April 8, 2008

Transport Industry Least Prepared For Climate Change

Aviation, healthcare, tourism, transport, oil and gas and the financial services sector all feature in the “danger zone” in a report on climate change risks from KPMG - meaning that they score highly on the risks which face them yet score poorly in terms of their preparedness to face these risks.

The climate change risks that companies should be paying more attention to are physical, regulatory and reputational risks as well as the emerging risk of litigation; yet the scope and potential impact of these risks appears to be under-estimated across all sectors.

While the oil and gas sector is far better prepared than any of the other sectors in the “danger zone,” the climate change issues it faces make it the riskiest of all the 18 sectors. By contrast, transport is a far less risky sector but its level of preparedness is the worst of all the 18 industries examined.

However, even the sectors in the “safe haven” may not be as safe as they would like to think. “Take a sector like food and beverages for example,” said Barend van Bergen, a director of KPMG Sustainability. “This is supposedly a low risk sector yet recent events have shown that this industry is highly vulnerable to climate related risks such as increases in agricultural input costs.”

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