Global Climate Finance: Is there money for the private sector?

The architecture of the various global climate funds is complex. I spent two days last week at the Adaptation Fund’s Readiness for Climate Finance Seminar,  and the question top-of-mind now is this: How will all the funds I keep hearing about galvanize private-sector engagement in lower-income country adaptation. First, the list of development agencies involved in climate financing astounds – in a good way, that is, if you think development funds help change the world for the better. Generally, I hold that view. And hats off to the Climate Funds Update for providing accessible information for those of us who think of this financing as a sideline.

Second, of those Funds that focus on climate resiliency (many also focus on low carbon development) – the Adaptation Fund, the Climate Investment Fund, the Global Environmental Facility, et. al. – are not looking at increasing private investment as a primary or secondary objective of their work.  While the private sector certainly has helped execute some of the work funded by the millions already disbursed, no measures of the number of jobs created and other key economic and social barometers are tracked. Plus, the leaders I spoke with at this seminar couldn’t identify any names of local or multinational corporations involved in the work their institutions fund.

Third, an important element of these climate funds is that, in least developed countries, they are building government capacity to carry out resiliency projects through their thorough accreditation processes.  The Adaptation Fund’s process seems particularly robust as they work doggedly with National Implementing Agencies to ensure the governments have the muscle and organization to successfully manage the work.  In the development parlance, this is called the “enabling environment,” though at ND-GAIN we call it readiness.

Forth, for every person who thinks the private sector sees market growth from the $100B involved, another leader of the development community would furrow his or her brow at the notion. Their concept of private-sector engagement with that $100B holds that the private sector should invest its own funds in reducing vulnerability.

Fifth, the Green Climate Fund – the domicile of that expected annual $100B – is likely to be the private sector’s best bet, although it hasn’t enjoyed the best news of late (as even generous Sweden is holding back its funds).  The Fund is selecting private-sector specialists to serve on its Private Sector Advisory Group.

The Fund’s Private Sector Facility expects to “catalyze, mobilize and leverage flows of private climate finance in developing countries and make best use of the knowledge on best available technologies.” So, market experience and innovation in the private sector are recognized assets and, if its dollars are new and not simply reallocated from other development resources, the private sector may see an uptick in available resources.  In any case, when the dust settles on GCF within the next few years (hope springs eternal about the pace of complex international mechanisms), more resources will be available for saving lives and improving livelihoods through low-carbon development and climate adaptation – a good thing.

So, the question remains: Is there money for the private sector in the global climate finance marketplace? From my POV, not yet.  But, it will be important to stay tuned through resources such as the Climate Fund Update to try and detect the answer!

Supply Chains in the Face of a Changing Climate

This post originally appeared in Environmental Leader:  http://www.environmentalleader.com/2014/04/30/supply-chains-in-the-face-of-a-changing-climate/ The economic damages from weather-related disasters continue to climb worldwide, and will continue on that path. Proactively, organizations are making strides to anticipate and prepare for these climatic shifts.

Early April, Unilever CEO Paul Polman made a public statement calling for “decisive action to tackle climate change in order to secure the future of businesses and people around the world for years to come.” Unilever’s own response is a leading example of companywide sustainability plans, and includes a goal ofsourcing 100 percent of its agricultural raw materials sustainably. Additionally, the National Hurricane Center announced its plans April 18 to issue separate storm surge watches and warnings—in addition to wind notices—beginning in 2015 to help communities better prepare for approaching storms, the Washington Post reported.

This new normal of increased weather-related risk and vulnerability is being faced by communities as well as multinational corporations dependent upon supply chain networks around the world.

As an example, extensive flooding in Thailand in 2011, badly damaged global parts suppliers for the automotive and electronic industries causing an estimated $15-20 billion in losses. This weather event hurt the bottom line of major multinational corporations around the globe, including Cisco, Dell, Ford, Honda, HP, Toyota and many others.

Honda’s losses totaled more than $250 million when flood waters inundated an auto assembly plant, and HP estimates that more than half of its seven percent revenue decline in the fourth quarter of 2011 reflected a shortage of hard disk drives caused by this Thai flooding. While no single storm can arguably be blamed on climate change, experts predict that the world will be wracked by more and more storm events like the Thai flood of 2011.

What tools can corporations employ to inform thinking about supply chains, especially as we enter an era when more companies are adding a climate-change dimension to strategic planning?

A supply-chain report from CDP, the global nonprofit that measures vital environmental information, indicates that 73 percent of executives surveyed now see physical risks from climate change disrupting their supply chain.

When assessing their global risks, corporate leaders can employ a full tool belt of indices to inform their thinking.  From Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, to the major credit-rating agencies’ foreign-currency ratings, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report companies can better measure and evaluate decisions about supply-chain moves around the world.

The Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index is the latest tool that supply-chain managers can call upon when confronting this new strategic planning landscape.

PepsiCo—which relies on agriculture as do the growers and communities where the global food-and-beverage company operates—uses the ND-GAIN.

“To improve the resilience of our supply chains across the world, we need sound, scientific data and tools such as the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which is critically important in researching a country’s vulnerability to global climate risks,” maintains Dan Bena, PepsiCo Senior Director of Sustainable Development.

ND-GAIN is an index that illuminates which countries are best prepared to deal with climate disruption. The Index seeks to unlock global adaptation solutions in the corporate and development community that save lives and improve livelihoods while strengthening market positions.  It informs strategic, operational and reputational decisions regarding supply chains, capital projects and community engagements.

Using 17 years of data, ND-GAIN ranks more than 170 countries annually based on how vulnerable they are to droughts, super storms and other natural disasters. It also captures how ready they are to employ adaptation solutions. The Index, formerly housed at the Global Adaptation Institute in Washington, D.C., moved to the University of Notre Dame in April.

Nancy Gillis, Senior Manager of Climate Change and Sustainability Services, at EY, notes those national governments that are looking at opportunities to stimulate economic development want to be more attractive to large companies and look for ways to shore up vulnerabilities.

“There is a lot of focus on energy, transportation and other infrastructure investments.  ND-GAIN helps point out relative strengths and weaknesses and gives governments and corporations a lot of information to consider partnerships that ensure a corporate license to operate.” Forward-thinking corporations are incorporating extreme-event planning into their business-continuity preparations to reflect our climate-changed future.

What’s clear is that each new catastrophic storm event will bring new calls to action for more data to help inform the private sector on how best to prepare for—or better yet prevent—supply chain disruptions when the “next” storm comes along. We have entered a new era where adaptive management of climate risks will play an increasingly important role in board rooms and C-suite offices across the globe—particularly for multinationals with extensive supply chains exposure in the most vulnerable places.

Joyce Coffee is managing director of the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN). Coffee, who is based in Chicago, serves as the executive lead for related resiliency research, outreach and execution.

This post originally appeared in the Environmental Leader http://www.environmentalleader.com/2014/04/30/supply-chains-in-the-face-of-a-changing-climate/

Climate change a growing concern for companies expanding their footprint

This article originally appeared in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/hubs-water-climate-change-siting-drought-flood-business Traditionally, the most important factors in choosing a location for a new factory or operation have always been workforce supply and economic incentives. But a new consideration, climate change, is quickly moving up the ranks as a major factor for corporate decision-makers. Recently, as climate-related crises have hit cities across the globe, it's become increasingly clear that companies need to consider the financial impact of a paucity – or an excess – of water.

Operational, strategic and quality-of-life issues factor heavily in the decisions that giant enterprises make about where to locate their much sought after capital projects. As the devastating environmental conditions associated with climate change – including water shortages, severe storms, natural disasters, rising seas and hotter climates – become more pressing, it's clear that these, too, will become key considerations for companies hoping to press their competitive advantages.

As a result, these decisions will begin to dramatically affect both traditional and emerging business, transportation, manufacturing and travel hubs. And as with anything else involving corporations, real estate, jobs and money, there will definitely be winners and losers.

Supply chain links

In the wake of natural disasters, which appear to be getting increasingly severe, a "new normal" has emerged among corporate decision-makers. With some analysts citing the impact of the mutable climate, more companies are adding a climate-change dimension to their strategic supply-chain planning and site selection. Adaptive management of climate risks is playing a growing role in boardrooms and C-suites across the globe, particularly at multinationals.

A report from CDP, the global non-profit that measures vital environmental information, found that 72% of companies surveyed see physical risks from climate change disrupting their supply chain.

For New Orleans-based energy company Entergy, 2005's Hurricane Katrina was a lesson in the potential supply disruptions that could be caused by increasingly extreme weather events. Since then, Entergy has begun incorporating climate risks into its business planning and operating activities; consequently, it has strengthened its power-distribution network, including the sites that are most vulnerable.

Water, water nowhere

Companies often underestimate the importance of water to their business, and few have a comprehensive global process to assess water risk. But this is quickly changing, notably in the west and southwest regions of the US, as drought sinks critical water supplies. Companies in the food and beverage, mining and oil and gas companies sectors especially base their site assessments on high-level projections of water scarcity.

In 2013, the Aqueduct Project, a hydrological mapping initiative at the World Resources Institute, ranked 36 countries based on their water risk. Sixteen, including the UAE, Barbados, Cyprus, Jamaica and Singapore, received a 5.0, the worst possible rating.

But if drought is a consideration, so is flooding, and too much water can also affect site selection. After Thailand's extensive flooding in 2011, losses for badly damaged global parts suppliers alone totaled an estimated $15-20bn, and the flood hurt the bottom line of several multinationals, including Ford, Toyota, Dell, Cisco and Honda. HP, another company that was especially hard-hit, estimated that half of its 7% fourth-quarter 2011 revenue slide was due to the flooding. Not surprisingly, global companies are increasingly assessing the issue of monsoons and other water-related weather events when making decisions about where to locate or enlarge their facilities.

As for the US, it won't be long before severe water-supply problems in states like California and Arizona will begin to affect their popularity as site locations for plants. And look for other states as well as cities with plentiful supplies, such as those surrounding the Great Lakes, to woo businesses with water as their big asset. Already, Milwaukee is leveraging the business potential of its plentiful water supply. It's certainly not alone.

Site selection heats up

Water isn't the only climate issue that is increasingly affecting site selection. Too much heat is also becoming a factor as it becomes clear that fiery temperatures and air pollution can have a major, devastating effect on workplaces and workforces. Air-conditioning alone can't make up for such conditions.

A team of climate-change researchers recently studied 170m hospital admissions and eight million deaths in Germany. After tracking them season by season, day by day, for 10 years, they found that the temperature-and-pollution spikes associated with extreme heat events tended to increase hospital admissions and deaths by 2% to 5% the first day. Adverse health effects and mortality mounted with each day of a heat wave.

Interestingly, the analysis found that extreme cold events typically had a negligible to nonexistent impact on hospitalization and deaths. Distributed across the population of a country such as Germany or the US, the analysis estimates that the cost of a hot day is between 10 cents and 68 cents per resident in terms of health care and lost productivity.

Winners and losers

So, when it comes to site selection and climate, which countries top the list? The Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN), where I work, has ranked the climate adaptation performance of 177 countries over the last 17 years, has found that, while the top-ranked countries are often prone to sea level rise, drought and flooding, they are nonetheless able to maintain the security of their water, food, and health systems. They are able to preserve their fundamental ecosystems, and their coastal, energy and transportation infrastructures remain sound, enabling greater social, economic and governmental stability.

The ND-GAIN's highest-ranked country is Denmark, which has an index score of 83.4. Other European countries and Australia round out the top 10, while the US ranks 13th, with a score of 79.

North Korea is the lowest-ranked country, with an index of 34.3, and Afghanistan, Burundi, the Central African Republic and Eritrea fill out the bottom five on the list of countries that aren't likely to draw many foreign industrial and business operations any time soon.

The most surprising low-ranked countries are India, which is number 120, and China, which is number 98. But as two of the hottest spots for global business in the last decade, both demonstrate the impact that corporate investment can have on resiliency. India has moved up 10 points on the relative ranking since 1999, and China has moved between three and six spots during that period.

In real-estate parlance, the desirability of a property is based on location, location, location. And while climate change may still rank below such factors as workforce and incentives, more and more organizations are weighing climate conditions as they determine where they will locate new operations.

Consequently, cities, states and countries that lag on the climate-change index need to launch initiatives, such as public-private partnerships, to strengthen their attractiveness. The private sector, of course, can play an invaluable role in this effort.

This article originally appeared in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/hubs-water-climate-change-siting-drought-flood-business.

The Wrong Direction: Countries at Risk from Climate Change Face Shrinking Resiliency

In its latest stark report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describes significant and worsening environmental risks to the world’s poorer countries.  Indeed, the situation is so severe in 11 countries that any amount of corporate investment right now isn’t likely to improve their situations should global shocks strike, including climate change. The countries – Algeria, the Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Honduras, Libya, Madagascar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela – all rank below 100 on the  University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, a measure of a country’s vulnerability to global challenges in combination with its readiness to improve resilience.

The critical issue for these countries remains their preparedness to accept investment in adaptation or resiliency. In countries such as Yemen, Syria, and Nepal, political instability and violence are trending downward, decreasing investment readiness.  In Venezuela, it’s the rule of law; in Nicaragua and Madagascar, it is a dearth of education opportunities. And in Libya, it’s the lack of a voice and accountability.

Many of these countries already have experienced weather extremes. Consider Syria’s drought that forced 800,000 farmers to migrate to the cities in recent years, or the unprecedented flooding in Nicaragua in 2013. Will they prove to be resilient to the next climate disruption?  It’s not likely.

They must focus on their governance, social systems and economic structures to turn their readiness trend around and increase the likelihood that they can attract private and public investments to help them endure their vulnerabilities to climate change.

Cities at Risk - Measure what Matters

Approximately sixty percent of major cities housing 1 billion people are at risk to at least 1 major natural disaster per year (source:  UN DESA/Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects) Data need to compare city vulnerability and readiness to determine relative risk and opportunity that save lives, improve livelihoods and create market value at the City scale.

Climate change is here, and the world’s poor are at extreme risk. All of us, the poor included, are part of the solution to make it better. Adaptation in cities proves a powerful force.  It provides collateral benefits for alleviating poverty, sparking economic development and engaging the global community.

The United Nation’s Green Climate Fund is targeting annual disbursements to emerging economies of up to $100B by 2020. At the same time, the global infrastructure industry is projected to grow to $3.3B in next 4 years.  Why? In 2011, global losses from natural disasters exceeded $380B.

We need to measure what matters to determine global success.  By illuminating regions best prepared to deal with global changes brought about by overcrowding, resource constraints and climate disruption, we can unlock global adaptation solutions in the corporate and development community that save lives and improve livelihoods while strengthening market positions.

In our cities, let's focus on sectors crucial to human health and prosperity that also can be greatly improved by innovation, - water, energy and health.  Here is a start of some indicators we might track:

1. Growth rate of electricity access
2. Onsite and distributed energy generation
3. Paved Roads
4. Upstream protected land
5. Distribution of dams and reservoirs
6. Number and quality of medical professionals

There are dozens of others.  What are your recommendations?

2014 Climate Adaptation, Resiliency, Preparedness Conferences

Dear Readers, I thought I'd share some recent work from ND-GAIN's Sarah Senseman to identify upcoming climate adaptation, climate resiliency and/or climate preparedness conferences (take your pick of the term-du-jour).  There's a bias towards city or urban-related events in this list, based on my current interest. Let me know if I am missing something!  

Nexus 2014: Water, Food, Climate and Energy Conference

3-7 March 2014, North Carolina, USA

https://nexusconference.web.unc.edu/

World City Forum 2014

12 March 2014, Netherlands

http://www.worldsmartcapital.net/worldcityforum

Building Resilience Workshop V

13-14 March 2014, USA

http://www.resilienceworkshop.org/

Green Cities 2014

18 March, Australia

http://greencities.org.au/

Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana State of the Coast 2014

18-20 March 2014, USA

http://www.stateofthecoast.org/

Urban Affairs Association - 44th Annual Conference

19 March, USA

http://www.urbanaffairsassociation.org/

Water and Sanitation Health 2014

24 March, Australia

http://www.watercentre.org/events/wash2014

Trees, People and the Built Environment II

2 April, UK

http://www.charteredforesters.org

Livable Cities Forum 2014

2-4 Apr 2014, Vancouver, Canada

http://www.livablecitiesforum.com/about/

Great Plains LID Research and Innovation Symposium

2-4 April 2014, Oklahoma, USA

http://lidcompetition.okstate.edu/great-plains-lid-conference/2014-great-plains-lid-research-and-symposium

Planning for Disaster Resilience Symposium

5 April 2014, Texas A&M, USA

http://hrrc.arch.tamu.edu/outreach/events/

World Urban Forum 2014

5-11 April, Medellin, Colombia

http://www.unhabitat.org/categories.asp?catid=767

Metropolitan Solutions

7 April 2014, Germany

http://www.metropolitansolutions.de/home

ICLEI Global Town Hall

7-11 April 2014, Germany

http://globaltownhall.iclei.org/

Transforming Local Government

23 April 2014, USA

http://www.tlgconference.org/

American Planning Association Conference

26 April 2014, USA

http://www.planning.org/conference/

Regional Studies Association International Conference 2014

27 April 2014, USA

http://www.regionalstudies.org/conferences/conference/regional-studies-associationinternational-conference-2014

Carolinas Climate Resilience Conference

28-29 April 2014, Charlotte, NC, USA

http://www.cisa.sc.edu/ccrc/

CERES Conference

30 April – 1 May 2014, Boston, MA, USA

http://www.ceres.org/conferences

Resilience 2014

4 May 2014, France

http://www.resilience2014.org/

Climate Strategies Forum

12-14 May 2014, Washington, DC, USA

http://www.climatestrategiesforum.org/

Adaptation Futures

12-16 May 2014, Fortaleza Ceara, Brazil

http://adaptationfutures2014.ccst.inpe.br/

International Conference on Water Resources and Environmental Management

13-15 May 2014, Antalya, Turkey

http://www.icwre.com/

Local Solutions: Northeast Climate Preparedness Conference

19-20 May 2014, Manchester, NH, USA

http://www.antiochne.edu/innovation/climate-change-preparedness/

Conference on Climate Change Preparedness: Local Solutions

19-21 May 2014, New Hampshire, USA

http://www.antiochne.edu/innovation/climate-change-preparedness/

Velo-City Global 2014

27 May 2014, Australia

http://www.velo-city2014.com/

Urbantec China

29 May 2014, China

http://www.urbantecchina.com/

Resilient Cities 2014: 5th Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation

29 - 31 May 2014, Germany

http://resilient-cities.iclei.org/bonn2014/resilient-cities-2014-home/

Federation of Canadian Municipalities Annual Conference

30 May 2014, Canada

http://www.fcm.ca/home/events/annual-conference-and-trade-show.htm

World Cities Summit 2014

1 June 2014, Singapore

http://www.worldcitiessummit.com.sg/index1.php

Singapore International Water Week

June 1-5 2014, Singapore

http://www.siww.com.sg/

European Forum on Urban Forestry

3 June 2014, Switzerland

http://www.efuf2014.org/

Integrated Research on Disaster Risk Conference 2014

7-9 June 2014, Beijing, China

http://www.irdrinternational.org/2013/07/29/news-irdr-conference-2014-call-for-abstracts/

Community is the Answer 2014

9 June 2014, UK

http://www.communityistheanswer.org/

4th ATINER Annual International Conference on Urban Studies & Planning 2014

9 June 2014, Greece

http://www.atiner.gr/planning.htm

New Cities Summit 2014

17 June 2014, USA

http://www.newcitiesfoundation.org/index.php/events/new-cities-summit/new-cities-summit-2014-dallas/

City Futures 3

18 June 2014, France

http://www.eura.org/

The 8th International Association for China Planning (IACP) Conference

21-22 June 2014, China

http://www.chinaplanning.org/conf/index.php/iacp_8th/8thIACP_guangzhou

Congress for the New Urbanism 22

22 June, USA

http://www.cnu.org/cnu22

39th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop

22-25 June 2014, Colorado, USA

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/workshop/

Adaptation in the Great Lakes

24-26 June 2014, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

http://graham.umich.edu/glaac

European Network for Housing Research 2014

1 July, UK

http://www.enhr.net/enhrconferences.php

Peri-Urban 2014

8 July, Australia

http://periurban14.org/

14th National Conference on Transportation Planning for Small and Medium–Sized Communities: Tools of the Trade

21 July, USA

http://www.trbtoolsofthetrade.org/default.htm

International Symposium on Landscape and Urban Horticulture

17 August, Australia

http://www.ihc2014.org/symposium_28.html

California Adaptation Forum

19-20 August 2014, Sacramento, CA, USA

http://www.californiaadaptationforum.org/

5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC Davos 2014

24 August, Switzerland

http://www.idrc.info/

World Water Week

31 August – 5 September 2014, Stockholm, Sweden

http://www.worldwaterweek.org/

Mediterranean City Climate Change Consortium Biannual Meeting

September 2014, Athens, Greece

http://www.mc-4.org/

CEBDS International Conference on Sustainable Development

September 2014 (exact dates TBA), Brazil

http://www.wbcsd.org/regional-network/members-list/latin-america/cebds.aspx

Cities of Europe, Cities of the World

3 September, Portugal

http://www.eauh2014.fcsh.unl.pt

World Leisure 2014

6 September, USA

http://www.worldleisure2014.org

International Conference on Urban Drainage 2014

7 September, Malaysia

http://www.13icud2014.com/

Pacific Northwest Climate Science Conference

9-10 September 2014, Seattle, WA, USA

http://pnwclimateconference.org/

International Water Association World Water Congress

21 September Portugal

http://www.iwa2014lisbon.org/

Deltas in Times of Climate Change II

24-26 September 2014, Netherlands

http://www.climatedeltaconference2014.org/

11th World Metropolis Conference

6 October, India

http://www.metropolis.org/news/hyderabad-welcomes-metropolis-deleg

CABERNET 2014: 4th International Conference on Managing Urban Land

14 October, Germany

http://www.cabernet.org.uk/?c=1124&n=56

Sustainability Leaders Forum

November 2014 (exact dates TBA), London, UK

http://www.edie.net/whatson/view_event.asp?id=4352&title=Sustainability+Leaders+Forum

2nd International Conference on Urbanization and Global Environmental Change ‘Urban

Transitions and Transformations: Science, Synthesis and Policy’

6 November, Taiwan

http://ugec.org/2nd-international-ugec-conference/

FLASH 2014: Resilience Revolution

19-21 November 2014, Tallahassee, FL, USA

http://www.flash.org/2014meeting/

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Convention of the Parties

1-12 December 2014, Lima, Peru

http://unfccc.int/meetings/rio_conventions_calendar/items/2659.php?year=2014

Linking Science, Practice and Decision Making

8-11 December 2014, Washington, DC, USA

http://www.wri.org/events/aces-community-ecosystem-services-linking-science-practice-and-decision-making

International Water Summit

Jan. 20-22, 2015 Abu Dhabi, UAE

http://iwsabudhabi.com/

10th International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability

21-23 January 2015, Denmark

http://onsustainability.com/the-conference

Sustainable Communities Conference

TBD February 2015, Canada

http://www.fcm.ca/home/events/sustainable-communities-conference-and-trade-show.htm

New Partners for Smart Growth

TBD February 2015, USA

http://www.newpartners.org/

Alaska Forum on the Environment

February 2015 Anchorage, USA

http://akforum.com/

Delhi Sustainable Development Summit

5-7 February 2015, New Delhi, India

http://dsds.teriin.org/2014/

National Adaptation Forum 2015

12-14 May 2015, St. Louis, MO, USA

http://www.nationaladaptationforum.org/

Istanbul Intl. Water Forum

May 27-29, 2015 Istanbul, Turkey

http://www.worldwaterforum5.org/

Presidential advisors Podesta & Holdren: Consider how we’re unleashing data power on climate change

The Internet buzzes with the ambitious plan* by White House advisors John Podesta and John Holdren to create easy-to-use tools to prepare people to be more resilient to climate change.  But, hey, we’re already doing this for the world – employing half-a-million data points in an interactive assessment of 177 countries that uses this framework: And our data, methodology and framework are free and available for anyone to see and use.

Here’s an ingredient in our not-so-secret sauce: We include readiness. We believe decision makers need to know what’s occurring in the government, economic and social sectors to make the vulnerability information truly actionable.  Because corporate decision makers don’t look at climate change in isolation, we include climate and other variables in our set of vulnerability indicators.  Human health, human habitat, water, food, ecosystems and infrastructure variables round out our description.

We aim to keep it simple and easy to use, drawing the user in initially with a relative rank of geographies.

Then, we provide detailed information about each geography, including the variables most at risk:

Consider these ways this framework can raise awareness and inform decision-making by turning climate risk into opportunity for action.

Supply chain risk: Plot the major assets in your value chain on a matrix of relative vulnerability and readiness, and discover your major risks and opportunities for investment:

Investment decisions: Do you possess a product that helps increase resiliency? How about infrastructure, pharmaceutical or building technologies? Compare several geographies to one another to determine relative areas of risk – energy sensitivity for one, health-care workers per capita for another.

Setting development priorities: Exploring opportunities to expand your operations in a new location?  What variables matter most?  Roadway infrastructure, an educated workforce?  Data here, all in one place, will inform your next steps.

Good luck with this super important effort, Messrs. Podesta and Holdren.

We commend you for your work to unleash the power of data on climate change adaptation and resiliency.

Read about our methodology here, and contact us for more info!

* http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/19/fact-sheet-president-s-climate-data-initiative-empowering-america-s-comm

Australia to Zimbabwe: Contrasts in Drought Resiliency

The world has grown more informed about how to handle drought after observing southern Australia weather 12 years of one.  We’ve learned lessons about water conservation and efficiency, about recycling water and finding previously untapped supplies.  Yet, when a relatively shorter drought of less than a year hit Zimbabwe last year, the country suffered a great deal. Curious about what distinguishes the relative resiliency of these two countries and seeking to go beyond my immediate judgement that it’s because Australia is a well-developed economy and Zimbabwe is far less so,  I turned to ND-GAIN for insights.  Here’s what I learned:

• Australia, at No. 5 on the ND-GAIN index, has continued to move up the ranks – it’s now well ahead of the U.S. at 13.
• Zimbabwe, at 171 on the ND-GAIN index, sits five places from the bottom of the Index. It has fallen 35 places. Its food important dependency of 28 percent contrasts to Australia’s 3 percent.
• Though its rural population is also declining, 64 percent of its population lives in rural areas to Australia’s 11 percent.
• Zimbabwe also gets a growing amount of energy from both hydropower – prone to drought-related variability - and imported sources, while Australia’s dependence on foreign oil is smaller and decreasing.
• The most striking variance in vulnerability, perhaps, lies in the two countries’ dependence on natural capital: Zimbabwe scores 38 percent and Australia four percent (and decreasing). This may explain why their natural systems responded so differently even though water-related vulnerabilities including precipitation and temperature change don’t differ markedly between the two countries.

But the big reveal that, unfortunately, supports many a hunch is that Australia’s readiness to adapt to climate change – as measured by economic, governance and social indicators – is two-to-three times greater than Zimbabwe’s.  Political stability, an economic environment conducive to business and the quality of the rule of law, to cite some specific readiness measures, all help countries weather the stress of drought.

While we should all take lessons from Australia’s deft handling of its drought – learned over time through trial and error – we also should continue to support efforts to shore up the readiness of a lower-income country as a way to ensure that Zimbabwe and others keep pace with the adaptations needed in a climate-changed world.

Climate Adaptation as a Business Opportunity –ND-GAIN as a tool to help

There are some incredibly positive sustainability trends baring themselves out today:

• Sustainability is becoming more a part of the ethos of the c-suite
• Non-profit and public/private partnerships are growing in impact
• Sustainable growth is being fueled by innovation in business/technology

Yet these hopeful trends are paired with a more sobering theme:   climate risk

This year, 4 out of top 10 global risks derived from World Economic Forum’s global risk perception survey, http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-2014-report,  relate to climate disruption

3.Water Crisis

5. Failure of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

6. Greater Incidence of Extreme Weather Events

8.Food Crisis

These risks share space with other risks such as high unemployment, fiscal crisis and political and social instability.

More specifically, one statistic from CDP’s supply chain survey, https://www.cdp.net/CDPResults/CDP-Supply-Chain-Report-2012.pdf,  really caught my attention:  more than 70% of corporate respondents saw risks to their supply chain from climate disruption.

And indeed, these risks are baring themselves out. 2011’s unprecedented flooding in Thailand alone resulted in $20B economic losses, Honda’s losses totaled more than $250 million when flood waters inundated an auto assembly plant, and  - to take another climate impact - General Motors calculated that a one-month disruption at one of its production facilities in Mexico hard hit by drought, could result in a loss of $27 million in net income.

