Positive Adaptation — A New Approach to Climate Action
Solving the Climate Crises by Adapting in Positive Ways
The vast majority of businesses are — at the moment — missing the point with climate change. There’s a groundswell towards ‘sustainability’, towards committing to Net Zero, phasing out plastics, restoring biodiversity, and building a circular economy.
But they’re missing more than half of the equation and putting themselves at considerable risk.
The unfortunate reality is that — according to a recent United Nations study, based on our current greenhouse gas emissions we’re still heading for a world that is more than 3C warmer by 2100 (UNEP 2020). Even if we get our collective act together and meet the Paris Agreement we are still locked in to more heating.
This great trend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — to mitigate emissions and meet the Paris Agreement is only dealing with the causes of climate change but is ignoring the consequences. These consequences are already happening and will continue to impact us until we’ve somehow managed to reverse global warming.
It’s fantastic for a business or a city or a building to be ‘sustainable’ and tackle emissions, but it’s equally a failure to meet our Duty of Care if we don’t also adapt to the consequences of climate change. This means identifying the range of risks for our business or city or building or the like, then having a plan for adapting to those risks and preparing for potential disasters.
To fail to adapt is to fail to address climate risk.
The way in which we adapt can either contribute to global warming or it can tackle global warming.
We can make adaptations to our business or city or building that contribute to more global heating, to more deforestation, to more waste, OR we can make adaptations that also do good things, that also mitigate climate change, that are also ‘sustainable’.
I’ll break it down, because it’s important to understand that mitigation and adaptation are two very different things, different sets of language, and are often best managed by different types of people and skill sets. Ultimately it’s vital that we find ways to do both together — to make Positive Adaptations that prepare us for a changing climate and tackle climate change.
Sustainability = Mitigation
This is the buzz word right now. I’m not going to explore in this post how incredibly mis-used and mis-understood this word is, but given the number of ‘greenwash’ court cases around the world at the moment I’m sure I’ll be obliged to unpack it shortly.
To be ‘sustainable’ is to reduce our contribution to climate change, whether that be reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing deforestation and habitat destruction, or working towards a circular economy.
Examples of Sustainability (Mitigation) might include Net Zero commitments, carbon offsetting, zero waste targets and the phasing out of single-use plastics. They can all be good things (if handled properly) and are absolutely vital in tackling climate change. But these are not necessarily addressing climate risk and they are not necessarily activities that prepare us for a changed climate.
Adaptation
Adapting to climate change is — at least at the moment — desperately overlooked by the majority of businesses, cities and property owners. The bias towards Mitigation is blinding.
On the other hand, if we only focus on adaptation — that is, if we only focus on adapting our business, city or building to withstand a changed climate, we might still be contributing to global warming. It becomes a vicious self-fulfilling circle.
For example, we might build massive sea walls to protect wealthy beachfront neighbourhoods, but that work in itself contributes to global warming through the carbon emissions associated with the concrete. A mining company might adapt by selling off the coal mining arm of its business, but the new owner has little care for climate change and expands the coal mining operation… a perverse outcome that still carries climate governance risk.
Disaster Preparedness
Think of this as immediate risk management for a business, a city, a property — for anything really. We can anticipate to some degree the short term or ‘acute’ climate risks and put in place a plan to deal with those risks. We can prepare for the consequences of a climate-driven event. It’s not surprising that the global insurance industry is currently investing heavily in re-writing their code in this space.
It’s important to distinguish between Adaptation and Disaster Preparedness because they speak to different timelines, to different parts of our climate-changed future. Disaster preparedness considers our shorter term climate risks, whilst Adaptation considers the longer term or ‘chronic’ risks.
Bringing it all Together into Positive Adaptation
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of actions we can take to Mitigate, Adapt and prepare for Disaster. Some more critical than others. Some with more leverage than others. And to take actions in one sphere that might lead to perverse outcomes in another sphere could be catastrophic for your business.
This Positive Adaptation tool is incredibly powerful in helping you navigate this minefield. When we bring all three spheres together we can begin to identify actions that prepare us for climate-driven disaster, adapt to the changing climate, and also tackle climate change.
The goal here is to gravitate your actions towards the zone that combines Mitigation and Adaptation, and where relevant also prepares you for Disaster. It’s not about black & white, all or nothing, but about optimising your actions.
For example, it’s sill ok to carry out actions that are only adaptations as long as you’re aware that it’s not necessary ‘sustainable’ — so you can get your messaging right.
When you’re communicating with your shareholders or the public about your ‘climate action’, be clear about whether you mean Mitigation, addressing climate risk through Adaptation, or both.
Examples of actions that might be Positive Adaptations include;
- A business that changes its default employer contribution scheme to avoid any investments that contribute to global warming (an adaptation to address governance or brand risk), and direct investments towards renewable energy technologies (mitigation).
- A new hospital building that installs a green roof to soak up increased rainfall (Disaster Preparedness), provide better cooling for the building (an Adaptation to extreme heat), and to grow fresh organic food for the patient and local community (Mitigation by designing out food transport impacts and chemical fertilisers).
- A city that constructs waterfront green parks to act as a storm surge buffer (Disaster Preparedness), cool the city and soak up the increased rainfall (Adaptation to urban heat and rainfall risk), and soak up carbon through the growth of the urban forest (Mitigation). New York City’s Hunters Point South Park is a great example.
Positive Adaptation is by its nature more complex, holistic and systems-based, but it’s also the gold standard of climate action. By adopting more of a ‘risk management’ approach through the climate adaptation lens, a business, city or property owner or any entity for that matter can magnify their climate action in a way that is a win from any perspective.
