Maplecroft, a global risk and strategic consulting firm in the U.K., noted recently that “resilience to major weather ….events is not improving in some of the world’s most important growth markets, leaving large sections of their populations, essential infrastructure and economies at ‘extreme risk.’”

That view aligns with that of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index.  The open-source GAIN Index underlines that climate change, population growth, urbanization and resource scarcity jeopardize urbanizing nations.

Why should we care?  Because we care about humanity and should make it a priority to help the most vulnerable adapt.  And because supply chains and investors are exposed to greater risk than anticipated as natural disasters exacerbate other political and societal risks.

Maplecroft describes an interesting contrast.  Its Socio-Economic Resilience Index ranks the U.S. at 169^th and ‘low risk,’ even though it features in the “20 most at-risk countries for exposure to hurricanes, tsunamis, extra-tropical cyclones, storm surges, flooding, volcanic risk and wildfires.“  The Philippine’s socio-economic resilience to natural disasters, meanwhile, ranks No. 65 and ‘high risk’ Because, while it has registered strong economic growth over the last four years, “better disaster resilience has not materialized,” which keeps its index ranking unchanged.

The WEF Global Risks 2013 Eighth Edition posits that the twin threats of economic upheaval and accelerating climate change will collide during the next decade, delaying adaptation efforts while exposing nations to unpredictable financial loss from disasters. It contends that denser cities are more threatened by higher temperatures, exacerbated drought, storms and heat waves, although rural areas certainly are vulnerable from many of these weather-related events.  I do see a big climate risk derived from the ongoing population shift toward coastal zones.

In the CDP Supply Chain Report 2012-13, “Reducing Risk and Driving Business Value,” 70 percent identify a current or future risk related to climate change.  Seventy-three percent say they feel that climate change presents a physical risk to their operations.  More than half of the supply-chain risks identified due to drought and precipitation extremes already are affecting respondents’ operations or are expected to have an effect within the next five years.  According to the survey, the primary impacts will be a reduction/disruption in production capacity and increased operational costs.

Since 2011, the World Economic Forum has been leading a Supply Chain Risk Initiative to consider safeguards for global supply chains.  Among other priorities, it aims to:

• More explicitly assess supply chain and transport risks as part of procurement, management and governance processes
• Develop trusted networks of suppliers, customers, competitors and government focused on risk management
• Improve network risk visibility, through two-way information-sharing and collaborative development of standardized risk assessment and quantification tools
• Improve pre- and post-event communication on systemic disruptions and balance security and facilitation to bring a more balanced public discussion

Combining those with a Ten Point Checklist for Making Corporations Resilient and Asking the Climate Question: How to Create a Climate Adaptation Plan, would deliver a robust execution plan.

So, as you consider your supply chains, you might want to ponder if food shortages, fragile states, variable water supplies and the vagaries of emerging economies have affected it before, since these geopolitical, societal, environmental and economic factors are likely to be stressed simultaneously by climate change in the future.

Especially since these issues are likely to take priority for limited resources, it is worth considering how climate adaptation can be a collateral benefit of actions aimed primarily at nearer-term economic, geopolitical, societal and environmental factors.  If we don’t, twining these threats with accelerating climate change could collide in the next decade, delaying adaptation efforts while exposing companies to unpredictable financial loss from disasters.

A few weeks after a spirited conversation with a client about how best to communicate sustainability, I spied an opportunity at the National Adaptation Forum early this month. The Forum was chock-a-block full of convincing data that emphasize we need to act.  But fewer actors than I would have liked attended; corporate participants were noticeably absent, except for a few private sector consultants, like me.

Image from the January, 2013 DRAFT National Climate Assessmen

while the NCA process is designed to be highly inclusive and participatory, we need to ensure that the private sector is, indeed, meaningfully engaged.  The corporate sector has real risk and opportunity related to climate change and they should join the brave folks who have the temerity to ask what can be done to bring the rich resource – the national climate assessment – into the space of action.