But, as with any business risk, known risk can spell opportunity.  Vulnerable sectors crucial to human health and prosperity that also can be greatly improved by innovation – such as food, energy, and water –  are prime for investments that help us adapt to climate risks.

The US Military calls climate change a threat multiplier and instability accelerant, and some suggest that climate change fueled conflicts in Chad, Darfur, Yemen and Syria.

And it is not just civil conflict:  A report from the World Bank, http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_Heat_Executive_Summary_English.pdf, says that many important development advances of the 20th Century, such as food security, global health and poverty reduction, may be undermined by climate change.

Recently, the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index produced an analysis that showed it will take more than 100 years for lower income countries to reach the resilience of OECD or richer countries.

While I am concerned for all of us that unprecedented climatic variations are making the world more vulnerable, I reflect on the positive business trends and am certain we can apply our innovation, leadership, and partnerships, to building resiliency.

In fact, there are countless examples of corporate-lead climate adaptation around the world that are helping to decrease the impacts of droughts, superstorms, fires and floods caused by climate disruption.

Leading companies are leaning in, showing the importance of adaptation for their value chains by applying themselves to those vulnerable sectors crucial to human health and prosperity.

Increasing resiliency in food:

- Monsanto is developing new drought-tolerant corn varieties through the Water Efficient Maize for Africa, project, in partnership with the African Agricultural Technology Foundation the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

- The global reinsurance firm Swiss Re is helping farmers in Ethiopia tackle current and future precipitation uncertainty, providing insurance against climate-related losses.

- PepsiCo is rolling out its i-crop precision-farming technology, enabling farmers to monitor, manage and reduce their water use while maximizing potential yield, in collaboration with the Columbia Water Center of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Increasing resiliency in infrastructure:

- Engineering firms such as AECOM and CH2MHill are integrating adaptation into coastal and energy infrastructure systems to protect future generations living in urban areas.

- Ushahidi, a small nonprofit software company, uses the power of crowdsourcing software to distribute real-time information including about roadways and transportation, during disasters in lower income countries and around the world.

Increasing resiliency in water

- Unilever, in partnership with the UN Global Compact and the World Food Program, is spearheading local water use reduction, freeing-up water previously used for clothes washing for other applications in India.

- Ecolab is creating water efficient technologies for commercial and industrial infrastructure that are more resistant and resilient to climate change.

But how do we join these proactive companies on finding market value in resiliency?

As companies are starting to realize that their bottom line is intimately connected with climate disruption, the private sector wants to know where do we get relevant information to inform our leadership?

There are many valuable tools out there.

The ND-Global Adaptation Index, http://index.gain.org, ranks the 193 UN countries annually based on how vulnerable they are to droughts, super-storms and other natural disasters and, uniquely, how ready they are to successfully implement adaptation solutions.

We measure the countries’ vulnerability of health, food, water, and infrastructure and the social, governance and economic readiness of the country to take on investment, thus informing many elements of our value chain.

Using 17 years of data, we examine over 50 indicators for each country in the index, and some real winners emerge from these hundreds of thousands of data.

It’s no surprise, European and North American countries are among those most prepared for climate risk.

And many developing countries are making the most and the fastest improvements – as companies invest in these growing markets.

The BRIC countries are doing better than the global resiliency average.  And there are some surprises, like Rwanda, which has moved up  the rankings 40 positions, primarily by improving its economic, governance and social readiness measures, making it a more viable investment opportunity.

Many companies may find the greatest business opportunities in more vulnerable countries with a high demand for adaptation products and services, but also high readiness based on a transparent, safe and fair investment and regulatory environment.

We can use the ND-GAIN matrix to examine countries in our supply chains, consumer markets, capital assets and community engagements to better understand our relative risks and opportunities.

I’ve found that one of the reasons climate adaptation is resonating with the private sector is that it is a very personal issue.  The indicator of climate adaptation success is not an ethereal Metric Ton of CO2e.  Adaptation is about direct impacts to our most important assets - our employees, our customers and our communities and their prosperity yesterday, today and tomorrow.

We have the opportunity to save lives and improve livelihoods for millions around the world while improving our market positions by matching the power of data, with corporate innovation, leadership and partnership.

Adaptation provides collateral benefits to

• Mitigate greenhouse gas emissions
• lift more out of poverty,
• strengthen economies,
• prevent civil conflict,
• buttress food security,
• protect natural resources and
• ensure a brighter future for generations to come.

I encourage you to ask yourself the climate adaptation question of your work to create business opportunities out of resiliency that offer rewards for humanity.

(This is the One Great Idea presentation I gave at the Greenbiz Forum today).

Poor Countries Are Losing Ground in the Race to Adapt to a Changing Climate

The World Economic Forum released their 2014 Global Risk Report with a write up crafted by WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Climate Change based, where Juan Jose Daboub (the Global Adaptation Institute’s founding CEO) is co-chair.  I drafted the original write up which resulted in this piece: The year 2014 is likely to be crucial for addressing climate risks, a point made by United Nations (UN) climate chief Christiana Figueres at the Warsaw Climate Change Conference. Countries made only limited progress on issues such as emissions reduction, loss and damage compensation, and adaptation. Greater progress is urgently needed to create incentives and mechanisms to finance action against climate change while efforts are made to keep temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.

Even as governments and corporations are called upon to speed up greenhouse gas reduction, it is clear that the race is on not only to mitigate climate change but also to adapt. Droughts, super-storms and other natural disasters are increasingly causing systemic risks around the world.

Failure to adapt most strongly affects the most vulnerable, especially those in the least developed countries. They tend to lack the infrastructure and capacity to deal with extreme droughts and floods, reduced crop yields and increased stresses on energy and water supplies.

According to the latest Notre Dame-Global Adaptation Index, it will take more than 100 years for the world’s poorest countries to reach the current adaptive capacity of higher-income OECD countries. The World Bank estimates the cost of climate change adaptation for developing countries at US$ 70-100 billion per year through to 2050.

Gradually, however, promising models are emerging of collaboration between the public and private sectors and civil society to strengthen resilience to climate change. An example is the US$ 3 billion Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), intended to create the infrastructure to nurture new value chains. Through techniques such as rainwater harvesting, efficient irrigation and crops that can produce more nutrients for the same input of water, SAGCOT aims to increase food production in a way that is both environmentally sustainable and benefits small-scale farmers and the rural poor.

Such innovative and ambitious projects, unlocking investment funds through public-private partnership, showcase the kind of multistakeholder collaboration that will be needed across all sectors to meet the twin priorities of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Sources

ND-Global Adaptation Index http://news.gain.org/post/69787249752/2013-nd-gain-data-show-worlds-poorest-countries-lag

Scherr, S. J., J. C. Milder, L. E. Buck, A. K. Hart, and S. A. Shames. 2013. A vision for Agriculture Green Growth in the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT): Overview. Dar es Salaam: SAGCOT Centre. Available at http://www.ecoagriculture.org/documents/files/doc_483.pdf

World Bank. 2010. Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change: Synthesis Report, Washington DC: World Bank. Available at http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/documents/EACCSynthesisReport.pdf

Business on the Front Lines

BOTFL ND GAIN

A benefit – and deep pleasure – of working at the University of Notre Dame is rubbing shoulders with eminent thinkers.  I had the joy last year of meeting Viva Bartkus, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the university’s Mendoza College of Business. She not only is a , University of Notre Dame who is not only a great sage, but also a fine director. In her course, Business on the Front Lines, Notre Dame graduate students serve in post-conflict societies to inspire  business initiatives through the humanitarian lens.  In two-week installments, they play a role in building long-term community capacity for local resiliency and stability by partnering with local institutions to give people a stake in peace. Earlier this week, I noted in a blog about food security that in employing its Pilot Program for Climate Resilience, the World Bank found flagging demand from the private sector in climate-resiliency issues.  Fully 90 percent of their PPCR resources were tapped by government, and only 7 percent by the private sector. The Bank cited as a possible cause the lack of development of markets in these communities.  Looking at the ND-GAIN scores for the countries Dr. Viva’s class has impacted, her course is embracing these markets.

