- Greenwash creates a false sense of financial security about
the climate crisis and embeds liability for the future
- Private and public sector spending on infrastructure must be
climate resilient or risk chaos
- Calls for set standards for climate adaptation, informed by a
government review on the economics of resilience
Widespread greenwashing is
compromising efforts to prepare for climate impacts like floods
and heatwaves, the Chair of the Environment Agency will say
today, as she warns that investors and the wider public are being
let down as a result.
Emma Howard Boyd, who is also
interim Chair of the Green Finance Institute, will say businesses
are “embedding liability” and “storing up risk for their
investors” by giving a false impression they are addressing the
climate crisis and the danger is people “won’t realise this
deception until it is too late.”
She will warn nearly £650
billion of public and private infrastructure investment planned
by 2030 is at considerable risk unless increasingly severe
climate impacts are considered in planning and
delivery.
Speaking at the UK Centre for
Greening Finance and Investment Annual Forum at The Institution
of Civil Engineers in one of her final speeches before leaving
the Environment Agency in September, she will say:
“The more businesses are
transparent about their plans to transition to net zero and
prepare for climate shocks, the easier it is to benchmark best
practice, set standards and celebrate the companies that really
are delivering on their commitments.
“As with the government’s
ambition for net zero by 2050, delivering on climate resilience
and nature recovery requires robust, consistent and trusted
data.
“If we fail to identify and
address greenwashing, we allow ourselves false confidence that we
are already addressing the causes and treating the symptoms of
the climate crisis.”
Emma Howard Boyd will praise
the work of NGOs such as ShareAction, Make My Money Matter and
ClientEarth “for their tireless work to call this
out.”
The importance of driving
private investment into climate adaptation was demonstrated
earlier this year through the Bank of England’s first climate
stress test, which showed that UK banks and insurers will end up
taking on nearly £340 billion worth of climate-related losses by
2050 unless action is taken to curb rising temperatures and sea
levels.
Highlighting under-investment
in climate adaptation, Emma Howard Boyd will
say:
“Such action will require
collaboration between the public and private sectors. Around the
world, just five per cent of climate finance goes towards
resilience and virtually none of that comes from the private
sector.”
She will also call for more
government involvement to help drive investment in climate
adaptation, starting with a Treasury-commissioned review to
assess the economics of climate resilience, similar to the 2021
Dasgupta Review into the economics of biodiversity.
She will ask that
it:
“…considers costs and benefits
of resilient investment both nationally and by economic sectors;
what trajectory that investment should follow; and the
appropriate balance between public and private investment.
“This would help us understand
how preparedness for climate shocks supports sustainable economic
growth establish an overarching ambition for adaptation
investment and a plan to achieve it.”
Emma Howard Boyd’s intervention
comes after the publication of the Climate Change Committee’s
annual progress report last week, which included a reminder that
“expected changes in the UK climate will lead to risks across all
areas of the UK’s economy, society and environment” and that
“adaptation action must be undertaken today to prepare for these
impacts and is essential alongside (but not in place of) efforts
to reach Net Zero”.
ENDS
Notes to
Editors