(By the way, if you read no further, please note that the National Climate Assessment (NCA) will go to President Obama in December, and you have until the end of this week to comment.  Whoever you are, if you have a stake in your home, your business or your community, the report relates to you, so give it a gander!)

I maintain that the NCA nurtures several super powers:

1.       The power of the prez: Obama can meet with a key group of corporate scions (as he does when seeking assistance with passing key legislation) to share the national climate assessment and ask them to relate and discuss their own adaptation actions and challenges.

2.       The power of story:  There are millions of companies in America.  Climate change already has affected countless numbers of them.   What are they and other companies with foresight doing to adapt?  A nonfederal convener as impartial and neutral as Facebook could offer a cloud on which corporate adaptation stories could reside, with the NCA serving as a foundation.  For each chapter – health, agriculture, forestry, etc…..we could create a wiki of examples to inspire and cajole others to action.

3.       The power of accountability: Somewhere between the big donor and the common man sits the 300-plus U.S. companies that are part of the Carbon Disclosure Project or the more than 4,000 companies from 60 countries that report through the Global Reporting Initiative.  These companies are embracing accountability as a way to earn and burnish their license to lead. We must strongly encourage CDP and GRI to create a community of climate adaptation leaders by giving credence to adaptation.

The Carbon Disclosure Project has cast a spotlight on supply-chain engagements.  How about illuminating climate adaptation next?

In the meantime, check out NCAnet, a network of organizations working with the NCA to engage producers and users of assessment information across the United States.  Perhaps a group you collaborate with has already joined.  Or perhaps you can be the spark to ignite engagement.

I am noticing something remarkable in arguably the most important job category: elected officials. Might we see a 180-degree shift in the qualifications for this unusual job category?  In 2010, six-term South Carolina Republican Bob Inglis lost his House seat because he believed in human-caused climate change.

Now we have Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who gets it, as do some former “flat earth” proponents. (Even Charles and David Koch, the oil tycoons who for years have bankrolled climate-change deniers, may be changing their tune since a study on earth surface temperatures, that they financed, in part found that global warming is occurring and humans have played a role in it.)

The way Christie ably managed the Hurricane Sandy climate crisis in his state has provided cover for politicians of all political persuasions to claim leadership in this area.  A good thing too, since  Yale Project on Climate Change Communication recently reported that 58 percent of registered voters consider global warming when determining for whom to vote.

Those numbers are for the U.S., but it appears to be true elsewhere. Greenland just elected a new prime minister, Aleqa Hammond, whose primary strength over the incumbent was her handling of mineral and metal rights in those growing areas of Greenland no longer covered by ice.  Thus, that election was settled over an already-changed climate.

Business may be a bit closer to making these choices, too. CDP Supply Chain Report 2012-13,  73 percent of surveyed companies  say they feel that climate change presents a physical risk to their operations. Still, fully 44 percent of CEOs in the survey acknowledged that climate change isn’t a significant item on their agendas.

Perhaps Greenbiz’ State of Green Business 2013 addresses it best when it asks (page 13) “at what point will climate, extreme weather and resource constraints be similarly seen as a patent threat that requires changes to the design and operation of our businesses and supply chains?  What will be the dramatic event(s) that provide the tipping point?  How much disruption and inconvenience will the public be willing to tolerate?”

So, let’s see if the hot new job of the 2020s will be Corporate Climate Research and Adaptation Strategic Advisor.   For thoughts on what that job entails, see Ten Point Checklist for Making Corporations Resilient and Asking the Climate Question: How to Create a Climate Adaptation Plan.

I’m sure you’ve noticed, as I have, the pick up in media reporting on climate change whenever a weather-related disaster occurs, especially around major events such as Hurricane Sandy, the prolonged Texas droughts and the Colorado wildfires.  And reporters are coming from a wide variety of beats, including politics, community affairs and real estate.  That diversity of story approaches is a dream come true for communications professionals such as I.  I am eager to see more proactive climate-change coverage, not just that in response to a crisis.

