Canada, Singapore and UK among countries most prepared for climate change, BloombergNEF’s new ranking of climate adaptation preparedness finds
- Physical impacts of climate change cost the global economy at least $1.4 trillion last year according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.
- Governments are starting to align with private investors in viewing climate resilience as a strategic investment, not merely a cost center.
- Canada, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, the UK and Japan ranked as most active in addressing climate change adaptation.
- The US, which suffers the greatest cost from climate damage globally, ranked 12th of the 25 countries studied.
- BloombergNEF’s new framework and scorecard provides a tool for investors to analyze country-level climate risk and resilience.
BloombergNEF’s (BNEF’s) new analysis of major economies shows Canada, Singapore and South Korea are leading when it comes to preparedness to adapt to a changing climate, with Saudi Arabia and Russia among the least prepared.
Climate-driven damages are increasing worldwide and harming human health, economic development, and regional security. Global losses topped $1.4 trillion last year, almost 10x the total in 2000 according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence. With the world off track to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming goal, future damages can worsen unless economies and societies adapt. The economies that are the most active in addressing the physical perils of climate change are most likely to experience earlier the benefits of economic resilience, making them a lower-risk investment for private capital.
BNEF’s adaptation framework and country preparedness scorecard examines the climate adaptation preparedness of G20 and select Southeast Asian markets. The scorecard enables investors to better understand the resilience of countries to future climate impacts. This bridges a critical gap in current analyses, which often neglect the preparedness of a host country when assessing asset-level exposure.
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