Global action on climate adaptation
This article originally appeared on the CharteredBanker.com blog at https://www.charteredbanker.com/resource_listing/cpd-resources/global-action-on-climate-adaptation.html
Road surfaces that don’t melt during hot summers and drought-resistant seeds are the kind of solutions needed as the world adapts to climate change, according to the Global Commission on Adaptation.
The Commission, which is backed by more than 20 countries, including the UK, Germany and China, is running a Year of Action ahead of its Climate Adaption Summit in the Netherlands in October 2020.
Patrick Verkooijen, CEO, the Global Center on Adaptation, and Co-managing Partner of the Global Commission on Adaptation, said the initiative was about “implementing real solutions around the world which show that adaptation is not just the right thing to do but the smart thing to do.”
“Adaptation not only has economic benefits, but it is also essential if we are to avoid climate apartheid — a world in which the wealthy pay to escape from the worst impacts of climate change, while the poor are left to suffer,” Verkooijen added
International support
More than 75 governments, institutions, civil society organisations, and private sector players are helping to advance eight ‘Action Tracks’. These are focused on: finance and investment, food security and agriculture, nature-based solutions, water, cities, locally-led action, infrastructure, and preventing disasters.
As part of the finance and investment stream, the private-sector led Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment has been launched by London-based insurance broker and advisory business Willis Towers Watson in partnership with the governments of the UK and Jamaica, the Global Commission on Adaptation and the World Economic Forum.
It will focus on developing data and analytical tools to better understand the risks posed by climate change and to align investment flows towards infrastructure capable of withstanding a changing climate.
Resilient infrastructure
John Haley, CEO of Willis Towers Watson, said: “Pricing the risks posed by climate change will create opportunities to build a network of resilient infrastructure in high, medium and low-income countries, enabling us to better prevent future human and financial disasters.”
A report on climate resilient infrastructure from the OECD lists a range of impacts to infrastructure from temperature changes, rising sea levels, changing rainfall patterns and storms. These include melting road surfaces and buckling railway lines; damage to bridges; port and airport disruption and disruption of energy supply due to flooding.
The Global Commission on Adaptation is based in the Netherlands and led by Ban Ki-moon, 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of the World Bank. It is guided by 33 commissioners and 19 convening countries, representing all regions of the globe, and co-managed by the Global Center on Adaptation and World Resources Institute.
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Alex Edmans: For everyone to receive a bigger slice, capitalism has to grow the pie
As published in Scotland on Sunday on 15th March 2020 as a preview to Prof. Alex Edmans presentation at GEFI’s inaugural Radical Old Idea event in Edinburgh. Please click here to read the original article and click here for details of the event.
The consensus among politicians, citizens, and even executives themselves, is that capitalism serves only to enrich the elites while ignoring ordinary people. Companies are making outsized profits and CEOs are raking in exorbitant salaries, while paying scant attention to – and even exacerbating – the world’s major social problems in 2020. Climate change, income inequality, population growth, resource usage, automation – the list is endless.
So it’s urgent that companies take action. If they don’t, not only may customers and workers walk away, but also politicians may pass regulations that overturn capitalism as we know it – as Bernie Sanders is currently proposing, and winning support for.
But many popular proposals to reform business may not actually be in the best interest of society. Many are based on the pie-splitting mentality. They assume that the value that a company creates is a fixed pie. Then, the only way to increase the slice enjoyed by society is to reduce the slice that goes to business – slash CEO pay, restrict dividends, and donate profits to Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.
But viewing the relationship between business and society as a fight between “them” and “us” is deeply flawed. Profits don’t just go to nameless, faceless capitalists but pension funds investing on behalf of citizens – not “them”, but “us”. So while it’s critical for companies to take seriously their responsibility to society, they also have a responsibility to deliver profits.
That’s the power of a different approach to business – the pie-growing mentality, which stresses that the pie is not fixed. The implications are profound. For CEOs, the best way to increase profits is not to take from society (cutting wages or price-gouging customers) but to create value for society – higher profits then arise as a by-product. For citizens, high profits need not result from value extraction, but successfully serving a social need. A company may improve working conditions out of genuine concern for its employees, yet these employees become more motivated and productive. A company may develop a new drug to solve a public health crisis, without considering whether those affected are able to pay for it, yet end up successfully commercialising it.
Importantly, the idea that both business and society can simultaneously benefit is not wishful thinking, but backed up by rigorous evidence. On 24 March, I will present this evidence – and the new approach to business underpinned by the pie-growing mentality – at the Global Ethical Finance Initiative’s (GEFI) inaugural Radical Old Idea event in Edinburgh.
The Radical Old Idea is a discussion platform inspired by the historic Scottish Enlightenment. By bringing together business and financial services representatives, it explores innovative ideas that deliver positive economic outcomes for the benefit of society. Indeed, solving the world’s major social problems of 2020 involves working with capitalism, not against it. Successful businesses design products that transform customers’ lives for the better, provide employees with a healthy and enriching workplace and preserve the environment for future generations.
But an idea can’t just remain an idea – it must be put into practice. I will present a framework for implementing responsible business, and tackling the difficult trade-offs that often hold companies back.
Leaders of today’s companies are in a privileged position, as their global scale gives them more power to create social value than ever before. But they’re also in a challenging position, because the world’s social problems are more serious than ever before.
Yet the idea of serving both business and society is not a too-good-to-be-true pipe dream, but realistic and achievable. We have the evidence to back us, the examples to inspire us, and the tools to put it into practice. Let’s make this vision a reality.
Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School and author of the book Grow The Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit.