Preparing Companies for Climate Change: A Necessity - Essay Sample

Introduction

As human activities take new dimensions in everyday life, technologies advancing, and companies emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, there is a great threat of change in climate systems worldwide. Companies should be well prepared for climate change in the future to avoid disruption of their operations. Climate change is the change in climatic condition and its variable properties over a long time, usually 10 years or more. According to Aldy and Pizer (2015), climate change can be attributed to human activities such as deforestation and emission of greenhouse gases from factories. Greenhouse gases destroy the ozone layer causing an abnormal increase in temperatures across the globe. Among the most susceptible companies include those within the climate-sensitive regions such as flood plains and coastal regions, companies that depend on climate-sensitive inputs, as well as those with long-lived capital assets.

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Companies Should Be Prepared for the Following Impacts

The severe scarcity of water resources especially in drought-prone regions, decrease in crop productivity due to adverse heatwaves and drought, increased economic losses as factories are swept away by floodwaters at peak river discharges, coastal erosion, and rising sea levels. There is anticipated te increase in water restrictions due to high demand for water by human activities such as industry, irrigation, and home use coupled with river abstraction, and low water runoff and drainage due to high rate of evaporation. In addition to that, there will be economic losses as extreme heatwaves will bring a negative impact on the health and well-being of workers, decreasing labor productivity, and production of crops. The heat events will also cause the outbreak of wildfires, especially in the Russian boreal region and southern Europe (Hallegatte et al., 2015).

Climate change is expected to cause a shortage of raw materials, especially for companies dependent on climate-sensitive sources of raw materials. There will be increased coastal, riverine, and urban flooding, causing destruction of settlements, livelihoods, and infrastructure, especially in Asia. Climate change will increase heat-related mortality leading to the reduced number of workers in factories and other companies. Apart from that, there will be an increased risk of food and water shortages due to adverse drought (Arnell & Gosling, 2016).

There will be increased prices and shortage of resources such as coal, gas, oil, and other metals and minerals. New government regulations will arise, including carbon pricing, regulation on air pollution, subsidy regimes, disclosure requirements, as well as the carbon bubble, and international climate policies. There will be massive impacts on the technology used in companies such as GMO and disruptive technologies (Urban, 2015).

Mitigation of Impacts of Climate Change

Mitigation refers to measures of reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and other causes of climate change. Many mitigation measures are available and can be used to reduce the impacts of climate change. They include adherence to the international agreements on climate change such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Bali Roadmap, Kyoto Protocol, Cancun Agreement, Copenhagen Accord, COP21, and Durban Platform. Apart from that, there are other national policies that can be used to mitigate the impacts of climate change. These include national regulatory standards and measures, tradable permits, taxes and charges, and voluntary agreements based on information creation, financial subsidies, and incentives, as well as market creation and setting standards. Moreover, initiatives developed by local and regional corporations, authorities, and non-governmental organizations can assist in reducing the impacts of climate change significantly. Some of these initiatives include energy efficiency programs, renewable energy portfolio standards, sectoral cap and trade mechanisms, and emission registries. All these policies, when put into action, may contribute to a significant reduction of effects of climate change both on companies and people. However, companies must be willing and prepared to take into action all the climate change policies enacted both at international or national levels (Urban, 2015).

Adaptation and Resilience of Companies to Climate Change

Companies can adapt to some of these effects of climate change. Adaptation is the adjustments by companies over time to increase their coping range. Resilient companies have a sufficiently wide coping range and can recover quickly from situations causing vulnerability. Given that mitigation alone might not be enough to avoid impacts of climate change, it is essential for companies to embrace adaptation and resilience towards these impacts. The following are some of the ways of enhancing adaptation and resilience (Tol, 2018).

Companies should strengthen their capacities to effective demand management, integrated water-wastewater planning, and integrated development of land and water. Companies should have and aim at achieving their organizational goals, such as access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation and improving public health surveillance. Companies should develop strong and resilient systems for proper vulnerability mapping, coordination, and sustainable urban development. According to Watts et al. (2015), companies should also adopt more water-saving strategies and water-efficient technologies to adapt to the shortage of water, especially in dry regions. In addition to that, companies need to implement best practices and suitable instruments of governance the integrated water management and river basin management. Companies should obtain insurance against possible losses that might be as a result of weather-related yield deviations. Companies should reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to help in improving air quality. They should enhance regulation, monitoring, observation, training, education, and communication systems. Furthermore, companies should embrace co-production of robust solutions combining the indigenous knowledge, and science and technology (Arnell & Gosling, 2016).

Conclusion

Climate change is the persistent change in climatic condition and its variability properties over a long period of time, usually a decade or more. Companies should be prepared for the impacts of climate change, including the shortage of raw materials, labor, and economic loss, among others. They should adapt to these impacts and remain resilient even when their coping range is exceeded.

References

Aldy, J. E., & Pizer, W. A. (2015). The competitiveness impacts of climate change mitigation policies. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2(4), 565-595.

Arnell, N. W., & Gosling, S. N. (2016). The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale. Climatic Change, 134(3), 387-401.

Hallegatte, S., Bangalore, M., Bonzanigo, L., Fay, M., Kane, T., Narloch, U., ... & Vogt-Schilb, A. (2015). Shock waves: managing the impacts of climate change on poverty. The World Bank.

Tol, R. S. (2018). The economic impacts of climate change. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 12(1), 4-25.

Urban, M. C. (2015). Accelerating extinction risk from climate change. Science, 348(6234), 571-573.

Watts, N., Adger, W. N., Agnolucci, P., Blackstock, J., Byass, P., Cai, W., ... & Cox, P. M. (2015). Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health. The Lancet, 386(10006), 1861-1914.