Feature
ENVIRONMENT
Tilt to green For some, the global pandemic underlines the importance of acting quickly to avoid the worst impacts of another major pending worldwide catastrophe – climate change BY MARTIN MASSEY
W
hile the COVID-19 crisis is rightly taking all our attention now, we must not lose focus of the need to address climate change, a catastrophe risk management problem on a planetary scale. As risk managers there is an expectation from key stakeholders including regulators that existing risk management frameworks will need to address risks from climate change and therefore organisations will need to enhance their frameworks and risk maturity from identifying to reporting climate change risks to boards in supporting strategic decision-making. This is both a major challenge and big opportunity for risk managers. Climate change is unlike any other environmental problem and any other public policy problem and is underpinned by a combination of four unique issues: global, long-term, potentially irreversible and uncertain. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic provides us with an indication of what a fully fledged climate crisis could entail. Experts have been warning about these threats for years and indicate that the world at large is generally ill-prepared to deal with either. What has been encouraging is how scientists and health professionals have been collaborating and reinventing how they work. Integration of scientific knowledge into risk management is also crucial to building resilience to climate risk. The impact of climate change also poses a financial
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Risk managers, through collaboration with a range of stakeholders, will need to play an increasing role in supporting organisations in identifying, assessing and managing climate-related risk and opportunities
Enterprise Risk
