RESILIENCE FINANCE WILL GO MAINSTREAM.

From the Climate Bonds Initiative to the Global Adaptation and Resilience Investment WorkGroup, finance sector experts are working to create mechanisms in the financial markets that make it more likely that assets under management will include more climate change resilience projects. That’s important, since the gap in resilience finance, which the Climate Policy Initiative doggedly tracks annually, grows wider. Creating principles for resilience-related green bonds is a high priority in the growing climate bond field.

RESILIENCE FUNDING WILL INCREASE.

Both the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Emergency Management Agency received increased mitigation-related appropriations, in part through the “Disaster Recovery Reform Act.” Going forward, FEMA can use 6 percent of its Disaster Relief Fund on pre-disaster mitigation and HUD allocated $28 billion to support long-term disaster recovery in nine states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands with $16 billion earmarked for risk mitigation. Rules and guidelines for accessing these competitive grants are on the agencies’ 2019 to-do list.

CLIMATE CHANGE-DRIVEN MIGRATION WILL BE BETTER ORGANIZED.

Even as Louisiana grapples with the ongoing migration of families from their southern parishes because of climate-related issues (e.g., in Plaquemine Parish, 67 percent of the population left between 2000 and 2015), it and other states seek ways to create capacity and opportunity in receiving communities. We even have a term for this change:“Climigration.” It was coined by Robin Bronen, executive director of theAlaska Institute for Justice,to replace the commonly used misnomer “climate refugee.”

RESILIENCE NEWS WILL BECOME MORE UBIQUITOUS.

The resilience-related news cycle will grow, driven by growing tragedies that define the resilience gap. Last year’s National Climate Assessment spotlighted the costs we already are experiencing:

• Flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in 2011, triggered by heavy rainfall, caused an estimated $5.7 billion in costs.
• Drought in 2012 caused widespread agricultural losses to crops and livestock, and low water levels along the Mississippi River affected transportation of goods. resulting in an estimated $33 billion in losses.
• Annual federal firefighting costs have ranged from $809 million to $2.1 billion per year between 2000 and 2016.

Experts in many sectors now assert how climate change risk is impacting their goals, resulting, for instance, in a 10-fold increase in my resilience-related Google feed – the source of many of my tweets the past year.

RURAL AMERICA WILL CONTINUE TO BEAR THE BRUNT OF CATASTROPHIC LOSS.

Many Americans still live, work and play in smaller towns and cities where most climate change-related tragedy strikes – from Paradise, California, to Mexico Beach, Florida. Resources focused on smaller communities, such as Flood Forum USA and Online Help and Advice for Natural Disasters, are going to be even more in demand.

Are you detecting other resilience-related trends? Please let me know. Contact me on Twitter.

This oped originally appeared in Triple Pundit https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2019/five-resilience-trends-watch-2019/82001

Image credit: Bureau of Land Management/Flickr

The post Five Resilience Trends to Watch in 2019 appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

At last week’s Global Climate Action Summit, I sat down with Keith Kenny, McDonald’s Global Vice President of Sustainability to learn about the company’s resilience story. He asserted that climate resilience is both an environmental and economic imperative for the company.

“Farmer livelihoods and related thriving rural communities are important to us because our restaurants are in those communities,” he explained. “That gets forgotten when we speak about sustainable agriculture.  Farmers need to be able to reinvest in their business. Just as we invest in them.”

That belief proved to be McDonald’s inspiration for its Flagship Farmers Program, which connects farmers interested in continuous improvement and sustainable practices. Its platform notes that climate change is affecting agriculture, causing droughts, floods, more storms and heat waves. The program encourages farmers “to adapt and develop our farming systems to be more resilient to these changing environmental conditions.”

Publicly recognizing these hazards caused by changes in climate – and predicted to grow over time – offers a good start on the path to making climate resilience a key feature of the business.

Keith pointed out that McDonald’s invests in supply chain projects with a 20-30 year payback, which makes them both climate change sensitive and focused on resilience to ensure year-over-year payback. Unlike other retailers with tens of thousands of items on their shelves, “15-to-20 items represent 70 percent of what we sell,” he said. “We have long-term relationships with our suppliers. Most of them have grown their business as we have grown ours.”

This is key, for instance, for beef consistency – patty to patty – throughout the world and also for long oblong potato varietals conducive to harvest times, storage and its fries.

This is a significant improvement from McDonald’s supply chain response of about five years ago. Then, under different leadership, its response to a question of what McDonald’s was doing to adapt its supply chain to climate change was to exclaim, “We’ll just tell Canada to get ready to grow canola if it gets to hot and dry to grow it in the lower 48.”

Its fresh approach may bring McDonald’s more into the climate-resilient supply chain vanguard with such companies as Mars Inc. and Coca Cola that have collaborated with the nonprofit Business for Social Responsibility to launch a Climate-Resilient Value Chains Leaders Platform announced at last week’s Summit.

Though McDonald’s has yet to officially join that initiative, it is among a group of food companies including Keurig Green Mountain, Heinz and Chipotle making initial strides on climate resilience. And, like other big companies, climate action to reduce greenhouse gasses is becoming more of a priority. This year, McDonald’s announced it was partnering with franchisees and suppliers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to its restaurants and offices by 36 percent by 2030 from a 2015 base year in a new strategy to address climate change. It also committed to a 31 percent decrease in emissions intensity per metric ton of food and packaging across its supply chain by 2030 from 2015 levels, and the combined target has been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative.

Keith said innovation is key to McDonald’s resilience and sees soil health as a “huge opportunity” that the company is exploring with such partners as the World Wildlife Fund and the University of Arizona. In addition, he enumerated the many collateral benefits of pursuing adaptive multi-paddock grazing – moving cow herds from paddock to paddock – that allows soil to regenerate by giving native plants a chance to establish deeper roots. This enhances carbon sequestration and water retention and filtration while increasing productivity with more animals grazed on the same land.

Keith also offered another example of how its thinking about climate change and resilience has changed, and it reflects that McDonald’s is a surf-and-turf restaurant. Cod fished from the North Atlantic were a key element of McDonald’s filet-o-fish sandwich until environmental organization Greenpeace brought McDonald’s and others to task for fishing in a warming ocean where melting ice flows are exposing previously frozen areas. Keith was invited by Greenpeace to journey on its Arctic Sunrise ship to see firsthand “what the fish are up to” in a climate-changed world.

In May 2016, McDonald’s and more than a dozen other seafood industry giants joined forces to protect a large area of the Arctic from increased fishing. The voluntary agreement commits the companies from expanding cod fishing into a previously ice-covered portion of the Northern Barents Sea in the Arctic.

This article originally appeared on Triple Pundit

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Hence the rise of adaptation finance, which World Resources Institute has said is necessary as “poor rural areas are frequently the most in need of financial support to strengthen their resilience to climate change, yet they often have the fewest financial resources available.”

To that end, a key question was asked at “Resilience Day” during this week’s Global Climate Action Summit: how do we scale finance for adaptation?”

The question and responses are critically important because, as noted by Barbara Buchner, executive director of the Climate Policy Initiative, finance for climate adaptation in 2017 amounted to just $22 billion vs. $382 billion for climate mitigation.

Here are five answers based on input from several players in the adaptation investment field. These leaders include Sanjay Wagle, managing director of the private socially driven equity investment firm The Lightsmith Group; Dr. Buchner and Kirsten Dunlop, CEO of the European Union’s Climate-KIC; Kathy Baughman-McLeod, senior vice president of Global Environmental & Social Risk, Bank of America; and Mari Yoshitaka, chief consultant for the Clean Energy Finance Division of Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. For adaptation finance to work and ensure resilience, the following must occur:

