The following is an excerpt from a guest blog post by our Head of Corporate Climate Leadership Charles Henderson. Read the full blog post on the ACI Insights blog here.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how reliant the global economy has been on just-in-time supply chains, as well as continued demand, supply, and travel, to promote economic growth. We have witnessed the rapid unravelling of the global movement of people and goods, with dire consequences for many industries, including aviation. That global patterns of trade and travel will change seems a given; how exactly is yet to be determined, as this will also depend on other factors, notably climate change. Corporate climate resilience is more important than ever.
The current situation may in fact be a foretaste of what is to come if we do not address climate change – a slower moving, systemic risk. Disease pandemics often follow extreme weather disasters and, much like other shocks, spread faster among the less privileged and hit more vulnerable populations the hardest. There are also less obvious, causal links between how we manage the natural world and viruses that spread like wildfire. Recent scientific research shows that by clearing forests for agriculture, for example, we are unleashing diseases from their natural havens, and these pathogens are infecting livestock and human communities.
If COVID-19 has highlighted how fragile our modern world can be it also exposed the risks to corporate resilience in the face of a rapidly changing landscape. The economic fallout, including a recession, will test all business models. Shareholders, stakeholders, and the public will ask increasingly more difficult questions about the long-term security of their investments, pensions, and the businesses that hold together the fabric of society. Financial and planetary debt, and how they are governed, are at the top of this resilience agenda, making alignment of business goals with the environment indispensable.......