Blog articles

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.

Richard Barker, Board Member of the International Sustainability Standards Board, says that while companies might carry climate-health-related risks, a couple of hurdles need to be jumped for information about those risks to be reported to investors. The first is that they must potentially affect the company’s financial prospects. The second is that those effects must be capable of affecting an investor’s decision about financing the company. There is judgement in this. It is for a company itself to decide on information about its business that is material to its investors. To the extent that climate-health risks can be expected to grow in scale and scope, disclosure about them would grow also.

For most boards, health and climate have traditionally been separate agenda items and different risk categories, writes Gillian Karran-Cumberlege, Head of Chair Advisory and Co-Founder Fidelio Partners, and Chapter Zero Fellow. She points out that, arguably, the primary challenge for boards is navigating increasingly interconnected risks and the interplay of climate and health is becoming one of the best examples of this.

Tina Mavraki is a FTSE100 Board Director, executive leader and advisor across industries; she is also a Chapter Zero Fellow. She reminds us of the old adage that you cannot manage what you cannot measure. That is why, to date, conversations about climate-health risks are largely absent in the boardroom.