That encouraging development is why I’m so bummed – and disturbed – to see the demise of the environmental desk at some of the top news outlets in the U.S.  This is troublesome because objective third-party reporting helps us understand the issues, the politics that often surround them, and the solutions to these precarious challenges. We need that coverage, perhaps even more than we need the reporting that accompanies a weather-related emergency.

What does it reflect that the NYTimes is dismantling its environment desk of seven reporters and two editors and placing them elsewhere, while at the same time dropping its Green Blog?  Why is the Washington Post reassigning its lead climate reporter off the environmental beat? They’re not alone. Four years ago, CNN dropped its environmental team and the network’s environmental coverage today is weaker. NBC slashed its staff of environmental reporters in 2008 – in the middle of Green Week!

Have the continual readership studies that news shops take in today’s fiercely competitive media world revealed that readers and listeners tune out on such coverage? Are other beats suddenly becoming more newsworthy and requiring additional resources?  I would like to know.  I also would love to ask veteran Pulitzer Prize judges whether they see fewer entries of investigative stories or series on environmental issues.

We’ve seen environmental-reporting cycles before. But why is this happening again at a time when Congress, the administration and corporate leaders are acknowledging climate change and the damages it’s triggering? As for consumers, surveys certainly indicate they are interested in environmental issues and what companies are doing to combat greenhouse gases and other pollutants. So what gives?

I seriously doubt that Mother Jones can go it alone on the environmental front within the print media, along with respected bloggers such as Marc Gunther and Aman Singh to pick up the slack.

In less than a week, a sell-out crowd will converge at the National Adaptation Forum in Denver.  Government, corporate and academic voices will debate, provoke and solve.  It’s a frame up for the media to get ahead of climate adaptation or, if they would prefer to think about it in their market’s terms, the next storm that undoubtedly will grace their websites’ home pages in the next 12 months.

I, for one, am going to look with interest at how many journalists – environmental specialists and those who aren’t – will attend the Forum. It will serve as another litmus test of the media’s genuine interest in covering issues that will determine if our planet withstands what the experts maintain lies ahead on climate change.

One more thing: Let’s give a shout out to a kickstarter-type campaign to pay for climate journalists. And let’s all ante up to help us adapt! Because what are the consequences when media interest evaporates as our environment evaporates?

The Next Silk Route

Seeing this map of the melting Arctic Sea and subsequent shipping routes in the Economist a few weeks ago startled me.  I was programmed to think of voyages and conquests by the Economist’s cover picture of a ruddy Viking. And this triggered, at least for me, a profound reality: Everything we know about shipping is about to change because of climate change.

Just hearing that certainty alone sends an Arctic chill down my spine.  I’m not ready to give up that icy white at the top of my son’s globe. Or all the mystery, epoch history, science and beauty locked up there simply to buy get cheaper toys, clothes, solar panel parts, fish protein, energy and the list goes on and on.

But ready or not, the draft National Climate Assessment suggests we already are registering a decrease in sea ice, snow cover and glaciers, as well as an increase in ocean temperatures. Indeed, reflecting the physics of glaciers, they are retreating faster than most models originally had predicted.

So the climate has created an opportunity for this era’s Genghis Khan to open up trade routes that were a mere child’s dream of racing boats across a plastic globe only a few years ago.  I’m heartened to see that a multinational collaboration is taking the lead.  The Arctic Council comprises adjacent countries: the United States, Canada, Denmark (representing Greenland and the Faroe Islands), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden.  Corporations are chomping at the bit for the new shipping, fishing and extractives possibilities and a responsible policy will help to ensure safe handling.

Time has given the Vikings and Genghis Khan a romantic and heroic reputation as adventurers. Let’s hope the heroism of this new era of profound geologic change leads to two developments: the halt of other climate events through employing greenhouse gas mitigation and a careful and considerate approach to the use of our new geographical landscape.