Delay and Pay or Plan and Prosper

Watch the briefing on C-Span.

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) held a briefing on the Global Commission on Adaptation’s Flagship Report and Year of Action for climate adaptation. The Commission, which is chaired by Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, seeks to accelerate adaptation action by elevating its political visibility and focusing on concrete solutions. In September 2019, the Commission launched its flagship report, Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience, which outlines a roadmap for scaling-up climate adaptation in the United States and abroad in order to safeguard communities and economies from the impacts of climate change. In particular, the report emphasizes the investment potential of climate adaptation initiatives.

The report also kickstarts a Year of Action on climate adaptation, starting in late 2019 and going through 2020, to advance the recommendations from the flagship report which include eight major areas of focus—agriculture, cities, finance, disaster risk management, nature-based solutions, infrastructure, water, and locally-led action. This concentrated effort will help accelerate adaptation action and support, thereby improving human well-being and resulting in better, more sustainable economic development and security for all. 

Briefing speakers highlighted key elements of the report and shared how federal legislators can engage with the Year of Action for climate adaptation.

The Global Commission on Adaptation is guided by 34 leaders in government, business, and civil society as well as 20 convening countries, representing all regions of the globe. A global network of research partners and advisors supports the Commission. The Commission is co-managed by the World Resources Institute and the Global Center on Adaptation.

 

HIGHLIGHTS

 

Welcome and Introductions

Daniel Bresette, Executive Director, EESI: The issue of climate change has been with us for decades, and EESI stated in 1988 that addressing climate change is a moral imperative. Inaction on climate change is making the solutions we need to limit global warming harder and harder to achieve. We have to act now on climate change. 

 

Speakers

Dr. Rosina Bierbaum, Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability and School of Public Health, University of Michigan; Roy Weston Chair of Natural Economics, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland; Chair, Science and Technical Advisory Panel, Global Environment Facility

• In 2007, two major reports concluded that climate change is altering the baselines traditionally used for planning, thus, the planning that we have done in the past will no longer work. Most of the impacts from climate change will be negative. 
• Both mitigation and adaptation are needed. 
• Today’s risks are not insignificant; crops, forests, and pests are shifting and floods, droughts, and fires are increasing. Extreme weather events will only get worse as global temperatures rise. 
• One major advancement in climate science is that we are starting to be able to attribute specific events and characteristics of events to climate change. For example, in Louisiana, climate change has increased the risk of getting more than two feet of rain by 40 percent. 
• Every sector is being affected by an increase in temperature, precipitation, and sea level rise. For example, the energy sector is impacted by wildfires, flooding, lower river levels, and intense storms. 
• Clearly, the past is not prologue, and we can’t plan the way we did before. 
• There is a lot of infrastructure in the path of storm surges and rising sea levels. As a result, the annual cost of coastal storms along the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico could be increased by $2 billion to $3.5 billion in another decade. 
• Investors are increasingly calling for risk disclosure. We have seen Pacific Gas and Electric declared the first S&P 500 climate casualty. 
• The time to act is clearly now. The Global Commision on Adaptation and the Year of Action tracts are desperately needed. We can delay and pay or plan and prosper. 

 

Manish Bapna, Executive Vice President & Managing Director, World Resources Institute

• The Global Commission on Adaptation was created to elevate the political visibility of adaptation and mobilize action.
• The Commission is composed of people from all around the world and was launched a year ago in the Netherlands. 
• Five messages in the report:
  • Adaptation is a human imperative. If no action is taken on climate change, 100 million people around the world will fall into poverty by 2030, major crops yields will fall by 30 percent, and coastal cities will face a trillion dollars a year in damage. Those that have the least will suffer the most and climate change will exacerbate inequality. 
  • Investing in adaptations makes economic sense. For every dollar invested in adaptation interventions, four to five dollars could be generated in return. 
  • Despite these economic returns, there is still not an uptake of action. We need to see big revolutions in how we understand, plan, and integrate climate risk. 
  • Nature-based solutions are ways to build resilience in cities. In Bangladesh, cyclones are killing fewer people because they are more prepared.. 
  • We need to look at concrete steps that can be taken to build resilience. The Commission is doing this by bringing the World Bank, Gates Foundation, and a wide range of players together. 

 

Christina Chan, Director for Climate Resilience Practice, World Resource Institute

• Richer countries like the United States will need to adapt to the impacts of climate change. 
• We need to think about the economic benefits of adaptation. Upfront, front-end investments will help us avoid the costs of responding to emergencies. There is an economic imperative to invest in adaptation. 
• Government agencies will be affected by the impacts of climate change. The Department of Defense is already unable to train in certain areas because it is too hot.
• Climate change will impact everyone; however, some communities will be more vulnerable and less able to adapt. One of the key messages in the Commission’s report is that we should not accept a world where only some can adapt and others cannot.
• The federal government has an essential role to provide leadership, encourage preparedness, and incentivize adaptation for communities. Executive Order 13653 directed federal agencies to take climate change and adaptation into consideration. 
• Climate preparedness and resilience is a long-term process and legislation is key. Agencies must collaborate to provide the best data to states and communities. 

