Equity, Climate and Corporations

Equity and the Private Sector

I’m working on a review of the U.S. adaptation field for a client – and a persistent theme keeps surfacing with the potential to change my work significantly. It’s the broken interface between equity and adaptation.  The project is raising my awareness about an issue my corporate clients seem to give little more than lip service to: the inequality of climate risk. 

Yet, I wonder if, perhaps, I just wasn’t hearing them properly. 

Of course, the development community speaks of the disproportionate risk from climate change confronting the world’s poorest people. I have written before about their plight. And the World Bank’s Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Normal report, persuasively surmises that climate change will erode progress made on reducing poverty. It is sobering that over the past 30 years, one dollar of every three spent on development has been lost as a result of climate risk,. according to USAID and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Academics have come to similar conclusions. A joint Stanford-Berkley study reveals that in a climate-changed world. global incomes could be 23 percent lower by 2100.

We know that the long-term impact of lower incomes relates to shrinking global markets and, thus, has an impact on economies and the corporate sector worldwide.

But do corporations care about inequity?  It’s a critical question since one of the key findings of this year’s World Economic Forum Global Risks Report, based on a global risk perception survey of over 1000 ‘educated elite,” is that inequality and “polarization” now rank among the top three as interconnected underlying trends influencing global risks.

I missed this finding while focusing on another pervasive trend – the importance of environmental risk – that the report demonstrates more clearly than ever. The report assesses 30 separate global risks divided into five categories: economic (blue), environmental (green), geopolitical, societal and technological. The pattern I detect is that economic risk impacts dominated earlier this century before environment risk impacts took its place more recently.

WEF’s Risk trends interconnections map illuminates that rising inequality has become the most important driver of global risks. “And the most important pairing of interconnected risks was that of unemployment and social instability,” It noted.

I put the question about corporations’ degree of care about inequality to a plenary of private sector leaders at ResCon recently and got a wide variety of responses. They ranged from “a rising tide lifts all boats” and “since the election, I’ve called a few meetings to discuss how we are helping or hurting social inequity” to “inequity is the largest challenge that cities face.”

WEF concludes that we need to “boost growth but also reform market capitalism to help to mend the increasingly pronounced fractures that can be seen in many societies.” 

Reforming market capitalism is a bold statement – more apropos of a grassroots group – but, personally, I certainly am glad to have WEF on the case and eager to continue to pursue equity actions with my clients.

As Feds Devalue Science, It’s Time To Take It to the City

This post initially appeared in Triple Pundit: http://www.triplepundit.com/2017/03/science-and-the-city/

A pivotal conversation in Chicago galvanized my career in adaptation.  A group of scientists from Washington, D.C., were visiting as part of a roadshow preceding the rewrite of the National Climate Assessment. After an hour of posturing and talking at us, they asked if there were questions.

I couldn’t help myself.  I gave them a verbal licking for assuming that we practitioners knew nothing of science – or anything really.  It shushed the room and opened the door to many excellent speaking engagements, where I often was the token practitioner on a panel of scientists.

During one such panel session, after a climate scientist wowed a room of Doctors Without Borders physicians by describing changes expected from extreme heat, vector-borne disease and extreme weather events, the first question to the scientist was: “What should we do about these risks?” The scientist responded, “I don’t know.  I make science.  You guys are the ones with the solutions.”

What?

Perhaps in this era when science seems so devalued at the federal level, we possess an exceptional opportunity to bring science to cities.  Indeed, many cities wish they had the bandwidth to increase the evaluation of evidence to shore up their decisions.

Not all scientists are averse to digging into local issues and suggesting solutions.  When I led implementation of the Chicago Climate Action Plan, I benefited from two incredible science rock stars who prepared the city’s climate risk assessment: Katherine Hayhoe and Don Wuebbles. And, of course, the New York City Panel on Climate Change is a respected and relatively well-known local scientific engagement.

So, if you’re frustrated that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations might be rolled back, recognize that local government can be a way to control private-sector environmental harms. If you’re worried that federal data and tools have been removed from the public domain, take your data and tools to a city’s public domain. If you’re unsure how you can make an impact on the world without the federal government’s support, consider all that cities have done and have the power to do.

While scientists and their supporters rearrange their packed schedules to participate in the March for Science later this spring “to support and safeguard the scientific community,” I encourage you to look up your mayor’s office and make an appointment for a chat. And I do mean your mayor. It doesn’t have to be Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel or any big-city chief executive. What about the mayor of your mom’s town?  You could return as the prodigal son or daughter.

When you secure a meeting, prepare a three-sentence overview of what you do. Not a book or even a short bio. After brief introductions, start the meeting with such questions as:

• What sort of science do you need?
• What department heads are using science in their work right now?
• How can a scientist be helpful to your work?
• What innovation are you most proud of?
• What most needs work?

Then listen. If in this first conversation you talk 15 percent of the time and listen the other 85 percent, you have succeeded.

And please don’t follow up with half a dozen peer-reviewed articles that raise complex questions and end with complex questions in tiny print. That just reminds your city friends of the gulf between your research and their practice.

Instead, suggest ways to reframe their questions, offer ideas for solutions from the literature, put them in touch with knowledgeable scientific colleagues, and create your own “support and safeguards for the scientific community” — in your actual community.

