Boards are not discussing climate and health because there is a measurement gap

“Climate-health risks are understood at a macro level but simply do not feature in board discussions,” says Mavraki. “They are managed as business-as-usual adaptation rather than as a strategic risk.”

She explains that this is largely because the human aspects of climate change – that is the impact on health – have an incremental effect on business, especially where the impact is mental-health or heat-related. “Where heat does show up, the response is usually tactical: you change shifts, you invest in facilities,” she says. “But it is not strategic.”

Mavraki points out that, generally speaking, boardroom climate conversations are often framed too narrowly. “Carbon is dominating the agenda at the expense of broader environmental and health interconnections. It’s too easy to just focus on carbon. The interconnection of these things matters,” she says.

It is not surprising that the focus to date has been on what can be readily evaluated; but, going forward, there needs to be a mechanism by which these broad environmental and health risks can be measured and overseen by boards who are inspired to ask the right questions.

The measurement and attribution challenge

“The measurement gap is the core problem,” says Mavraki. “Companies are not even measuring the cost of the human aspects of climate change and, because they cannot measure it and they cannot analyse the numbers, they do not pay attention to it.”

Attribution – the discipline of linking climate change to specific health and business outcomes – is the critical missing discipline, she says. “It is a fundamentally underdeveloped field; a notoriously futuristic discipline. Not many people do it and do it scientifically,” says Mavraki.

“The attribution and cost benefit have to be compelling,” she says. “Without credible attribution and cost-benefit analysis, there is no mechanism to bring these risks onto the board agenda. The economic case must be made before attention follows.”

What would help now

Generalisations are not helpful. “Economic data need to be tied to specific industries rather than presented at an aggregate level,” says Mavraki. “A municipality might track workforce productivity across the economy, but a company needs the numbers to land at the company level.”

She reminds us, scale matters. “Evidence needs to demonstrate material impact to command board attention,” she says. Those incremental effects of climate on health are not going to shift the dial; there must be something substantial happening if there is to be action.

“The most effective route into the climate and health conversation is to identify where the pain is greatest and work backwards,” says Mavraki. “Go to where it hurts the most and where the buck stops then build the attribution and cost case from there."

ESG framing is part of the problem

Generally, climate-related health risks tend to surface through operational health and safety risks rather than through climate or ESG frameworks.

In some industrial sectors extreme heat is a by-product of business as usual that will only worsen as the planet warms, producing severe working conditions. So far, there are largely short-term adaptation responses to these conditions, framed as operational health and safety issues, and not as climate risk. That is not an approach that is going to get climate and health on the board agenda.

Part of the problem, says Mavraki, is that ESG is often misunderstood with risks wrongly classified and not addressed as part of business strategy. “The result is that boards often think about ESG in theory only without tying it to strategy,” she says.