Times maintained that “the power of his genius, combined with his living manner, forced whites to rethink their racism, whether they knew it or not.”

“Seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doing to it,” he responded. “All I'm saying is, ‘See what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance.’ Love, baby - love. That's the secret.”

Another Resilience Renaissance has begun. At a reception that Climate Resilience Consulting hosted last week, we reflected on Louis Armstrong as we launched our fresh Roaring 20s that is generating a resilience renaissance for our communities:

Here are five areas where resilience leadership saw resilience shine in 2020:

1.    Equitable and Just Climate Platform, A Vision for an Equitable and Just Climate Future

2.    First Street Foundation, Find Your Home’s Flood Factor    

3.    McKinsey Global Institute: Climate risk and Response: Physical Hazards and Socioeconomic Risks,

4.    The New York Times, The Great Climate Migration

5.    Scientific American, The Impacts of Floods Exacerbate Existing Racial and Social Inequality

We celebrated 2020 Climate Resilience Consulting reports, including:

1. Equitable Climate Resilience in local government with IBTS and the Kresge Foundation.

2. How State Governments can Help Local Communities Invest in Climate Resilience with Innovation Network for Communities.

3. More Urgency, Not Less: COVID-19 Pandemic’s Lessons for Local Climate Leadership with Innovation Network for Communities.

4. A Roadmap to Resilience Incentivization by Multi-hazard Mitigation Council, National Institute of Building Safety.

5. Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Industrial and Commercial Buildings for UNDRR ARISE.

And resilience leaders defined three “moonshots” to kick off the resilience decade ahead: 

1.    Social Equity in Disaster Response and Recovery to ensure we shift from mainstreaming – where the wealthy get wealthier from federal disaster dollars – to transformation where the poor grow wealthier and more powerful from federal disaster dollars.

2.    New utopias envisioned for the coming American climate change-driven migration, including an uptick in affordable housing in and near job centers, an improvement in public school outcomes and a reinvigoration of America’s small-town main streets.

3.    Resilience Hubs, driven by lower-income and BIPOC community needs and wants, that become a routine element of municipal and philanthropic budgets.

As this extraordinary year concludes, we encourage you to give generously of your time and treasure to the resilience communities you hold dear.

I’m deeply grateful for the work CRC does for and with our clients and also for the myriad contributions to climate resilience forged and furthered this year. I look forward to the chance to work together at the dawn of the Roaring Renaissance Resilience Decade. 

Be safe and jazzy! 

Why a Migration Plan is a Must for the Biden Administration

This article originally appeared on Triple Pundit https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/migration-biden-administration/708686

As we discussed yesterday, the Biden administration must honor our nation’s collective responsibility to minimize the impacts of the climate crisis on Americans and people everywhere now and into the future. How? The first two priorities, as previously discussed, include rejoining the Paris Agreement and boost jobs in the emerging resilience center. Third, the federal government should launch the long-term migration plans necessary to secure the safety of citizens most vulnerable to climate risks.

As the New York Times said this summer, the “idea of retreating from areas that can’t be defended…is a political minefield.” Nevertheless, with his five-decade career behind him, President Biden can afford to show courage and wade in. Taking on such a complicated plan has many moving parts – but bottom line, it’s time to focus on how we can protect populations throughout regions that are most vulnerable to climate change across the U.S.

Here’s why the Biden White House must focus on both migration and resilience.

Numbers and statistics don’t lie: migration is already underway

Let’s start with the numbers. To start, there were 454,000 disaster-induced displacements within the U.S. in 2019 alone, according to the extreme weather disasters measured by the International Displacement Monitoring Center. In addition, more than 386,000 homes, worth a total of about $210 billion, are at risk of coastal flooding by 2050 – and nearly two billion homes may become submerged by 2100, estimates the online real estate database company Zillow. At least 13 million U.S. coastal residents are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to sea level rise, says Bloomberg.

Those statistics foreshadow massive risks for the U.S. government – a daunting challenge that to date federal agencies apparently cannot grasp. For example, while FEMA classifies 8.7 million properties as having substantial flood risk, the First Street Foundation Flood Model identifies far more: 14.6 million properties with the same level of risk. This means nearly six million households and property owners have underestimated or been unaware of their current risk.

Meanwhile, the real estate industry has already started to integrate flooding risks into more property listings as cities like Miami Beach (pictured above) keep building along the shore even as it’s clear communities of color will bear the harshest burden as the climate crisis continues.

The financial sector is already adapting

The U.S. financial sector is responding in kind. The number and total value of flood insurance policies have been declining since 2006, meaning that households that purchased a property in coastal areas may be at increased risk of defaulting on their mortgages. Further, U.S. property insurance rates increased for 10 consecutive quarters since the fourth quarter of 2017 following Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. This 10-quarter streak tracks with greater storm frequency and intensity and follows 17 quarters of rate reductions, from the third quarter of 2014 to the third quarter of 2017.

Research has shown that after disaster-declared hurricanes, various banks have increased by almost 10 percent the share of coastal mortgages that they offloaded to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Additionally, the odds of an eventual foreclosure rose by 3.6 percent for a mortgage originated in the first year after a hurricane, and by almost 5 percent for a mortgage originated in the third year.

Four ways the Biden Administration can secure the housing market during the climate crisis

These data suggest the U.S. housing market is trending toward the next “big short.” How can that trend be halted?

First and foremost, the Biden administration should immediately establish a climate change mitigation program, as recommended by the Government Accountability Office.

Next, the feds must emphasize resource-building in receiving communities as part of a strategy to make relocation from climate change hazards, from river and coastal flooding to wildfires. This is the easiest, most dignified and most attractive option for property owners and renters to pursue. This relocation emphasis should be a priority in fund allocations to FEMA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Both of these agencies have appropriations which explicitly allow for the acquisition and relocation of exposed communities, while the Small Business Administration (SBA) has the tools for risk mitigation and disaster recovery.

The incoming Biden administration also needs to ensure that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requires investments to assess and address climate change risks, build climate change resilience, and do no harm to avoid perpetuating environmental injustice.

Finally, the U.S. needs a Climate Community Reinvestment Act as the next generation of the CRA. Such legislation would have to focus on community resilience investments including low- and moderate-income housing outside of flooding, combined sewer overflow, and wildfire-risk zones, cooling centers, natural infrastructure for heat and stormwater mitigation, which could become possible through the use of community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and other public-private partnerships.

For other ideas and inspiration for this crucial pillar of a Biden climate action plan, check out The United States’ Climate Change Relocation Plan via the Atlantic Council. 

For the new Biden administration, accomplishing this work will ensure he makes progress on his stated aims to reduce inequality, lower levels of poverty, create a healthier environment, build stronger communities, and generate more and higher-quality jobs. Climate change is the humanitarian challenge of our time.

Lead with this in mind: the Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves report insists that the U.S. could cost-effectively spend $520 billion to reduce its disaster liability by $2.2 trillion. That’s good math for a resilience decade legacy.

Image credit: Carlos Veras/Unsplash

The Biden Administration Can Make the 2020s the Resilience Decade

This article originally appeared in Triple Pundit. https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/biden-administration-resilience/708681

With less than two months before the Biden administration starts, here’s a gentle reminder: In April, when I labeled 2020 the start of the adaptation decade, I noted: “If one thing is increasingly clear from this COVID-19 era, it’s that countless millions of Americans – and even more global citizens elsewhere – will grow poorer from it. And this matters immensely for climate change.”

This helps explain why President-elect Biden’s climate strategy includes an important and valid emphasis on climate change mitigation. He favors decreasing greenhouse gas emissions primarily through increasing investments in renewable power, while increasing regulations to direct the private sector toward more efficient technologies and operations. However, to connect this strategy to apply to poor Americans, you must emphasize resilience.

It requires much more than simply the aim of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis to “honor our responsibility to be good stewards of the planet for future generations.” Biden as president must honor our collective responsibility to minimize the impact of the climate crisis on Americans and people everywhere now and in the future. How? Here are three priorities.