1. Get the adaptation-related policies right. Regulatory uncertainties hinder investors. Especially since finance flow is mostly domestic, investors care about predictability. Nonprofits, bilateral agencies and academic institutions can assist sovereigns with regulatory improvements.
2. Borrow innovative finance solutions from other sectors, including the vanilla approach of ensuring all government investments are adaptive to climate risk, as well as insurance-linked securities, green bonds and other scalable and replicable means.The International Finance Corporation and other multilateral investment banks can further this work, increasing their emphasis on adaptation from a historic emphasis on mitigation.
3. Move toward a globally accepted standard for resilience finance including language on the use of proceeds so the market grows with each investment. Commercial and investment banks should be part of this standard-setting, with engagement from the Financial Stability Board and others.
4. Create facilities, starting in markets easy for investors’ participation, where a blend of philanthropy, impact capital, development finance and regular market capital invests in products and where projects can be wrapped and warehoused for their marketability. Focus especially on multiplying the scant grant resources in ways that inspire more adaptation finance, not just one improved project. Philanthropies, development banks and green investment banks are part of this solution.
5. Make the existing knowledge about profitable adaptation solutions much more widely known, since investors remain unaware of opportunities in this space. All adaptation thought leaders need to make this a priority, turning risks into investment opportunities.

As the Summit comes and goes underway, it is important that we strive to ensure these five directives can help scale up climate adaptation.

This article originally appeared in Triple Pundit.

The post Five Adaptation Finance Tips That Can Help Build Resilience Worldwide appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Real estate risk from the physical impacts of climate change.”

That’s how Neil Pegram, Director of Americas with GRESB, a global investor-driven benchmark organization that tracks real estate portfolios’ environmental, social and governance performance, welcomed attendees at GRESB’s affiliate event at last week’s Global Climate Action Summit.

Pegram was noting how slow the real estate industry has been in turning its attention to the impact of climate change on real assets, even though climate resistance has become an investment imperative in a sector where such investments often are held for a decade or longer.

It seemed apropos that the GRESB event was taking place as the East Coast prepared for Hurricane Florence’s anticipated wrath and as the real estate industry absorbs the news that 2017’s natural disasters caused an estimated $220 billion in property and infrastructure damage – two-thirds of the $330 billion in global economic losses, figures Munich RE.

In March, GRESB released a new resilience module, an optional supplement to the GRESB Real Estate and Infrastructure Assessments. It is a significant improvement over the paltry resilience checkbox that GRESB included in prior benchmark frameworks.

GRESB leaders acknowledged it was the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) recommendation that information related to governance, risk management, strategy, and performance metrics be disclosed that caused them to fortify the resilience benchmark.

Several real estate investors in attendance described their portfolio’s resilience – and they reinforced the view that an industry awakening has begun. Nina James, General Manager, Corporate Sustainability, for Investa said that resilience generally is considered a “mega trend” and investors place it in the category of a “taking a long-term bet.” Like technology, climate change is viewed as a disruption that influences thinking and begs questions about what effective asset stewardship should look like.

Martin Kholmatov, Senior Responsible Investment Specialist at AIMCo, acknowledged that a new set of stresses and shocks exists.  “They make us wonder, how is the business model going to evolve.” He said, adding that he and others think that “a proxy for good management is looking at ESG [Environment, Social and Governance] issues.”

Romilly Madew, representing Australia’s Green Building Council, noted that a growing number of investors ask about resilience. “We tell our members to deal with resilience now and be prepared because investors are going to ask,” she explained.

And Michelle Bachir of Deloitte pointed out that the firm’s advisory clients “are wondering what to put out there to make it decision useful for investors.  Our clients want to portray their leadership in the space. This is an exciting time.”

But GRESB’s data don’t completely confirm this positive tone. Only 13 percent of Real Estate Assessment GRESB responders – just over 100 firms – submitted information for the resilience module. The vast majority reported on only 20 percent of the resilience module, a poor showing indeed.

Adam Kirkman, Head of ESG at AMP Capital struck a conservative note by asking, “Where is the right time to pull the lever to future proof an asset based on risks down the track….What is the financial engineering resilience required?” He also pointed out that benchmarking is for the current real estate portfolio, while resilience decision-making needs to be built into new assets, too.

