Climate Risk and Corporate Rescues

Cities are at the forefront of the battle against climate change. We are the source of approximately 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And as the climate changes, densely populated urban areas—particularly coastal cities—–will disproportionately feel the impacts. Those of us in local government recognize the importance of national and international leadership on climate change. But we are not waiting for others to act first. Under PlaNYC, New York City's comprehensive sustainability plan, most of our efforts have focused on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Initiatives including the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan, which will increase energy efficiency of existing buildings, and retrofitting ferries to use cleaner fuel, will help us meet our goal of reducing the city's emissions by 30% by 2030. These actions alone, however, will not stop climate change. We already face climate risks today, including heat waves, blackouts, flooding, and coastal storms. With climate change these risks will only increase. To ensure that New York City is resilient to existing and future climate risks, we must take further action. Through a generous contribution from the Rockefeller Foundation, I convened the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), which gathered the leading climate change scientists, academics, and insurance, risk management and legal experts. These experts helped develop a framework and tools to assist the City create a risk-based response to climate change that is grounded in state-of-the-art science information. In February 2009, the NPCC released the most detailed climate risk information for any major city in the world; this volume of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences presents the NPCC's full findings. The NPCC climate change projections put numbers to what we already know: climate change is real and could have serious consequences for New York if we do not take action. I appreciate the hard work of the members of the New York City Panel on Climate Change. Through PlaNYC, the City will build on their work as we craft strategies to improve the city's resilience to climate. Building climate resilience can take many forms, including increasing our understanding of climate risks and vulnerabilities, hardening facilities and assets to prevent impacts, educating vulnerable populations about risks, and ensuring that we can quickly resume operations after weather events occur. In the coming months, the New York City Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, another PlaNYC initiative, will release a plan detailing how Task Force members will prepare the city's critical infrastructure for warmer temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and rising sea levels. Planning for climate change today is less expensive than rebuilding an entire network after a catastrophe. We simply can't wait to plan for the effects of climate change. The NPCC and Rockefeller Foundation's contributions to the City's climate resilience efforts will help ensure that we create a greener, greater New York for future generations. In 2008, Mayor Bloomberg established the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), with the mandate to provide New York City with the most up-to-date and comprehensive scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information about climate change and its impacts on the city and environs. Climate Change Adaptation in New York City: Building a Risk Management Response is the first report of the NPCC. The report will help New York City develop, adopt, and implement policies to adapt the city's critical infrastructure to the changing climate. This NPCC report outlines a powerful and novel framework for deploying sophisticated tools of risk management to address the city's climate adaptation challenges, and details with rigor and insight the critical challenges that climate change poses to New York City's energy, transportation, water, and communications systems. The report also presents a coordinated set of climate projections prepared by the NPCC to be used by the many public agencies and private-sector organizations that manage critical infrastructure in the region as they develop adaptation strategies, and it describes how legal and regulatory tools can support adaptation policies. The challenges facing the insurance industry and the use of insurance to reduce climate risks are also described at length. A final section sets forth the indicators and monitoring activities needed to inform Flexible Adaptation Pathways as the City and region move forward. The NPCC report is the product of the committed scientists and experts in the New York City region who served as authors, led by Co-chairs Cynthia Rosenzweig and William Solecki. The dedicated Science and Policy Team at the Columbia Earth Institute and the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities organized the process that has resulted in the production of this landmark report. It is becoming recognized throughout the world that cities have a crucial role to play in responding to climate change. The NPCC 2010 Report puts climate change adaptation in New York City in the broader national and international contexts and helps establish New York City as a thought and policy leader in this urgent endeavor. Climate Change Adaptation in New York City will be widely read around the world, both for its specific insights and also as a roadmap for other cities in preparing plans for climate change adaptation. The work of the NPCC is a pioneering activity for which all New Yorkers, and all others around the world who will benefit, should be most grateful. The Rockefeller Foundation also merits our gratitude for the generous support it has provided to this endeavor. Climate change will have a profound impact on New York City and its residents as it alters environmental baselines on which the urban infrastructure was built. Despite this, both the City and its stakeholders have a wide range of tools and resources with which to respond to the problem. Key insights in the following report derive from the highly integrated connections between science and public policy as they relate to climate change. The New York City Panel on Climate Change, for example, comprises a number of scientists and other technical experts capable of considering the issues at hand with a view to understanding the potential impacts of climate change and options for adaptation. The City University of New York is well placed to contribute to the multifaceted complex questions of climate change and how the city will be affected. This requires a multidisciplinary approach that can draw from the deep resources of the colleges that make up our institution. In addition, the New York City Panel on Climate Change had ongoing, continuous, and fruitful communication with the Mayor's Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, and the New York City Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. The collaborations brought forward in this document embody the culmination of a first step in a science–policy linkage that will be required to effectively address climate change in New York City. In addition, these collaborations show how great universities in a great city can link together to make a positive difference in the lives of its citizens.