Rejoin the Paris Agreement

As the U.S. rejoins the Paris Agreement, the U.S. must act on the agreement’s adaptation priorities. I wrote five years ago that our choice in that agreement is to “adapt or bust.” Consider this: U.S. disaster costs from 2016-2020 have exceeded $550 billion – a record. As of Oct. 7, 16 U.S. climate-related disaster events have triggered losses that exceed $1 billion each. These events included one drought, 11 severe storms, three tropical cyclones and a major wildfire, according to NOAA. 

Indeed, America’s growing disaster liability costs the nation $100 billion annually and grows 6 percent per year, a rate that is surging 10 times faster than the increase in the country’s population.

Hence the incoming Biden administration must take on these four challenges.

To start, the new administration should acknowledge that the U.S. is re-signing the global agreement for adaptation, resilience and reduced vulnerability. In addition, the Biden White House should follow the Paris Agreement’s guidelines, set expectations to plan and implement adaptation. Next, it’s clear the new administration should report on adaptation needs and efforts. Finally, it behooves Biden’s team to measure the adequacy, effectiveness and progress of all adaptation projects.

These steps will prove key to realize the positive returns on resilience. And the business case is real. An October report from the Urban Land Institute figures that Southeast Florida can realize at least $5 in benefits for each dollar of infrastructure resilience investment. A 2019 report from the National Institute of Building Safety maintained that modern building codes save $11 for every $1 invested.

The Biden administration must boost jobs in the resilience sector

Much is being expressed about a national infrastructure bill. And the Biden platform proposes, for instance, that new federal funding to rebuild roads, bridges or water infrastructure consider climate change. Beyond this consideration, the Biden administration should encourage the growth of resilience investments. Just as we celebrate the market viability of solar energy after a decade of government engagement, we also should be able to celebrate the market strength and investment potential of resilience. In these sectors specifically, the White House needs to emphasize the following:  

Water: Flood defense, wetland protection, stormwater management, rainwater harvesting, waste-water treatment relocation, strengthened water distribution systems and desalinization plants should be among the priorities.

Buildings: Start with green roofs and walls, water retention gardens and porous pavements.

Energy: Grid resilience along with back-up generation and storage should be a priority.

Information and communications technology: The Biden administration should strengthen data distributions systems, in addition to climate monitoring and data collection that can inform and build community resilience such as early warning systems that can assist with the relocation of citizens.

Health: Treatment and monitoring for diseases that might increase due to climate change as well as the treatment of respiratory conditions from wildfires.

To be sure, the resilience mission cannot be left to the private sector to steer. Even those corporate leaders purporting to be for poverty alleviation – such as Certified B Corps – have overall not made it a part of their platforms.

Migration plans to protect vulnerable Americans

The New York Times has said the “idea of retreating from areas that can’t be defended…is a political minefield.” But with a five-decade career behind him, a President Biden can afford to show courage and wade in. Taking on such a complicated plan has many moving parts – and that will be the focus of tomorrow’s discussion on rethinking housing across the regions that are most vulnerable to climate change across the U.S.

Image credit: Markus Spiske/Unsplash

Stop Allowing This Decision-Making Strategy to Inhibit Climate Resilience Progress

This article originally appeared in Triple Pundit https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/strategy-climate-resilience/707901

Written with Camilla Gardner

When deciding to act on a resilience project, we often linger on the price tag and let it control our decision-making. Perhaps it’s time to focus our attention on the costs of inaction.

Resilience – our new normal

2020, for sure, has forced each of us to contend with many “new normals.” For many municipalities, budget constraints exacerbated by COVID-19 are forcing them to rethink how to allocate available resources. Wage cuts compounded by health challenges and, for many, a hellish hurricane and fire season have precipitated a multi-crisis reality. At a time when resilience is key more than ever, municipalities increasingly axe sustainability positions and projects.

Why are our priorities so severely shuffled? A primary culprit is the traditional strategy that municipalities employ to make decisions. This process – known as cost-benefit analysis, or CBA – weighs the sum of the benefits of an action against the negatives, or costs, of that action. Frankly, the conventional CBA approach is an archaic process that is incompatible with the modern climate crisis. Here’s why:

Time to rethink the cost-benefit analysis

For starters, the dollar values placed on resilience and mitigation projects (and which, ultimately, dictate whether to pursue a project or not) are an incomplete picture of the outcome. CBA is myopic in the sense that it is structure-centric and lacks a holistic, human-focused tone. It excludes the social and environmental benefits that accrue over time, even decades after project completion.

So many of the most important outcomes of resilience projects – the intangibles that make a city livable and bolster people’s well-being and capacity to thrive – aren’t communicated within the bottom line. Similarly, the costs are immediate and upfront while taking mitigatory action usually has remote, delayed and uncertain benefits. Consequently, economic and social needs and desires that are felt immediately seem more pressing than climate resilience efforts.

Consider a green infrastructure (GI) project, which involves a network that provides the “ingredients” for solving urban and climatic challenges by building with nature. In addition to maintaining water quality and mitigating flooding, GI installations can clear and cool the atmosphere, increase local property values, enhance aesthetics, and improve local health outcomes and social connectivity.

Yet not all of these co-benefits can be reaped right away. When trees are involved, the rate of carbon sequestration, stormwater capture, or urban heat island mitigation may be greatest 20 to 50 years after a project’s completion.

3 ways to take a new approach toward your long-term planning

It is increasingly essential to enhance the visibility of the local impacts derived from climate resilience projects by communicating these co-benefits in the one language that drives decision-making: dollar value. We are losing out a lot by allowing seemingly unfavorable cost-benefit ratios to inhibit progress toward a future we cannot afford not to create. To do so, the following needs to become standard practice for conducting cost-benefit analyses:

Conduct a triple bottom line (social, environmental and financial) CBA

The triple bottom line (or otherwise noted as TBL or 3BL) is an accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and financial.

Collectively, we rely too heavily on technical and infrastructural solutions to address a much more holistic problem. Too often, the dialogue around climate resilience investment only weighs avoided losses against the physical costs of the (grey) infrastructural investment. Likewise, this conversation usually occurs after disaster strikes. We must shift to highlight proactively that these investments yield a triple dividend.

These include development potential to local communities by stimulating innovation and economic activity bolstered by reduced climate risk, as well as a web of improved social and ecological outcomes that enhance wellbeing for all involved, even if disaster doesn’t strike. Recently, FEMA incorporated ecosystem benefits into its CBA tool. It is a critical first step forward toward legitimizing nature-based climate solutions. But much more needs to be done to move forward.

Pursue innovative strategies to monetize the “intangible” benefits.

Certain values, such as avoided energy costs, can be determined easily via their market price. However, many values don’t have a direct market value – such as the value of social connectivity, the costs of trauma, the loss of community caused by a hurricane or wildfire, or the costs of having to relocate from one’s community.

One solution is contingent valuation. This is an economic survey technique for eliciting willingness to pay for outcomes such as health or that don’t have an obvious price tag.

The United Kingdom’s Sheffield Hallam University study used this process to determine the value of feeling part of the community or of having neighbors looking out for each other: $16,700 and $13,000, respectively. This method has even been used to value human life by determining people’s willingness to pay for risk reduction devices or services that could prove life-saving. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency had valued “statistical life” at an average of $7.4 million in 2006 dollars.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of what can and must be valued to make the business case for a more livable future. Unfortunately, contingent valuation is both time and resource-intensive. Moving forward, it is critical to fund research into innovative strategies to monetize these more holistic costs and benefits city by city in a more streamlined, cost-effective manner. Likewise, encouraging policymakers to give greater value to more qualitative considerations – not just the bottom line – is key.

Incorporate a timeline that accounts for longer-term social and environmental benefits.

Even if all co-benefits were internalized, a challenge remains: common discounting practices. They’re designed to take account of the variable timescales over which costs and benefits are distributed. But they give very low (and possibly practically zero) weight to far-off events, namely the social and environmental benefits of resilience projects. Consequently, by discounting, CBA appears to make these benefits disappear. A potential solution: time-declining discount rates. These declining discount rates account for discounting but make future benefits more relevant to the present investors and policymakers.