Now, proceed, scientists, to make some science in the city. You might find it invigorating.

Image credit: Pexels

Joyce Coffee, LEED AP, is president of Climate Resilience Consulting, https://www.climateresilienceconsulting.com/, working with leaders to create strategies that protect and enhance markets and livelihoods through adaptation to climate change. She also collaborates with scientists at Arizona State University on the Urban Resilience to Extremes Strategic Research Network. Previously, she worked with the University of Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiatives’ “Science Serving Society” as managing director of the Global Adaptation Initiative.  Earlier in her career, she led implementation of the Chicago Climate Action Plan @joycecoffee.

Adaptation Veteran Joyce Coffee Shares Strategic Insights

Check out this Climate Change Business Journal Interview that is part of their Executive Review and includes thoughts on the frontier for corporate adaptation and inspiration for adaptation progress. 

Moonshot Musings

We at Climate Resilience Consulting asked our network for their climate resilience moonshot – their ambitious idea and grand vision for achieving a resilient future as the Apollo program did in landing the first astronaut on the moon. The responses were inspiring for our future. I share several here to fuel your imagination and forge your impactful idea.   

From a research scientist based in North America with expertise in adaptation measurement:

Change the method for assessing investment time frames to correspond to the lifetime of the project’s impact. Integrated coastal zone management, water management, flood management and forest management project impacts may be even longer than the end of this century. Many of these projects impact markets. Yet most investment decisions are annual at best.

From a member of the UNFCCC Adaptation Committee based in Europe:

When we think of adaptation, we often focus on big events and focus on a time horizon of a decade or two. For instance, most National Adaptation Plans have a time horizon of 2030. We should look even further into the future for the many relevant slow onset climate change events – including sea level rise, loss of snow cover, loss of permafrost, loss of glaciers, desertification and ocean acidification – that have significant impacts in the long term and need to be addressed now to keep the challenges manageable.

From a City sustainability director in North America:

Use a gas tax for a federal, state or city revolving fund for resilience.  This would be a way to generate revenue, creating a pool of capital to fund “unbankable” resilience.

From a community leader bridging between people in vulnerable communities and local government in North America: 

Create a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) mechanism, Property Assessed Resilience (PAR).  Like PACE, PAR financing would stay with the building upon sale and could be shared with tenants. State and local governments could sponsor PAR financing to create jobs, promote economic development, and protect the environment through projects related to flood, heat and fire mitigation.

From a water conservation leader in North America: 

Create a Work Projects Administration-type jobs program, similar to the Depression-era program that kickstarted jobs, to address the millions of acres that need to be re-treed in the American West.  Along with increasing water security and decreasing fire risk, jobs would include dead tree removal, biomass technology creation and new tree planning.

What is your moonshot?

New Year’s Solution: Putting adaptation out of business

 My business started with an intention I set 10 years ago to gain enough knowledge, experience, moxie and network to establish a climate adaptation firm. It reminds me of the power of the self-help genre that tells us to write down our goals, create vision boards, and send our big ideas out into the universe.

So in the month of New Year’s resolutions, here’s the next big goal I’m setting for myself: In the next 10 years, put the adaptation business out of business.

My vision is this: every housing, health, water, food, transportation, energy, communications and economic development decision we make anticipates a climate-changed future.

Adaptation needs to be a part of the routine!  And, like the green building movement it needs to be not only acceptable, but expected, that every professional that makes decisions that impact our future (that’s all of us) thinks adaptation first. 

Right now, Adaptation is a movement, it’s a special attribute. It’s embraced by a minority. 

But in 10 years, we’ll define success as adaptation being intrinsic, not unique.

And with that, all of our new year’s resolutions will be easier to achieve:

We’ll be healthier

We’ll drink more and cleaner water

We’ll have more outdoor areas to exercise

We’ll put our families first

We’ll take more calculated risks

We’ll have a better quality of life…

And we’ll have a lot more reasons so smile more!

Happy New Year!

Chicago: Taking Tips from the Screwworm

This blog originally appeared on Triple Pundit.  See here. 

Given the typical irreverence of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, I’m pondering something I think he might like to know: He could be the Screwworm Mayor.

Some of you may know that the lowly screwworm threatened Southwestern cattle in the 20th century, decimating Texas ranchers’ livestock with the wasting disease it triggered.  The tenacity of those hard-scrabble ranchers in the Southwest Cattleman’s Association eradicated this invasive pest by introducing of millions of screwworm flies sterilized by radioactivity. (You with me, Rahm.) The Association contends that this was the most beneficial 20th-century program to livestock producers than any other.*

As science and policy swirls around the introduction of sterile male mosquitoes to help eliminate the global scourge of malaria in some regions, Chicago has its local version.  Here’s our story: In 1986, the mosquito Aedes albopictus – also known as the Asian tiger mosquito – arrived by way of standing water in used tires (which had come full circle from stripped rubber rings in the U.S., then via ship to Asia to be retread and home again) and bamboo.

