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A new company to manage climate change risks for business and government.

I have been waiting for more of an emphasis on climate adaptation to happen. This is the area of climate change in which emergency management has a role. When you hear the phrase “climate mitigation,” it is usually about reducing greenhouse gasses.

Since we are failing in our ability to limit the increase in worldwide temperatures, you must “adapt” to the new reality. Therefore, I found it interesting to see the launch of a new company, Adaptation Leader.

The following comes from a news release: “As governments and businesses face climate-related emergencies in ever-increasing numbers, scale, and severity, their leaders are beginning to realize they don’t want to be caught without the strategies needed to remain viable and even flourish in a rapidly changing world. There also is growing recognition that major climate-related business and financial risks are surfacing right now, not just in the long term,” observes co-founder Lisa Granquist. Adaptation Leader seeks to work with change agents within those organizations and initiatives who understand that climate change adaptation is an important internal and external priority alongside mitigation and who may require assistance in leveraging that understanding into robust strategies and actions.”

The bottom line is that if we will be dealing with a warming climate, we will need to adapt to the changing conditions. Adaptation Leader aims to provide services to leaders of organizations that want to plan and implement climate adaptation actions to protect and optimize their investments across their programs, products and people.

Source: https://www.govtech.com/em/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/climate-adaptation-moves-to-the-forefront

CASE STUDY

It’s a truism in business that you can’t just reduce expenses to be viable — there must be a strategy for innovative gain to achieve success. Ira Feldman makes the same point about Adaptation Leader, a newly-formed advisory firm: “The climate change discourse has been focused on mitigation. We need more attention on adaptation and resilience.” 

That’s the aim of Adaptation Leader which states its mission this way: “We believe that climate adaptation policy, planning, and implementation should receive at least as much attention, promotion, support, and funding as that dedicated to climate change mitigation.”

To deliver its services, Adaptation Leader has assembled a team of 20+ experts in the fields of disaster risk reduction, climate tech, and ESG as well as adaptation to climate change. Their goal is to bridge the information and actionable strategy gap between climate scientists and policymakers on the one hand, and business and organizational leaders on the other. The firm supplies methods, tools, and insights in specialty programs, such as “Resilient Public Private Partnerships,” developed by team member and PPP expert David Baxter. At a more basic level, the company provides a suite of “turnkey” workshops. In an “Adaptation 101” introduction, these events cover the fundamentals of such topics as adaptation metrics, foresight and scenario planning, strategy valuation, and PPPs.

In addition, Adaptation Leader adds a crucial missing element to the conversation: the stakeholder community. “We have created a platform to bring together stakeholders by convening dialogues,” explains Feldman. “The blind spot in the adaptation and resilience space has been a lack of stakeholder input.”

Feldman is clear about the company’s ambition: “We want Adaptation Leader to be the agenda setters in the AR space. We have the thought leadership for — excuse the cliché but it’s true — out-of-the-box thinking. We don’t go with the conventional wisdom.”

PRESS RELEASE
Announcing the Launch of Adaptation Leader™
A New Advisory Firm Focused on Helping Clients Adapt to a Changing Climate
WASHINGTON, DC | LONDON, UK | WATERLOO, CA | BOSTON, MA – 17 May 2021

A new enterprise offering climate adaptation advisory services, Adaptation Leader™ LLC, has been created to address an urgent and critical need—information, methods, tools, and insights needed for organizations to begin adapting to the emerging and inevitable changes occurring in our climate. Formed as a “bridge” between climate scientists and policy makers on one side and organizational leaders faced with the challenge of understanding and taking appropriate action in response to climate change on the other, the Adaptation Leader team brings together more than twenty experts and analysts, including some key figures in the adaptation, disaster risk reduction, climate tech, and environmental, social and governance (ES&G) fields.

“As governments and businesses face climate-related emergencies in ever-increasing numbers, scale, and severity, their leaders are beginning to realize they don’t want to be caught without the strategies needed to remain viable and even flourish in a rapidly changing world. There also is growing recognition that major climate-related business and financial risks are surfacing right now, not just in the long term,” observes co-founder Lisa Granquist. Adaptation Leader seeks to work with change agents within those organizations and initiatives who understand that climate change adaptation is an important internal and external priority alongside mitigation and who may require assistance in leveraging that understanding into robust strategies and actions.

More companies also are recognizing the need to provide more extensive and higher quality climate disclosures either through voluntary reporting under such frameworks as GRI and SASBi, or in response to changing regulatory requirements. Among the key drivers: the mainstreaming of ES&G factors in investment decision making; the recommendations from the TCFDii; and the growing likelihood that the Biden administration will move towards issuing mandatory reporting requirements for publicly traded companies through the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “There’s very little attention paid to the adaptation component in most existing climate disclosures. Although fully evaluating both physical climate and transitional risks requires deep understanding of climate adaptation, our observation is that most of the tools and services offered to asset owners to this point do not offer the necessary depth and sophistication. Existing analytics and advice have often been inadequate to suitably reveal and address climate-related organizational risks,” notes co-founder Karl Schultz. “Thus, Adaptation Leader is developing some unique offerings to fill the gaps.”

New Adaptation Leader offerings include “Adaptation Strategy Valuation” (ASV), which provides granular (e.g., product- or property-level) understanding of the corporate risk of failure or loss across multiple climate and decision-making scenarios. ASV has been developed by a team directed by corporate valuation expert Roland Mader. Another package of offerings recognizes the role of partnerships, including public-private partnerships (PPPs), in advancing resilience and adaptation activities. An Adaptation Leader team led by PPP expert David Baxter
has developed an adaptation-focused program called, “Resilient Public Private Partnerships.” Offerings developed by Adaptation Leader in advance of the formal launch of the company include a suite of “turnkey” workshops. These are now available for delivery on a group or per-seat basis. In addition to an “Adaptation 101” workshop, these workshops each introduce the basics of topics such as adaptation metrics, foresight & scenario planning, strategy valuation, and PPPs.

Two other novel offerings include the CAPPS (Community of Climate Adaptation Practitioners, Policymakers, and Scholars) platform and a Chief Resilience Officers outsourcing service for both corporate and local government clients. “These offerings bring essential and immediate capacity to organizations struggling to come to grips with climate adaptation and its implications before the challenges become insurmountable,” notes co-founder Ira Feldman.

Company leaders believe that the new firm fulfills a vital need at a crucial moment in time. Much of the focus of climate action efforts to date has been placed on greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. Adaptation Leader and its leadership believe that although such efforts are crucial and must continue, climate adaptation policy, planning, and implementation should receive at least as much attention, promotion, support, and funding as that dedicated to climate change mitigation. Indeed, this fact has been explicitly acknowledged in the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement.

Against this backdrop, Adaptation Leader is positioning itself to become the dominant independent climate adaptation strategic advisory services firm as well as a source of insight that can be used to further define the climate adaptation agenda and a convener supporting the development of an extensive and diverse adaptation and resilience community of practice. Incorporated in February of this year, the Adaptation Leader management team includes founders Granquist, Feldman, and Schultz as well as leading ES&G and management consultant Peter Soyka as Chief Operating Officer and William Russell, of Transitioning to Green, as Senior Project Manager.

About Adaptation Leader

Adaptation Leader™ LLC provides services to leaders of organizations that want to plan and implement climate adaptation actions to protect and optimize their investments across their programs, products, and people. We are a global team of 20+ experts located around the globe. We offer adaptation-focused strategic planning; research and analysis; educational and tactical workshops; organizational development and improvement services; and stakeholder convenings.

Contact: Ira Feldman, +1 (202) 669-1858, ira@adaptationleader.com, www.adaptationleader.com

ⁱ GRI is the Global Reporting Initiative, and SASB is the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Both entities are nonprofits seeking to promote consistent, universal, high quality sustainability disclosure by corporations and other entities.

ⁱⁱ Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure, an initiative of the Financial Stability Board.