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.

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.

Top Three Reasons to Love Your Index

The top three reasons to use an index

Some of you will disagree with the title immediately.   Indices, among other complaints, are prone to lack transparency, magnify errors, misrepresent details…and you get the message.

But you may realize how frequently indices enter into your decision-making.  A recent staff meeting of ours uncovered three major ones used today: NASDAQ for our investments, U.S. News and World Report college rankings for our kids and the Big Mac Index to settle a bet.

Much as we love to critique (and criticize) indices, they do have their place. Please read through my top three reasons for using an index; then tell me what you agree – and disagree – with.

1. Indexes have readily available relative information that sparks dialogues and invites further investigations.

2. Indexes often invite new audiences to a concept that differs from their area of interest because they combine different variables rather than looking at them in isolation.

3. Indexes provide measures for change that, otherwise, are not quantifiable with a numeric indicator.

The most satisfying indexes allow those who use them to control variables and scenario analysis that visualize the effects of each index component.  This is what turns them from conversation starters to decision-making tools.

For adaptation indexes, I’ll possess the disadvantages while still celebrating the ability to start a conversation about results leaders who take steps toward resiliency often obtain.  I’m particularly struck by the opportunity to measure climate adaptation long-term through ND-GAIN. Coming from the climate mitigation world, I miss my tidy metric ton of greenhouse-gas equivalent as a way to measure progress. No neat unit exists for climate adaptation.  But through an index that tracks change over time, you can detect relative shifts in vulnerability and readiness.

The Auto Industry's Real Climate Risk

An article caught my attention last week from the Auto Industry Action Group, entitled “How Climate Action May Impact the Auto Industry.”   Initially, I thought it might tell the story of an industry that has seen significant disaster-related setbacks taking charge to prevent future problems. Actually, it proved to be a polemic about how to protect the industry from climate-related regulations.

Like the finance industry, which gained important business-continuity planning lessons from 9/11 and more recent disasters for example, Goldman Sachs’ stellar disaster-recovery preparations that enabled it to keep its lights and power on in lower Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy). I presumed that automakers were also familiar with risk mitigation, drawing lessons from disruptions to their supply chain after Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

I bet there are a few leaders in the auto industry who are assessing the realities of the climate-change issue  and are mulling risk evaluations that, for instance, include a look at the relative vulnerability by country of origin of their major suppliers – China Japan, Korea and Mexico.  As of 2011, Japan and Korea possessed a similar level of readiness, and Mexico and Japan’s vulnerability matched, but China was the least prepared and most vulnerable of all of them. (Check out the vulnerability/readiness matrix here to compare countries.)

Others closer to home may be thinking about these risks. The environmental choir, namely The American Sustainable Business Council, published an interesting article about small business risks from climate adaptation.

I can only assume that many car dealerships, which stand at the tail end of the industry’s value chain, consider themselves small businesses. Without climate-adaptation leadership, they could find themselves in trouble.  Among several compelling statistics noted in the article, an estimated 25 percent of small- to-mid-sized businesses don’t reopen after a major disaster, and 57 percent of small businesses have no disaster-recovery plans.

These small businesses represent our American jobs and the backbones of our communities. As climate-related risks grow at home and abroad, we should make it a priority to find the right tools to help all business owners manage for a dramatically changed future.

Three Steps to Better Decision-Making

Three Steps to Better Decision-Making Many tools are available for corporate and development decision-makers to help them plan and devise their business strategies.   Corporate leaders I speak with say they use the Consumer Confidence Index, Corruption Perceptions Index, and Human Development Index among other well-regarded tools, to help relay complex information quickly to their boards of directors and C-Suite peers.  The ND-Global Adaptation Index joins these business barometers to provide quick insights into a country’s climate vulnerability and readiness to adapt.  And since risk experts view climate change as ranking among our principal threats to business, the tool proves to be a timely resource for strategic planning.

As you seek to protect your investments and supply chains while identifying fresh market opportunities, it will pay to absorb how the ND-Global Adaptation Index can assist you.  A quick tour offers three steps (each requiring just a minute) that can generate actionable information about country-level vulnerabilities from climate change and the readiness of countries to absorb and use new investments. By taking the tour, you’ll be able to apply climate savvy to the decisions you make this year.