How can the UK road system be adapted to the impacts posed by climate change? By creating a climate adaptation framework

Climate change research on transportation systems: Climate risks, adaptation and planning

Introduction to <i>Climate Change Adaptation in New York City: Building a Risk Management Response</i>

Testing a participatory integrated assessment (PIA) approach to select climate change adaptation actions to enhance wetland sustainability: The case of Poyang Lake region in China

The severe damage and impacts caused by extreme events in a changing climate will not only make the sustainable development goals difficult to achieve, but also erode the hard-won development gains of the past. This article reviews the major impacts and challenges of disaster and climate change risks on sustainable development, and summarizes the courses and linkages of disaster risk reduction (DRR), climate change adaptation (CCA), and sustainable development over the past 30 years. Our findings show that the conceptual development of DRR actions has gone through three general phases: disaster management in the 1990s, risk management in the 2000s, and resilient management and development in the 2010s. Gradually, CCA has been widely implemented to overcome the adverse effects of climate change. A framework is proposed for tackling climate change and disaster risks in the context of resilient, sustainable development, indicating that CCA is not a subset of DRR while they have similarities and differences in their scope and emphasis. It is crucial to transform governance mechanisms at different levels, so as to integrate CCA and DRR to reduce disaster and climate change risks, and achieve safe growth and a resilient future in the era of the Anthropocene.

The Adaptation AGORA project supports the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change by promoting innovative methods, best practices, and participatory education to strengthen regional and community action. A central element of the project is the Agora Community Hub, a collaborative online platform that hosts the Adaptation AGORA Digital Academy – a structured educational resource designed to boost climate literacy and engagement.The Digital Academy offers a series of interactive modules that help citizens and stakeholders access, understand, and use open-source climate data and tools to respond to adaptation challenges and combat misinformation. It integrates a wide range of international and national web-based climate data, risk and adaptation tools and platforms with tailored learning materials and guidelines to support users across different levels of climate knowledge.The Academy is built around nine thematic modules that guide users through the fundamentals and complexities of climate adaptation:What is Climate? – Understanding climate basics and variability. How Can Climate Models Benefit You? – Exploring model types, uses, and limitations. How to Use and Visualize Climate Data? – Learning to navigate and exploit data sources, tools and platforms. Climate Threats and Hazards – Identifying physical impacts and environmental risks. Climate Risks – Linking hazards with vulnerability and exposure. Adaptation &amp; Governance – Exploring policy, planning, and institutional responses. Investigate Options and Take Action! – Supporting decision-making for local adaptation. Food and Climate Change – Understanding climate impacts on food systems. New Frontiers – Introducing emerging tools and innovation in climate adaptation. Each module is tailored to varying levels of expertise – base, intermediate and advanced – ensuring inclusive learning. Users are guided not only on how to access data, but how to critically assess, interpret, and apply it to real-world problems. The Digital Academy is co-developed through ongoing engagement at key events like ECCA 2023, the SISC Conference 2023, and targeted stakeholder and student workshops. These co-creation processes ensure the Academy reflects the needs of practitioners, researchers, educators, and the public. This dynamic learning environment enhances scientific inquiry, promotes critical thinking, and invites data providers, educators, and policymakers to collaborate. Ultimately, the Academy fosters trust, deepens understanding, and empowers communities across Europe to take informed action toward climate resilience.

