When Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, Chevron suffered $1.4 billion in damages. When monsoon floods swept Thailand in 2011, disk drive shortages cost Hewlett-Packard $4 billion in revenue. When Twenty-First Century Fox was filming “The Revenant,” they added $10 million to production costs to relocate filming to Argentina when Canada didn’t get enough snow. These are just a few of the wide-ranging ways that climate change-related impacts affect major companies. In fact, the World Economic Forum’s annual survey of business and government leaders named “the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation” among the most likely and impactful risks to business in 2017.

New research at Conservation International looks at more than 1,600 company disclosures to investors reported through CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project). The study sheds light on the range of climate change risks that companies face and, importantly, the myriad but often inadequate strategies they are putting in place to manage them. In particular, fewer than 5% of companies are using nature-based solutions such as coastal restoration, watershed management, or forest protection to hedge against the risks of storms, floods, or raw material shortages, instead relying on hard infrastructure or process-level approaches.

This presentation will outline the current “state of play” on corporate climate adaptation strategies and propose ways that companies could better incorporate nature-based solutions into their strategies, drawing on Conservation International’s experiences working with companies on climate change.

About the presenter: Allie Goldstein is a Scientist from Conservation International. She works with the organization’s Moore Center for Science and its Center for Environmental Leadership in Business to identify ways to engage the private sector on nature-based solutions to climate change.

Light refreshments will be served.