The Index, free and open source, employs a layered structure, starting with the so-called GAIN ranking

3. The GAIN ranking orders every country by aggregating all measured factors into a single score. It allows a quick look at combined vulnerability and readiness. View the full rankings to find your countries within the index and compare their GAIN ranking with one another.

2. The GAIN Matrix shows the evolution of vulnerability and readiness over the past 15 years. It allows deeper insights into country risk and opportunity.  Add your countries to watch their evolution.

3. The GAIN Country Profiles provide you with all of the data and their sources, organized by specific vulnerability and readiness measures such as water availability, food security and education level.

So if you want to use the Index to size up your supply chain, you can examine a cross-section of the data most germane to your supply chain with just a few clicks on the rankings page. Here’s a snapshot for water, http://index.gain.org/ranking/vulnerability/water for example. Simple, fast, insightful.

Check it out, then tell me what you learn about your business through using this tool.

A Full-Time Focus (and Idea Exchange) on Corporate Climate Adaptation

A Full-Time Focus (and Idea Exchange) on Corporate Climate Adaptation After five years of focusing peripherally on climate change adaptation, I have thrown myself full time into that passion and pursuit. I’ve joined the Global Adaptation Institute, now known as the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (more on that shift in a future post).  I’m on a listening tour, of sorts, during my first few months. And I hope we can make the most of the “exchange” part of this blog’s title.  Please send your feedback as I share my beginner’s-mind thinking on our work.

For those of you new to ND-GAIN (see past blogs about it here and here), the following may bring to life the value of this index tool for assisting you in your decision making:

1. ND-GAIN is the world’s only index that measures the vulnerability of each nation to climate change and its readiness to adapt, making it an important tool for preparing for disasters, developing infrastructure, and managing ecosystems around the world.
2. ND-GAIN provides the private sector with the means to gauge adaptation-related opportunities in developing countries. With this ability, the private sector can address the critical needs of vulnerable populations while identifying new markets well-suited to their business model, products or services and investment-risk profiles.
3. ND-GAIN helps policymakers identify the easiest-to-achieve avenues – the low-hanging fruit – for rapidly improving a country’s investment attractiveness to the private sector as well as to motivate and create incentives to employ  the best public policies.
4. ND-GAIN helps international organizations rank their resources based on need and effectiveness

Our mission is to enhance the world’s understanding of the importance of adaptation and facilitate private and public investments in communities most susceptible to climate change.

We envision building resilience to climate change and other global forces as a vital component of sustainable development and market growth.

To accomplish this work, we need your input.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Joyce E. Coffee, managing director at ND-Global Adaptation Index

Urbanization and climate adaptation – how at risk is your supply chain?

Maplecroft, a global risk and strategic consulting firm in the U.K., noted recently that “resilience to major weather ….events is not improving in some of the world’s most important growth markets, leaving large sections of their populations, essential infrastructure and economies at ‘extreme risk.’” That view aligns with that of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index.  The open-source GAIN Index underlines that climate change, population growth, urbanization and resource scarcity jeopardize urbanizing nations.

Why should we care?  Because we care about humanity and should make it a priority to help the most vulnerable adapt.  And because supply chains and investors are exposed to greater risk than anticipated as natural disasters exacerbate other political and societal risks.

Maplecroft describes an interesting contrast.  Its Socio-Economic Resilience Index ranks the U.S. at 169^th and ‘low risk,’ even though it features in the “20 most at-risk countries for exposure to hurricanes, tsunamis, extra-tropical cyclones, storm surges, flooding, volcanic risk and wildfires.“  The Philippine’s socio-economic resilience to natural disasters, meanwhile, ranks No. 65 and ‘high risk’ Because, while it has registered strong economic growth over the last four years, “better disaster resilience has not materialized,” which keeps its index ranking unchanged.

The WEF Global Risks 2013 Eighth Edition posits that the twin threats of economic upheaval and accelerating climate change will collide during the next decade, delaying adaptation efforts while exposing nations to unpredictable financial loss from disasters. It contends that denser cities are more threatened by higher temperatures, exacerbated drought, storms and heat waves, although rural areas certainly are vulnerable from many of these weather-related events.  I do see a big climate risk derived from the ongoing population shift toward coastal zones.