Chapter 6: Insurance industry

Climate risk is increasingly affecting the livelihood of the majority of the population in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia (SA), making the majority of people vulnerable to it. Therefore, enhancing adaptation to climate change is inevitable to reduce the vulnerability of people in these regions. This chapter investigated the major climate risks faced by the farm households and also examined the factors affecting the adoption of climate adaptation measures by them, using primary data from SSA (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique) and SA (Bangladesh, India, Nepal). Additionally, we reviewed the level of climate risks and the factors that affect the capability of these countries to climate adaptation at the macro level. We found variation in the climate risks experienced by the farmers. One of the most common climate risks faced by the farmers was drought except in Bangladesh. The econometric model shows that economic status, membership in farm organization, and training are the important factors influencing the adoption of climate adaptation. Our review of macro-level indicators reveals that though the countries under study experience different levels of exposure to climate risks, they are highly vulnerable to climate risks because they all have a low adaptive capacity due to the prevalence of high levels of poverty and corruption in the public institutions. Hence, to enhance climate adaptation, the government and other relevant stakeholders should focus on improving the farmers’ resilience capacity by investing in improving the economic status, enhancing the network and knowledge through training, and building better and cleaner institutions.

In this article, we use a political economic analysis in arguing that climate change risks and vulnerabilities are often produced and sustained through inappropriate, loosely designed and socially contested institutional mechanisms. Using ethnography, we contribute to the existing social science scholarship on climate vulnerability and risk by focusing on a political economic analysis of how risks are framed and responded at local institutional levels in the Indian Sundarbans. Our paper offers place-based nuances of climate politics to show how local institutions are characterised by power relations, economic incentives and political influences while facilitating and deploying climate risk management strategies. Empirical findings from our study highlight that neoliberal approaches to climate risk management facilitated by local institutions reveal predominant market mechanisms, patron–clientele relations and technologically engineered solutions to create local climate economies. From our findings, we conclude that political economy of climate change can explain why and how adaptation policies become ineffective in everyday experiences of precarious living.

This chapter reviews and discusses the status of development policy related to potential climate-related disasters and its approach to mainstream climate resilience in urban development planning in Thailand, specifically Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR). Climate change (CC) adaptation planning in Thailand has mainly emphasized minimizing the effects of future climate variability and change, particularly in urbanized areas. The subsequent concern with the improbability of CC projections has delayed the adoption of climate adaptation plans and policies. The improbability of climate forecasts and the absence of sectoral or regional detailed data and information have highlighted a deficiency in the development of CC adaptation measures, planning, and action. A larger proportion of relevant stakeholders should be involved in the practice of understanding climate risks and vulnerabilities, and planning and implementation. The evidence of climate risks and vulnerabilities in BMR have been discovered by some scholars.

China’s sheer size, vast population and competing development priorities (whose pathways often contribute to severe environmental degradation), as well as increasing economic disparity across regions, are among the many challenges facing China’s current leaders. As documented in the previous chapters, climate change presents an additional stressor. China has been subject to floods, droughts and heat waves for millennia; these hazards are not new. What is new is how rapidly climate risks are changing for different groups of people and sectors. This is due to the unprecedented rates of change in multiple processes – socio-economic development, migration, land use change, pollution and urbanisation – occurring alongside increasingly more intense and frequent weather hazards and shifts in seasons. China’s people and ecosystems are facing dynamic pressures that threaten the progress made in lifting large segments of the population out of poverty. It is within this challenging context that China’s policy makers, businesses and citizens must manage climate risk and build resilience. China faces similar difficulties to other countries in grappling with climate risk and adaptation as a ‘wicked challenge’. As discussed in Chapter 1, developing climate risk management and adaptation strategies and polices is difficult for a number of reasons, including: limited data records; low financial, computational and research capacity for conducting and understanding integrated risk assessments; over-reliance on technological and engineering solutions; and the necessity of cross-sector policies and actions that do not sit conveniently within any one government agency or research discipline. Adaptation planning for policy making requires significant investment of both human and financial resources, and many countries currently lack capacity in core areas needed foradaptation. Ensuring successful long-term adaptation is complex, as it involves trade-offs between certain actions. Even with the best data and intent, the results can lead to policies and actions that create maladaptive futures. The challenge for China, an emerging world power, is how to approach the risks and opportunities presented by climate change while also addressing long-term socio-economic needs – particularly the needs of diverse vulnerable populations – in more sustainable ways, despite an uncertain climate future. This closing chapter documents the evolution of Chinese climate adaptation planning efforts, from approaches in assessment research to institutional arrangements and policy. It does so by examining assessment research methodologies and attitudes toward the environment and natural resource use, both of which underpin current policy and planning decisions. The chapter provides an overview of key adaptation policies that China has instituted at national to provincial scales in light of research priorities and concerns, such as those documented in the other chapters. The chapter covers some of the ongoing challenges to national and provincial adaptation policy and planning. It also highlights, and concludes with, China’s emerging South-South climate policy and cooperation efforts in moving forward with treating adaptation as an iterative, cooperative process.