The mosquito survived in Chicago, despite being well outside its native range, because of the urban heat island effect that increases the temperature of urban areas with lots of black, heat-trapping surfaces. (Think: tar paper roofs and asphalt roads and parking lots.)  In the meantime, while shipping rules for tires and bambooprevented the introduction of more of these pests, every year (10 generations in a mosquito’s life) some live on in Chicagoland, contributing to our mosquito population. As the climate changes, the range for this mosquito will move north.

What if Chicago established a Midwest Mosquito Infertility Association, introducing sterile males specifically for this invasive pest, thus halting that progression?

While mosquito fertility is a topic of much debate, the unique situation of Tigris mosquitos in Chicago gives us a chance to control this experiment and address two of the biggest issues in that debate: One, the population affected isn’t over an entire continent or state (making it harder to eradicate, given the scale of effort), and two, the population is not native to the area (thereby, the web of life does not depend on its existence to keep itself in balance).

Let’s give those tiger mosquitos a wrangle!

*Update:  Those sterile males may need to be called back into service.  The Washington Post reported this fall:  Screwworm outbreak in Florida deer marks first U.S. invasion of the parasite in 30 years.

What the U.S. Can Learn from the U.K. About Climate Risk

As the United States welcomes a new presidential administration, and the District of Columbia becomes what I refer to as the “Red Fed,” I find myself examining U.S. regulations and policies seeking business-friendly opportunities for revamped regulation.

I have studied the European Union’s Water Framework Directive that requires compliance by EU ascension states, and it promises exciting prospects for helping Eastern Europe’s emerging economies prioritize water efficiency as their development quickens. I also perused France’s new law under Article 173 of its “energy transition for green growth” regulation, which requires investors to report on how climate change considerations are incorporated into their portfolios.

Both hold promise as excellent examples for the U.S. In particular, I will be watching the application of Article 173 with interest.

In the meantime, the most intriguing regulation to me is the United Kingdom’s Adaptation Reporting Power (ARP). It sprang from country’s Climate Change Act of 2008, and the subsequent National Adaptation Program in 2013 reinforced it.

The ARP enables the U.K. government to require organizations (known as “reporting authorities”) that provide public services to prepare climate change adaptation reports detailing how they assess and act on the risks and opportunities from climate change. Therefore, it provides an opportunity to gather evidence on climate risk, organizational capacity and activities to build resilience.

Interestingly, early evaluations of the law note: “The ARP was a catalyst for many organizations to begin formally considering their climate change risks and adaptation responses, including at the Board and Management levels” (see the Government Report for the Adaptation Reporting Power).

Having been involved with creating laws when I worked for the city of Chicago and helped promulgate air, stormwater and invasive species ordinances, I remain a super fan of performance-based regulation versus prescriptive law.  I believe it is the lack of a prescription that galvanizes conversations at senior levels. If the law had mandated what industry must do, a smart functionary within the company would have complied.  Without that parenting, the functionary creates a variety of crazy ideas across company verticals discussed in the C-suite. How exciting!

In the case of ARP, the U.K. government has categorized its adaptation activity into seven “themes.” Among them: agriculture, forestry, water, energy and transportation infrastructure, for which industry leaders are asked to report.

In a first tranche or ARP rollout, reporting was mandatory for the identified corporations.  It now is voluntary.  While the report’s form is dictated by statutory guidance (and, smartly, includes sections related to the company’s assessed risk and opportunities from climate change and a related action plan in an Adaptation Report), the specifics of what and how industry must respond is left to the market.  This inspires healthy competition to derive solutions that mitigate more risk and seize more opportunity.

Early results of ARP, detailed in the government report Adapting to Climate Change: Ensuring Progress in Key Sectors 2013 Strategy for exercising the Adaptation Reporting Power, suggest it is helping to developing capacity to understand climate risk issues in key infrastructure sectors. Notably, it also helped the U.K. government identify specific areas of research opportunity to share with the scientific community.

The government will review the law every five years, primarily to ensure that the voluntary reporting protocol is producing results and a shift to mandatory reporting is not required.

As the U.S. transitions to a new era of federal governance, the U.K. ARP should top our list for the infrastructure and agricultural agendas.

This post originally appeared on Triple Pundit.

How Health, Climate Change, and Social Justice Intersect in Chicago

By Joyce Coffee and Elena Grossman

Before Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fame exploded with “Hamilton,” he composed and won a Tony for “In the Heights,” in which the song “Black Out” is performed to end Act 1. The song is about the power going out during a heat wave in an immigrant community in Queens, New York, and the chaos that ensues.

In it, the lyrics “we are powerless” are sung by the community to mean more than just being without electricity. It also sums up how many people feel about their ability to withstand the stress and strain of extreme weather.

Last month, hundreds of leaders from around the world wrapped up the annual conference of the parties about climate change, COP22, held in Marrakesh, Morocco.  They pledged to press ahead with implementation of the Paris Agreement to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change.  But you need not travel far to see what the impacts of a future change in climate could mean.

In fact, Chicago offers a great case to illuminate the inequity of weather impacts on low-income neighborhoods and communities of color -– an injustice that will only intensify as the climate shifts to more heat and more floods in the region.

The ultimate illustration is a tragedy that Chicago is known for around the world: more than 700 deaths from the 1995 heat wave.  The majority of those who lost their lives were African American, and nearly all lived in communities considered below the poverty line.

