Message from the Vice-Chair – Facing the Elements
This Advisory Report Facing the Elements: Building Business Resilience in a Changing Climate is the final contribution to the impacts and adaptation stream of Climate Prosperity by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
Already in Degrees of Change: Climate Warming and the Stakes for Canada, published in 2010, and Paying the Price: The Economic Impacts of Climate Change for Canada, published in 2011, the Round Table presented information about the physical and economic impacts of climate change we can expect if we fail to reduce emissions globally and fail to prepare for the impacts of climate change that are now inevitable. Facing the Elements explores the key challenges for Canada’s business community in ensuring our country’s prosperity in a changing climate by both managing risks and exploiting opportunities.
Facing the Elements presents new research and understanding on how businesses in Canada are investing so that they can adapt to current and future climate change impacts and what governments can do to further facilitate deliberate assessment and management of risks and opportunities created or exacerbated by a changing climate. The report presents a state of play of business adaptation in Canada and draws from real practitioner experience to highlight steps and strategies that need to be taken to build climate resilience in the private sector.
Too often uncertainty about the precise timing, location, and magnitude of specific impacts of climate change is held up as a reason for delaying cost-effective adaptation action. Facing the Elements clarifies for business the value of adapting ahead of the storm and recommends to government and organizations that engage with businesses practical needs and steps to shift business practices over time and put our economy on a path to climate resilience. That concerns us all.
Our climate is changing and that is causing all of us — governments, communities, and businesses — to change the decisions we make.
Robert Slater, CM, PH.D.
NRT Vice-Chair
© 2013