Geneva, 18 September 2019: Today, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) launched a new report entitled Business Climate Resilience – thriving through the transformation. The report provides a guide for business to build resilience by developing enhanced adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change, to better manage associated risks and seize opportunities. The report highlights practical steps that businesses can take to enhance climate resilience. It presents a direct call to action for policymakers to deliver clear leadership and strong collaborations to address the urgency of the climate emergency.
The climate emergency is no longer merely a risk – it is a present-day reality. With the increasing rate of climate impacts being felt across the world, there is an urgent need for governments private sector to take bold climate action. There is a critical necessity to reduce emissions drastically and to make the transition to a net-zero emissions world that is aligned with the 1.5°C scenario of the Paris Agreement, as clearly indicated by the 2018 IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C.
Published a shortly after the landmark report by the Global Commission on Adaptation, WBCSD’s report brings together important global developments and latest thinking on climate adaptation and resilience, with particular focus on private sector climate resilience. It builds on the need for businesses to prepare for both the physical risks that are associated with climate change, as well as the associated transitional risks on the path towards a net-zero economy.
Successful companies will be those that are able to adapt to and thrive through this transformation.
While we must continue to implement every possible effort to limit global warming and reduce emissions at the proper speed and scale, we need to focus on adapting to the changes that are already here, while preparing simultaneously for the significant environmental regulatory changes that are likely to emerge in the near future.
- Sunny Verghese, Co-founder and CEO of Olam, and Chair of WBCSD who authored the foreword of the report
This report is a call to action addressed to policymakers and business to double down their efforts on building resilience to climate change. It is a call to action to strengthen win-win collaboration. It is only by working together that we can adapt and increase our resilience to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.
- Peter Bakker, President and CEO of WBCSD
WBCSD will be working to amplify the key messages from the report at UN Climate Week and in the lead up to and during COP25, with the aim of triggering improved climate action from both business and governments to build climate resilience and accelerate ambitious climate action.
The ‘Business Climate Resilience: Thriving Through the Transformation’ report is available online here.
Please contact Karl Vella at Vella@wbcsd.org for further inquiries.