But climate change isn’t just about hotter days, heat-related illnesses and deaths.  As temperatures rise, they trigger and exacerbate other health issues, such as asthma. Again, available data show the clear disparities of asthma rates among children in poorer Chicago neighborhoods.

The other impending climate impact is more precipitation — which, here in Chicago, always poses the threat of flooding.  Mold growth in flooded homes can trigger asthma attacks and allergies, and dealing with a flooded home can cause psychological, emotional and financial stress.

“Water in Basement, WIB” is the lingo for a flooded basement from storm and sewer water backups during extreme precipitation events. WIB complaints are overall higher in poorer Chicago regions. A more updated map of approved claims from private insurance, the National Flood Insurance Program, FEMA, and the Small Business Administration (SBA) Disaster Relief highlights the same neighborhoods being heavily affected by urban flooding.

Direct causation can’t be concluded here because WIB complaints are reported to the city, and many homeowners are reluctant to report flooded basements because they fear it will reduce their property value.

Leaders who gathered in Marrakesh spent two weeks talking about how impoverished communities around the world face a disproportionately higher risk to the physical and health impacts of climate change.  This includes the disadvantaged communities in Chicago. The same communities of color and communities with high rates of poverty who face climate impacts today are many of the same with high heat-related deaths in 1995, asthma prevalence, number of asthma-related emergency department visits, and number of flooded basements and flood-related insurance claims.

This underscores the need to demand and allocate more resources to communities that face mounting risks of the extreme heat, worsening air quality, and flooding that climate change will bring.  We need to work together to ensure an equitable reduction of climate change vulnerability in Chicago.

Co-authored by Joyce Coffee, President, Climate Resilience Consulting and Elena Grossman, MPH, BRACE-Illinois Project Manager, University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health.

This article originally appeared on Triple Pundit

Vanguard Adaptation Leader: U.S. Department of Defense

The community of adaptation leaders should, indeed must, bolster its essential link with the national security apparatus.  Three reports suggest why:

1.     The Department of Defense has created a Roadmap (2014) with an objective to collaborate with stakeholders, including the adaptation community. Specifically, it says it seeks to promote deliberate collaboration with stakeholders across the Department and with other Federal, State, local, tribal and international agencies and oorganizations in addressing climate change considerations.

The report maintains that climate change “is a long-term trend, but with wise planning and risk mitigation now, we can reduce adverse impacts downrange.”  The authors’ use of the term “downrange” is important. While it’s not necessarily the future, it’s a target that may be farther away and, therefore, requires careful preparation to nail. 

The report concludes: “By taking a proactive, flexible approach to assessment, analysis, and adaptation, the Defense Department will keep pace with a changing climate, minimize its impacts on our missions, and continue to protect our national security.”

2.     In 2015, the DOD released another report on the national implications of climate change that notes the need to adapt military facilities – many located along the coasts and/or in arid environments – and to develop adaptation strategies to diffuse risks in developing countries.

3.     The White House in September released a Statement and a National Security document about integrating climate change into national security. But, in a missed opportunity, the documents do not mention adaptation.

As panel submission deadlines loom for the biannual National Adaptation Forum, I hope its steering committee has invited the DOD to speak at the May 2017 forum.  The Defense Department is at the frontline in its adaptation leadership. We should try to leapfrog one another, helping to inform adaptation strategies for communities of stakeholders and to enhance research to action.

Stranded Assets: Preventing the Next Era of Climate Change

I first heard the term “stranded assets” at a Bloomberg event in New York City during Climate Week 2014.  For me, the term conjured up images of homeowners and their dogs waiting atop roofs to be rescued during Hurricane Katrina.  Yet that didn’t seem right for the context of the discussion, and a quick Google search set me straight: They were talking about coal-fired power plants that would be worth nada on Wall Street should a carbon tax change the market.  (That was almost two years before Peabody Coal went bankrupt.)

Two years later at Climate Week NYC 2016’s Sustainable Investment Forum, stranded assets still seems to mean the same thing to investors – coal – and they mull it increasingly. The industry understands the term as holdings that need to be written down before the end of their expected life span. 

But BlackRock is an early leader in unveiling it's future meaning. Read more here at my oped published in Triple Pundit:

http://www.triplepundit.com/2016/10/stranded-assets-preventing-next-era-climate-change/

Financing Projects that Address the Physical Risks from Climate Change

I asked the Intentional Endowment Forum, run by a former boss of mine Dr. Tony Cortese, if they were aware of adaptation finance, that is, finance that addresses the physical risks of climate change.

I thought the response from Dr. Maximilian Horster a Partner at south pole group focused on the financial industry was particularly succinct, recapping what those of us in the adaptation finance investigation space are discovering. 

He writes:

“Currently, the investor focus is indeed mostly on transition risk: legislation, regulation, behavioral change, carbon pricing etc and the subsequent effects of asset stranding potential, energy transition and the like. Keep in mind that also here, we only see the beginning of actual stress tests among a – still small – group of investors and for only a few asset classes. Although the uptake is increasing rapidly, we are far from having established consistent standards, benchmarks or best practices.

For physical risks, we are even further away from an investor understanding. Often, data availability on physical climate risk is cited as the big hurdle but that is only half the story: Data on the likelihood of climate related extreme weather events (flooding, droughts etc) exist for most geographies and is used by insurance companies to price liabilities. However, it is not yet utilized for asset management, not even by that very same insurance firms that produce this data.  