In the CDP Supply Chain Report 2012-13, “Reducing Risk and Driving Business Value,” 70 percent identify a current or future risk related to climate change.  Seventy-three percent say they feel that climate change presents a physical risk to their operations.  More than half of the supply-chain risks identified due to drought and precipitation extremes already are affecting respondents’ operations or are expected to have an effect within the next five years.  According to the survey, the primary impacts will be a reduction/disruption in production capacity and increased operational costs.

Since 2011, the World Economic Forum has been leading a Supply Chain Risk Initiative to consider safeguards for global supply chains.  Among other priorities, it aims to:

• More explicitly assess supply chain and transport risks as part of procurement, management and governance processes
• Develop trusted networks of suppliers, customers, competitors and government focused on risk management
• Improve network risk visibility, through two-way information-sharing and collaborative development of standardized risk assessment and quantification tools
• Improve pre- and post-event communication on systemic disruptions and balance security and facilitation to bring a more balanced public discussion

Combining those with a Ten Point Checklist for Making Corporations Resilient and Asking the Climate Question: How to Create a Climate Adaptation Plan, would deliver a robust execution plan.

So, as you consider your supply chains, you might want to ponder if food shortages, fragile states, variable water supplies and the vagaries of emerging economies have affected it before, since these geopolitical, societal, environmental and economic factors are likely to be stressed simultaneously by climate change in the future.

Especially since these issues are likely to take priority for limited resources, it is worth considering how climate adaptation can be a collateral benefit of actions aimed primarily at nearer-term economic, geopolitical, societal and environmental factors.  If we don’t, twining these threats with accelerating climate change could collide in the next decade, delaying adaptation efforts while exposing companies to unpredictable financial loss from disasters.

National Climate Assessment – getting people to do something about it

A few weeks after a spirited conversation with a client about how best to communicate sustainability, I spied an opportunity at the National Adaptation Forum early this month. The Forum was chock-a-block full of convincing data that emphasize we need to act.  But fewer actors than I would have liked attended; corporate participants were noticeably absent, except for a few private sector consultants, like me. Image from the January, 2013 DRAFT National Climate Assessmen

while the NCA process is designed to be highly inclusive and participatory, we need to ensure that the private sector is, indeed, meaningfully engaged.  The corporate sector has real risk and opportunity related to climate change and they should join the brave folks who have the temerity to ask what can be done to bring the rich resource – the national climate assessment – into the space of action.

(By the way, if you read no further, please note that the National Climate Assessment (NCA) will go to President Obama in December, and you have until the end of this week to comment.  Whoever you are, if you have a stake in your home, your business or your community, the report relates to you, so give it a gander!)

I maintain that the NCA nurtures several super powers:

1.       The power of the prez: Obama can meet with a key group of corporate scions (as he does when seeking assistance with passing key legislation) to share the national climate assessment and ask them to relate and discuss their own adaptation actions and challenges.

2.       The power of story:  There are millions of companies in America.  Climate change already has affected countless numbers of them.   What are they and other companies with foresight doing to adapt?  A nonfederal convener as impartial and neutral as Facebook could offer a cloud on which corporate adaptation stories could reside, with the NCA serving as a foundation.  For each chapter – health, agriculture, forestry, etc…..we could create a wiki of examples to inspire and cajole others to action.

3.       The power of accountability: Somewhere between the big donor and the common man sits the 300-plus U.S. companies that are part of the Carbon Disclosure Project or the more than 4,000 companies from 60 countries that report through the Global Reporting Initiative.  These companies are embracing accountability as a way to earn and burnish their license to lead. We must strongly encourage CDP and GRI to create a community of climate adaptation leaders by giving credence to adaptation.

The Carbon Disclosure Project has cast a spotlight on supply-chain engagements.  How about illuminating climate adaptation next?

In the meantime, check out NCAnet, a network of organizations working with the NCA to engage producers and users of assessment information across the United States.  Perhaps a group you collaborate with has already joined.  Or perhaps you can be the spark to ignite engagement.

Job Posting: Climate Adaptation Expert?

I am noticing something remarkable in arguably the most important job category: elected officials. Might we see a 180-degree shift in the qualifications for this unusual job category?  In 2010, six-term South Carolina Republican Bob Inglis lost his House seat because he believed in human-caused climate change. Now we have Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who gets it, as do some former “flat earth” proponents. (Even Charles and David Koch, the oil tycoons who for years have bankrolled climate-change deniers, may be changing their tune since a study on earth surface temperatures, that they financed, in part found that global warming is occurring and humans have played a role in it.)

