Your Climate Change MBA is intended to facilitate your access to actionable knowledge regarding business climate risk and risk management. There is no "right answer" when it comes to any given company's response to climate change; we do hope, however, that Your Climate Change MBA can contribute constructively to your company’s climate change decision-making.
It is hard to over-state the business uncertainties associated with the gap between today’s global GHG emissions trends, and the 70-90% reduction in emissions scientists have called for. That gap inevitably creates a volatile risk management situation for both societal and business decision-makers. The wider the gap becomes (and it has been growing for the last 30 years), and the longer it persists, the greater the risks posed by climate change and potential climate responses. Not unlike the increase in earthquake risk as tectonic stresses grow over time.
That's why this section of Your Climate Change MBA points you to resources and tools that may be useful to you in communicating climate change risks and options within your organization, and how to utilize the Climate Web in implementing such tools. Options you may wish to consider include:
Rapid Materiality Assessments (RMA) are a resource-effective way to assess the “materiality” of climate change to an organization’s goals and risk management objectives. The result of an RMA is a quick but comprehensive assessment of climate risks and actionable conclusions for decision-makers, which can inform resource-allocation and other climate-relevant decision-making. The RMA is carried out using the expertise of a company's own staff.
Climate Assumptions Audits help challenge out-of-date assumptions that will serve a company poorly when it comes to climate change risk assessment, scenario planning, and risk management. An Assumptions Audit is a relatively easy way to make sure decision-makers are incorporating the best information into developing climate strategies or engaging in climate scenario planning.
Climate Change Scenario Planning can take a variety of forms, from the TCFD’s 2o C scenario planning approach, to more conventional scenario planning that is customized to the decision-making context of a particular company. Climate change scenario planning, and resources that can support such planning, are included in Your Climate Change MBA.
The Business Materiality Dashboard is a tool for tracking material changes in climate relevant variables as they occur. It’s called a "Materiality Dashboard" rather than a “Risk Dashboard” because changes in the same variable may represent a risk for one business sector, and a business opportunity for another. The Business Materiality Dashboard assesses the current and potential business materiality of almost 30 variables using easy to read visual indicators. Frequent updates to the Dashboard help senior decision-makers stay on top of frequently shifting business materiality conversations.
Your Climate Change MBA helps users explore how the Climate Web can support these and other decision-making needs at the company level. The goal is not to recommend a particular response to climate change; there are no "one size fits all" business responses to climate change. But any business response can be informed by the 20,000 hours of knowledge curation represented by the Climate Web, and the kinds of decision-support tools described above.