Climate Risk and Equity Launch

Future Earth Australia’s second flagship program— Climate risk and equity—commenced in November 2018 with an event held in conjunction with Climate-KIC Australia and the University of Sydney’s Sydney Environment Institute. The morning consisted of an opening plenary lecture, followed by two panel discussions that were open to the public. The public event was followed by an invitation-only expert roundtable.

To kick off the day’s events, Dr Nick Wood, ESCC Hub stakeholder group chair, and Professor Andy Pitman, Director ARC Centre for Excellence in Climate Extremes, gave a climate science perspective on the challenges of providing physical climate data that industry can use in decision making.

In the first panel, "How is climate science being applied in industry?", a panel chaired by Dr. Tanya Fiedler of the University of Sydney Business School was convened. The panel included Karl Braganza, head of climate monitoring, Bureau of Meteorology (BOM); Amber Johnston-Billings, director of climate change & sustainability, KPMG; John Manning, VP and senior credit officer, Moody’s; and Zoe Whitton, head of ESG Research, Citigroup.

The second panel, on "standards, funding and fairness within climate science and governance", encouraged members to talk about standards within climate science and governance. The panel members included Rosemary Bissett, Head of Sustainability Governance and Risk, NAB; Professor Lesley Hughes, Pro Vice-Chancellor at Macquarie University; Ryan Crompton, General Manager, Modelling and Research Solutions at Risk Frontiers; and Mark Crosweller of the National Risk Resilience Taskforce.

In the afternoon's expert roundtable, 25 experts from government, industry and academia joined a roundtable discussion under the Chatham House Rule to explore how other sectors are using climate science to guide business and policy, and how this might be made more transparent. Several necessary characteristics were identified for an effective climate risk disclosure framework.

To learn more about the Climate Risk event, see our two outcome papers here and here.