What’s Your Climate Resilience Moon Shot?

At a recent “Challenges and Opportunities of Private Sector Climate Resilience” conference convened by the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Interamerican Development Bank in Cartagena, Colombia, I moderated a panel of three of the world’s resilience experts and posed this clinching question: What is your resilience moon shot.

Their answers proved to be as diverse as their backgrounds – and the rest of us better be ready to implement them:

·      Emilie Mazzacurati, founder and CEO of the award-winning Four Twenty Seven climate consultancy (one of two firms worldwide exclusively adaptation-focused), responded in keeping with her leading-edge analysis, research and strategy work. Her resilience moon shot? A climate adaptation unit. “We need a measure of resilience that allows the market to see progress over time,” she maintained.

·      Eric Kaufman, indefatigable head of the Natural Resilience Foundation to establish financing mechanisms for public resilience projects such as Staten Island’s New York Wheel project, offered: densification of Orlando with all of Southern Florida’s residents safely located on higher ground and the rest of the land-turned-to-sea becoming a glorious water park.

·      Dale Sands, senior vice president and Global Director, Metro and Adaptation Services for engineering giant AECOM and lead of such game-changing projects as the UN Disaster Reduction Department (UNISDR), favors a risk-sharing mechanism for small businesses. It would be based on insights gleaned from AECOM’s survey of 208 New Orleans small businesses. 

I will reveal my climate adaptation moon shot as I launch Climate Resilience, a consulting firm helping corporate and local government leaders to incorporate climate adaptation into their value chains. 

What’s your resilience moon shot?

Asking the Climate Question: How to Create a Climate Adaptation Plan

Asking the Climate Question: How to Create  a Climate Adaptation Plan

So, let’s save ourselves some time and use not only public resources but the

example

of a public process to ensure we are climate resilient.

Here are five steps to climate resiliency with excellent city resources to enhance your company’s preparedness:  

1.    Review local climate-change impact projections.

(See

Climate Change Adaptation in New York City: Building a Risk Management Response, Volume 1196 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Science; and Chicago’s

)

2.    Identify relevant vulnerabilities.

(Chicago’s are extreme heat, extreme precipitation, ecosystem changes. New York’s includes inundation.)

3.

Prepare an economic risk analysis.

(

In Chicago, conservatively estimated the total cost impact of anticipated climate changes on city departments and functions for the 2010-2099 period as $2.54 BN

.)

4.    Create adaptation strategies.

5.    Use a short- and medium-term plan that:

a.    Focuses on existing adaptation.

b.    Considers, especially, adaptations that also mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

c.    Sets as priorities adaptations with a collateral improvement to your bottom line and your

employees' quality of life.