Business action for climate-resilient pathways

The role of standards: This DNV Group Technology and Research paper explores whether standards could be key to mobilizing businesses for climate-resilient pathways.

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Climate resilience is about building socio-ecological systems as well as organizations that can best withstand the coming stresses of climate change and mitigate the severity of future impacts; it is about setting companies and societies on the path of sustainable development. Standards, we argue, could help give direction and dimension to this complex undertaking.

  • Business needs to develop a more fluid and integrated perspective on mitigation, adaptation, and sustainability to ensure identification of trade-offs and co-benefits. 
  • To identify opportunities, climate action taken by business must focus on more than physical climate risks, and should also involve organizational, strategic, and business model transformation.
  • Standards can be powerful tools for integrating climate risks and opportunities into core business strategies and for supporting the transformations needed for climate-resilient pathways. 
  • To be transformative, standards must influence not only the operations of companies, but also affect their external environment, and even contribute to changes in world views and paradigms. 
  • Business climate action requires solutions-oriented research that bridges the gap between the climate change science community and business.
  • Going forward, an ideal point of departure is the further development of procedural guidance to support companies with integrating climate risks and opportunities into core business.