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Businesses' embrace of climate change resiliency and adaptation has come a long way. Once given short shrift, the practice of hedging against the risks posed by a warming planet are now a part of the corporate culture at one of the world's largest mining companies, Rio Tinto, and oil and gas heavyweight ConocoPhillips Co. in ways that once would have seemed unimaginable, industry representatives said Oct. 2 at the Carbon Forum North America 2013 conference in Washington, D.C.
Rio Tinto, a leading multinational mining company with operations in 40 countries across six continents, is putting its climate risk analysis on par with more traditional business risk assessments, said Jeff Hopkins, an adviser for economic and environmental policy for the company.
"What we tried to do is embed climate risk as a facet of overall business risk," Hopkins said at the conference, hosted by the International Emissions Trading Association. "It is just another facet of what forward-looking businesses have to contend with in terms of unexpected shocks."
ConocoPhillips, one of the world's largest oil and gas companies with operations in 30 countries, has gone so far as to make climate risk assessment a routine part of its operations, said panelist Sabrina Watkins, head of sustainable development for the company.
"We've tied resiliency into the normal activities of the company in terms of the financial plans, environmental performance assessments, auditing and so forth so that we try to keep a complete range of activity within the company," Watkins said.
Climate adaptation once the 'poor boy in class'
Panelist Eduardo Dopazo, a senior adviser for DNV KEMA Inc., said he is heartened by the discussion itself. Climate adaptation, he said, was the "poor boy in class" and was given lower priority than climate mitigation and technology transfer.
"In the last 10 years, and even more dramatically in the last two to three years, the amount of attention devoted to adaptation has soared," Dopazo said in a slide show presentation.
He said business leaders are "sounding...