What is the Forum on Climate Linked Economics?
An ongoing joint initiative across the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to create a link between the meteorology/climate communities and the broader community of economists, corporate executives, risk managers, financial planners, insurance professionals, and technology leaders.
The American Meteorological Society is uniquely situated to assemble a diverse community of scientists and practitioners who are all focused on Climate Linked Economics. This topic includes scholarly research presentations, practitioner panel discussions, keynote speakers, and small group meetings for public and private-sector leadership. The initiative targets partner organizations including the American Bar Association, the Global Association of Risk Managers, and others.
What outcomes are we targeting?
Relationships that drive collaboration between scientists and practitioners. We are linking climate, the economy, and business operations. Connections between leaders within the weather and climate communities and senior executives and managers from organizations focused on TCFD and other climate-linked business decisions that currently have little (or no) exposure to the scientific community.
We serve as a catalyst to engage AMS boards and committees and we organize content for AMS venues such as the Annual Meeting, Washington Forum, Summer Community Meeting, Short Courses, etc. We anticipate expanding to organize content for a broader community of professionals inside and outside fo the AMS.
What should Forum participants expect?
The long-term impact of climate change is localized and complex. Risks have impacts across broad businesses strategies. This includes revenues affected by shifting customer demands, costs driven by mitigating weather impacts, and/or physical risks of damage to business assets. Savvy business leaders are striving to learn and adjust their businesses by factoring these risks into the existing processes in their organization. Risk management processes, governance structure (including audit and risk committees), and the tools they already use and these can evolve to make business more climate-resilient.
In addition to keynote speakers and panel discussions, the Forum also organizes small-group meetings for participants to network with the speakers and other invitees.
Why is the Forum needed?
More and more companies are examining their exposure to climate-related risks as a result of the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), credit rating agencies, and other bodies. Millions of businesses operate day-to-day knowing that extreme weather (as influenced by a changing climate) leads to unplanned fluctuations in profitability. The Global Risks 2020 report produced by the World Economic Forum said “…environmental risks have grown in prominence in recent years. For the first time, 'extreme weather events,' 'natural disasters,' and 'failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation' are in the top five global risks for both impact and likelihood of occurrence within the next ten years.
Who should participate?
We envision establishing a broad group of stakeholders from the public and private sectors with a robust participation from underrate and graduate students. We aspire to assemble organizations including those on the list below and we aspire to constantly expand ideas and participants:
The Demex Group (Confirmed)
Jupiter Intelligence (Confirmed)
Guy Carpenter (Confirmed)
Morgan Stanley (Confirmed)
Nephila Climate (Confirmed)
Everstream Analytics (Confirmed)
NOAAs Centers for Environmental Information - Billion-Dollar Disasters (Confirmed)
IBM (Confirmed)
Amazon (Confirmed)
AB InBev
Unilever
Munich Re
Goldman Sachs
Microsoft
Municipal leaders who focus on climate impacts for city planning
Google
Milliman
Branch Insurance
Verisk Analytics
Axios (and other media partners)