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If you listened to Vincent Charpiot of Capgemini on the pod a few weeks ago, one of the big conclusions of Cap’s recent Sustainability survey was a shift in emphasis towards climate adaptation. I’ve since heard similar if more anecdotal evidence from other leading figures in the discipline. This isn’t because organisations have fallen for the lazy lukewarmer platitude of “we can just adapt to climate change” but due to the very real and present disruption to supply chains due to extreme weather.

Of course we can try to keep adapting, but a bit like those who take a compliance-based approach to Sustainability, you have to run harder and harder just to stand still. Of course, the sensible approach is for everyone to keep reducing carbon emissions so future supply chain problems are diminished in potential.

But to me, the mitigate/adapt dilemma kind of sums up the ‘wicked problem’ of climate change. Like the proverbial ‘tragedy of the commons’, tackling climate change at source depends on having faith that enough other organisations will act responsibly that everyone’s impacts are limited. If an organisation does act, the benefits are shared with everyone, if they don’t act, the negatives are also shared equally. This effectively incentivises ‘do nothing’

Adaptation measures are much easier to conceptualise: you identify the risk, you develop an action plan, you sell that to the powers that be – we’ve got to do X or our business is sunk – and you implement that plan. The cost-benefit analysis is so much simpler and under direct control. Now, there is a knack of using the immediacy of climate adaptation to further conversation about carbon reductions – if we don’t, this will keep happening and we’ll have to keep spending money, but it is a much more difficult sell.

I suppose this is why I keep coming back to the business case for sustainability. We have to keep emphasising the other ‘whys’ – compliance, cost reductions, employee recruitment, retention and engagement, customer/stakeholder expectations and evolving markets. Reminding people of the ‘selfish’ benefits to an otherwise altruistic act.