The mitigation and adaptation conversation

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

Mitigation & Adaptation is going to a conversation every business will have to have in the face as the climate crisis evolves. There is no escaping this, if future of work preparedness is of concern to you.

Here is an example.

The physics of sea level rise are clearly understood. This phenomenon is driven by two things.

1) Expanding seawater as it warms (Currently the oceans are absorbing 93% of the heat as the globe heats up)
2) Ice Sheet & Glacier melting (Eg. currently Antarctica is losing ice mass at an average rate of about 150 billion tons per year, and Greenland is losing about 280 billion tons per year)

Using the above data points scientists can model what sea level rise will be over time and therefore which costal areas are under threat.

At a recent Climate Solutions event with concerned business and home owners in Knysna, we helped improve everyone’s climate literacy (and thus preparedness) by using the en-ROADS climate simulator to identify the land areas at risk from sea level rise. We then interacted with approximately 30 mitigation policies with the goal of creating a climate solution scenario where we can keep global temperatures well below 2°C

Revisiting the risk map we were able to see what land will be saved by these actions. This was the mitigation part of the conversation.

The conversation then shifted to what adaptation steps can be taken for those land areas that remained at risk.

Improving the groups Climate Literacy – which is set to become a critical workplace skill – helped them prepare for a future impacted by, in this case, sea level rise.

What about your business? Do you understand what the impacts of the climate crisis will have on your operations, both direct and indirect? What steps need to be taken to mitigate and adapt?