Ari Frankel, Sustainability & High-Performance Buildings, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. put a fine point on the challenge beyond GRESB.  Unlike other reporting frameworks such as GRI that requires quantification of progress and check boxes relating pastinformation, TCFD is “transformative, because you are asking investors to look at forward-looking, qualitative and scenario-based uncertainty.”

Let’s hope these real estate mavens attended the actual Global Climate Action Summit. They would have heard from leaders as varied as James Lee Witt, former FEMA director and current advisor to Fortune 500 companies; Lionel Johnson Jr., mayor of St. Gabriel, La.; former U.S. Vice President Al Gore; Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands; and Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. They warned that the real estate sector’s ongoing drive for coastal development was on a collision course with climate risk, imperiling real estate assets and humans.

The UNFCCC’s 3rd Biennial Assessment and Overview of Climate Finance Flows released in April — a month after GRESB’s resilience module – calculates that real estate assets at risk in 2070 will be $35 trillion (total value).  Now that’s mind-blowing.

This article originally appeared on Triple Pundit

Image credit: NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory

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In the last few months, I’ve offered counsel to cities as diverse as Minot, N.D. (at the invitation of FEMA), Miami Beach (at the invitation of the Urban Land Institute) and Buras, La. (at the request of the Rockefeller Foundation 100 Resilient Cities). Speaking with these local and innovative government leaders has helped me refine my own understanding of the current state of resilience finance in the U.S.

Here are four market inspirations I have gleaned that could drive more resilience finance:

1. In its report “Climate Adaptation and Liability,” the Conservation Law Foundation unveils numerous cases describing a new era in the “duty to care” for designers, real estate professionals and municipal government officials as events that future climate scenarios envision replace force majeur events.
2. Although the federal National Flood Insurance Program distorts price signals in the risk transfer elements of the market – and I strongly encourage you to engage on its reauthorization, perhaps starting by reviewing this excellent piece – in such highly vulnerable markets as Houston and Miami, an insurance price signal is emerging as flood insurance premiums rise faster there than elsewhere.
3. Credit rating. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have made announcements that the physical risks from climate change will be factored into municipal credit ratings, and S&P has been clearer about this impact, for instance as shown in the article How Our U.S. Local Government Criteria Weather Climate Risk. Municipalities don’t want their debt to be more expensive and, therefore, less attractive to investors, so this is a big deal.
4. Big data. With the emergence of big data modelers such as Airworldwide, RMS and Core Logic in the past decade, more financial services professionals will have growing access to the cost of both actual and avoided loss from extreme events. While cities cannot afford these big modelers, financial sector parties are applying them to city problems and generating new methods to create “bankability” – revenue generation from projects that traditionally don’t generate rates or fees. For instance, resilience bonds, described in a very approachable way by re:focus partners in this report, link future insurance savings to a bank of funds for current risk mitigation projects.

Along with these drivers, progress continues in the debt market, creating more means to fund city resilience. Most importantly, that headway should include a swift pivot of general obligation bonds from traditional investments that neither create collateral benefits nor consider climate change scenarios to resilience investments promising more long-term return and performance given future risk. That is really the only way to ensure we create resilient cities. But with close to 80,000 issuers of municipal bonds in the country, the four key drivers above are key for ensuring this transition.

At the same time, the growth of innovative bond mechanisms could also help cities increase funds for resilience. The District of Columbia has had success with green bonds for its water and sewer authority, while the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority has created excellent examples of sustainability bonds’ utility. The resilience bonds mentioned above are another in this category. Of course, catastrophe bonds – some with hurricane triggers – are another insurance-linked mechanism for getting money to cities after disasters.

In a future post, I will suggest ways cities can invite more resilience finance, given these market levers and financial means.

This op ed originally appeared on Triple Pundit

The post Paying for Resilience: Market Drivers and Financial Means appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

• Investors who deal in debt and equity and seek to benefit from the risk and opportunity that climate change creates.
• Urban planners and nonprofits dealing in social equity and cohesion and eager to prevent harm based on risk and opportunity created by climate change.

Will these two paths converge in the wood, as Robert Frost put it? Or, is it never the twain shall meet as Kipling expressed it?