The way Christie ably managed the Hurricane Sandy climate crisis in his state has provided cover for politicians of all political persuasions to claim leadership in this area.  A good thing too, since  Yale Project on Climate Change Communication recently reported that 58 percent of registered voters consider global warming when determining for whom to vote.

Those numbers are for the U.S., but it appears to be true elsewhere. Greenland just elected a new prime minister, Aleqa Hammond, whose primary strength over the incumbent was her handling of mineral and metal rights in those growing areas of Greenland no longer covered by ice.  Thus, that election was settled over an already-changed climate.

Business may be a bit closer to making these choices, too. CDP Supply Chain Report 2012-13,  73 percent of surveyed companies  say they feel that climate change presents a physical risk to their operations. Still, fully 44 percent of CEOs in the survey acknowledged that climate change isn’t a significant item on their agendas.

Perhaps Greenbiz’ State of Green Business 2013 addresses it best when it asks (page 13) “at what point will climate, extreme weather and resource constraints be similarly seen as a patent threat that requires changes to the design and operation of our businesses and supply chains?  What will be the dramatic event(s) that provide the tipping point?  How much disruption and inconvenience will the public be willing to tolerate?”

So, let’s see if the hot new job of the 2020s will be Corporate Climate Research and Adaptation Strategic Advisor.   For thoughts on what that job entails, see Ten Point Checklist for Making Corporations Resilient and Asking the Climate Question: How to Create a Climate Adaptation Plan.

Adapt, media, we need you!

I’m sure you’ve noticed, as I have, the pick up in media reporting on climate change whenever a weather-related disaster occurs, especially around major events such as Hurricane Sandy, the prolonged Texas droughts and the Colorado wildfires.  And reporters are coming from a wide variety of beats, including politics, community affairs and real estate.  That diversity of story approaches is a dream come true for communications professionals such as I.  I am eager to see more proactive climate-change coverage, not just that in response to a crisis. That encouraging development is why I’m so bummed – and disturbed – to see the demise of the environmental desk at some of the top news outlets in the U.S.  This is troublesome because objective third-party reporting helps us understand the issues, the politics that often surround them, and the solutions to these precarious challenges. We need that coverage, perhaps even more than we need the reporting that accompanies a weather-related emergency.

What does it reflect that the NYTimes is dismantling its environment desk of seven reporters and two editors and placing them elsewhere, while at the same time dropping its Green Blog?  Why is the Washington Post reassigning its lead climate reporter off the environmental beat? They’re not alone. Four years ago, CNN dropped its environmental team and the network’s environmental coverage today is weaker. NBC slashed its staff of environmental reporters in 2008 – in the middle of Green Week!

Have the continual readership studies that news shops take in today’s fiercely competitive media world revealed that readers and listeners tune out on such coverage? Are other beats suddenly becoming more newsworthy and requiring additional resources?  I would like to know.  I also would love to ask veteran Pulitzer Prize judges whether they see fewer entries of investigative stories or series on environmental issues.

We’ve seen environmental-reporting cycles before. But why is this happening again at a time when Congress, the administration and corporate leaders are acknowledging climate change and the damages it’s triggering? As for consumers, surveys certainly indicate they are interested in environmental issues and what companies are doing to combat greenhouse gases and other pollutants. So what gives?

I seriously doubt that Mother Jones can go it alone on the environmental front within the print media, along with respected bloggers such as Marc Gunther and Aman Singh to pick up the slack.

In less than a week, a sell-out crowd will converge at the National Adaptation Forum in Denver.  Government, corporate and academic voices will debate, provoke and solve.  It’s a frame up for the media to get ahead of climate adaptation or, if they would prefer to think about it in their market’s terms, the next storm that undoubtedly will grace their websites’ home pages in the next 12 months.

I, for one, am going to look with interest at how many journalists – environmental specialists and those who aren’t – will attend the Forum. It will serve as another litmus test of the media’s genuine interest in covering issues that will determine if our planet withstands what the experts maintain lies ahead on climate change.

One more thing: Let’s give a shout out to a kickstarter-type campaign to pay for climate journalists. And let’s all ante up to help us adapt! Because what are the consequences when media interest evaporates as our environment evaporates?