Talking Climate and Sustainability WTW

Transitioning to a zero-carbon economy requires a collective effort where each player weighs up their risk and opportunities. In this episode, Luba describes how investors are mapping out transition risk – not just the risk in moving, but also in hesitating -  as well as the opportunities that emerge when organizations change how they function in a Net Zero economy. With Willis Towers Watson’s recent commitment to Net Zero, Luba explains how this type of shift not only effectively accounts for climate-related financial risks and opportunities, but also helps clients to stay ahead of the curve in the system transition.

Culture determines how an organization behaves. It can be easy to become resigned to “that’s just how things are”. As culture seeps into all that your organization does, it easily becomes the glue that holds everything together - determining structure, relationships and how we collaborate. Climate change needs a holistic approach and impacts on everything we do, just like culture. In this episode, Marisa explains how understanding, measuring, shaping, and encouraging a culture that is effective in achieving your company’s climate ambitions can be revolutionary.

The distinctive and systemic characteristics of climate-related financial risks require a strategic response. Incremental adjustments will fail to produce the scale and rate of change needed for a climate resilient future – what’s needed is transformation in how we steward today. In this episode, Matt expands upon the key themes we saw emerge from our Climate Risk and Financial Stewardship Summit in May 2021, and explains how stewardship can channel Net Zero commitments to make a real difference to the role of people, capital, and risk in our climate-resilient future.

In this episode, Carlos Sanchez, Director of Climate Resilient Finance at Willis Towers Watson, talks about the recent progress in climate finance around correctly pricing climate risk. Carlos also shares an update on the cross-sectoral work of the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI) and how their approach is helping correctly price climate risk, and how CFA UK are developing a certification on climate and investing, training the next generation in understanding how climate risks and opportunities arise.

Lydia Messling speaks to Paula Pagniez, Director at the Climate and Resilience Hub at Willis Towers Watson, about how we are beginning to see actions have a real impact –particularly facilitated by innovative insurance products. When we are able to properly understand and convey exposure and vulnerability to risk, we can help to identify tools and actions that can have a lasting impact upon building resilience – sometimes these are very simple solutions. These solutions are being implemented now, giving us much to be hopeful about.

In this latest episode of the Talking Climate and Resilience podcast series, Rowan Douglas, Head of the Climate and Resilience Hub at Willis Towers Watson, explores the challenges of an orderly transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy - from massive industrial transformation to economic dislocation. As climate change becomes increasingly integrated into mainstream financial decision making and organisations respond to their own risks, navigating an orderly transition will depend on climate risk and the wider implications for communities and society being recognised as a responsibility that we all share.