In the face of continuing non-action on climate change policy at the national and international levels, we’ve seen a growing fatigue develop around the topic of corporate climate change mitigation. But regardless of the lack of government action, companies can’t be seen to be ignoring climate change. Additionally, there is a growing recognition that a lack of mitigation will mean increased climate impacts. As a result we’re seeing a rapid increase in corporate discussion of climate change adaptation.
Climate change adaptation historically has been seen as quite distinct from climate change mitigation. Indeed, distinguishing between climate change “mitigation” and climate change “adaptation” is not conceptually difficult if one looks at the typical formula for risk:
Risk = H x E x V
Where H = Hazard (e.g. sea level rise), E = Exposure (e.g. exposure to sea level rise), and V = Vulnerability (e.g. damage from sea level rise).
In this formulation, climate change mitigation reduces risk by addressing the level of the hazard (e.g. GHG concentrations in the atmosphere). Climate change adaptation, on the other hand, moderates risk by reducing either exposure to or vulnerability to the hazards of climate change. For example, reducing one’s exposure to sea level rise could mean building farther away from an exposed coastline; reducing one’s vulnerability to sea level rise could mean building high enough to avoid storm surges.
In this context, the distinction between mitigation and adaptation seems clear. And it makes sense to distinguish between mitigation and adaptation efforts at a societal level. The policy objectives are different, the policy measures you would use are different, and the distributions of policy costs and benefits are likely to be very different.
The same logic is filtering down into, for example, commitments by multilateral development banks (MDBs) to dedicate distinct percentages of their lending portfolios to mitigation and adaptation efforts. MDBs are now trying to figure out a metric by which to measure where their portfolio dollars are going. This is not as simple as it sounds when you get into possible multiple impacts of a given loan, but as representatives of societal policy one can see why the MDBs want to be able to differentiate between mitigation and adaptation.
But does the same logic apply in the context of private sector decision making? Is it important for companies to record and report climate change mitigation vs. adaptation initiatives separately? This question can be approached from two perspectives: 1) is there a significant societal value in such a distinction? And 2) is such a distinction practical to implement?
I would argue that there is no obvious societal value in being able to separately sum up private sector mitigation and adaptation activities. Such summations simply cannot answer the question of whether a societal climate change mitigation goal is being met; the only way to assess that outcome is to measure GHG emissions at the societal level. The same argument applies to tabulating private-sector adaptation activities. In neither case can corporate actions be summed to yield insights into societal outcomes, not to mention the fact that many activities will be listed in both categories, leading to inflated numbers.
The practical impediments to implementing such a differentiation through corporate reporting are even more convincing. Companies are not actually driven by societal climate change mitigation and adaptation objectives; rather, they are driven by their need to reduce their own business risks by adapting to changing policy, market, and climate forces, and to enhance their competitive advantage through new products and services.
Next page: No clear standards
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Climate change adaptation is
Climate change adaptation is not just about avoiding risk, and it does have a great deal of market benefit. Just ask the pharmaceutical companies selling more prophylactic against vector born diseases. It's good to remember that, in addition to the extreme weather events driving our understanding of climate change right now, there are ecosystem and demographic changes that are more subtle. See some additional discussion of these ideas at http://climateadaptationexchange.com/
Keeping the differentiation
Keeping the differentiation is useful: I would suggest that differentiation mitigation and adaptation pecifically within the company is useful for both implementation and reporting to stockholders, regulators, banks, insurers, stakeholders, and even society. Adaptation is chiefly about avoided future costs and business continuity, a form of risk management of interest to those focused on managing a company's corporate risk--which can be valued dollarwise. In contrast, mitigation is really about emissions reductions, and not 'mitigation' in the classic sense that the disaster community means it ie reducing a hazard, so helping reduce global GHG emissions is a crude way for a company to avoid future weather hazard to itself even if important for society as a whole. Therefore, mitigation on the individual company level is more about energy management seeking savings within the company--which also has a dollar value that can be reported--but is not germane to risk management in terms of mitigating weather hazards. It might 'avoid risk' in the sense of avoided liability for non-compliance with emissions regulations, but not for avoiding physical risk from weather. Additionally, the communities inside and outside of the company that are charged with or care about climate adaptation vs. mitigation are distinct in terms of skills, interests, language, and culture with different reporting requirements, so keeping streams of information separate is useful even if ultimately they are all reporting dollar value to shareholders and stakeholders. I do agree that "dual use" efforts that both mitigate and adapt should be highlighted (e.g. a hydroelectric dam that reduces emissions by it's operation, and also helps with water supply maintenance and flood control), but for reporting purposes I think streams of information still should be kept separate in terms of reporting outcomes even if in the end the outcomes are lumped together dollarwise in defining the final bottomline.