Her goal: to explore the role of business in rebuilding war-torn communities.

Students have worked with Uganda farmers to consider cultivation measures to enhance the quality of the food they bring to

Viva notes that BOTFL is a “Journey of discovery where students ask ‘what should be the role of business in society.’”market; in Kenya to inform supply-chain variables with new business models and in Lebanon to determine new approaches to the public/private/political interface in government-run utilities.  After students depart, Catholic Relief Services staff members continue working with local experts to put them into effect.

Business on the Frontlines is demonstrating to students—and to the world—the powerful impact business can have in pulling populations out of poverty and stabilizing society following a conflict or disaster.  It’s a great example of building resiliency through private sector efforts.

Expert View: Five Issues that Promise to Heighten National Security Risks in a Changing Climate

At last month’s ND-GAIN annual meeting, Brigadier General (USMC RET) Stephen Cheney, the American Security Project’s CEO, laid it on the line.  For the military and for the world, climate change risk is real and grows every day.  And the military knows from experience that waiting for certainty on future predictions can prove disastrous. Reflecting on climate impacts with national security significance, a panel spelled out five repercussions of a changing climate.  Cheney himself laid out four risks:

1. Sea level rise in Asia will displace millions of people.  In Bangladesh alone, more than one million of its 160 million people will need to relocate. Relocations cause tensions that historically have erupted into civil conflict in which the U.S. military has responded..

2. Forest fires, such as the one in Russia that elevated wheat prices and perhaps sowed the seeds of the Arab Spring in the Middle East, will put more natural resources at risk, causing scarcity-driven conflicts. (In an earlier post, I noted that the U.S. Defense Department estimates that 6,000 square kilometers of African land for agriculture – roughly the size of the West Bank and Gaza[1]will disappear by 2060 so the bargain over food resources will worsen.)

3. Extreme weather events, such as Super Typhoon Haiyan that ravaged the Philippines will require military response for humanitarian aid.

4. Arctic ice melt will trigger a tussle over territory, leading to conflict between the nations that claim ownership.

The fifth effect of a changing climate with national security implications was offered by Marcus King, associate professor of George Washington University’s The Elliott School of International Affairs. His was a promising trend – that water scarcity has fostered more incidents of cooperation than conflict.  For instance, he mentioned the agreement by Jordan, Israel and the Palestine Authority to rejuvenate the Dead Sea.

He noted that the Pentagon refers to climate change as an instability accelerant, and cited projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others that by 2030, global demand for water will exceed the water supply by 40 percent.  Already, in the tinder box of the Middle East, water trends are alarming.  In Syria, 800,000 farmers were forced to move to cities because of a two-year drought and, in Yemeni, aquifers could be depleted by 2020.  For Egypt, which relies on neighboring countries for all of its fresh water, conflicts driven by water could erupt as Egypt’s neighbors consider building dams for their energy security.

As Roger-Mark De Souza, director of the Wilson Center of Population, Environment, Security and Social Change foretold, with 1.5 billion, or more than one-in-five, people worldwide living in conflict or post-conflict areas, climate vulnerability will worsen crises.

[1] Approximately 6,020 square kilometers, The World Bank

Climate on the Davos Agenda

I’m thrilled that the World Economic Forum has placed climate change squarely on the agenda for next week’s forum at Davos.  It makes sense since its 2013 Risk Report noted climate change, combined with economic upheaval, as a top hazard to the global economy. This emphasis for the Forum is particularly important. The convening of corporate and private sector leaders has played a lesser role in the global climate change efforts, which primarily have been driven  by the United Nations.  Fortunately, it appears the private sector, through the power of the Forum, is going to play a bigger role in this discussion. Perhaps that will turn the UN efforts toward more action.

Next week, all World Economic Forum participants can attend sessions specifically dealing with adaptation and resiliency, including:

• An ideas lab on adapting to climate change

  • A discussion of the role of business and supply chains in making sustainability a mainstream issue

  • A plenary on the interaction of the climate and development global agendas toward 2015

  • A conversation about building resilience to natural disasters linked to extreme weather events and climate change

I’m eager to see the direct and indirect impact of The Forum’s climate adaptation conversations.

Beyond Davos 2014, World Economic Forum will participate actively in the Climate Summit at the UN in New York on Sept. 23,  the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences of the Parties in Lima, Peru, in late 2014 and subsequent convening.  This work reflects a set of robust Forum partnerships. The lead is Dominic Waughray, a member of ND-GAIN’s Advisory Board.

Feeding a climate-altered world

How will we feed the world amid drought, fire, floods and population shifts?  While I don’t yet envision a Malthusian catastrophe, per se, I think it critical to begin a conversation about this question as it relates to our work.  At last month’s ND-GAIN Annual Meeting at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., I derived several key takeaways from our panelists*:

1. Climate change could undermine development advances of the 20th Century, such as the interrelated issues of food security, global health and poverty reduction, the World Bank contends.

2. The largest demand for funds in the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience is for agricultural and landscape-management projects and, among fund recipients, water is the second largest.  Project examples include $5M to Mozambique (ND-GAIN Rank 137 http://index.gain.org/country/mozambique ) for drip irrigation and other agriculture enhancements, $15M to Zambia (ND-GAIN Index http://index.gain.org/country/zambia ) to insure farmers against extreme weather and $22M to Bangladesh, (ND-GAIN Rank 145 http://index.gain.org/country/bangladesh) for a seed selection and storage and cropping cycles project.

1. As climate portfolios grow to include resiliency and adaptation, in addition to greenhouse gas mitigation, the World Bank notes a decreased participation from the private sector, says Patricia Bliss-Guest Program Manager of Climate Investment Funds there. Through its pilot program for climate resilience, the Bank works to incent additional private participation in addition to government assistance.

1. Microinsurance is a major priority for the insurance sector in emerging markets and insurance can send important price-based signals to the market, notes Lindene Patton Chief Climate Product Officer at Zurich Insurance Group Ltd. She cautions against subsidizing insurance too much, adding that the question of climate risk is generally understood by the reinsurance industry to be a people, not a physical science, problem.

2. The key to resiliency in the food supply (taking cocoa as a case) involves examining all the vectors impacting farmers, including demographic shifts, community engagements, diversity of crops and agrarian livelihoods, maintains Perry Yeatman Principal, Mission Measurement, based on her work at Kraft Foods. She says it matters to our ample supply of chocolate bars that cocoa farmers are aging, their children are migrating to cities, the farmers need to raise chickens to diversify their nutrition and their community structures are crucial to their farms’ viability.

3. While climate change might favor the Eastern Europe and the Americas, a tremendous amount of investment for water infrastructure is necessary elsewhere in the world, believes David Gustafson Senior Fellow and Environmental and Ag Policy Modeling Lead at Monsanto. He favors partnerships with local and global institutions to address this concern, especially as the global agricultural community looks to intensify its production efforts sustainably to feed our  ever-growing world population.

