ARIJIT CHAKRABORTI

With climate scientists determining that July 2023 was the warmest month on record, the Secretary General of the United Nations defined this moment as the arrival of the era of “global boiling”.

While the weather across multiple continents is getting extreme – with higher surface temperatures and more intense natural calamities like floods, storms and draughts – the estimated global cost of extreme weather attributed to climate change between 2009 and 2019 was $2.86 trillion.

At the same time, business leaders across the world are working to find ways to minimise harm to the environment and make their businesses greener. In addition, a relatively small number of leaders are pivoting towards how their business transformation should focus on making their businesses resilient to climate change and unlocking the potential of their business growth.

In the 26th Global CEO Survey 2023 conducted by PwC, the CEOs of companies in Bangladesh ranked climate change as the sixth-important threat to their business. About 13 percent of them indicated that it was a near-term threat to their businesses, while about 22 percent indicated that it would be a threat to their businesses in five years.

Based on these responses, it could be inferred that CEOs continued to prioritise their short-term business challenges such as inflation and macroeconomic volatility over building longer-term climate resilience of their businesses.

However, the pivotal moment for business leaders to reframe the challenge has arrived. Driving organisational shifts should not only focus on managing climate risks and safeguarding business, but it also should seek the opportunity to reinvent new competitive advantages and sustain business growth.

Therefore, business journeys towards net zero would require significant transition across the energy portfolio, materials portfolio and operating models. Each business will have a sufficient degree of opportunities to transform its portfolio of products and services in order to reap benefits and enhance business growth.

For example, buildings and infrastructure construction should consider the extreme climate conditions in future, and thus avoiding expensive retrofitting down the line. Buildings should also be fitted with cooling, water supply and flood-resistant facilities with lesser energy consumption requirements.

Builders who would be able to develop their capabilities to address such needs with carbon-light inputs are expected to develop their competitive advantage in the coming days.

In Bangladesh, several large-scale infrastructure development projects are in progress, and many are expected to take off in the coming years. The requirements and specifications of these projects should be developed and updated to make these assets climate-resilient and carbon-light, thus making them future-ready.

While it’s understandable that business leaders can’t respond to all possible opportunities and market shifts, they must reimagine the future so as to understand what strategies should be adopted to garner maximum benefits out of these changes. For example, an automobile company’s strategy would be to determine how much electric vehicle manufacturing capabilities it should build, vis-à-vis continuing to manufacture compressed natural gas vehicles.

Furthermore, business leaders should build their business continuity capabilities to withstand adverse and extreme climate conditions. For example, the organisations managing jetties on the riverbanks and seashores of Bangladesh should think about how they will continue to operate with the sudden rise of water levels.

Finally, business leaders must understand that long-term financial success depends on their ability to manage their key non-financial business parameters. Therefore, they should think about actively investing in developing their core capabilities to get their businesses fit for the future.

The author is a partner of PwC. The views are his own.