This paper examines whether US cities’ membership in voluntary climate clubs improves the municipal bond ratings issued by S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch. We suggest that only clubs focused on climate adaptation could help cities signal their resilience to climate risks and their ability to service their municipal bonds. Yet, club membership is only a signal of intent. By itself, it does not offer concrete evidence that cities have adopted adaptation policies or enhanced their resilience to climate risks. We examine three climate clubs: ICLEI, whose membership obligations cover climate and other environmental issues; C40, whose scope covers both climate mitigation and adaptation; and 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), which focuses on adaptation only. Employing a two-way fixed effects model for a panel of 80 US cities from 1995 to 2018, we find that 100RC membership leads to a small improvement in bond ratings. This has important policy implications: Assurances about implementing adaptation policy, as opposed to evidence about how adaptation reduces climate risks, could have spillover effects on municipal finance. In such cases, climate adaptation could have tangible implications for city-level finances.

Part 1 Introduction and Overview 1. Why this book and what can you find? 2. Background: Challenges of adaptation and guiding pinciples for good adaptation 3. Adaptation research - Where do we stand? 4. Adaptation policy and practice - Where do we stand? Part 2: How to prepare the ground for adaptation? 5 Explore potential climate change impacts and vulnerabilities and identify priority concerns 5.1 Regional vulnerbility assessment (including information on mapping) Mark Zebisch 5.2 Practical Guidance for vulnerability assessments at the regional and local scale (BalticClimate) Mattias Hjerpe 5.3 Identify priority concerns with a risk assessment for the Swiss NAS Roland Hohmann 6. Initiate adaptation, ensure commitment and management 6.1 The role of governments in adaptation: a comparison across Europe Reinhard Steurer and Anja Bauer 6.2 Building commitment for adaptation - the right place at the right time? Julian Wright 6.3 Initiating and sustaining adaption in the private sector Magnus Benzie and Oskar Wallgren 7. Build knowledge and awareness 7.1 Making climate change scenarios useful for regional adaptation plans in France Christian Page 7.2 Adaptation communication with business actors and the general public at metropolitan level - experiences from northwestern Germany Claudia Korner and Andreas Lieberum 7.3 Awareness on climate change adaptation in Denmark - how to address a target group Louise Grondahl 8. Identify and cooperate with relevant stakeholders 8.1 Participation process for the development of national adaptation strategies: the Austrian example Andrea Prutsch and Therese Stickler 8.2 Stakeholder Involvement in Rural Areas - Examples from Brandenburg Andrea Knierim 8.3 ANCONA IS GETTING READY! How the City of Ancona is building its resilient profile throughout a participatory process Marco Cardinaletti Part 3: How to plan for adaption 9. Explore a wide spectrum of adaptaion options 9.1 Identifying and sorting adaptaion options Inke Schauser 9.2 Adaptation: what could it look like? Examples from the adaptation inspiration book Marjolein Pijnappels 9.3 Practical experiences with Adaptation Wizard 10. Prioritise adaptation options Megan Gawith 10.1 Prioritisation of adaptation options for The Netherlands: a multi-criteria analysis Ekko C. van Ierland, Karianne de Bruin and Rob B. Dellink 10.2 Economic Appraisal Paul Watkiss and Alistair Hunt 10.3 Prioritising actions using adaptation tipping points and adapation pathways M. Haasnott, J.C.J. Kwadijk and N. Asselman 11. Work with uncertainties 11.1 An adaptive approach to conservation management of Bosherton Lakes SAC in Wales Clive Walmsley and Tristan Hatton-Ellis 11.2 Robust decision making - Managing uncertainties in adapting water resource systems to a changing climate in England and Wales Suraje Dessai and Geoff J. Darch 11.3 Communication of uncertainties - recommendations from social science research Torsten Grothmann Part 4: How to implement adaptation and review success? 