SNV participates in leading climate change forum
SNV climate finance expert Mr. Alex Downs will present at the upcoming Climate Risk Asia Virtual Week. The event will take place from 30 November to 4 December in Singapore.
The event which will focus on measuring, managing and mitigating the threat from climate change is organised by the Economist, an international weekly newspaper that focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, and technology.
The climate change challenge
Covid-19 has provided a crash course in resilience for businesses the world over. Has it prepared organisations for the disruptive challenges that must be managed if the world is to avoid a foreseeable catastrophe in the form of climate change? If we are to reach the target set out in the Paris Climate Agreement to limit the rise in global temperature to below 2°C, the world will need to see a global energy transition that will have huge effects on all organisations. Couple this with the disruption to businesses from the physical impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels and extreme weather events, and it becomes clear why markets are demanding greater transparency on the climate risks that firms face and the strategic approaches they are putting in place to build resilience.
Making climate risk management mainstream
Alex will join the panel discussion on making climate risk management mainstream. Questions that will be raised during this session will include; how do you quantify a country’s overall climate risk? How are investors responding? How can countries shift from addressing adaptation as an incremental cost and isolated investment to systematically managing and incorporating climate resilience into all policy planning, investment decisions, implementation and evaluation?
Alex is an Investment Manager for the Dutch Fund for Climate Development (DFCD). This is a 160 million euro investment fund that enables private sector investments in climate adaptation and mitigation projects and will speak from his experience of this initiative.
Other panellists include Rod Carr, chair, Climate Change Commission, New Zealand and Bill Hare, chief executive for Climate Analytics
About the event
Climate change has a significant impact across a wide range of industries, causing a series of transitional, legal and financial risks. After the success of its inaugural summit in 2019, Climate Risk Virtual Week will feature critical global insights from industry leaders on how to better measure, manage, mitigate and report climate-related risks.
The programme will explore the unique opportunity which the pandemic has provided to governments and businesses to speed up the transition to a low carbon economy. Also, participants will hear about multiple risks, assess evolving regulatory and disclosure frameworks. We explore the role of climate-related data and the new road to COP26.
With the virtual format this year, we plan to host more than 600 attendees across the week with an even broader geographic range than before. Climate Risk Virtual Week will be a premier forum bringing together corporates and public-sector executives to discuss and debate the current state of climate risk and accelerating future action. The forum will provide a platform to better assess climate risks, providing financial and systematic level stability.
About the DFCD
The Fund is an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign affairs who has made €160 million available to increase the resilience of communities and ecosystems most vulnerable to climate change.
The DFCD is managed by a pioneering consortium of Climate Fund Managers (CFM), World Wide Fund for Nature Netherlands (WWF-NL) and SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, led by the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank, FMO.
The DFCD forms an important additional instrument for the Dutch government’s efforts in contributing to the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).