I agree that we can’t ignore
I agree that we can’t ignore mitigation an only focus on adaptation but I feel they are usually applicable to different situations. For example in our Cafédirect coffee, tea and cocoa supply chain the producers have a relatively low carbon footprint but they are being hugely impacted by climate change, so we have been working with them on adaptation. Whereas the other parts of our supply chain (processing and consumption) have a much larger carbon footprint hence our focus has been on mitigation.
I think that it is not an either or – it is dependent on process’ impact on climate change and the impact from climate change.
We have found that climate change is having such a significant impact on coffee farmers that we could face severe shortages, drastically deteriorating quality and soaring prices in the future.
Some of the farmers we work with in Peru were confronting torrential rain, flooding and landslides destroying their crops. Our only choice for that part to the supply chain is adaptation. We helped them set up a reforestation project to restore the forest whist also generating income from voluntary carbon credits, some of which is in turn used to adaptation projects on the farms.
You can see more about it in this film: http://youtu.be/CRi7bfTBeSE or report: http://cafedirect.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/05/Coffee-Clim...
I appreciate the comments
I appreciate the comments posted in response to the blog. I just thought I'd make a clarifying comment. I'm not in any way arguing that there's no real difference in or priority of mitigation (reducing the hazard) and adaptation (reducing exposure or vulnerability to the hazard). Nor am I arguing that investors and other stakeholders shouldn't be interested more in one or the other, e.g. mitigation, and ask for more action on mitigation than on adaptation.
What I am suggesting is that when companies start including mitigation and adaptation activities in their Sustainability Reports, or as the corporate reporting continues to develop under the Carbon Disclosure Project, that we avoid the temptation to ask companies to systematically differentiate between adaptation and mitigation. Not because it wouldn't be nice to know, but really because it will be much harder to implement than we generally realize, with little systematic benefit at the end of the day. At least that's my hypothesis.
I think I have to join the
I think I have to join the chorus of disagree-ers. While both strategies are equally important for companies facing the threat of climate change, only mitigation has any real marketing value.
Customers may be impressed with a company who is reducing their greenhouse gas emissions or investing in on-site renewable energy (maybe even RECs), but a corporate policy to move production or investment away from low-lying areas doesn't have any real marketing cache. I am not even sure that investors will be impressed with adaptation strategies, as these are essentially long-term investments with a significant degree of uncertainty, while many mitigation activities have a short-term payback (in energy savings) with a strong ROI.
Me, I'm banking on companies that are investing in mitigation - not only are they trying to SOLVE the problem of climate change, they are taking immediate action that will often prvide a quick payback and strong ROI.
I think it would be helpful
I think it would be helpful if the author's definitions of "mitigation" and "adaptation" were given at the beginning of this essay. I understand "mitigation" to mean some form of restoration of a resource or reversal of damage already done, in some cases used almost as permission to have an adverse impact somewhere else.
I have seen the word "mitigation" also used to mean avoidance or minimization of creation of impacts, which I take to be the author's meaning here. If that is correct, I agree that there is little value in distinguishing between resources spent on 'not doing damage that could have been done' and 'resources spent on increasing fitness for expected conditions' (the former being a questionable metric in the first place?).
However, I do think there could be utility to understanding allocation of resources towards trying to counteract or negate damage already done ("mitigation" as I understand the term), vs. spending time and effort on optimizing one's own position for approaching scenarios.
I think as a species we tend to be better at innovation than mitigation.
I respectfully disagree that
I respectfully disagree that all adaptation and mitigation measures be lumped together. It is critically important that we recognize that climate change is occurring - today - and that we are beyond mitigation. Climate change related metric and reporting can easily be done with this distinction and it may prove to very useful to see the shift from mitigation to adaptation that some leading companies make. Once you lose the distinction it will be more challenging to dissect data to provide important insight, trends and data that will inform future decisions and investments.
Climate change mitigation
Climate change mitigation (prevention) reduces the hazard for everyone. Climate change adaptation (cure) reduces the impact for some selected number of people (think "customers"). Unless the customer base includes all 6+ billion people and the entire ecosphere, that's quite a significant difference.
Additionally, well designed mitigation reduces the hazard for all future time. Any specific adaptation has a limited design life, after which it must be re-done. Moreover, in the absence of effective mitigation, more and more adaptation will constantly be required.
An ounce of mitigation (prevention) is worth a pound of cure (adaptation) -- probably more. That's true whether or not a corporation can buy apparent social responsibility cheaper (or even at a gross profit) by focusing on adaptation.