According to the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, $70 trillion (U.S.) of assets under management integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into core operations. But, peeling back that good news, would we see more social equity ensuing? By and large, the positive and negative implications on communities of climate change aren’t being addressed.

I frequently note that climate change exacerbates the tale of two very different futures – rich getting richer from extraordinary resources for resilience and poor getting poorer due to precarious resilience in everyday circumstances. What would it take for those two futures to cause investors to integrate social equity into their climate strategies, creating what I call Finance “Adaptation Equity?”

First, though, they would have to grasp – and care about – social equity issues. Those investors already trying to achieve sustainability goals are likely to see social equity as material to financial equity because it:

1. Accomplishes two ESG pillars – Environment and Social – that link the mitigation of physical risks of climate change with the enhancement of communities. Think of aligning with international standards related to human rights or the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
2. Unveils new investment opportunities in physical assets that can enhance community equity such as infrastructure and real estate.
3. Responds to an admittedly small group of impact investors who focus on beneficiaries and aim for responsible investment to be defined by social equity.
4. Portends new pathways for longer-term investors (e.g., pensions) and development funders (e.g., blended finance teams) to apply their assets to climate and inequity affected sectors and regions.
5. Enhances understanding of systemic risks within the financial ecosystem by connecting climate change and inequity, especially given that without concerted effort, climate change will make inequity worse – and inequity has been proven to impact markets.

Still, for finance equity to flow to social equity requires work. Here are three strategies for each.

Investment equity

1. Include social equity principles in investment policy statements and goals as well as in requirements for consultants and advisors. Ask, “Will this asset improve the lives and livelihoods of lower resourced communities?”
2. Make social equity a part of risk mitigation assessments for climate-exposed assets, broadening the scope of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure guidelines to ensure that social elements are privileged.
3. Insist social equity be part of green bond project frameworks, asking if the infrastructure asset will have an equal or greater number of lower-resourced beneficiaries.

Social equity

1. Include means to raise fees and taxes related within social equity projects to make them more attractive to financiers. Ask, “How can we make this project a revenue generator?”
2. Make calculations that show the market benefits of social equity in your geographies and communicate them to public and private stakeholders.
3. Insist that social equity be part of financial assessments for infrastructure and other projects by being present at negotiations and integrated design discussions.

As efforts create successes, failures and draws, both groups should communicate action on social and investment equity with their clients and beneficiaries to help build this field of practice.

This piece originally appeared in Triple Pundit.

The post 6 Steps for Building a “Sweet Spot” Where Social and Financial Equity Meet appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

I enjoy the satisfaction of cleaning up messes and solving problems. For a while I earned my living by “lending my confidence” and applying those skills to organizations in need of change or repair. On the home front, as clutter accumulates, it’s gratifying to clear off the tabletop, put away the folded laundry, vacuum up the crumbs and settle with a cup of tea to enjoy restored beauty and order. In organizations, when we’ve been able to enlist shared intention, find a root cause or contributing factor, outline an alternative and watch people feel the relief of things untangling, it feels great.

But this sense of myself as someone who can – if I choose – set things right has a flip side. I’m coming to see it as also an unwanted part in what Robin DiAngelo calls my “white fragility.” When I turn my attention to persistent, systemic ills in the world around me (poverty, racism, war, polarization, economic devastation, for example) my habit suggests that they too will yield if we (maybe I?) just put a confident, creative shoulder to the wheel and “get it right” once and for all. That they’re still here 50 years after Dr. King called us to racial and economic justice … nearly 50 since Earth Day celebrated our intention to care for the earth differently … that doesn’t fit my picture. It challenges my sense of empowerment, offends my view of progressive progress, discourages me and makes me want to turn away and bury my nose in the latest murder mystery. And then another. And then another. And in my grumpy, defensive retreat, Mother Culture protects her status quo by whispering in my ear: “It’s too big for you. It’ll all work out somehow. Just go back to sleep. Nobody put you in charge.”

