Climate Resilience Pathways: Catalyzing private sector action
The innovations and investments businesses make can be pivotal in fortifying and transforming operations, supply chains, and communities to prepare for and adapt to climate threats.
As climate-related risks loom large over the global economy, no business remains untouched. The compounding impacts of climate change are reshaping the global business landscape and will continue to do so even with significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, demanding immediate and strategic action from the private sector.
Resilience First and Washington DC-based think-tank The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) have partnered to curate and deliver a year-long programme: Climate Resilience Foresight Series. This initiative aims to drive business action on climate resilience while enhancing organisations’ ability to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Programme Objectives:
- Help to mainstream climate considerations within businesses’ effort to improve organisational resilience.
- Strengthen a community of practice amongst the private sector.
- Provide companies with knowledge and tools to integrate climate resilience into business strategy and inform a framework for corporate climate resilience leadership.
Corporate Dialogue Series:
This expert-led series combines virtual sessions with in-person events.
We will examine climate change as a threat multiplier in a 2 and 3 degree world, and how companies can strengthen climate resilience across five organisational dimensions:
- Infrastructure and Operations
- Workforce
- Social and External Ecosystems
- Environment
- Finance
Discussions may also explore evaluating trade-offs in building resilience, identifying business opportunities from climate resilience, and how to approach internal governance to ensure climate resilience.
Expected Outcomes:
- Enhanced foresight and preparedness for climate impacts.
- Strengthened climate resilience community of practice.
- Integrated resilience strategies within organisations.
- Executive Summary or Whitepaper which organisations can use in practice to adapt and improve their resilience to climate change.
Opportunities for Attendees:
- Develop climate resilience leadership: Gain insights into emerging scenarios and apply Resilience First’s model to strengthen your organisation’s resilience.
- Collaborate and share best practices: Network with peers, businesses, academics, and policymakers to share best practices and contribute to shaping a leading corporate climate resilience framework.
- Access valuable resources: Stay informed with exclusive access to research, white papers, and key climate events.
If you are interested in contributing input to or sponsoring our Climate Resilience Programme, contact Theo Bachrach at contact@resiliencefirst.co.uk for more details.
Resilience First, Resilience Rising and C2ES have launched the Corporate Climate Resilience Pathways Initiative, which aims to empower companies to enhance their resilience and contribute to a global ecosystem of resilient business practices. As the backbone of the global economy, businesses play a pivotal role in driving forward resilience and mitigating the dire impacts of climate change. Together, we have published a new report and crafted a set of guiding principles aimed at inspiring decisive, private-sector action.
Working Principles for Corporate Climate Resilience Leadership
Together with cross-sector stakeholders, we’ve developed guiding principles that reflect how companies can demonstrate leadership in advancing resilience to the physical impacts of climate change.
Download the report and principles here
This initiative stands as an important signal to businesses, investors, and policymakers that there exist companies deeply committed to advancing climate resilience.
Building on two decades of industry experience in measuring greenhouse gas emissions and setting climate targets, the private sector has been able to compete, attract investment, and engage in policy discussions to drive decarbonisation. Similar dynamics are required to elevate business action on climate resilience, ensuring a thriving society in an uncertain future. Currently, diverse approaches to measuring the physical risks of climate change and to building resilience result in measurement and reporting inconsistencies, a lack of transparency, and missed opportunities for collaboration and collective impact across sectors.
The business community requires a new way of responding to climate shocks in order to cement its role as a driver of enhanced resilience and global stability – one that is comprehensive, inclusive, aligned, and sustainable over time.
By enabling transformations that substantially scale-up investment in climate resilience, our initiatives will lead to more resilient businesses, improve the adaptive capacity of the communities where businesses operate, and position businesses as advocates for policies that simultaneously strengthen private sector resilience while accelerating deep decarbonisation efforts.
