By Coral Davenport | The New York Times. A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.” Read more
Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C
Incheon, Republic of Korea, October 8 – Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society, the IPCC said in a new assessment. With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society, […]
Value and resilience through better risk management
Source: McKinsey&Company Although the risk environment is growing more perilous and costly, leading companies are blazing a path to resilience and value by embedding strategic risk capabilities throughout the organization. Today’s corporate leaders navigate a complex environment that is changing at an ever-accelerating pace. Digital technology underlies much of the change. Business models are being transformed by new waves of […]
Large potential reduction in economic damages under UN mitigation targets
Source: Nature International climate change agreements typically specify global warming thresholds as policy targets, but the relative economic benefits of achieving these temperature targets remain poorly understood. Uncertainties include the spatial pattern of temperature change, how global and regional economic output will respond to these changes in temperature, and the willingness of societies to trade present for future consumption. Here we combine historical […]
Why whistleblowers are crucial to risk compliance
Source: Inside Financial & Risk. The role of whistleblowers in UK companies is essential in order to establish a culture of risk compliance. What can firms do to ingrain a whistleblower culture within their firms and to protect the whistleblowers themselves? A recent case highlighted the importance of whistleblowers in UK companies and their role in reporting compliance and risk […]
Insider threat: The human element of cyberrisk
Tucker Bailey, Brian Kolo, Karthik Rajagopalan and David Ware | McKinsey&Company Cyber programs often miss the significant portion of risk generated by employees, and current tools are blunt instruments. A new method can yield better results. Insider threat via a company’s own employees (and contractors and vendors) is one of the largest unsolved issues in cybersecurity. It’s present in 50 percent […]
A decade after the global financial crisis: What has (and hasn’t) changed?
Source: McKinsey&Company The world economy has recently returned to robust growth. But some familiar risks are creeping back, and new ones have emerged. How secure is the global financial system, a decade after the crisis? Great strides have been made since 2008 to prevent a recurrence of the financial crisis and recession that followed. Yet there is more debt than […]
Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change
Source: The New York Times. “This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by […]
Planet at risk of heading towards “Hothouse Earth” state
Stockholm Resilience Center. An international team of scientists has published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement are met, there is a risk of Earth entering what the scientists call “Hothouse Earth” conditions. A “Hothouse Earth” climate will in the long term […]
Is this Peruvian city the most polluted on earth?
Source BBC. Residents of Cerro de Pasco, a city high in the Andes, say the soil is harming their children. Peru’s government has declared a health state of emergency for the region on three separate occasions, but has not accepted that mining activity is to blame… Video by Grace Livingstone and Jasmin Souesi.
Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know
By: Peter W. Singer, Allan Friedman | Oxford University Press Dependence on computers has had a transformative effect on human society. Cybernetics is now woven into the core functions of virtually every basic institution, including our oldest ones. War is one such institution, and the digital revolution’s impact on it has been profound. T he American military, which has no peer, is […]
Risk Governance and Resilience: New Approaches to Cope with Uncertainty and Ambiguity
By Ortwin Renn and Andreas Klinke This chapter will address the major functions of the risk governance process: Each of these stages is described in the light three aspects of resilience: adaptive management capability, coping capability, and participative pre-estimation, interdisciplinary risk estimation (including scientific risk assessment and concern assessment), risk characterization and risk evaluation, and risk management, including decision-making and […]
Stories of Resilience Courage and Spiritual Transformation
In the aftermath of Maria, Caribbean students at St. Thomas University create short story collection. On April 23, St. Thomas University will be unveiling a rich and diverse short story collection “Student Narratives on Hurricane Maria” written by Caribbean students displaced by Hurricane Maria. Nineteen students, mostly from Puerto Rico and one from the Dominican Republic, came together to share […]
Climate of Hope
The 2016 election left many people who are concerned about the environment fearful that progress on climate change would come screeching to a halt. But not Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope. Bloomberg, an entrepreneur and former mayor of New York City, and Pope, a lifelong environmental leader, approach climate change from different perspectives, yet they arrive at similar conclusions. Without […]
Using water to create resilient cities
Source: UToday. European project CATCH, with the UT as one of its partners, wants to prepare cities for climate change and resulting extreme weather events – by putting water in the center of urban design. It’s starting with seven pilot cities, where new climate adaptation measures are being tested. Enschede is one of them. >>
Risk and Confidence Survey: taking the pulse of business. Spring ’18
Source: CNA Hardy. ‘Perfect storm’ of risk suppresses confidence Over the past six months there have been some dramatic changes in the risk landscape. Cyber and regulatory risk have pushed political and economic risk off the risk radar. As the frequency and severity of cyber risk increases and oversight, via the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) steps up, so […]
How to confront uncertainty in your strategy
By Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit | McKinsey&Company Lack of certainty about the future is the very reason you need a strategy. Instead, embrace probability. “Predictions are difficult, especially about the future,” quipped Yogi Berra (and, before him, physicist Nils Bohr). This rings especially true for those trying to run a strategy process. Uncertainty is not only everywhere in […]
Worsening Worldwide Land Degradation Now ‘Critical’, Undermining Well-Being of 3.2 Billion People
Source: Ipbes. Worsening land degradation caused by human activities is undermining the well-being of two fifths of humanity, driving species extinctions and intensifying climate change. It is also a major contributor to mass human migration and increased conflict, according to the world’s first comprehensive evidence-based assessment of land degradation and restoration. The dangers of land degradation, which cost the equivalent […]
GDPR goes live
Source: Airmic. EU members states are now entering the final countdown to the EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which apply from 25 May 2018, bringing a huge change in data protection. All organisations should be familiar with the main provisions of the GDPR. However, organisations must act now, asking themselves how the GDPR apply to them and take practical steps […]
Catastrophic risks: How can we assess and manage them?
By Ortwin Renn, Klaus Lucas, Armin Haas, Carlo Jaeger. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies. Many catastrophic risks are major threats to the wellbeing of society. Such risks are called systemic risks. They threaten the functionality of vital services to society such as electricity production, water supply, climate stability, cyber security and amny others. With the assisatnce of complex models we may […]
A new posture for cybersecurity in a networked world
Source: McKinsey&Company. By Thomas Poppensieker (Munich) and Rolf Riemenschnitter. As the dangers mount, current approaches aren’t working. Cyberrisk management needs a root-and-branch overhaul. Until recently, financial firms and governments were the primary targets of cyberattacks. Today, with every company hooking up more and more of their business to the Internet, the threat is now universal. Consider the havoc wreaked by three recent […]
The Arctic is sending us a powerful message about climate change. It’s time for us to listen.
Source: World Economic Forum. Arctic scientists aren’t usually afraid of a little cold. Windy conditions don’t usually get us howling. The beasts we pay attention to are usually polar bears. But last week’s “Beast from the East” triggered a few anxious conversations. Social media memes aside, our problem isn’t this one extreme weather event per se. Our key fear is […]
ISO 31000:2018
The new version of ISO 31000 was published on the 15th of February. The series of reports on the changes against ISO 31000:2009 started last year in October has now been concluded. ISO:”This document is for use by people who create and protect value in organizations by managing risks, making decisions, setting and achieving objectives and improving performance. Organizations of all […]
It’s time for a new social contract
Source: World Economic Forum. Democracy is becoming collateral damage in a world where global risks have been ignored or exacerbated by those with the power to act. The increasing authoritarianism of elected leaders, the actions of entrenched dictators, and the use and threat of military power have brought us to the edge of full-blown crisis. 2017 was a year of […]