Recently I’ve been working with the national Poor People’s Campaign, which is organizing across 40 states for 40 Days of Repentance and Moral Renewal beginning Mother’s Day this spring. This rich connection has reminded me of a powerful antidote to soporific discouragement: joy. As I listen to the stories of the leaders that PPC organizers call “those most affected” by injustice, cruelty and inequity, I’m struck by how joyful the gatherings are designed to be. We sing, and it’s contagious. We help each other, and are glad to be making a space where all are welcome. We play goofy games and laugh. We make and value connections. It wakes me up and pulls me out of my slump and into relationship and companionship. Is it possible that the cultivation of joy in my life could be not a distraction or an indulgence, but rather a sort of spiritual duty, a kind of arming myself for the long haul of non-violent struggle?

There are countless sources around me to mine for that joy: dancing with the kids in my Quaker Meeting (and watching their delight at an adult acting non-seriously) … walking in the woods with my infinitely curious standard poodle … people-watching on the street, softening to imagine the stories carried in all those bodies and minds, and mentally saying to each, “Blessings on you, child of God” … feeling the wind in my hair or seeing the sparkles on a river. Feeling joy isn’t an alternative to continuing to work at resisting injustice, greed, and violence; it may well be a way to stay engaged and to release me from “results” being a condition of my efforts.

The post Finding Joy in the Struggle: Working with the Poor People’s Campaign appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

That said, it’s so interesting, speaking as a lawyer and urban planner (I only play one on TV), how entrepreneur/founders like Bird’s and Uber’s have little to no regard for rules, and/or no knowledge of how public policy works and why we have rules in the first place (zoning codes, environmental laws, public health codes, each is a species of the police power, intended, at bottom, to ensure some level of public order and safety). Ask for forgiveness, not permission, is the MO. I wonder if these entrepreneurs ever took a basic civics course, let alone a course in land use law and city planning.

On the one hand, I love their approach. Given how tough it is to break through the status quo (incumbent businesses like taxi cabs and the rules and regs that protect them), this approach seems to be the only way to get traction quickly and at some scale. And the PR effect, while it cuts both ways, at least raises people’s awareness and level of consciousness about what’s possible (Bird founder VanderZanden’s dream of scooters outnumbering cars one day) and what’s currently missing (hard to get people to care about something they don’t see or experience).

On the other hand, it’s a slippery slope, unbridled enterprises flaunting rules at will, rules that, while no doubt imperfect, usually have a very sound rationale (and rule making process) behind them. It’s a variation on Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons. . . Each entrepreneur pursuing her own grand vision and road (pun intended) to profitability at the expense of the whole, the common good. Santa Monica’s sidewalks and streets, as currently configured, can only hold so many moving objects, only so many scooters and bikes and pedestrians and skateboarders, to say nothing of cars. At some point, without new rules and upgraded infrastructure, the “commons,” our public streets and sidewalks, will simply be overwhelmed, if not (tragically) destroyed, as city populations grow and the sheer number of vehicles, whether self driving cars or scooters, grows with them (think Kolkata or Beijing).

Which points to, I think, the really hard innovation challenge, which is a social one, not a technological or commercial one: How, in a messy, pluralistic and open democratic society such as ours, can we make smarter, more forward-thinking social policy decisions more quickly, more nimbly, so as to enable commercial innovation to happen in a way that maximizes its benefits while minimizing its risks (think of the flurry of social media platforms like Facebook that have grown so quickly, largely unregulated, and are now the subject, ex post, of so much scrutiny, if not disdain, for their recklessness vis. user privacy).

I don’t think it’s an either/or. I think we can have great, smart rules (think of Smart Codes and form-based codes for city planning) and great, smart technologies that work hand in hand. I’d prefer the rules to come first, myself. This was the great legal historian Willard Hurst’s thesis: our legal order, our constitution and laws, were the great enabler, or as he put it, “releaser,” of American enterprise, of our creativity and entrepreneurship as a people. Laws, on Hurst’s view, didn’t limit or constrain freedom, they made it possible, especially in the area of economic development.

But I guess this is the rub. Chicken/egg, scooters/smart codes. Which came first? My left brain votes for rules first. My right for creative enterprise. I guess the point is, it’s not really linear or binary, and rule making is a kind of creative enterprise in its own right. Rules  are an ancient technology, a core operating system whose many versions span the centuries.