What is missing is a mapping of these physical risks to the actual assets (such as production facilities), but also supply chain locations and end markets. We are developing this right now, but interestingly, investor interest is much less than one would think. Main reason is that - according to climate science - the full swing of physical risks are still 15-20 years away and therefore beyond most investors’ investment horizon (“tragedy of the horizons”).

Because of this, we see very few investments into climate change adaptation by mainstream investors. The exceptions are of course the multi-lateral funds under the UNFCCC and other outfits that have a strong focus on climate change adaptation, mainly for rural population and agriculture in developing countries since some time:http://www.climatefundsupdate.org/themes/adaptation.”

Laurels for Credit Rating Agencies:Levers of Change in the Climate Adaptation Market

The voices and actions of the financial industry are critical to change capital market policy and practice change. That’s why I’m thrilled credit rating agencies are seizing their role as levers of change in the adaptation market. Consider these three examples of their newfound interest:

1. Standard & Poor’s explicitly weighs adaptation in its new Proposed Green Bond evaluation tool.

2. S&P proposes an Environmental Social and Governance risk exposure assessment.

3. In its proposed ESG assessment tool, S&P acknowledges the differences in the time horizon of risk. 

Read my oped published in Triple Pundit for more insights: http://www.triplepundit.com/2016/10/laurels-credit-raters-levers-change-climate-adaptation-market/

Finding Cash in the Couch Cushions for Climate Adaptation

I’m immersed in a fascinating variety of projects for the Rockefeller Foundation and Regional Plan Association and all include a similar question about how to finance urban resilience. That got me wondering: What well-known financing solutions could help us to finance more adaptation today?

Here are seven:

1. Climate Reinvestment Act: In the post-housing bust period, Community Reinvestment Act funds have shifted to financing schools and the like from funding low-income housing. This has been a shift for banks that used to achieve their CRA goals within their general market share in low-value mortgages. So, what if banks to meet the credit needs of the communities where they operate used CRA investments for resilience that improved communities, such as green infrastructure to absorb stormwater and prevent flooding? Or how about LaSalle Bank, which a decade ago paid for tree planting along the Chicago marathon route counter urban heat island and runner’s heat stress.

2. General Obligation Bonds:  Cities are reluctant to assume more debt, worried especially about damaging their credit ratings. Yet, deferred maintenance, presumably triggered partly by insufficient bonds to pay for infrastructure improvements, means that much of the country’s infrastructure earns a dismal grade of D+ from the Society of Civil Engineers. Credit raters, though, are rational actors and more of them are mindful of resilience – vis-a-vis Standard &Poor’s recent reports on the impact of climate risk on sovereigns and corporations – and it’s a great time to borrow with interest rates low and investors seeking to diversify from stocks in a bull market. 

3. Green Banks: In the last decade, a healthy proliferation of Green Banks – public or quasi-public financing institutions that provide low-cost, long-term financing support to clean, low-carbon projects – has erupted worldwide. In the United States, their charters drawn up by state legislatures, all speak to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. This made sense 10 years ago when investors needed to grasp climate resilience. But today, adaptation is where the discussion of efficient clean energy was back then – a murky area with few examples and fewer investors.

4 & 5: With tools such as green bonds and property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs, Green Banks are well placed to pivot to adaptation. It opens opportunities for green bonds that fund resilience and property-assessed resilience loans that travel with a property’s mortgage.

6. Infrastructure Bank: Hillary Clinton’s infrastructure plan proposes an infrastructure bank and promises that federal infrastructure investments would be resilient to both current and future climate risks.  Ensuring that federal funds for infrastructure go only to climate-resilient projects is a smart idea. Any taxpayer dollars for our roads, rail and water infrastructure should not be misspent on old-fashioned pre-climate change designs. Resilient infrastructure is a foundation that will not crumble, flood, catch fire, buckle or otherwise fail us due to the extremes of climate change.

7. Tourist Fees:  After 9/11, the U.S. instituted a $10 airline security fee for each round-trip ticket. In cities with very big resilience bills and big visitor populations such as New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, a resilience fee could help pay for a much more pleasant stay. 

What are your ideas for financing resilience?  Let us know! 

Financing Adaptation: The White House and The Global Adaptation & Resilience Work Group Exchange Ideas

At a White House roundtable on resilience investment with the Global Adaptation and Resilience work group and the Council on Environmental Quality last month, experts from government and the financial sector debated what the financial products are that will help people plan for the long term.

An optimistic bunch, there was general consensus that incentives are lining up – climate adaptation is smart business.

But do finance and policy advisors have the information they need to make decisions in the long-term interests of their shareholders and the public?

Three key questions emerged from the conversation, along with several sub issues: 

First, are there maps of climate risk to analyze, adaptation tools that resolve climate risk, and a known set of adaptation projects to use as best practice and to seed the resilience investment pipeline? Several insurance leaders noted that there are existing vectors of risk that the industry uses that are helpful for pricing climate risk. 