Finally - making the case for a more equitable future

The effects of climate change are disproportionately felt by lower income and communities of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC). Accordingly, disaster recovery and adaptation costs and the price of necessary resilience projects are greater. This results in less-favorable cost-benefit ratios. Therefore, resilience investments tend to favor wealthier neighborhoods and overlook the committees with the fewest resources but are the most in harm's way.

By establishing the strategies discussed above as priorities as well as centering on the unique social context in which a project will be applied and focusing more on what is to be gained rather than how much it might cost, our investment decisions can be more informed and equipped to center equity, real climate risk, and the well-being of all.

Camilla Gardner supports the resilience program at the Urban Sustainability Directors Network as a Climate Resilience Consulting associate. 

Image credit: Pxhere

Achieving Social Equity Is Connected with Climate Finance

This article originally appeared in Triple Pundit https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/social-equity-climate-finance/707011

In our previous article, we focused on how the world’s poorer citizens are most vulnerable to the globe’s most dangerous crises: COVID-19 and climate change. The people at most risk of contracting COVID-19 – low-income individuals, women, workers dependent on working in the informal economy, and racial and ethnic minorities – are also the same citizens that are most at risk due to the climate crisis. Reaching true social equity will require a focus on both addressing climate risks and ensuring some level of finance is available to all.

Social equity requires a focus on long-term recovery

The past several months of the COVID-19 pandemic can tell us a lot about how to address climate risks, and importantly how to do so in ways that can achieve social equity.  A strong post-COVID-19 recovery could be a unique policy and investment opportunity to address both climate resilience and equity issues by squarely incentivizing, or even mandating, the financial sector to fill what has otherwise been a gap in financing in order to create resilience for the most vulnerable.

Many policy makers are thinking through practical ways to action this right now. For example, a recent OECD report on Green COVID Recovery recommends “integrating environmental sustainability and socioeconomic equity” in policy packages – by, for example, lowering labor taxes concomitantly with raising taxes on pollution - in order to build long-term resilience, boost the prospects for social equity, and mitigate the regressive effects of environmental policies.

In addition, the IMF has been supporting this idea by promoting a “smarter, greener and fairer” recovery. As the current IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, has stated, “We cannot turn back the COVID-19 clock, but we can invest in reducing emissions and adapting to new environmental conditions.”

However, how exactly sustainable and equitable COVID-19 recovery plans can support vulnerable communities – particularly those local communities hardest hit economically, and most exposed to climate related risks - remains to be seen. 

There are several ways to do this, and the options to enhance resilience and close the equity gap include both public policy and private investment. There is no need to start from scratch, though, and the following recommendations provide practical mechanisms for achieving social equity within the financial ecosystem, and increasing the availability of affordable financing for climate-resilient investments for vulnerable communities:

The role of financial institutions like CDFIs and green banks

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs): CDFIs are financial institutions with, with the support of the U.S. Treasury Department, are tasked with providing low- and moderate-income communities, individuals, and smaller firms with affordable capital.

In the United States, there are more than one thousand CDFIs in the form of commercial banks, credit unions, and venture capital firms that are currently financing low-income communities, each of which can be mobilized to create community level climate-resilience. While CFDIs are beginning to take notice of the importance of climate change to the communities they serve, post-COVID mandates can help them better serve these communities’ climate-resilience needs. Nevertheless, coordination, capacity and financial support by the federal government may essential to unlocking CFDIs for climate adaptation.

Green Banks: In addition to CDFIs, Many U.S. states (and more than 35 countries around the world) have green banks or green banking mechanisms, which in a nutshell, “leverage public funding to attract private capital for clean energy projects”.

These institutions are – by design and mandate – focused on climate finance and investment, but traditionally have been far more focused on renewable energy or energy efficiency investments. Expanding the model beyond energy to include a greater variety of climate-related projects that support vulnerable communities, including mobilizing private investment so it can help attain authentic social equity, could help ensure these institutions address all aspects of climate change, not simply mitigation.

Furthermore, these institutions could be critical links in the financial “ecosystem” by bundling and securitizing pools of local investment which can then be bundled to create investment vehicles for larger investors, as was the case with the Connecticut Green Bank’s securitization of solar home renewable energy credits.

In short, the global business community can’t address the COVID-19 crisis without viewing it through the lens of climate change – and we need to retool the financial sector in order to help guide the world’s poorer citizens through both this pandemic and navigate through the long-term risks linked to climate change.

Co-author Stacy Swann is CEO of Climate Finance Advisors, a Benefit LLC with the explicit purpose of creating a material positive impact on society and the environment. Ms. Swann is also a Board Member of the Montgomery Country Green Bank.

Image credit: Lawrence Makoona/Unsplash

The Link Between Climate Finance and Building Resilience after COVID-19

This article originally appeared in Triple Pundit: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/climate-finance-covid-19/706956

Co-written with Stacy Swann

In 2020, the world’s poor find themselves at the nexus of two crises: COVID-19 and climate change. The people most vulnerable to COVID-19 – low-income individuals, women, workers in the informal economy, and ethnic and racial minorities – are the same citizens that are most vulnerable to weather and climate crises.

The poor disproportionately face obstacles to adapting to the effects of climate change due to unstable incomes, little if any savings, their work in the informal economy, a lack of access to credit, and of course, the reality of the landscape in the communities and countries in which they live.

These constraints have only become exacerbated in the COVID-19 global recession. As governments, businesses and financial institutions move into economic recovery, it is necessary to ensure that that recovery is sustainable, resilient and fair – if not, it will be reinforcing an already dire situation for the world’s poor.

A population’s vulnerability to climate change proceeds along three axes: exposure, susceptibility and the ability to cope.

Where it comes to access to finance, low-income populations suffer the impacts of all three. The poor are more exposed to climate change because of where they can afford to live or the economic activities they engage in, such as farming or fishing.

For instance, a Harvard study found that Miami-Dade County was affected by “climate gentrification:” as flood risks increase, wealthier residents are moving inland, displacing local low-income communities. Further, some studies suggest that climate change adaptation expenditures tend to be driven by wealth rather than need, which exacerbates the inequalities between high and low-income communities if not shifting more climate risk onto the latter.

Finally, structural inequalities ensure that low-income communities lack access to the social, cultural and financial assets they need to cope with the onset and consequences of climate change. Low-income urban households tend to hold most of their wealth in a single asset – housing – which means they have a single and significant point of financial vulnerability to climate change. Conversely, high-income households generally hold better-diversified portfolios of assets and wealth, both financially and geographically making them better able to withstand financial shocks from climate impacts.

Taken together, these factors imply that the costs of climate change may make vulnerable communities even more vulnerable over time, increasing proportionate costs of climate change for these groups exactly when they cannot afford it, and in doing so, accelerating inequality. This is the exact opposite of progress. 

Investing in resilience is really the only option to address these headwinds and ensure a fair and just transition. Finance, both public and private, has a powerful role to play in mitigating the cycle of income inequality and climate vulnerability, but historically this sector and its leaders have been deaf to the needs of the most vulnerable, deeming these groups as higher risk from a credit perspective. Furthermore, there has been an increasing gap in the financial ecosystem of banks and investors serving vulnerable communities and those that do exist often provide capital at significant cost, effectively reducing the availability of credit to low-income communities.

In our next article, we’ll focus on two strategies that can help these struggling communities recover in the long term.

Co-author Stacy Swann is CEO of Climate Finance Advisors, a Benefit LLC with the explicit purpose of creating a material positive impact on society and the environment. Ms. Swann is also a Board Member of the Montgomery Country Green Bank.

Photo: a 2019 climate change protest in Nuremberg, Germany. More observers see links between the global COVID-19 pandemic and climate change risks.

Image credit: Markus Spiske/Unsplash

COVID-19 Makes the 2020s the Adaptation Decade for Climate Change

This oped originally appeared on Triple Pundit: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/covid-19-makes-2020s-adaptation-decade-climate-change/87386

If one thing is increasingly clear from this COVID-19 era, it’s that countless millions of Americans – and even more global citizens elsewhere – will grow poorer from it. And this matters immensely for climate change.

Why? First, remember that climate action embodies two halves: mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to physical impacts. Poverty relates to each in very different ways.