Social change, even something as simple as scooters on sidewalks, is dynamic and messy, like any creative process, and this includes a role for disruptors and transgressors like VanderZanden. After all, I imagine that if he actually studied all the rules and procedures that make it so hard to change urban mobility systems (think about how hard it was just a decade ago to build a dedicated bike lane in most US cities), he probably wouldn’t have started Bird in the first place.

Hurst and Hardin might not have been pleased, but then again, they never sat in LA traffic at rush hour. .

The post Bird Scooters and Social Change appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

Many experts predicted this was likely – and I don’t mean the climate scientists.  The Global Risk Perception Report – the latest of which came out last week – has for the last five years included the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation on its list of the five global risks in terms of impact. It bases its list on survey data from about 1,000 World Economic Forum advisors worldwide. Other risks in that set also are climate-related such as water crises, major natural disasters and extreme weather events.

Plus, the stakes are high for the real estate industry. The UNFCCC 2016 Biennial review of climate finance notes that $35 trillion in real estate assets will be at risk in 2070 if we make no changes to our current carbon emission trajectory. That figure represents about half of today’s global assets under management in any industry sector.

But how do these risks relate to the U.S.? The shocks of powerful storms can destroy many of those assets, as the devastation from this year’s climate disasters reminds us. Longer-term changes in temperature can cause other shifts. Even from where I sit in the middle of the country in Chicago, we are in the midst of a shift to a climate that will look more like New Orleans by the end of the century.

So, there are both orderly shifts and shocking disasters occurring because of our changing climate, and I think one question we want to ask is: What does that mean for our shift as investors?  Will it be orderly or will it be a flight?

We can’t say we haven’t been warned. This analysis from Zillow shows that if we have sea level rise of six feet – predicted by the end of the century along much of the U.S. coast – we lose houses worth roughly $900 billion in value. And this applies just for coastal properties. It doesn’t include other risks such as inland flooding and fire that also loom. It also doesn’t value the PTSD, injuries, loss of life, loss of community and livelihoods that these figures suggest.

These data came to mind as I was preparing to speak at this week’s National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers Sustainability and investment Summit, whose tagline is “License to Think in Public.”

One of the most thought-provoking data I shared:  U.S. counties facing the greatest risk from natural disasters have the highest and quickest rising home values.   Counties with the very high risk from these disasters have seen a 55 percent appreciation in their already very costly homes in the last 5 years.

The U.S. finally received the much-anticipated Multihazard Mitigation Council’s latest cost benefit analysis, illustrating that, on average, every dollar invested in disaster mitigation pays back $6.

The investors at NAREIM, representing over $1 trillion of assets under management, think it should, and some even think it will. What they need: project-level natural hazard data that includes climate change projections. This is something the climate resilience field is working on, with a variety of firms jockeying to be first with the roll out of their proprietary software.

In the meantime, as my fellow panelist Chris Smy, Global Practice Lead at Marsh Inc., noted, the stakes are high as insurance companies, by and large, do not price their policies according to the longer-term climate risks, and developers persist in going where the money is, which is along the coast.

Yet Darob Malek-Madani with National Real Estate Investors showed that some investors are taking notice. His firm finished a study that convinced them to no longer invest in Miami. Except for the financial situation of the state and city, he said, they might even prioritize Chicago.

Jack Davis – RE Tech Advisors and a resilience leader with Urban Land Institute – reminded us that the stakes go well beyond real estate. As the New York Times reported last year, gross domestic product, especially in the Southern states, is predicted to record losses of 10-20 percent of GDP, hitting the poorest residents hardest.

I thought that when real estate investors bring equity questions to the table, we can perhaps sense a shift underway. Certainly, the investment community at large is more vocal about the risks than in the past, though silent on the equity questions. The Financial Stability Board’s Taskforce on Climate Change-related Financial Disclosure (FSB-TCFD),led by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg, is developing climate-related financial risk disclosure commitments for companies. The big guys, though, are not waiting for that guidance to disclose. My library is filling with articles that say what BlackRock demonstrates: Their investment stewardship features climate risk disclosure as a key priority.

