The Business Leaders Guide to Climate Adaptation & Resilience

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), together with the consultancies Bain & Company and Jupiter Intelligence, developed The Business Leaders Guide to Climate Adaptation & Resilience. This is a comprehensive guide for corporate top executives and their teams designed to help them streamline climate change adaptation within their companies’ strategic business planning, organizational strategies, governance structures as well as day-to-day activities. Within its nine modules, the guide provides tools, frameworks, and case studies to facilitate action across several key adaptation issues. Several multinational companies have provided feedback and case studies to support the recommendations put forward in this guide.

The key message of the guide is that firms are facing increasing climate-related risks posed by climate change and require immediate action. The guide points to risks of disruptions in supply chains, failing infrastructure, displacement of employees, and higher cost of inputs.

This guide helps corporate top executives to shape their climate risks management strategies, with a very practical approach that identifies frameworks for building resilience, and the concrete immediate next steps to take in order to adapt their business to climate change. These activities should aim at making workforces, key supply chains, and the communities and natural ecosystems upon which they depend collectively more resilient while of course avoiding maladaptation. Importantly, the guide provides details about how roles and responsibilities of key figures in the organization (Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Risk Officer) should act to integrate climate change considerations both in their plans and in their day-to-day activities.

The guide has three main messages for its target audience:

• “Act Now”: as is typical for climate-related issues, time is of the essence and early action increases the chances to avoid risk, protect communities, and unlock new business opportunities. 
• “Coordinated Business Strategy”: for an effective climate adaptation, it is essential to enable a coordinated transformation across all business functions, with a shift from a reactive to a proactive risk management approach.
• “Local Collaboration”: to establish collective resilience within and beyond the value chain, it is imperative to collaborate with a diverse range of stakeholders at both local and national levels.