At the same time, part of making the environment for investment stable is having a clear awareness of the measure of progress the investment will cause. An initial step is to “weatherize data” showing what the impact of weather is on parts of the economy.  With these short term impacts explained, then it is important to build measurement models to extrapolate into the future.  The customization of predictive risk data is the next frontier in adaptation investments. 

These tools will be most useful when delivered along with narratives about best practice.  Several finance-industry adaptation project examples were shared, including a Nature Conservancy project that is allowing the Government of the Seychelles to swap some of its debt for climate adaptation projects and a Swiss Re project offering small holder crop insurance against drought and floods in Ethiopia.

Second, should the investment industry be focused just on increasing resilient investments – that is investments focused on adaptation projects – or should they also care about increasing the resilience of projects, that is the multi-trillion dollars of investments funded globally?  The focus of these investment leaders was generally on the latter.

Especially since insurance experts use a back-of-the-envelope calculation that basic productivity for a business needs to be restored within 2 weeks (as long as a typical business can stay afloat with no revenue) and full productivity in three months (which is tied to a timeline of when insurance pays for unrecoverable losses), it seems the resilience of all projects is imperative for the markets.  Understanding the local context of the physical changes caused by climate change for market sectors is complex, and private sector leaders are focused not just on the physical risks from climate changes, but also the social risks to their workforce and markets. These human factors are often related not just to the company, but also the communities within which they do business.  Thus, resilience is today’s problem of the commons. Of course, another major insurance issue is that only about 30% of extreme risk loss is insured around the world. 

Third, what is the roles for the US Government in increasing the finance industry’s engagement with resilience?  While it was acknowledged that resilience is generally a shareholder issue, (vs. national security which is a government issue), and the private sector owns and operate a significant majority of infrastructure in the world, it was agreed there is a significant role for government. For instance, participants recommended that climate science risk be baked into codes and standards to motivate the private sector, since the general rule of thumb is that one dollar spent in risk mitigation saves four dollars in the future on recovery.

But the major issue is that the US government is the insurer of last resort, based on the Stafford Act, allowing developers to operate with the knowledge that if you invest now without paying any premium for future risk mitigation, the federal government (in the form of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency) will ultimately pay for damages incurred that are beyond the capacity of the private insurance market. Repealing the Stafford Act would transform the industry’s viewpoint on climate risk. 

Another recommendation for the government was to promulgate and enforce disclosure requirements for both acute and chronic types of risks.  Tax incentives or rebates could help ensure compliance with a Securities and Exchange Commission asset level climate risk disclosure.  Ultimately, the group agreed that the private sector takes on risks that it wants to take on, designing, building and repairing – all crucial to resilience.  But the private sector is not going to choose to invest in  what they cannot control - regulatory change. 

This is a crucial role for the US Government. Finance leaders will always innovate to get the most out of the market, and policy leaders can help make sure these decisions are in the long-term interests of the public with regulatory innovation.

Launched! 3 Pivotal Woman Pave the Path for a New Consulting Firm

A decade ago, working with my game-changing professional coach Brooke Vuckovick (whose practice now is exclusive to senior executives), I set a goal of establishing a consulting firm.  At the time, with a newborn son and rewarding job leading the City of Chicago’s climate action plan, that idea seemed a bit far-fetched. 

But, I’m thrilled to introduce Climate Resilience Consulting. It turns out one can chart a career path to gain experience and insights that provide authentic and useful counsel to clients. 

Two other women were critical to my move, each at key moments in my journey.  With Brooke’s sage advice and several more years of experience innovating climate mitigation, adaptation, air quality and storm water management efforts for the City of Chicago, I headed to the private sector, counseling Fortune 500 clients on how to make their corporate social responsibility efforts substantive for PR giant Edelman’s “Business + Social Purpose” practice. 

My boss, Jane Madden, a mentor of remarkable knowledge and insights, asked me to blog.  She maintained that I had a distinctive perspective on the world, that adaptation was new and controversial and that I should share my voice.  As those of you who blog know, the discipline of writing and the pressure to get even 200 words on paper several times a month, provides a great excuse for clarifying one’s thinking and keeping a record of the evolution of ideas and knowledge.  The Climate Adaptation Exchange, which celebrates five years in August, helped me stay focused on adaptation even as my day-to-day work revolved mostly around sustainability.

After several years at Edelman counseling dozens of clients from Humana to the Chicago Botanic Garden to PricewaterhouseCoopers, I was recruited to help establish the Global Adaptation Index (now the Global Adaptation Initiative) at the University of Notre Dame.  Early in my quest to bring ND-GAIN to the next levels of impact and effectiveness, I met Emilie Mazzacurati, president and founder of the successful and esteemed Four Twenty Seven climate consultancy.  She made it clear that you can serve clients of every ilk, helping them to define and meet their adaptation needs, employing remarkable talent to serve market needs, and creating a robust company. 

Today, after three years at ND-GAIN, the market appears riper than ever. Of course, the Paris Climate Agreement invites nations, companies and cities to make adaptation a goal of their climate efforts. And the sustainable development goals place a clear priority on adaptation.

But more impressive, because it steps from the realm of bureaucracy to that of market leadership, The World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Perception Survey unveils the failure of climate mitigation and adaptation as the No. 1 risk in terms of impact. 

