Even as Covid-19 dominates the headlines temporarily, climate change remains on the top of people’s minds. Understandably so: it is the most pressing challenge of the coming decade. The rising cost of global warming is becoming rather obvious – from 1980 to now, weather-related and flood loss events have tripled to quadrupled.
In fact, extreme weather events are claiming around 16,000 lives in G20 countries annually, according to Climate Transparency. The estimated cost is a steep $142 billion per year. From threat to facilities and corporate assets to supply chain disruptions due to broken energy and transport links, businesses have much to lose as the seas rise, droughts get drier, the ferocity of storms intensifies and the threat of massive flooding rises.
That’s not all. There are environment-related lawsuits lurking.
“Climate change cases targeting ‘carbon majors’ have already been brought in 30 countries around the world, with most cases filed in the U.S.,” says Christopher Bonnet, Head of ESG Business Services at AGCS. “It’s not just governments and regulators who are putting pressure on companies to positively respond to climate change, however. Climate-linked activism against corporates is a developing trend – particularly in Europe – and boards are increasingly challenged by investors and other stakeholders.”
The price of responding to the challenges posed by climate change could be as high as $2.5 trillion over the next decade, according to an Allianz study.