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Is your business ready? Climate Change threats and opportunities

“The most common disruption to hit organisations over the past year was extreme weather, which was identified as a disruption to 58 per cent of organisations – up from 25 per cent in 2009. It replaced IT disruption as the top disruption for the first time in this research series’ history.”
(Chartered Management Institute, March 2010)

Weather already significantly affects economic activity and business continuity and as climate changes all sectors of UK business will be faced with preparing for a range of new threats and opportunities.

How climate can affect your business
A changing climate affects all business areas, and not just the more obvious ones of product design or service delivery. As highlighted by the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) the impacts of climate change can affect:

• Markets: changing demand for goods and services;
• Finance: implications for investment, insurance and stakeholder reputation;
• Logistics: vulnerability of supply chain, utilities and transport arrangements;
• Premises: impacts on building design, construction, maintenance and facilities management;
• People: implications for workforce, customers and changing lifestyles;
• Process: impacts on production processes and service delivery.

The impacts of climate change can be managed like any other business risk and planning ahead is often more likely to lead to cost-effective adaptation than responding to changes as they happen.

How USEA can help your business
The changing climate is likely to be an issue for your business and could well affect your bottom line. USEA can help you understand and assess the threats and opportunities that could arise from climate change so as to limit the former and maximize the latter.
Support offered, includes but is not limited to:

• Help build resilience, business continuity and adaptive capacity;
• Use of the latest sector specific tools and resources to assess the potential impacts of climate change on either business or entire business sector;
• Use of the latest Climate Projections developed by the UKCIP to provide probabilistic information on expected changes in climate throughout the 21st century;
• Support in the development of a climate change continuity plan based on current and future vulnerability to specific weather events (Flood/Snow/Heat-waves)
• Preparation and delivery of general awareness raising, scoping exercises as well as action planning workshops for management and staff;
• Integrating climate change risks into normal business management and procedures.