Take climate change mitigation and how it relates to poverty. Mitigation actions include enhanced energy efficiency, especially in industrial, commercial and multifamily properties, utility-scale renewable energy and public transit investments. If done well and with intensity, all of these down the road will diminish climate change impacts on poor people and – and all people.

Of course, if you first want to explore how to decrease poverty while increasing climate change mitigation, you might focus on distributed energy generation in poorer neighborhoods; jobs for the poor in renewable energy; and public transit to employment, day care and school. Yet, as many investors will maintain, these initiatives may deliver less impact dollar for dollar on greenhouse gas reductions than would utility-scale renewables, transit infrastructure, and commercial and industrial energy efficiency.

Thus, the intersection of poverty reduction and greenhouse gas reduction may be less of a priority for the market.

COVID-19 exacerbates three huge climate change risks

So, pivoting to climate change adaptation – i.e., decreasing physical risk – how does it relate to poverty in America? Risk has three components: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. As for hazard, whether you’re poor or rich, each of us faces the same climate change peril. That is, the same scorching heat, sea level rise and wildfires.

As for exposure, those who live in harm’s way – along coasts or rivers or in the wildfire/urban interface – are more exposed to these hazards. To be sure, as a global recession strikes, there might theoretically be a decrease in climate change exposure, as demand declines for new housing along the flood-prone coasts and rivers or in wetlands and marshes. This also may stem the tide of older people continuing to move to the coast to live out their retirement dreams. Poverty has a way of quashing those aspirations.

The biggest intersection of physical climate change impact and poverty is vulnerability. That’s because the poorer you are, the higher your vulnerability – to most anything. When you lose your house or car in a flood or fire, you have fewer resources for alternate housing or transportation, when your asthma increases with extreme heat, you have less funds for medical care, when food prices go up due to drought, your purchasing power goes down. In the case of climate change risk, vulnerability separates the rich from the poor and illuminates the disproportionate impact of loss.

While the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions has been a “nice to do” to involve the poor in job creation adaptation to climate change is a “must do.” We must focus on poverty alleviation and serving poorer neighborhoods as the priority of climate adaptation, or the result be even more profound suffering.

What must we do?

First, focus climate change adaptation on poor neighborhoods along the coasts and rivers’ edge, improving infrastructure and establishing the means and mechanisms for poor families to move out of harm’s way. And lest you think flooding is an issue for another time, consider that by 2050, U.S. coastal floods previously expected once every half century will occur almost every year in many areas.

Next, cool cities and neighborhoods to decrease deadly pockets of extreme heat (a.k.a. urban heat islands). Ensure that the poor have access to reliable air conditioning and the ability to pay electric bills. The urban heat island effect is predicted to increase heat by half. So, when temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F), city heat could rise 3 degrees Celcius (5.4F). 

Finally, focus public health in poor neighborhoods to ensure that fewer people suffer from debilitating cardiopulmonary illnesses such as COPD and asthma, which become more dangerous as temperatures rise. Today under 10,000 Americans die from extreme heat each year. The federal Global Change Research Program estimates that the number of Americans who die annually from extreme heat will almost double by 2050 from the present number approaching 10,000. For high heat states like California, Florida and Louisiana, among other, climate change is expected to increase death rates by between 3.5-4%, particularly among the poor, by the end of the century.

The environmental and social impacts of COVID-19 will linger a long time

And while COVID-19 has tragically taken over 60,000 Americans’ lives, with startling percentages being lower-income Americans, estimates of future climate change deaths are also sobering. More poor Americans will die from rising temperatures and the increased frequency, intensity and duration of coastal storms. Around the world, unless climate change adaptation focuses on the poor, a tragic rise in deaths will occur from malnutrition, vector-borne disease, extreme heat exacerbating chronic illness, extreme weather-caused disruptions to health service and food supply, and deaths of despair as outdoor labor productivity plummets.

As poor Americans grow poorer in the post-COVID-19 era, this creates a priority to act on climate adaptation. If we choose to be agnostic about income levels in climate change adaptation in the same way we are in climate change mitigation, millions more Americans in the coming decade will not only be poor, they’ll be dead.

The post-coronavirus economic environment will demand extraordinary leadership from all sectors. In your climate action strategies, remember the poor.

Image credit: Victor He/Unsplash

Rousing the Real Estate Sector to Anticipate and Manage Climate Change Risk

This OpEd and Image Originally Appeared on Triple Pundit: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/real-estate-sector-climate-change-risk/86791/

Take note, owners and operators of the nation’s 120 million residential, commercial and industrial buildings: It’s time to wake up to the impending climate crisis and to anticipate and manage climate change risk to your buildings, and their inhabitants.

Or else, you’re likely to face destructive consequences – especially if your buildings are in flood plains, exposed coastal settings are seismic zones.

Sure, it’s a common response to practically any perceived risk to delay taking precautions and actions until visible signs emerge. But those climate-related danger signals are becoming more real almost daily.

Consider recent warnings about climate change risk

A new report by U.S. national security, military and intelligence professionals warns that future climate change risk “presents high-to-catastrophic security threat.”

The World Economic Forum global risk perception report this year determined that the climate crisis dominates the top five risks for all stakeholders.

Global investment banker BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink, in his influential annual letter to CEOs, warns that companies that don’t assess and address climate risk will not be part of the investing giant’s portfolio.

McKinsey’s recent climate risk and response report on physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts report is groundbreaking and is a must-read. The consulting firm, known for its greenhouse gas mitigation curve, now assumes that higher global temperatures are being triggered by business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions and, for the first time, urges businesses to focus on climate adaptation.

Stakeholders in the real estate sector must look beyond their buildings

Fortunately, for business owners and operators struggling to wrap their heads around climate change risk, help is at hand: The Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Industrial and Commercial Buildings. The scorecard was developed by real estate investors, developers, architects, engineers, government professionals and community leaders increasingly concerned about the physical impact of climate change on their built assets. It seeks to motivate building owners and operators to take action to increase building resilience.

The scorecard also is intended as an analysis of overall building resilience by looking beyond issues that are in the immediate control of the building. These include transportation, water and energy infrastructure as well as local policy. And, if provides a “resilience agenda” of sorts for when building owners and operations hold discussions with city planners and investors.

The scorecard — developed by ARISE, the Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies that is a global network led by the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction — includes 10 “essentials.” These essentials include measures to plan for resilience, measuring future risk scenarios and effective disaster response plans.

The scorecard can be used as a tool in exploratory workshops with stakeholders including building tenants, community representatives, city planners, emergency managers and representatives of the owner or manager. As Peter Williams, the scorecard’s lead author and formerly of IBM, sees it: “With existing buildings, improving resilience may require retrofitting existing structures and processes but ‘build to last’ should be the objective.”

In sum, here’s the memo for the global real estate sector: this scorecard is an excellent vehicle for the action each of us needs to lead as we do our part to take on climate change risks.

Risk Disclosure Worsens Rich-Poor Inequality

Published initially in Environmental Forum, a publication of the Environmental Law Institute

The latest evidence shows climate change exacerbates global economic inequality, as warming temperatures trigger declines in hotter, poorer countries and improved results in many cooler, richer countries. Complacency in the latter would be misplaced, however. A widening chasm will emerge soon between wealthy and poor communities in developed countries.

Exploding the myth that disasters are great levelers, the reality is that the least fortunate bear the greatest social, economic, health, and environmental costs. For instance, evidence grows that the poorest one-third of U.S. counties sustain greater economic hardship than their wealthier counterparts from hurricanes, rising seas, and higher temperatures.

Some of this gap may reflect the growth in physical climate risk assessment and disclosure. When the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, or TCFD, released its recommendations in 2017, it galvanized banks, stock funds, consumer markets, and real estate funds to disclose and reduce risky investments.

With a focus on asset risks, the market’s consideration remains restricted to how physical climate changes affect those wealthy enough to have investments to lose in the first place, thus continuing to ignore the poor’s plight. In addition, by ignoring how this disclosure will impact the most vulnerable, the markets are readying a flight of capital from the places most at risk. This creates a knock-on effect of increasing vulnerability and dis- parity between rich and poor.