In a future post, I plan to address the approaches for increasing this agricultural intensity. As I write this, my alumni magazine arrived with the cover story, “GMO vs. Fresh Food….”   I’ve had a study diet of this issue and look forward to continuing the dialogue.

*A video of the panel can be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V09U8W00Mk4&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLF545132229EF6E68

Turn Tragedy in the Philippines to Adaptation Action

I mourn with my Philippine kaibigans about the incalculable death and destruction wrought by Typhon Haiyan on that beautiful country and its people.  I lived and worked in the Philippines in the mid-1990s while at the U.S. Agency for International Development. I consider the country my second home.  I feel a deep sadness that so many lives were lost. Yet, I do not feel hopeless.  I know that  ways exist to increase the Philippine’s resiliency, and the solutions lie within the country, the corporate sphere and the development community. When a climate-related disaster strikes, I turn to ND-GAIN to help provide me with answers to how to prevent future calamities.   It probably isn’t a surprise to those who have seen the Haiyan destruction that the Philippines ranks 99 of 176 countries on the ND-GAIN index..  When looked at from the perspective of the country’s vulnerability to climate disruption and its readiness to adapt, it is in the highly vulnerable and not-ready quadrant of the Readiness Matrix. It possesses a great need for investment and innovation to improve readiness as well as a great urgency for action.

Since 1995, however, the Philippine’s’ relative GAIN score has headed in the wrong direction, initially ranking 87th of 176 countries.   Several factors related to ND-GAIN account for this deterioration, including the growing perception that political unrest will trigger a destabilized government or an actual coup by unconstitutional or violent means. Other factors: its rate of population growth in urban centers and the natural-disaster risk for populations living in cities of more than 750,000 people.  If they reflected awhile that they rank with Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire and Iran in terms of their political stability and nonviolence score, they might strive to strengthen the institutions that hold the government accountable.

Several initiatives could help the Philippines in the near and longer term.  First, simply assume that decreasing the country’s exposure to extreme events involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that the Philippines always will lie in the eye of the storm during typhoon season regardless of the extent of climate change.

The real opportunity lies in decreasing Filipinos’ sensitivity to climate disruption, increasing their adaptive capacity and boosting their economic, social and political readiness. These will increase their resilience and keep them on a path to market growth, human thriving and a caring and outward-looking world view for which they’re famous.

Based on ND-GAIN, here are three places from which to start. None are easy, but all generate hope for both the Philippines and the global community:

• Shore up the political stability of local, regional and national government.
• Increase the percentage of paved roads to trigger more expeditious travel on islands within the archipelago during the monsoon season.
• Improve sanitation facilities and access to water to strengthen the population and decrease disease while freeing up community energy for commerce.

The Philippines is nababanat, or elastic, as well as resilient, and Filipinos face many more typhoons ahead.  Working together, we can save lives and improve livelihoods there and in other vulnerable regions.  As an adaptation professional deeply immersed in questions of how, I employ ND-GAIN to guide the way.

Benchmarking: Improving our Work by Learning from Others

Thanks to the World Bank’s Steve Hammer, the lead urban specialist - cities and climate change within the Urban Development and Resilience Unit, I participated last week in a lively discussion with dozens of the Bank staff about measuring a country’s readiness to face climate change. While I have written about the benefits of indices, it’s delightful to observe my judgments turned into curiosity by bright global thinkers and doers. Their questions and assertions called to mind a corporate and adaptation tool benchmark we initiated several months ago. This World Bank discussion represents part of our overall effort to improve the GAIN Index over time. This process includes benchmark investigations as a way to examine various decision-making tools in the context of what GAIN should be delivering.

Working with my colleague Sarah Senseman, we have investigated dozens of tools – some adaptation-specific, many not, and we’ve derived a Top Three list worth examining:

• The Corruption Perception Index, http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/interactive/, earns raves for it elegant accessibility, simple organization and usefulness to a broad stakeholder group, amateur to professional, as well as its easily located supplemental information.

  

• Yale’s Environmental Performance Index (http://epi.yale.edu/) comprises well-developed resources; it still keeps to a specific purpose and vision and keeps a clear design, making the most of a transparent collaboration with a university, which increases its credibility.

• Aqueduct, http://www.wri.org/our-work/project/aqueduct, illuminates the problems of one of our most at-risk resources, potable water, and maintains its mission to help its user – the corporate sector – make more informed, resource-based decisions.  It’s also simple and refrains from including too much information.

Other country indexes worth mentioning from our benchmark include the  Consumer Confidence Index, Human Development Index, Ease-of-Doing-Business Index and the Index of Economic Freedom.

We’re also suckers for tools that leverage the power of infographics and maps to help the index tell a story, even to the uninitiated.

Those that didn’t make our list tried to do too much – complicating the simplicity, failing to consider their users and calling into question their credibility.

An interesting tool wiki to watch as it comes out of beta is The Climate Development Knowledge Network’s Tools for Climate Compatible Development. (Regrettably, they are not taking new submissions just yet, so you won’t find ND-GAIN there). It assembles several key tools to assist in informing the climate/development challenge.

ND-GAIN will keep in mind lessons learned from these benchmarks to inform how we can continue to help decision makers.

This blog is co-authored by Sarah Senseman, an ND-GAIN intern

National Security: A driver for climate adaptation prioritization?

I got involved in the corporate sustainability space through civil conflict. In Vietnam, actually, while investigating innovations in water infrastructure service delivery sparked by a community fight over access to water in Haiphong. That escalated into a major conflict that left two water workers dead before the People’s Committee came to its senses and considered a new way to approach fair water access. That was two decades ago. Yet that question of water and conflict continues to erupt and spill over from small-town skirmishes to all-out wars.  Noted journalist Tom Friedman has written about it in an April 2012 column, The Other Arab Spring, and a May 7, 2013, column, Postcard from Yemen. And I’m hearing rumblings from my Notre Dame colleagues who suggest a rear-view mirror look at Darfur reveals that the conflict that forced people off their land was less about sectarian strife and more about lack of access to water. My colleague Peter Annin has written a book with the provocative title of “Water Wars.”

When I think about water conflict, though, I ask myself if we know more now than we did about the relative vulnerability to water risk. It turns out that we do know a lot more.  For instance, examining countries on a short fuse in water-stressed regions of the world through the ND-GAIN index, it’s apparent that the Sahel and the Horn of Africa both show significant water vulnerability. Indicating that are such barometers as the projected change in precipitation and percent of population with access to improved water supply. Their vulnerability could possibly be having an impact on other  susceptibilities, such as food and health and wellness.

It is plausible that climate change is causing internal and cross-boundary migration that is affecting security around the world. At the recent New York Climate Week, Brigadier General Steven Cheney, CEO of the American Security Project, noted that 70 percent of global militaries consider climate change a threat to security.  He identified regions such as S. Asia Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, Mali and the Middle East as “tinder boxes” for various  reasons that concern flooding and drought, which are triggering competition for resources.

The U.S. military is taking a close look at this. A 2011 Defense Department Report,  “Trends and Implications of Climate Change for National and International Security,” firmly recommends to “institute water security as  a core element of DOD strategy” since “the availability of water underlies all other elements of human security.”

