Judith Rodin / June 29, 2011 / Speeches & Presentations
Dr. Judith Rodin
It has been my great pleasure to join you this afternoon.
This very productive and engaging day leaves us in a better place in terms of advancing our understanding of climate change resilience, highlighting some of the key challenges and surfacing new opportunities for progress and collaboration.
The fundamental issues that you discussed this morning — increasingly volatile weather conditions, rising sea levels, and threats to public health present major challenges with consequential impacts on insurance markets, commercial distribution networks, business resource allocation, and corporate preparedness.
The recognition is growing that climate change must now be a factor of every business plan around the globe, in every sector, regardless of the size and nature of the business. And as you discussed this morning, this means the engagement of multiple actors — governments, business and non-profit organizations — in building and financing climate change resilience.
The nature and complexity of these global challenges has dramatically influenced our work at the Rockefeller Foundation. We see the need for new and innovative approaches to solving these problems infused with a deep commitment to partnership and collaboration.
At an earlier time, foundations served as social venture capitalists, testing novel ideas. The successful results of these pilots were then handed over to governments who scaled the best models to the benefit of larger constituencies. In somewhat of a virtuous circle, the private sector generated the wealth in the first instance and then fed some of that wealth back into philanthropic pursuits.
Today, we find ourselves at an inflection point which challenges that neat division of labor. All of us need to rethink our models and adapt to our new and vastly changed circumstances. The challenge and opportunity is to leverage the unique assets of each sector – public, private, and philanthropic – in unison, to get entire systems moving, resulting in new types of social innovation where integration leads to different kinds of solutions and maximizes leverage.
It is still early but we are seeing signs of progress in confronting the challenge of building resilience to climate change.
Just ten 10 days ago for example, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres was in Bonn leading the climate change talks. The Executive Secretary announced that there was “stronger convergence on the issues of governance and composition” of the Adaptation Committee, the advisory body on climate change adaptation to the Conference of the Parties. The Adaptation Committee is on track to be operationalized by Durban.
Spurred by our work and that of our partners, 10 cities across four countries in Asia through our financial support and collective global technical assistance have developed their own city resilience strategies to deal with current and future climate risks and impacts. At this stage, the ACCCCRN cities are moving into the implementation phase, well ahead of any directives emerging from the UNFCCC Adaptation Committee.
And today, you heard a number of corporate and social enterprise examples of the type of innovation needed in the area of climate change resilience building and financing. Some businesses have moved quickly on the challenges, and are capitalizing on potential solutions in ways that are strategically and economically productive.
Based on the results of the Caring for Climate Survey, developed through a partnership between the UN Global Compact, World Resources Institute, Oxfam, and the United Nations Environment Program, we’ve learned that 83 percent of companies believe that climate change impacts pose a risk to their products or services, and 86 percent of companies think that responding to climate change impacts, or investing in adaptation solutions, poses a business opportunity for their company.
There are also some good examples of companies that have translated these risks into action, through partnerships with governments, NGOs and local customers.
For instance, Skymet is India’s first weather forecasting company supplying accurate weather information directly to farmers, as well as to energy companies to facilitate power trading, and to a range of other users including city utilities, shipping companies, media outlets, and insurance companies.
In partnership with Nokia, Skymet provides SMS-based weather forecasts through Nokia Life-Tools to over 100,000 farmers, helping them to make better decisions in relation to irrigation and storage. We’ve been supporting a similar service in Kenya with Kencall, called the Kenya Farmer Helpline, which is also working to increase the availability of weather information for farmers.
It’s encouraging to see a growing number of businesses, large corporations and social enterprises exploring opportunities that will build resilience.
Today, there was also a good discussion of some of the tools that have been developed for public and private sector decision makers – in relation to the economic aspects of adaptation.
The Global Adaptation Institute has developed an Index which measures the vulnerability of a country to the effects of climate change and other global trends; it also measures the readiness of a country to successfully implement adaptation solutions. This too can be an important tool for investors.
Through our work, both in building climate change resilience and in impact investing, we are committed to helping expand the role of, and opportunities for, the private sector in developing products and services in this space and stimulating private capital to help scale these businesses. As many of you know, our work is helping to shepherd the progression of impact investing from an uncoordinated field to a mature industry. In light of our own deep commitments to these areas, we are delighted to have played host to today’s proceedings.
However, significant barriers to greater investment and private sector engagement remain as you heard today. Several themes emerged in this regard:
- There is a limited market for adaptation-oriented products and services, and limited recognition that resilient businesses require resilient workforces and consumers.
- While the regulatory landscape in relation to greenhouse gas emissions is becoming increasingly well-defined across jurisdictions globally, and CO2 has become measurable and monetised within financial markets, the policy and regulatory frameworks to guide business practices in relation to climate change resilience are, at best, underdeveloped.
- Despite the proliferation of industry codes of conduct, corporate best practice in relation to governance and transparency, standards for supply chain management, and international environmental management systems, there is a limited number of tools to guide investors and entrepreneurs in the development of more resilient business strategies and enterprises.
So, despite the activities of ‘early adapters’, we appear to be in the nascent stages of constructing that social innovation engine in the area of climate change resilience. This meeting clearly represents the start of a new dialogue. Let’s make this the turning point for the business and investment community by the progress we can provoke through what was discussed here today.
On behalf of Rockefeller Foundation, I would like to express my gratitude to Intellecap for their efforts in bringing us together for the start of this great dialogue on the business of climate change, and to all of you for your enthusiastic participation and commitment.
Thank you.
www.rockefellerfoundation.org