Essentially, this disclosure further marginalizes the poor and strands assets — and I don’t mean coal-fired power pants. Capital fleeing from climate hazard locales leaves behind those community members who are left homeless, without jobs, without schools, and without modernized infrastructure.

TCFD’s number one principle for effective disclosures is that they “should represent relevant information.” Are the jobless left behind as companies move their capital assets and supply chains from harm’s way “relevant” to investors? Are the crumbling social services and physical infrastructure that declining tax and rate revenues spark relevant? Essentially, is the next Big Short the housing market is trending toward relevant to investors? In our current and future climate-changed era, the markets’ choice is to build or dismantle communities. If the Great Recession offers any guide, however, dismantled communities aren’t good for markets.

What will it require for investors to integrate social equity into their climate strategies, thus shoring up proof of investors’ reasonable care? First, in those places where investor portfolios are most at risk, ask your risk analysts what will happen to community assets when your portfolio or elements of your value chain move away from the physical risks and, in dignified retreat, are invested to build community resilience for all rather than avoid risk for some.

Additionally, quantify the damage to your reputation, workforce, customers, and duty to care of ignoring or enhancing community resilience. Third, engage with the new Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment. Besides seeking to strengthen the market for private and public-sector investment in climate-resilient infrastructure and to reduce risk by shifting the flow of investment toward such infrastructure, the coalition promotes supporting vulnerable geographies to attract investment and prevent capital flight as risks intensify.

Further, use the new Climate Resilience Principles advanced by the Climate Bond Initiative to guide your investments, assessing and addressing climate risks and build- ing climate resilience for all while insuring against harm to impacted communities. Finally, include social equity principles in investment policy goals and requirements for consultants and advisors. Ask, Will this asset improve the lives and livelihoods of poor communities?

In short, make social equity a part of risk mitigation assessments for climate-exposed assets. This broadens the scope of TCFD’s recommendations to ensure that social elements are privileged.

Stop Making This Mistake in Your Climate Strategy

This article originally appeared in Triple Pundit https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2019/mistake-climate-action-plan/85971/

“The point of no return is no longer over the horizon,” Secretary-General António Guterres said at the start of the annual U.N. climate talks (COP25), which wrapped in Madrid on Sunday. In the following weeks, representatives from almost 200 countries negotiated how to deal with the threat from climate change at a global level. Many U.S. corporate collaboratives also used the event as a backdrop for their ambitious climate announcements.  

Although changing weather trends already impact businesses, private-sector climate leadership is focused almost exclusively on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions rather than also actively adapting to climate impacts. This is a grave omission that goes against the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement and hurts shareholders, communities and the planet.
 
For the last five years at these annual COP proceedings, high-level government leaders arrived determined to both decrease greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the current and future changes that aren’t avoidable any longer. Global mean temperatures have already risen by over 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, causing changes such as more frequent and extreme weather and gradual shifts in rainfall and sea levels. Man-made climate change is locked in for centuries, regardless of future global greenhouse gas reductions.

But many U.S. corporate collaborations have emerged solely to work in partnership on climate change mitigation. These include We Are Still In, America’s Pledge, We Mean Business and a new entrant, the Certified B Corp community. These groups' overarching climate policy priority is to keep average global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels this century.

Fully aligning corporate actions with the Paris agreement requires corporations to give climate resilience the same level of ambition as emissions reductions. Yet these business coalitions don’t specifically embrace the Paris agreement’s set expectations for planning, implementing and reporting on climate adaptation efforts.

Adaptation is missing from most corporate climate action strategies 

Investors define adaptation and resilience as the ability to anticipate, absorb, accommodate and recover from the increased risk and impact of climate change.

Why is the absence of a clear commitment to adaptation so egregious? Because adaptation is material to corporations’ operations and their future prosperity. Global supply chains, business continuity and market growth depend on it. The major credit rating agencies—Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s—certainly grasp that. Both include climate change risks in their evaluations, and Standard & Poor’s even describes how it calculates a resilience benefit in its evaluation of green projects.

Consider also the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. Its guidelines, elements of which are being incorporated into law in some European countries, provide counsel on how investors assess the physical impacts of climate change on their current and future portfolios.

Since physical climate risks impact operations, workforce, markets, infrastructure, raw materials and assets, the Climate Bonds Initiative now certifies bonds not only based on potential for greenhouse gas reduction, but also on their contribution climate change resilience. Even the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently released a repot entitled, Limiting the Federal Government's Fiscal Exposure by Better Managing Climate Change Risks.

Why do companies overlook adaptation? 

One reason why corporate collaborations may be avoiding action on climate adaptation is because adaptation is less a sustainability issue and more a legal, governance, finance, human resource and supply chain issue. The challenge has pivoted from an exclusive focus on how we can protect the planet to include how we can protect humans and assets from climate impacts that could create both the market crisis and the humanitarian crisis of our time.
 
Already, people around the world are enduring deadly heat waves, food insecurity, the spread of disease, imperiled ecosystems, and damaged infrastructure exacerbated by climate change. Scientists calculate that those living in poorer countries are 10 times more likely to be affected by a climate disaster each year than those in wealthy countries. But these impacts also affect developing countries like the U.S. and are expected to worsen. Many climate impacts will increasingly impact lower-income Americans more severely.

Why adaptation matters to purpose-driven businesses 

Some corporate climate action collaborations have at least been clear with their members that they have only a greenhouse gas reduction emphasis in their scope. But the omission of adaptation is particularly grave for corporate collaborations that have a remit beyond climate action. This could, arguably, include the B Corp community—which operates under the mission to work “toward reduced inequality, lower levels of poverty, a healthier environment, stronger communities, and the creation of more high-quality jobs.” When corporations sign on to a collaboration’s climate policy agenda in the context of this type of mission, they are led to believe their carbon reduction efforts are enough.

However, without adaptation as a climate action priority—at a minimum, upgrading or moving at-risk infrastructure, using climate resilient crops and adding spare capacity—companies are not serving this mission. They are not working to mitigate physical climate risks that increase inequality, have a disproportionate risk on impoverished communities, increase negative health outcomes, and disrupt communities.
 
Of course, they also miss the opportunity to create adaptation-related jobs. Besides being a business imperative, assisting in adaptation offers opportunities for corporations. It can open doors to new markets, build efficiencies and enhance communities while addressing risks.

For instance, building flood defenses and stormwater management systems, strengthening water supply and distribution systems, diversifying forest species, creating cooling technologies for outdoor workers, and strengthening electric grid resilience, among other things, are big business already. Plus, helping communities adapt can ensure business continuity and protect the middle-class market that has sparked so much of this decade’s business prosperity.

The bottom line

Corporate failure to adapt necessarily results in higher costs to the business, along with loss of lives and livelihoods. So, here’s the call to action for corporate coalitions on climate: Recognize that mitigation and adaptation are complementary strategies for reducing unmanageable change and managing climate risks. You can also benefit from fresh opportunities created by these strategies—and by exercising adaptation leadership in your communities.

House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

This is Climate Resilience Consulting’s response to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis’ Request for Information:

November 19, 2019

Email: ClimateCrisisRFI@mail.house.gov

RE: Climate Resilience Consulting’s Policy Recommendations to The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

Dear Congresswomen Castor and Members of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis,

Thank you for your important work. Please consider the following recommendations in response to your request for information, https://climatecrisis.house.gov/inforequest.

Overarching: The House Committee on the Climate Crisis should reframe your mission to be not only to “honor our responsibility to be good stewards of the planet for future generations” but also to “honor our responsibility to minimize the impact of the climate crisis on humanity.”  Your current emphasis is about saving the planet. This recommended reframing focuses on saving Americans, the humans on the planet, and not only in future generations, but now.