Percent changes in length of growing period changes to 2050.

So what  specifically do you analyze and consider to determine if a war or significant conflict is caused by climate change?   One approach involves looking at countries that are less vulnerable, or that have become less vulnerable over time, than their neighbors or peers and measure the degree of conflict in them.  In Africa, according to ND-GAIN, countries like Tanzania and Zambia have become less vulnerable over time.

The upshot? Investing in adaptation could be one way to mitigate civil conflict.

Post Script October 23. 2013.  Thanks to Josh Foster - a wiki of all things climate adaptation - for sharing the following with me from Science:

QUANTIFYING THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON HUMAN CONFLICT

A rapidly growing body of research examines whether human conflict can be affected by climatic changes. Drawing from archaeology, criminology, economics, geography, history, political science, and psychology, we assemble and analyze the 60 most rigorous quantitative studies and document, for the first time, a striking convergence of results. We find strong causal evidence linking climatic events to human conflict across a range of spatial and temporal scales and across all major regions of the world. The magnitude of climate’s influence is substantial: for each one standard deviation (1σ) change in climate toward warmer temperatures or more extreme rainfall, median estimates indicate that the frequency of interpersonal violence rises 4% and the frequency of intergroup conflict rises 14%. Because locations throughout the inhabited world are expected to warm 2σ to 4σ by 2050, amplified rates of human conflict could represent a large and critical impact of anthropogenic climate change.

Science 13 September 2013: Vol. 341 no. 6151 1235367

Bullish on the Resiliency of Emerging Economy Cities

Bullish on the Resiliency of Emerging Cities

At NYC Climate Week, Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin and SwissRe  Chairman Philip Ryan agreed that cities in lower-income countries had bettered their developed peers in their pluck for climate resiliency.  “I’m bullish on the resiliency of emerging cities, which show no fear in taking on adaptive innovations and collaborations that are making them more resilient to current and future climate changes,” Rodin noted.

As Ryan pointed out, while there is “nothing more challenging” to his business than climate change, innovative public/private initiatives are poised to present innovative ways to manage just that.  And growing city populations in lower-income countries stand to gain a great deal from the leadership their cities are displaying in adopting cutting-edge solutions.

Many city-related institutions possess an unabashed focus on Adaptation.  The climate leadership group C40 Cities has introduced an adaptation initiative lead by Mandy Ikert, its director of Water and Adaptation. The Urban Sustainability Directors Network emphasizes climate adaptation and resilience. And don’t forget the impressive impact the Rockefeller Foundation has made by raising the adaptation question to thousands of cities, more than 800 of which already have applied to its “100 Resilient Cities Initiative.”

In its “Wealthier, Healthier Cities”report, produced in partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project and C40,AECOM – the global provider of professional technical and management support services – suggests that climate adaptation is a competitive advantage. The report praises the impressive leadership that local governments have taken to spotlight the collateral benefits of climate adaptation for all sectors.

Of course, cities are hotbeds of competition. Management consultancy A.T. Kearney, which produces a resilient cities outlook every year, notes that New York, London, Paris and Tokyo remain today's leading cities. But an analysis of key trends in emerging cities suggests that Beijing and Shanghai may rival them in a decade or two.

Consider what’s happening in Quito, Ecuador.  Its climate-change strategy, formally approved four years ago (Oct. 2009), reflects the number of landslides, floods and droughts the steep-sloped Andean city of 2.1 million residents experience as well as the shrinking of the nearby Antisana glacier.  The push for the strategy actually began in 2007 when Quito hosted that year’s Clima Latino, a regional climate-change conference.

Quito’s strategy includes both mitigation and adaptation initiatives.  Its adaptation program centers on ecosystems and biodiversity; drinking water supplies; public health; infrastructure and power production; and climate risk management. The report draws on global climate models by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for impacts at similar altitudes and latitudes as Quito. The city has invested nearly $350 million so far in adaptation, using a blend of municipal dollars, international aid and philanthropic funding. In addition, Quito has moved climate adaption into the city’s main development agenda, report outside researchers.

While ND-GAIN ranks country level vulnerability and readiness, future plans include a downscaling of the Index, and cities may be our next target.

Like corporations, cities are adapting every day, and it is refreshing to know that cities in the developing world are reaping the rewards of nimble and innovative approaches to climate-change adaptation.  Their residents are fortunate to have the protection that this preparation affords. Why? Because although avoided costs are harder to quantify at a local level, the billions of dollars spent recovering from climate-related events worldwide serve as an important reminder of the need to act.

Climate as a Business Opportunity

Navigant Consulting recently published a well-researched blog, “Facing Climate Change and Adapting,” that reminds us of the billions of dollars the UN Green Climate Fund is expected to generate to support climate adaptation in emerging economies. The article also addresses the growing market demand for climate adaptation services, regardless of the $2 billion global multilateral mechanism, that grows at a brisk pace. If this sounds unlikely, just think of the dollars infused when countries have adapted to other mega trends, such as preparing for and recovering from World Wars.  While the blog identifies engineering consulting firms, desalinization technology and construction firms among those that stand to benefit from a changing climate, other sectors already have begun to benefit:

• The pharmaceutical industry will grow as vector-borne diseases adapt to geography changes.
• Agricultural innovation in seed and fertilizer already is occurring (see BASF an Monsanto) to accommodate not only different precipitation but also varying temperatures.
• Networking technologies are becoming hotter commodities, especially those that address the growing challenges of resource scarcity, the land-water-food-energy-climate nexus and the increasing impact and frequency of weather extremes.

While corporations involved in climate-change work often have been on both sides of the proverbial coin – either as mitigation leaders, looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or climate avoiders looking to avoid prohibitive policy changes, a new generation of climate leaders is emerging.  They see the great value in placing adaptation at the forefront of their work, and they’re well positioned to capture real market value from the billions of adaptation dollars out there.

Ranking Country Sustainability for Investor Decisions

As we know, decision–makers rarely if ever look at climate risk in isolation, which is why I’m glad that Marc Klugmann brought another great article from Fast Company’s Ben Shiller to my attention.  Mark is a founding strategic advisor to GAIN, and thus he is on the lookout for other indices that rank country vulnerability. RobecoSAM offers us a good one and a reminder of the importance of looking at a chromatic list of indicators when making sustainability decisions.

The article,The 59 Countries That Are Most Prepared To Handle An Uncertain Future is particularly interesting to us at ND-Global Adaptation Index, where we are currently pouring over 2012 data in preparation for launching the 2013 index in December. Comparing their index to ND-GAIN’s 2011 data we see that there is a great deal of consistency.  For instance eight out of ND-GAIN’s top-ten are in their top ten (The difference ND-GAIN includes New Zealand and Ireland in our top ten, not Canada and US).

ND-GAIN – which includes measures of governance, economics and society along with health, infrastructure,water, etc. and RobecoSAM’s sustainability data are complimentary and help corporations, governments, and charitable organizations prioritize investments in:

• New Markets, Products & Services
• Targeted Development
• Risk Mitigation
• Corporate Social Responsibility

Ultimately, indices like these help address crucial investor questions, such as:

1. Are you solving a big problem, preferably one that is worth a lot of money and is recognized today?
2. Is your solution differentiated, compelling and sustainable?
3. Does your venture have an understandable and relevant business model given your solution and the problem it addresses?

Stay tuned for a blog post next week that digs into some of these questions from the perspective of adaptation risk.