London Climate Action Week is over for another year.
The annual festival of climate action is now a firm fixture on the global climate action agenda, harnessing the power of the people, ideas and communities in London to find solutions to climate change.
We were pleased to see resilience continue to be recognised in the annual programme of climate events with resilience being a theme for this year.
Across the week, Resilience First and our members took part in and hosted events on how the private sector can be a leader and collaborate with others on building systemic resilience to the impacts of climate change.
Here we present a recap of some of the highlights of the week.
Private Sector Innovation
As the largest business network in the UN-backed Race to Resilience, we were delighted to take part in the High Level Champion for Climate Action’s (‘Climate Champions’), headline event on ‘ ‘Innovating for Change: Unleashing Private Sector Leadership for Climate Solutions for All’.
There is a growing number of case studies from the private sector on innovating business operations to mitigate and build resilience to the impacts of climate change. This includes hard to abate sectors like cement and concrete.
One thing that came up across examples heard in the room was the importance of executive leadership in getting action underway. With competing business priorities, it will take firm commitment from the executive level to ensure innovations needed to build resilience are delivered.
There is also greater recognition and embrace from the annual COP on how business can support their ambitions. We were therefore delighted to hear from COP29 High Level Champion for Climate Action, Nigar Arpadarai, on their private sector agenda for this COP, including supporting small and medium sized businesses to take action on climate change.
Closing out the main plenary, the CEO of Climate KIC, Dr Kirsten Dunlop, made a clear-eyed and impassioned case for investing in resilience now rather than pay exponentially more later.
Building the resilience of London
Resilience First were delighted to host two climate action leaders at our headline event on Tuesday, ‘Building a climate resilient city’.
Arup’s Global Director for Sustainable Development, Jo da Silva, and Chair of the London Climate Resilience Review, Emma Howard Boyd, led an insight packed conversation with our members, focusing on how business can lead and collaborate with others to build systemic resilience in cities.
The final London Climate Resilience Review is due to be released soon and we will continue to work with our members through our climate resilience programme to implement it’s recommendations.
Building a Resilience Coalition
Resilience First member, PWC, hosted the a World Business Council for Sustainable Development convened session which brought together Non-Governmental Organisations working to scale resilience knowledge and practise.
Resilience First will be working with organisations present to continue the work of building a private sector supported movement for climate resilience as we have seen successfully built for mitigation.
Operation Helios
The Greater London Authority’s London Resilience Unit delivered a day-long extreme heat scenario exercise, Operation Helios, to simulate a city-wide response to an multi-day extreme heat event, as is likely to occur within the next few years.
Alongside our members, including National Grid and UK Power Networks, Resilience First joined essential service providers like the London Fire Brigade, the NHS, the Met Office, Borough Council’s and representatives from London’s cultural and business industries for a day to test responses to such an event.
Resilience First will be running it’s own business sector version of the event in September and look forward to continuing to work with the Greater London Authority on implementing the lessons learnt from Operation Helios.
Resilience First’s Climate Resilience Programme
The growth in sessions on climate resilience underscores the growing awareness of climate resilience as a critical challenge to business.
Resilience First will be continuing our climate resilience programme with members in partners in the run up to and at COP29.
If you’re interested in learning more or taking part in the Operation Helios business sector session, please get in touch: contact@resiliencefirst.org
