Institute of
Global Affairs
In promoting immediate investment in natural capital solutions, and other types of adaptation and resilience measures, we need better messaging to drive home the urgency.
Looking at a system in its entirety will help identify crossover opportunities between climate change mitigation and adaptation.
It is also more difficult to ‘sell’ natural capital methods that are relatively new and may lack rigorous analysis of their results – new approaches may be needed to better understand what constitutes their costs and benefits. In promoting immediate investment in natural capital solutions, and other types of adaptation and resilience measures, we need better messaging to drive home the urgency: the world cannot afford to spend decades waiting for solutions to develop, mature and be mainstreamed. The benefits of acting now far outweigh the costs of waiting and addressing climate impacts after the fact; that the cost of doing nothing is not zero must be much better acknowledged if we are to assess current and future costs more accurately. Experts like ZFRA need to find ways to convince those developing investment vehicles to act quickly. For example, the market for ‘blue bonds’ – funds dedicated to ocean-friendly projects – needs to mature in the next two to three years if it is to have an impact before it is too late to make lasting improvements to the health of the oceans. Politically, we need to stop accepting that the external costs – among them the negative and unequally distributed effects of climate change – of current
the economies that depend on them. Additionally, looking at a system in its entirety will help identify crossover opportunities between climate change mitigation and adaptation. For example, a mangrove reforestation project has carbon sequestration benefits – and thus could get carbon credits to generate cash flow to make the project investable – but would also have storm surge protection potential. Viewing these benefits holistically can help advance blue finance. Ultimately, we need better quantification of the additional benefits of a natural capital approach to climate change adaptation and resilience and to move away from a classical cost–benefit analysis that is rooted in physical infrastructure only. ◆ investments are often borne by the weakest and most vulnerable in society. This makes these investments seem economically more viable than they really are, to the detriment of greener and bluer investments. And we need to better assess and quantify the long-term benefits of non-traditional, ‘softer’ approaches that yield benefits that are difficult to monetise; this again twists decision-making at the expense of the oceans and coastal regions and
Swenja Surminski is Head of Adaptation Research at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Swenja holds a PhD in Political Science from Hamburg University. Michael Szoenyi works in the Sustainability function with Zurich Insurance Group, leading Zurich’s award-winning Flood Resilience Programme. Michael has master degrees in Natural Hazards Management and in Geophysics, both from ETH Zurich.
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