As communities around the world continue to experience the devastating effects of climate change, the need to accelerate climate adaptation and resilience efforts has never been clearer. Businesses have a big role to play in driving adaptation and resilience. Although progress is already being made, significant gaps remain.
At COP28, the first annual implementation report of the Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda (SAA) will assess progress towards its implementation. Launched by the President of Egypt at COP27, SAA, through collaboration with High-Level Champions (HLCs), aims to deliver priority global adaptation outcomes urgently needed to increase the resilience of 4 billion people by 2030. Provide a list of goals. The agenda focuses on: He identified necessary transformations across six impact systems: food and agriculture, water and nature, human settlements, coasts and oceans, infrastructure, and health. with his two cross-cutting enablers of policy and planning and finance. These systems are intertwined, with diverse sets of actions and solutions across sectors and systems provided and enabled by a variety of actors, including businesses and financial institutions, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and policy makers at all levels. A plan is needed.
The SAA report enhances the role of businesses in delivering economic, social and environmental resilience across priority systems. The report recognizes the work undertaken by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with PwC and focuses on three elements: strengthening resilience, identifying opportunities and collaborating with others to accelerate adaptation action. leveraged to present a clear approach that companies can use to support their business cases. .
At COP28, the business community will explore opportunities to accelerate adaptation action, which will lead to the publication of discussion papers to be launched after COP28. This paper includes examples of business activities across the SAA system to help inform and demonstrate where businesses have made progress and where they need to accelerate their efforts.
Preliminary analysis suggests that although system-level transformation is not occurring as quickly as needed, major international organizations have made significant progress in recent years in bringing businesses together and generating support resources to accelerate adaptation. There are already indications that progress is being made. Corporate awareness and action across food and agriculture, water and natural systems appears to be moving at a faster rate compared to health, human settlements and infrastructure systems. There, private sector contributions appear to be lagging in assessing and responding to climate change adaptation risks. chance.
There has never been a better time for businesses to understand the opportunities presented by investing in climate adaptation and resilience, and without which SAA cannot be achieved.