Further, the Global Adaptation Resilience Initiative based on Wall Street with leadership from dozens of financiers looking for bankable adaptation projects suggests that adaptation has moved from sustainability objective to market niche.  It seems likely that very soon, the perceived risk of the growing threat of climate change, the bureaucracy of governments in the world committing to climate action and the anticipation of Wall Street will generate the foundation required for companies to embark on their adaptation journey.   I am here to help them. 

What’s Your Climate Resilience Moon Shot?

At a recent “Challenges and Opportunities of Private Sector Climate Resilience” conference convened by the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Interamerican Development Bank in Cartagena, Colombia, I moderated a panel of three of the world’s resilience experts and posed this clinching question: What is your resilience moon shot.

Their answers proved to be as diverse as their backgrounds – and the rest of us better be ready to implement them:

·      Emilie Mazzacurati, founder and CEO of the award-winning Four Twenty Seven climate consultancy (one of two firms worldwide exclusively adaptation-focused), responded in keeping with her leading-edge analysis, research and strategy work. Her resilience moon shot? A climate adaptation unit. “We need a measure of resilience that allows the market to see progress over time,” she maintained.

·      Eric Kaufman, indefatigable head of the Natural Resilience Foundation to establish financing mechanisms for public resilience projects such as Staten Island’s New York Wheel project, offered: densification of Orlando with all of Southern Florida’s residents safely located on higher ground and the rest of the land-turned-to-sea becoming a glorious water park.

·      Dale Sands, senior vice president and Global Director, Metro and Adaptation Services for engineering giant AECOM and lead of such game-changing projects as the UN Disaster Reduction Department (UNISDR), favors a risk-sharing mechanism for small businesses. It would be based on insights gleaned from AECOM’s survey of 208 New Orleans small businesses. 

I will reveal my climate adaptation moon shot as I launch Climate Resilience, a consulting firm helping corporate and local government leaders to incorporate climate adaptation into their value chains. 

What’s your resilience moon shot?

Hi, Leaders! It’s Adaptation Time!

I treated myself to two days of conferencing last week in my own city at the Chicago Forum on Global Cities, which focused on climate and other global challenges. Co-hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Financial Times, the event featured luminaries from 30 countries.  

The FT’s beautiful salmon-colored newsprint caught my eye both days, first with its special city supplement proclaiming in its cover article: “This would mean that, by the second half of the present century, some big cities could be as much as 10C hotter than their surrounding hinterlands….Many large cities are situated in low-lying coastal areas, leaving them badly exposed to the dangers of flooding that come with rising sea levels and storm surges.” And next with its front page showing an alarming image of central Paris under water. 

Despite the respected business publication’s stark climate prognosis, none of the panelists addressed climate adaptation and none responded to a question posed to the closing full plenary: “Climate Change and Global Cities,” https://www.chicagoforum.org/agenda/closing-lunch-climate-change-and-global-cities: “What role do cities play in increasing adaptive capacity to withstand climate change stresses and shocks?” However, when pressed by the FT moderator, the EU’s former commissioner for climate action only noted, “In Dakha Bangladesh, all they care about is adaptation, not mitigation.”

Tubingen, Germany, Mayor Boris Palmer, an erudite crowd-pleaser, proclaimed:  “It cannot be about adaptation, it must be about mitigation.”  He wisely noted that his success reflects never tiring of explaining the virtue of climate action at a level his audience understands. 

So here goes, an explanation geared to the panelists on the Global Threats to the Global City, https://www.chicagoforum.org/agenda/plenary-global-threats-global-city  (which did not mention climate change once in 75 minutes).

Abu Dhabi: https://www.ead.ae/Documents/RESEARCHERS/Climate%20change%20impacts%20-%20Eng.pdf Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi

The potential exposure of the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi, in particular, to the impact of sea level rises is quite significant, given its current socioeconomic conditions in coastal areas.  In addition to the effects of such rises on social and economic structures, the vulnerability of coastal ecosystems is also of particular concern.

Chicago https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/state-reports/climate/Illinois%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

In the 2011 winter, Chicago incurred over $1.8 billion in losses and 36 deaths when a blizzard dumped two feet of snow on the city. In 2012, Illinois had the second-highest mortality (32 deaths) due to heat nationwide.  

London: http://climatelondon.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/CCRA-London.pdf

Twenty-nine percent of bus stations and 26 percent of underground stations are at risk of flooding, along with 14 percent of schools and 27 percent of police stations. The number of days per year when overheating could occur is projected to rise from 18 to between 22-51 days by the 2020s (central estimate is 33 days).

Singapore: https://www.nccs.gov.sg/climate-change-and-singapore/national-circumstances/impact-climate-change-singapore

From 1972 to 2014, the annual mean temperature increased from 26.6°C to 27.7°C. The mean sea level in the Straits of Singapore also has increased at the rate of 1.2mm-to-1.7mm per year in the period 1975 to 2009. 

Rainfall has intensified in recent years. Singapore's Second National Climate Change Study found a general uptrend in annual average rainfall from 2192mm in 1980 to 2727mm in 2014.

Washington, DC https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/state-reports/climate/district_of_columbia_fact_sheet.pdf

In 2012, damages from Hurricane Sandy required over $3 million in FEMA public assistance grants to rebuild and recover in the District of Columbia. The previous year, D.C. suffered damages from Hurricane Irene that required over $2.4 million in FEMA public assistance grants to rebuild and recover.

