Resilience climate change event
CLIMATE CHANGE LIABILITY – CURRENT TRENDS
The first session of the event focused on the 3rd risk – liability, with Clyde & Co's Global Head of Climate Risk, Nigel Brook highlighting the ever-growing body of climate-related law and regulation, increasing scrutiny from regulators and enforcement bodies, strategic climate litigation and emerging duties of care that are giving rise to new liability risks. The range of potential claims categories is wide, from failure to adapt operations, product liability and disclosure-based claims to health and safety issues and greenwashing allegations. New standards are emerging all the time with which businesses and their directors and officers must comply, and as regulatory, investor and activist pressure intensifies, so decision-making will be re-shaped. Courts are also becoming more receptive to these kinds of claims. The speed of change is so rapid that "decisions made five years ago, could be seen as negligent [if made] today".
Key risks to business around climate change fall into three categories:
– Physical – The immediate risks arising from weather-related events as well as slow onset climatic changes. These physical impacts are already significantly impacting companies’ assets, investments, workforce, supply chains, input costs and outputs, and the costs of capital and insurance – Transition – The financial risks arising from the transition to a low-carbon economy. Regulation, policy, changes in consumer habits and investor pressure carry the potential to devalue or ’strand’ carbon-intensive assets, product lines, plants and business models – Liability – The risk of actions initiated by claimants who suffer loss and damage arising from climate change
Nigel Brook, Clyde & Co
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