“Climate Changes Your Business” Says KPMG
- Topics:
- Food Industry News & Trends, Meat Industry
Thursday, April 10th, 2008, 11:56 AM
KPMG’s latest report from its sustainability offices may have just won the “no-duh title of the year,” but it does take an interesting approach to the climate change question: What does climate change look like from the business side of the equation?
I’ve been asking this question a lot lately, attending food industry conferences to listen to how they frame the risk (and opportunity) that climate change provides. At that meat conference in Nashville, for instance, it was notable that global warming was on no one’s lips. At the Grocery Manufacturers Association Environmental Sustainability Summit, it was in almost everyone’s talking points.
In the KPMG report, the authors place the “food sector” in the “safe haven” section of their “perceived risks versus preparedness” matrix. (Nice job on this fancy-looking graphic. Like the color coding, guys). The top six sectors at particular risk from climate change? Aviation, healthcare, tourism, transport, oil and gas and the financial services sectors.
But the authors also make the point that even those ’safe haven’ categories like food, may not be so safe after all. Food and beverages, for instance, says one author, are “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. The idea therefore that this sector is relatively safe from climate change effects is likely to reflect a significant under-estimation of risk.”
In other words, “safe” doesn’t mean much in an era of climate change.