1. What policies should Congress adopt to decarbonize the following sectors consistent with meeting or exceeding net-zero emissions by mid-century? Where possible, please provide analytical support that demonstrates that the recommended policies achieve the goal.

a. Transportation
b. Electric power. The Select Committee would like policy ideas across the electricity sector but requests specific comment on two areas:

i. If you recommend a Clean Energy Standard, how should it be designed?
ii. How can Congress expedite the permitting and siting of high-voltage interstate transmission lines to carry renewable energy to load centers.

c. Industry
d. Buildings

Sector-Specific Policies

For all policies, Congress should require that investments:

•       Understand climate change risks – both hazards and vulnerabilities- faced by assets, activities and systems

•       Address these risks through risk-reduction measures that account for climate change uncertainties

•       Ensure assets deliver climate resilience benefits over and above addressing identified risks

•       Do no harm to communities beyond asset boundaries to avoid perpetuating environmental injustice.

This will ensure that American’s tax dollars are spent on climate change resilience while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. For further explanation, please see Climate Bonds Initiative, (September 2019) Climate Resilience Principles. https://www.climatebonds.net/adaptation-and-resilience

Transportation, Electric Power, Industry and Buildings Sector

In order to make informed infrastructure decisions (including for transportation, power, buildings and industry called out in your RFI), Congress should:

·      Create a national infrastructure bank to further private investments in resilience

·      Improve and align benefit-cost analysis across federal departments and agencies to account for full life-cycle and collateral benefits

·      Develop metrics for rating the resilience of infrastructure including modernizing data analysis and production to include predicted climate scenarios wherever this is material, such as in federal floodplain maps

·      Coordinate efforts of departments and agencies to increase efficiency in risk mitigation, resilience investments and disaster response

For further explanation, please see:100 Resilient Cities. (March 2018). Safer and Stronger Cities, Strategies for Advocating for Federal Resilience Policy.

http://100resilientcities.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/100-Resilient-Cities-Safer-and-Stronger-Cities-Final-PDF.pdf

2. What policies should Congress adopt to ensure that the United States is a leader in innovative manufacturing clean technologies; creating new, family-sustaining jobs in these sectors; and supporting workers during the decarbonization transition?

Congress should reframe the question to include climate change risk mitigation and adaptation: In policy creation, acknowledge that a just transition also relates to transitioning American workers away from jobs that are no longer feasible because it is too hot, too flooded or too devastated to continue with the work. Innovation in resilience, in addition to clean tech, will help US workers to thrive in a climate changed future.

Congress should develop institutional mechanisms related to health, education, housing, economic development and physical infrastructure to manage the climate-change driven economic losses that will have negative impacts on America’s families. Without targeted mechanisms these losses will increase racial and economic disparities.

3.     What policies should Congress adopt to ensure that environmental justice is integral to any plan to decarbonize these sectors?

Congress should frame government procurement in the context of targeted universal strategies. “A targeted universal strategy is inclusive of the needs of both dominant and marginalized groups but pays particular attention the situation of the marginalized group. Targeted universalism rejects a blanket approach that is likely indifferent to the reality that different groups are situated differently relative to the institutions and resources of society.” (John Powell, Haas Institute) This will help stem the current tide of federal resources that go to relatively wealthy individuals and places and will begin to address historic lack of investment in modernizing infrastructure in poorer communities and the growing wealth gap perpetuated by disaster recovery (See, for instance: Howell, J., & Elliott, J. R. (2018). As Disaster Costs Rise, So Does Inequality. Socius. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023118816795) This enabling environment relates to procurement rules, local job training programs, etc. One example, explored in response to question 11, is local hiring from disadvantaged groups for disaster recovery contracts.

Congress should emphasize resource-building in receiving communities as part of a strategy to make relocation from climate change hazards (e.g. river and coastal flooding, wildfire) the easiest, most dignified and most attractive option for property owners and renters to pursue. This relocation emphasis should be prioritized in fund allocations to FEMA, HUD and SBA for risk mitigation and disaster recovery.

Congress should put regulations in place that address increases in combined sewer overflows into household basements due to increased rate and volume of precipitation.  Combined sewer overflows (also known as “water in basement”) are not Presidential declared disasters and result in repetitive loss. This household flooding devastates neighborhood and household income, savings and property values. It is caused in part by historic and current unjust zoning, and unequal infrastructure modernization.

Congress should change the current majority ratio of Housing and Urban Development’s funds on disaster recovery, increasing resources overall and especially for housing resilience for low and moderate income Americans.

Congress should acknowledge and halt the housing markets’ trend toward the next “big short,” as climate change causes rapid declines in river-, coastal- and forest-related property values with likely relatively more significant negative impacts on disadvantaged communities.

Congress should ensure that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) follows the recommendations in response to question one, above. (e.g. assess and address climate change risks, build climate change resilience, and do no harm to avoid perpetuating environmental injustice in each investment attributed to CRA compliance.) 

Congress should create a Climate Community Reinvestment Act, that focuses on community resilience investments such as low and moderate income housing outside of flooding-, combined sewer overflow-, and wildfire-risk zones, cooling centers, natural infrastructure for heat and stormwater mitigation, etc.

Cross-Cutting Policies

4. Carbon Pricing: 

a. What role should carbon pricing play in any national climate action plan to meet or exceed net zero by mid-century, while also minimizing impacts to low- and middle-income families, creating family-sustaining jobs, and advancing environmental justice? Where possible, please provide analytical support to show that the recommended policies achieve these goals.

b. How could sectoral-specific policies, outlined in questions 1-3, complement a carbon pricing program?

In a national climate action plan or otherwise, Congress should require that revenue from carbon pricing, such as tax revenue, should be applied to both furthering greenhouse gas emission reductions and creating climate resilience in America’s critical physical and social infrastructure.  

Congress should reframe question 4a to say “What role should carbon pricing, climate change risk mitigation and climate change adaptation/resilience, play in…..”

5. Innovation: 

a. Where should Congress focus an innovation agenda for climate solutions? Please identify specific areas for federal investment and, where possible, recommend the scale of investment needed to achieve results in research, development and deployment. 

b. How can Congress incentivize more public-private partnerships and encourage more private investment in clean energy innovation? 

In response to both questions 5a and 5b, Congress should focus an innovation agenda for climate solutions on resilience, including the following project types by sector:

·      Water (Extreme Precipitation, Drought): Flood defense, wetland protection, stormwater management, rainwater harvesting, waste-water treatment relocation, strengthened water distribution systems, desalinization plants, etc.

·      Buildings (Extreme Precipitation, Extreme Temperatures): Green roofs and walls, water retention gardens, porous pavements, etc.

·      Forestry (Extreme Temperatures, Fire Weather): Wild brush clearing, species diversification, transmigration of species more capable of survival, afforestation and reforestation, mangrove conservation and replanting, etc.

·      Energy (Hurricanes/Typhoons/Cyclones): Grid resilience, back-up generation and storage, etc.

·      ICT (Extreme Precipitation, Extreme Temperatures, Hurricanes/Typhoons/Cyclones): Strengthened data distributions systems, climate monitoring and data collection that is applied to inform and build community resilience such as early warning systems, relocation or social networks, etc.

·      Health (Extreme Temperatures): Treatment and monitoring for diseases that might increase due to climate change (e.g. vector-borne diseases), treatment of respiratory conditions from wildfires.

(reference Climate Bonds Initiative. (September 2019). Climate Resilience Principles. https://www.climatebonds.net/adaptation-and-resilience p. 10)

6. What policies should Congress adopt to reduce carbon pollution and other greenhouse gas emissions and maximize carbon storage in agriculture?

7. What policies should Congress adopt to help farmers, ranchers, and natural resource managers adapt to the impacts of climate change?

8. How should Congress update the laws governing management of federal lands, forests, and oceans to accelerate climate adaptation, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and maximize carbon storage? 

9. What policies should Congress adopt to reduce emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases, including methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases?

Carbon Removal

10. How can Congress accelerate development and deployment of carbon removal technology to help achieve negative emissions?

In addition to carbon removal, Congress should establish a task force to examine geoengineering options and outcomes consisting of, at a minimum, geopolitical, science, engineering, innovation, social equity and ethics experts to address the existential threats of climate change and the relative benefits and disbenefits of geoengineering as part of climate change solutions.

