Climate change remains a critical risk to a wide variety of sectors and many international protocols and agreements have been established to manage climate change and set internationally binding emission reduction targets. While it is important to understand and manage GHG emissions and their contribution to climate change impacts, it is equally important to recognise the impact climate change will have on existing and proposed infrastructure.
Climate change risks need to be identified and adaptation strategies developed. This to ensure the sustainability of communities and that climate change risks do not pose an unacceptable risk to human life, livelihood and wellbeing. But the development of adaptation strategies cannot be done in isolation. Rather, the identification of risks and the development of adaptation strategies needs to form part of all public sector department policies, strategies and day-to-day operations. This ensures that adaptation strategies are identified by those who have the practical experience to develop feasible solutions, and will be responsible for the implementation.
SRK was recently involved in mainstreaming climate change into both economic and environmental policies of a provincial government in South Africa. This included the review of the policies to identify the extent to which climate change had been considered in the policies. Climate change scenarios and risks were developed to inform the identification of gaps in the policies. The scenarios, risks and gaps then formed the basis for stakeholder engagement where, to build capacity and awareness, public sector officials were educated on the potential risks, which then informed the development of action plans to address the gaps and opportunities. The opportunities in these instances largely related to economic opportunities associated with renewable energy, sustainable tourism and a transition to carbon neutral manufacturing. Given that the public sector itself does not invest in business, the action plans aimed to identify and support the enabling infrastructure required for these businesses to be successful.
This mainstreaming was supported by an economic valuation of the risks versus the investment required to implement the action plans. This provided a basis to prioritise action plans that achieved the greatest value at the lowest economic cost. It also enabled officials to motivate for funding for action plans based on potential financial losses estimated for the climate change risks identified. While not comprehensive, the approach provided valuable insights to the economic implications of inaction as it pertains to climate change, and the mechanisms to build resilience.
On the whole, the cost of implementing action plans to build resilience and realise opportunities was an order of magnitude lower than the potential financial implications of climate change; this highlights the need to consider climate change at all levels of decision making. The key to success is in sourcing available information to empower individuals working outside the climate change space and then work collectively to identify solutions that are based on defensible scenarios and experience in various sectors.