12 Avoid maladaptation 12.1 Climate change opportunities and sustainability Rob Swart and Marjoelein Pijnappels 12.2 Combining climate change mitigation and adaptation: green roofs in Basel, Switzerland Aleksandra Kazmierczak 12.3 A White Decay of Winter Tourism in Europe? Carmen de Jong 13 Modify existing policies, structures and processes 13.1 Climate change fitness of spatial planning in the Alpine space Marco Putz and Sylvia Kruse 13.2 Climate proofing of EU policies Sabine McCallum and Stephane Isoard 13.3 World's second northenmost captial region adapts to climate change - the Helsinki metropolitan adaptation strategy Lasse Peltonen, Leena Kopperoinen and Susanna Kankaanpaa 14 Monitor and evaluate systematically 14.1 Asking the right questions: monitoring and evaluating adaptation Patrick Pringle 14.2 Adaptation indicators Jelle van Minnen, Mike Harley, Kaj van der Sandt and Willem Ligtvoet 14.3 French adaptation policy: the monitoring approach for the first adaptation Bertrand Reysset Part 5: State of the art outisde Europe 15. Adaptation experiences in other industrialized countries and developing countries 15.1 The State of the Art in Adaptation Science, Policy and Practice in the United States Richard H. Moss, Thomas J. Wilbanks and Sherry B. Wright 15.2 Doing it: getting science into Australian adaptation policy S. M. Howden and R. A. Nelson 15.3 Wise adaptation to climate change: Japan's case Makoto Tamura, Kazuya Yasuhara, Nobuo Shirai and Mitsuru Tanaka 15.4 Developing countries Kelly Levin 15.5 What are lessons learned for developing countries? A reflection on the transferability of adaptation knowledge Britta Horstmann 15.6 Lessons leanred and differences with Europe Part 6: Lessons learned and further needs for adaptation research, policy and practice 16. What we know - Lessons learnt from practical cases 16.1 How to realize 'good practice' in adaptation? 16.2 How to make adaptation happen? 17. What we don't know - Needs for future adaptation research, policy and practice

Climate change will significantly impact the future viability and security of food production systems, with increased frequency and intensity of droughts, floods, storms and other extreme climatic events predicted in many regions. In order for food production systems to remain viable and resilient under a changing climate, novel approaches, which integrate risk management (i.e. adaptation) and risk transfer strategies, such as insurance, are required. We argue that the coordinated integration of risk management and risk transfer approaches will support greater resilience of food production systems under climate change. Conversely, if risk management and risk transfer strategies are not carefully integrated, there is potential to undermine adaptive capacity (e.g. insurance subsidies may dissuade farmers from investing in climate adaptation) and ultimately reduce the capacity of food production systems to cope with and recover from the adverse impacts of climate change. Here we propose a resilience-based conceptual framework for integrating risk management and risk transfer strategies along with four key principles, which we believe could underlie their successful integration and thus enhance food production system resilience under climate change. These are as follows: (1) pro-active investments in farmer climate adaptation rather than re-active disaster relief, (2) structuring of government subsidies around insurance and climate disaster relief to incentivise farmer climate adaptation, (3) rewarding farmer efforts towards climate adaptation with cheaper insurance premiums for those farmers that invest resources into climate adaptation and (4) recognising investments in the integration of farm climate adaptation and risk transfer schemes within the broader context of future climate disaster risk management and global food security. Such an integrated investment approach could substantially reduce future economic losses for farmers while also enhancing food security under climate change.