Resilience and Adaptation

11. What policies should Congress adopt to help communities become more resilient in response to climate change? The Select Committee welcomes all ideas on resilience and adaptation but requests comments on three specific questions:

a. What adjustments to federal disaster policies should Congress consider to reduce the risks and costs of extreme weather and other effects of climate change that can no longer be avoided?

Congress should adopt policies that create an enabling environment for disaster recovery and response contractor hiring from local marginalized communities in order to accelerate economic recovery post-disaster and decrease the current trend of wealth redistribution to the wealthy post event. (See:   Howell, J., & Elliott, J. R. (2018). As Disaster Costs Rise, So Does Inequality. Socius. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023118816795) This enabling environment relates to procurement rules, local job training programs, etc.

As noted in response to question 3, above, given the extreme household-, community- and tax- revenue loss of repetitive loss and given growing climate hazards, Congress should prioritize relocation from climate change hazards (e.g. river and coastal flooding, wildfire) making every effort to ensure it is the easiest, most dignified and most attractive option for property owners and renters to pursue. This relocation emphasis should be prioritized in fund allocations to FEMA, HUD and SBA for risk mitigation and disaster recovery.

Also as noted above, Congress should change the current emphasis of Housing and Urban Development’s funds on disaster recovery, reorienting resources to housing resilience for low and moderate income Americans.

Congress should reform the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), following the expert recommendations in Peterson, Jeffrey. (2019). A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas. Island Press.

b. How can Congress better identify and reduce climate risks for front-line communities, including ensuring that low and moderate-income populations and communities that suffer from racial discrimination can effectively grapple with climate change?

Thank you for acknowledging racial inequities in the context of climate change impacts. As described in response to question 3, Congress should prioritize creating assets, including improving elements of the social safety net, in receiving communities that will welcome retreating front-line communities.

Anticipating community retreat and before shock events, Congress should support the systematic and just evaluation of property values, considering historic disinvestment in marginalized communities. Through various potential means, including the establishment of a national land bank for property buyouts, creating public amenities in bought-out neighborhoods and creating assets in receiving communities to improve all community members’ quality of life.  

Congress, and all American leaders, should make it our mission to explicitly use the climate-crisis-driven migration of marginalized communities as an opportunity to explicitly remove racial discrimination and systemic injustice, so that current and future generations of Americans can thrive in The United States transformed into an equitable country.   See Moser, Susanne et. al. (2017). The Kresge Foundation. Rising to the Challenge, Together: A Review and Critical Assessment of the State of the US Climate Adaptation Field. https://kresge.org/content/rising-challenge-together

b. What standards and codes should Congress consider for the built environment to ensure federally-supported buildings and infrastructure are built to withstand the current and projected effects of climate change?

Congress should:

Require the fast track modernization of flood plain maps to account for current and future hazards and vulnerabilities. Carefully scrutinize local government engagement in defining new floodplain boundaries, encouraging the transfer of local knowledge of stormwater, coastal and river flood mitigation efforts onto the maps, while prioritizing risk mitigation in land use and building decisions that inspires significant climate vulnerability reduction through retroactive, current and future land use changes.    

For both federally supported and private projects, require the real estate sector to indicate the position of property within floodplains, once a land bank or other solution to compensate for plummeting home values in climate change hazard areas (see response to question 11) has been established,

As detailed in response to question one, for all policies, Congress should require that federally supported investments: understand and reduce climate change risks, create resilience benefits and do no harm to do no harm to communities beyond asset boundaries to avoid perpetuating environmental injustice.

This will ensure that American’s tax dollars are spent on climate resilience while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. For further explanation, please see Climate Bonds Initiative. (September 2019). Climate Resilience Principles. https://www.climatebonds.net/adaptation-and-resilience

Climate Information Support

12. Our understanding and response to the climate crisis has relied on U.S. climate observations, monitoring and research, including regular assessment reports such as the National Climate Assessment. What policies should Congress adopt to maintain and expand these efforts in order to support solutions to the climate crisis and provide decisionmakers – and the American people - with the information they need? Where possible, recommend the scale of investment needed to achieve results.

The National Climate Assessment is great work. Congress should use nudge tactics to ensure every federal government appointee to read it, thus triggering staffers to read the Assessment too..

International

13. The climate crisis requires a global response. U.S. leadership is critical for successful global solutions. What policies should Congress adopt to support international action on the climate crisis?

Please see the above recommendation in question 10 regarding geoengineering.

With the greatest urgency and Statecraft resources, Congress should be an active participant driving solutions that save lives and improve livelihoods at every future UNFCCC Conference of the Parties as temperatures approach and likely crest the 1.5 degree Celsius target of the Paris Agreement.

Respectfully submitted by,

Joyce E. Coffee, President

After Climate Week: Sustainable Finance for the One Percent

This Oped originally appeared in Triple Pundit: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2019/after-climate-week-sustainable-finance-one-percent/85071/

Some in the financial services industry seem to have just awakened to the realization they need to assess their risks. This shift in thinking is due in part to the growing awareness of the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosure and a grasp of its guidelines. It might also dawn on those same bright minds amongst the one percent that addressing their risks involves a flight of capital from the most vulnerable places and, thus, a knock-on effect of increasing vulnerability and disparity between rich and poor.

But not yet.

Instead, the financial industry’s top brass speaking at HSBC’s “Financing a Sustainable Future” event, part of last week’s Climate Week in New York, frequently centered on de-risking and disclosure, given the negative impacts of climate risks on banks, stock portfolios, consumer markets and real estate.

Those focusing on material loss to portfolios – rather than such loss to the world’s most vulnerable – were the European Commission’s Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), Bloomberg’s special advisor to the Chairman as well as its global head of sustainable business and finance, the head of sustainable finance at the Global Policy Initiatives Institute of International Finance, Moody’s infrastructure finance expert and the International Finance Corporations’ climate business head.

What does all this mean? It’s simple: Those facing disproportionate vulnerability to climate hazards – the global majority – will see less infrastructure investment, job access and social services. In effect, in the sustainable finance world of these big thinkers, stranded assets are ignored. And I don’t mean coal-fired power plants. When a flight of capital occurs from places facing climate hazards, what is stranded are human beings – members of our community left homeless, without jobs, without schools and without modernized infrastructure.

Last year, I asked this question: Is TCFD Guidance Exacerbating Social Inequity? And suggested that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, go further with his claims about the “tragedy of the horizon.” Other experts are acknowledging this issue. 

The private sector-led Coalition for Climate Resilience Investments launched by Willis Towers Watson and the World Economic Forum at last week's General Assembly includes an aim to provide “support for climate vulnerable geographies to attract investment and prevent capital flight as climate risks become more evident.” Further, in a paper authored by Climate Finance Advisors for UNEP-FI and the  Global Commission on Adaptation, Delivering Finance Today for the Climate-Resilient Society of Tomorrow, global finance system experts point this out:

“Identifying the financial implications of climate risks will create enormous opportunities for profitable investment by all types of investors, including both public and private finance. However, the same understanding may also trigger potential capital shifts or flight from the poorest and most vulnerable communities and countries, those most in need of investment in adaptation and resilience.”

They add: “Governments are likely to require the expansion of safety net programs for the poor and most vulnerable.”

Each of their recommendations could be reinterpreted with the aim of decreasing disproportionate risk, including, for instance:

• Accelerate and Promote Climate-Relevant Financial policies [that explicitly protect the most vulnerable].

• Develop, Adopt, and Employ Climate Risk Management Practices [that explicitly reduce risk to vulnerable populations].

• Develop and Adopt Adaptation Metrics and Standards [including benefits gained by vulnerable populations]

CFA’s findings influence the Global Commission on Adaptation report to lead with this:

“Climate change could push more than 100 million people within developing countries below the poverty line by 2030. The costs of climate change on people and the economy are clear. The toll on human life is irrefutable. The question is how will the world respond: Will we delay and pay more or plan ahead and prosper?”

I think the finance leaders speaking enthusiastically at the HSBC event have an answer to that question: They are working to ensure prosperity. Let’s plan and act on it being for the global majority, not just the one percent. 

Image credit: United Nations/Facebook

What’s New In Climate Finance? ADAPTATION! Twelve New Initiatives You Should Know

The Global Adaptation and Resilience Investment work group meeting this week alongside the UN General Assembly in New York during Climate Week provided insights into a dozen significant adaptation finance initiatives.

