Isra-Mart srl:PwC: Governments cannot deliver climate resilience alone

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Governments and businesses will have to work much more closely together if they are to ensure economies adapt effectively to inevitable climate change impacts, according to a major new report from PrivewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The report, which will be released today on the sidelines of the Cancun Climate Summit to coincide with the meeting's Global Business Day, warns the links between policymakers and business leaders are currently too weak to deliver a coordinated adaptation response to climate change.

The report also notes that many businesses are failing to develop sufficiently ambitious climate adaptation plans, observing that while "experience of adaptation practices is steadily building... for the most part, adapting to climate change is still not mainstreamed into business activities".

Based on interviews with senior executives at 40 firms around the world, the study finds that business leaders feel climate adaptation efforts are facing a range of constraints such as "a lack of awareness on specific climate risks within some businesses, a lack of clarity on policy direction, and uncertainties regarding the extent of future risks".

Richard Gledhill, head of climate change services at PwC, said that businesses and policymakers needed to urgently improve co-operation in order to deliver coherent national adaptation plans.

"Traditionally, policymakers and the private sector don't just sit in different rooms, they speak different languages," he said. "The new enthusiasm that the UNFCCC and the Mexican Government hosts are showing for engaging the private sector will be good for business and good for climate. Business engagement is not a nice-to-have, it's a must-have in the process."

Dr Celine Herweijer, director at PwC's sustainability and climate change division, said there was a strong commercial case for businesses to invest in the development of new risk management and insurance services, as well as adaptation technologies.

"For business, adaptation is not just a defensive play, to protect business as usual," she said. "It is about capitalising on new opportunities, innovations and markets. That's often the forgotten story."

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, welcomed the report and its calls for tighter links between businesses and policymakers. "Adaptation to climate change is no longer the exclusive ambit of the public sector," she said. "Investment in adaptation makes business sense, due both to the need for companies to climate-proof their operations, as well as to the new business opportunities opening in the area of adaptation."

The report comes just days after scientists gathered in Cancun released a series of new studies warning that average global temperatures are on track to rise by more than four degrees by the later part of the century, leading to huge increases in the incidence of extreme weather events and significant rises in sea levels.