 

Leo Martinez-Diaz, Global Director of Sustainable Finance Center, World Resources Institute

• Companies will be affected by the impacts of climate change. Businesses are beginning, in many cases quietly, but to plan for climate change. The federal government needs to encourage the private sector to take action. 
• The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is a private-sector led group which advises companies on how to disclose climate risk. The recommendations were endorsed by hundreds of companies, but companies are accepting them too slowly. 
• Many companies are concerned that if they are transparent about climate risks and their competitors are not, they will be at a disadvantage. 
• As long as we have a voluntary system of disclosure, those who have more risk may not want to disclose anything. 
• What are some current actions on the table right now
  • The Climate Risk Disclosure Act of 2019 would direct the SEC to issue rules that require every public company to disclose climate risks. It is crucial that the authority comes from Congress.
  • In Europe, the European Union Sustainable Finance Taxonomy is a list of activities determined by experts to be aligned with the Paris Agreement.
  • The Climate Resilience Principles launched by the Climate Bonds Initiative helps to define what are allowable, high-quality, and credible activities for adaptation and resilience. 
• What should Congress do?
  • Realize there are limitations to the voluntary disclosure regime and there is a need to move towards a mandatory disclosure regime. 
  • There must be a common set of standards and metrics. It is crucial that this information be presented to the market and investors in a way that is comparable, consistent, and common, which is going to require centralized action. 

Question & Answer

When you look at what other developed countries are doing to advance human adaptation practices, what are the best lessons learned that you think U.S. policy makers should look at?

• The Dutch Room for the River Program allows space for flooding. 
• In the United Kingdom, the Thames Barrier was built to protect people from storm surges and high tides. 
• In China, they use sponge cities to capture stormwater runoff. 
• Canada invests and finances nature-based solution. 

 

How do we ensure that as companies are doing their analysis of climate risks that they are using new data? 

• It will be crucial to have a mandatory disclosure regime. The insurance companies want to know that companies are taking the best science data into account and that there is not a moral hazard that the government is going to bail companies out. If companies feel that there is an implicit government guarantee, they will not do anything. 
• Given the pace of globalization and the lack of data in many places around the world, one of the most strategic investments that can be made is basic topographic maps. 

 

If we do not see action from the federal government soon, is there a backup plan? Can cities or the private sector step up if federal support does not come?

• There are a lot of bills finding their way to the Senate floor, such as the Transportation Bill. On the house side, the Select Committee on Climate Crisis has been busy. Many bills have been limited in scope, but when taken together, they are a great place to get started.
• The U.S. Climate Alliance has been doing quite a bit on adaptation. Often times, solutions that help with mitigation and also build resilience. We must weave resilience into bills that are likely to go forward. Adaptation is just about doing development differently. We need to reframe the narrative from one that is polarized about climate action to one that is about building resilience in what we do everyday. 
• The Miami Forever Bond allows taxpayer money to go toward climate preparedness. Communities that do not have the resources to adapt to climate change need help from the federal government. 
• NOAA’s Climate Resilience Toolkit has examples from all over the country and gives future projections. 
• In order to carry out climate adaptation at scale, a huge amount of coordination is needed because we do not have the time to waste resources. 

 

Do large institutional investors worry about climate change risk or transitional risk? With the Disclosure Act, do you think they will use the same framework for climate change risks and transition risks?

• Initially, companies were most focused on transition risk (i.e., risks facing companies in high emitting industries, such as fossil fuels, to transition to a low-emissions industry).
• Since then, the private sector and investors are increasingly concerned about physical risk. They need lots of data from the companies they invest in, but it is hard to get. That is where the mandatory disclosure regime could help. Transition and physical risks are very different, so the frameworks must also be different. 
• Understanding supply chains in different parts of the world is very important. 

 

What should we try to get into the transportation bills to keep transportation infrastructure from getting people to build in the wrong places?

• Block grant programs are great ways for the federal government to encourage adaptation investments. 
• We need to update zoning and regulations to disincentivize building in areas that we know are at risk. 
• We need to make sure the planning and design is going to be based on the best available data and the most updated flood maps. No regret practices incorporate flexible features into infrastructure to ensure that structures can be expanded or raised to cope with a projection that exceeds the baseline. For example, In California there is a bridge that can be elevated in case sea level rises more than expected.