An EIU flash poll of 2,324 senior executives worldwide challenges the stereotype that business is complacent about climate change. Just under half (46%) of respondents to our poll believe that the effects of climate change call for urgent and immediate action by leaders in government, business and civil society.
The poll comes at a time of heightened awareness of the effects of climate change. An unusual number of extreme weather events across the globe in early 2014—including a heat wave in Australia, unusually cold weather in the eastern US and severe storms in Europe—may be interlinked, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organisation. Business leaders' call for action may also have been influenced by a recent report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warns that the world is ill-prepared for the risks from a changing climate.
Companies will almost certainly be affected by climate change in one way or another. The risks involved include the breakdown of infrastructure networks, food systems and water ecosystems, for example. (Conversely, climate change could also offer new opportunities for certain types of firm, for instance those involved in water management or designing resilient buildings.)
Emerging economies are particularly vulnerable to climate change, a point highlighted in the IPCC report. This may explain why, in our survey, emerging-market business leaders (from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America) are far more insistent on action to combat climate change than their peers in Europe and North America. The degree of divergence between rich and developing-world attitudes is striking, and suggests a significant degree of scepticism remains among developed-world businesses that climate change is a priority global issue.
Overall, however, the largest share of our surveyed executives appears to be lending its voice to the call for action. This is consistent with other business-led initiatives on climate change taking shape in different parts of the world. One example is the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG) of major UK and European corporate leaders, which issued a communiqué warning that "significant changes must be introduced to the global economy, or the risks of disruptive climate impacts will grow increasingly serious."
Seventy major global companies have signed the CLG's Trillion Tonne Communiqué, calling for a timeline for achieving net zero emissions, which would keep cumulative emissions from human-caused CO2 below one trillion tonnes of carbon. Energy giant Shell is among the signatories to the communiqué. However, in our flash poll, only 39% of business leaders from the energy and natural resources sector demand urgent action on climate change, compared with 67% in logistics and distribution (the sector with the highest share of executives calling for immediate action).
Consumer goods company Unilever has also signed the communiqué, and its CEO, Paul Polman, has called for decisive action to tackle climate change: "Our current collective response to climate change is inadequate, and this now threatens businesses, jobs and the economy. (…) The cost of inaction is now greater than the cost of action."
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited (EIU) or any other member of The Economist Group. The Economist Group (including the EIU) cannot accept any responsibility or liability for reliance by any person on this article or any of the information, opinions or conclusions set out in the article.