While my climate resilience colleagues often ask where we can find financing for climate resilience, this group of investment managers brought a fresh spin to the money question: How can we avoid future investments in risky properties? Both questions are valuable, and it’s great to see some in the real estate industry “thinking in public” about how to make this market transformation happen.

Post originally appeared on Triple Pundit

More from Joyce Coffee

Image: Mar-A-Lago Visualization, Climate Central N. Lamm

The post Real Estate Investors Finally Consider Climate Risk appeared first on Innovation Network for Communities.

The balance between population, human habitats, and the natural environment we depend on has turned into an escalating conflict. At the root of the conflict is our recklessness in taking carbon from the earth, burning it, and emitting its byproducts into the atmosphere where they don’t belong.   As we mindlessly stoke the engines of “urban development,” using old technologies with catastrophic consequences, the conflict continues to spin out of control.

Nothing short of a new global awareness will bring an end to this conflict, and it must be realized in time to preserve the life-support systems of our planet and our civilization. The awareness begins with a recognition that climate change is not an economic, political, or technological problem. It is a problem of ethics, ecology, and the city.

There are four fundamental notions that inform this awareness. The first is the preciousness of human life and respect for all forms of life — from the smallest, most vulnerable creatures to the subtle life-giving powers inherent in mother nature herself. The second notion is the interdependence of existence. The ability of Earth to sustain life depends on an infinite number of interactions in countless complex systems. The third is a commitment to contribute to the welfare of all humanity — economically, culturally, and spiritually. The fourth is an acknowledgement that concern for others and wisdom in our actions are more important than a reliance on technology to solve our problems.

Why do we not see these values in the places where we live and work? Put simply, we have been praying to the wrong gods, and our cities have become a reflection and a manifestation of our indifference, indulgence, and intolerance.

Our buildings are urban icons to the accumulation of money and power, the isolation and protection of the individual, and the attempt to overpower nature. They are erected at the expense of rain forests rather than built in harmony with them. Our cars are containers that celebrate our ego, speed, and dominance. They are manufactured at the expense of our atmosphere and the air we breathe. Safe and comfortable as we may feel, they continue to rely on carbon-based fuels, and our skies are polluted with their emissions.

But a cloud is being lifted.

Something exciting and encouraging is happening in our cities that you will not discover on Facebook or see on Netflix. A new ethic is emerging, a new urban ecology — call it the re-imagining and greening of the post-modern city.

The re-imagining comes from the realization that the idea of the modern city is not our own. It is an idea that we have been conditioned to accept by political institutions, multi-national corporations, and mainstream media. It is being rejected and replaced by wider and more inclusive ideas of place and citizenship.

The city is no longer accepted as an isolated place on a map, circled by artificial boundaries, and defined by political interests to be protected against the world out there. Rather the “world out there,” the larger environment, is being seen as intrinsic to the very life of the city. The two are appreciated as co-dependent and mutually sustaining.

On an individual level, this ethic is found in a deep-seated responsibility for one’s actions, beyond casting a vote or expressing an opinion. It is a personal responsibility exercised in everyday decisions about how we use resources, consume and dispose of products, live in personal spaces, and share the commons.

On a societal level, a growing network of change makers is advancing this new urban ethic from a deep concern about our dependence on old city paradigms and carbon-based economies that no longer work. They are worried about the destruction of climate change on their world and their chances for a future as prosperous and promising as previous generations.

The courage of their convictions is becoming increasingly evident. They are ending inertia, tearing down old walls that no longer have purpose, and protesting against obsolete engines of commerce powered by carbon.

For them, “life after carbon” is a goal and a destination. They innovate to find new ways to bring ethics, ecology, and the shape of city into harmony with nature. It is time for all of us to embrace this new ethic, support their efforts, and put their ideas into practice. Only then can we truly find economic security, resilience, and happiness in our cities and throughout our planet.

Here’s to success!

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