From Abu Dabhi to Washington, cities have shown a sincere desire to address climate change by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.  That’s more important than ever, and it must be accompanied by a sincere desire to learn about and employ climate adaptation. Why? Because every $1 invested in adaptation avoids $4 in future losses.

Tubingen Mayor Palmer, as a member of the Germany Green Party (which puts climate change at the center of all policy considerations, including environmental policy and safety and social aspects), has the splendid chance to again demonstrate leadership by turning his refusal to embrace climate adaptation into an opportunity to embrace it and all collateral benefits for his constituents.  

Why Development should focus on Climate Adaptation

This Op Ed originally appeared on May 4, 2016 http://ensia.com/voices/why-development-should-focus-on-climate-adaptation/

Just as climate change disproportionately affects the poor,

so must efforts to reduce its toll.

One of the biggest threats to a thriving world today is that the world’s poorest people face disproportionate risk from climate change. The World Bank’s Turn Down the Heat report notes that climate change threatens to erode progress made on reducing poverty, while a Stanford studyreveals that global incomes for 2100 could be 23 percent lower than they would be in a world without climate change. While it is sobering that over the past 30 years one dollar out of every three spent on development has been lost as a result of climate risk, the long-term impact of lower incomes relates to shrinking global markets and thus has impact on economies around the world.

For leaders working on development issues in least-developed and lower-income countries, these trends call for more resources to support climate adaptation, such as improving water security through conservation and modernizing infrastructure to withstand extreme storms.

A trifecta of global influence has identified adaptation as a key climate action strategy for national and local governments, the private sector, and donors: the Paris Climate Agreement, which mentions adaptation more frequently than mitigation; the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, which prioritize adaptation; and Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, which calls out the imbalance between the global north and south in a climate-changed world.

In an average year, climate change affects more than one out of five people. Scientists from the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, a climate adaptation think tank I lead at the University of Notre Dame, have calculated that people living in the least-developed countries have 10 times greater chance of being affected by a climate disaster than those in wealthy countries. They also have calculated that it will take more than 100 years for lower-income countries to reach upper-income countries’ current level of capacity to adapt to changes in climate.

Climate change disproportionately harms the poor in wealthy countries, too.

Not only that, theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that while climate change heavily burdens the poor, it also worsens preexisting poverty by exacerbating the effects of other poverty causes, such as loss or erosion of physical and financial assets, including land, housing and jobs. Take Africa as an example: In 2015 alone, the continent faced about 50 events that were influenced by climate change — such as droughts, wildfires, landslides, extreme temperatures and floods — as calculated by the International Disaster Database at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. These events affected more than 20 million people, killed 1,139 and created damages amounting to more than US$2.5 billion. Such events and changes to historical trends are likely to worsen the symptoms of poverty. One likely outcome is decreased production of staple foods in many of the poorest regions — by up to 50 percent by 2020 in some African countries — increasing malnutrition and undernutrition, which currently cause 3.1 million deaths in children under five every year around the world.

Climate change disproportionately harms the poor in wealthy countries, too. Superstorm Sandy was one of the most expensive extreme weather events in history, costing corporations and governments more than US$40 billion. According to a report by Rutgers University, although registration for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance by ALICE households (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, which means they are above the poverty line but still not financially stable) exceeded registrations by non-ALICE households by 13,000, FEMA provided US$61 million more to non-ALICE households. Of the homeowners who applied for assistance, only 10 percent of ALICE applicants had received relief by February 2013 as opposed to 26 percent of all household owner applicants. Even after this relief, disparities remain. While ALICE households received some other help — through public assistance, private insurance and nonprofits — as a group they’re still left with $2.2 billion worth of residential damage and lost income that’s likely to stay unrelieved.

With hazards and vulnerabilities in mind, leaders can create strategies that increase adaptive capacities, especially for those most sensitive to climate hazards, including the world’s poorest citizens.

Climate adaptation requires several basic steps. First, leaders in government, the private sector and philanthropy should examine the relative hazards based on climate models for areas relevant to their work. Then they should identify adaptive capacities that are lacking and creating the greatest risk based on those exposures. ND-GAIN can help, identifying which countries are most prepared — including resource constraints — to handle and adapt to global challenges brought about by climate disruption. Other helpful resources include the World Economic Forum’sGlobal Competitiveness Report, an assessment of the economic drivers of countries’ productivity and wealth, which helps determine viable markets for corporate investment in projects in other countries, and the World Resources Institute’sAqueduct, which identifies water risks around the world.

With hazards and vulnerabilities in mind, leaders can create strategies that increase adaptive capacities, especially for those most sensitive to climate hazards, including the world’s poorest citizens. Increasing access to electricity, water and sanitation and improving community health-care options are further examples of the dozens of adaptation actions available. Quickly, leaders will see that not only are there parts of their current efforts they can claim are adaptation — which will burnish their brand and inspire further effort — but there are numerous collateral benefits to adaptation: lifting more out of poverty, strengthening economies, preventing civil conflict, buttressing food security, protecting natural resources and ensuring a brighter future for generations to come.