Climate and health

Chapter Zero members and Fellows have helped put climate and health boardroom conversations into context to enable us to understand the status quo from the boardroom point of view and learn how these nascent conversations are being governed.

In the financial services sector, climate risk is no longer just about compliance; increasingly it is seen through the lens of business opportunity. But climate-health conversations don’t yet show up at the strategic level. They are a ‘second order’ discussion for banks and asset managers. It is in the insurance industry where climate-health lands commercially.

Climate risk – including the acute, human risk of extreme heat, drought and flooding – sits within, not alongside, directors’ existing fiduciary and care duties across every sector, says Julie Hirigoyen, Non-executive Director on the boards of Willmott Dixon Holdings Ltd, The Kings Cross Group and Thriving Investments Ltd; and independent sustainability advisor and member of Chapter Zero.

Climate change is already undermining global security and prosperity, and further significant impacts on human health, wellbeing and livelihoods are inevitable. In recent years, we have seen with our own eyes that heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms are increasingly common and climate science indicates that this situation will continue to deteriorate. This is the new climate reality for which we are dangerously ill-prepared.