1.  Willis Towers Watson, partnering with the World Economic Forum and several governments, announced at the UN General Assembly the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment. The group focuses on strengthening the market for private and public-sector investment in climate resilient infrastructure, reducing climate risk by shifting the flow of investment toward climate resilient infrastructure, and supporting climate vulnerable geographies to attract investment and prevent capital flight as climate risks intensify. 

2.  Climate Bond Initiative completed its Climate Resilience Principles, which I co-authored, providing guidance for the investment sector on assessing and addressing climate risks, building climate resilience for all and doing no harm to impacted communities. 

3.  The Climate Service matured Climanomics, its subscription-based risk analytics software that quantifies financial impacts of climate changes, strengthening the market’s ability to improve an underdeveloped part of climate risk management:

4.  The Lightsmith Group raised additional funds for The Climate Resilience and Adaptation Finance & Technology Transfer Facility (CRAFT), seeking US$500 million to invest in 10-20 companies that provide resilience solutions for developing countries, paired with a technical assistance facility for market entry and capacity building.

5.  Climate Finance Advisors released Delivering Finance Today for the Climate-Resilient Society of Tomorrow in support of the Global Commission on Adaptation’s report.

6.  The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board launched the TCFD Good Practice Handbook to help organizations with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ reporting principles and requirements by offering specific examples of effective TCFD reporting.

7.  Moody’ acquired Four Twenty Seven Inc. in a move to further climate risk analytics in investment decisions. 

8.  European Bank for Reconstruction and Development issued the first ever dedicated climate resilience bond, raising US$ 700 million from a $500M issuance.

9.  The Global Environment Facility and Lightsmith Group launched the Adaptation SME Accelerator Project ASAP to build an ecosystem of small and medium-sized enterprises engaged in adaptation and climate resilience in developing countries.

10.       Rockefeller Foundation continued implementation of The Urban Resilience Fund (TURF) in part to establish a market standard for resilient infrastructure and demonstrate the value of the resilience dividend.

11.       The World Bank Group, through its Action Plan on Adaptation and Resilience voiced its intention to scale up funding to $50B by 2025, bringing adaptation and greenhouse gas mitigation finance on par with each another.

12.       Climacell launched its consumer weather ap to disrupt weather forecasting.

Onward with more money for resilience and adaptation!

Image credit:NASA

Salesforce Launches Yesteryear’s Climate Action Tool

This Oped originally appeared on Triple Pundit: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2019/salesforce-launches-yesteryears-climate-action-tool/84976/

There was plenty of climate related news last week besides the Global Climate Strike (shown above in Augsberg, Germany and discussed here). Last week, Salesforce introduced its Sustainability Cloud with an aim to “empower every business to drive impactful climate action.”

The platform has a nifty Salesforce look and feel, allowing clients to track, analyze and report reliable greenhouse gas data that offer efficiency and insights to managers and create dynamo reports and dashboards to catch the eye of the c-suite. The move is precipitated both by Salesforce’s headline sponsorship of Climate Week in New York next week, and, according to the company’s sustainability vice president Patrick Flynn, by its involvement in the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). 

But as we know, TCFD is focused on the financial impact of climate-related risks and opportunities on an organization, rather than the impact of an organization on the environment. In other words, TCFD is reflecting that businesses and stakeholders recognize the urgent issues of climate change more than ever including the risks that climate change is creating for their growth. In other words, corporations are worried about the physical impacts - both shocks and stresses - of climate change. This is an area that the Salesforce Cloud does not touch.

While I can think of dozens of carbon accounting platforms, for an industry that is old and acquisition-rich by Silicon Valley standards (check Hara, for instance, which more than a decade ago had become industry leading enough to be acquired by Verisae, which was subsequently acquired by Accruent), the resilience analytics marketplace is not so crowded and is ripe for a new entrant like Salesforce. 

A day before Salesforce’s Sustainability Cloud launch, the Climate Bonds Initiative released its Climate Resilience Principles that provide a framework for assessing climate resilience investments. Created with input from over 40 experts around the globe, the principles first aim to guide investors to understand climate risks faced by assets, activities and systems. Second, they address these risks through risk-reduction measures and third to increase the number and quality of investments that deliver resilience benefits over and above addressing identified risks.

These principles are solution to the urgent issue of climate impacts on business operations and growth. Moving beyond carbon accounting, one thing the principles rely on: the nascent risk and resilience metrics arena that Salesforce could capture and grow.

I have no doubt that Salesforce will be a force for good. With close to two hundred thousand clients, they are certain to make it easier for many more corporations to measure their carbon emissions. This captive market may be Salesforce’s disruption of the relatively mature carbon accounting marketplace.

But the real white space is for easily accessed and applied data that can help corporations assess and act on their current and future climate change hazards and vulnerabilities. Let’s hope the swift work of Salesforce’s epic workforce will not be disrupted by climate risks, such as San Francisco’s wildfire-driven poor air quality, increasing National Weather Service heat-related danger days or more frequently flooded commutes - to move ahead toward that truly newsworthy task.

Image credit: Wiki Commons

ClimateTech: A New Investment Genre for Startups Emerges

This Op Ed originally appeared on Triple Pundit https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2019/climatetech-new-investment-genre-startups-emerges/84521/

There’s HealthTech. FinTech. InsurTech, AdTech and AgTech. And biotech, of course. Is “ClimateTech” the newest emerging sector where technology-based startups are entering to combat climate change?

Given how quickly savvy entrepreneurs identify ways to transform an industry, it seems only natural that they are identifying tech-aided advances to help solve climate adaptation and resilience challenges. Activity certainly is accelerating and it will prove interesting to see if socially responsible investors take note. After all, venture capitalists may be wary since many made money-losing bets during the so-called CleanTech era in the 2000s.

So, what is ClimateTech? The Collider, a three-year-old Asheville, N.C. nonprofit dedicated to helping the world prepare, adapt and become resilient as climate change intensifies, defines this term as a “rapidly emerging industry in which data-driven products are developed to enable communities, companies, and governments to understand their risk and exposure to the effects of climate change and take action to adapt and become resilient.” (Take a look at The Collider’s infographic below.)

At least three resilience-focused ClimateTech categories can be classified. They are:  

• Energy resilience: Two years ago, according to one report, utilities had invested over $2.9 billion in distributed energy companies. Distributed generation falls into the classic CleanTech venture capital definition, and wealthy investors such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have been pouring money into the billion-dollar Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund for distributed generation and other energy tech. For instance, they have funded Sierra Energy, whose waste-to-energy gasification technologies are modular. And the Australian startup Omnicarbon provides the first artificial intelligence core smart city platform to partner with cities to achieve a sustainable, resilient and decarbonized future.

• Climate risk analytics: While investors become more sophisticated in how they harness data to select the startups most likely to thrive, there also is money to be made in investing in the analytics themselves. For example, Moody’s acquired Four Twenty Seven, Inc., making it an affiliate and giving the rating agency access to a giant database of granular climate change risk analytics. Bloomberg reasoned that the acquisition potentially signifies “the beginning of a major shift in how markets price risks related to climate change.”

• Agriculture: Sure, this could fall under AgTech, but such precision agriculture products as software management, data analytics, water efficiency and seed innovations are closely related to climate change, recruiting younger farmersand luring venture capital investors focused on agriculture, including Avrio Capital and Anterra Capital. Boston-based Indigo Agriculture, for one, develops microbial and digital technologies that improve environmental sustainability and consumer health, among other things.

While social impact investors haven’t been shy in investing in disaster recovery and big tech firms have donated sizably after extreme events, ClimateTech goes beyond do-gooding to find bottom-line benefits. While traditional CleanTech investments have slowed, these three climate resilience tech investment areas suggest there’s money to be made while combatting climate change.  

In fact, the genre is so ripe that a ClimateTech Wiki has emerged. The site offers a platform for both mitigation and adaptation/resilience technologies; give it a look and consider what climate resilience you can invest your time or treasure in.

Image credit: Hugh Han