WATCH: Risk, Resilience, and Decision-making in a Changing Climate
As climate risk rises across geographies, industries, and supply chains, every business is having to rethink the basic assumptions underpinning daily decision-making. This is the challenge that inspired Harvard Business School’s Business and Environment Initiative, in collaboration with Probable Futures, to create a new informative video series, “Risk, Resilience, and Decision-making in a Changing Climate,” combining climate literacy with entrepreneurial expertise.
In four videos, Harvard Business School professors Mike Toffel, Ishita Sen, Tarun Khanna, and John Macomber, along with Probable Futures’ Spencer Glendon, and CEOs, Chief Sustainability Officers, and other experts explore how climate change is disrupting agriculture, real estate, property insurance, and labor, and how adaptive strategies can help these industries build resilience as we reach higher degrees of warming. Over the course of a months-long collaboration, these trusted voices came together to share valuable guidance for a riskier business future.
Business Assumptions in a Changing Climate
Extreme heat and shifting climate patterns are disrupting the systems and products our businesses depend on – from agricultural products like olives to our manufacturing, shipping, energy delivery, and entertainment.
Mike Toffel (Harvard Business School), Spencer Glendon (Probable Futures), and Giovanni Quaratesi (Certified Origins) use the case study of olive oil production in Europe to highlight how our changing climate is challenging business assumptions and ways climate literacy can make industries more resilient.
Real Estate in a Changing Climate
Buildings are designed, financed, insured, and operated on the underlying assumption of climate stability. John Macomber (Harvard Business School), Spencer Glendon (Probable Futures), and Esther An (City Developments Limited) discuss how extreme heat and other climate impacts are testing the limits of our built environment and disrupting the real estate industry, and how we can adapt.
Insurability in a Changing Climate:
Property insurance is essential for managing financial risk, but rising climate hazards are increasing exposure and pushing premiums higher. Ishita Sen (Harvard Business School), Spencer Glendon (Probable Futures), and Pete Walther (Marsh Agency) break down how climate change is challenging long-standing assumptions in the insurance industry and ways insurance can evolve to meet increasing risk.
Labor in a Changing Climate:
By impacting how the human body functions, heat exposure affects every business that relies on outdoor labor. Tarun Khanna (Harvard Business School), Spencer Glendon (Probable Futures), and Anna B. Albright (Clema) discuss the wide-ranging challenges posed by dangerous temperatures and how businesses can innovate to protect workers.