Approaching With Growing Urgency.

According to NOAA, FEMA, and other government agencies, future climate-related water risks are approaching with a growing urgency. With rising temperatures, the occurrence of severe weather events will continue to increase while expanding over larger geographical areas of the continent.

 

Identifying Potential Risks Early On

Complex Predictions

As we know from direct experience, water’s complex behavior can be hard to predict. The compound has a reactive behavior, typically causing more—not less—consequential disruptions than experts could have ever predicted. This is why, whenever working with water’s unique dynamics, a company’s experience and expertise are crucial when it comes to fully recognizing the possible risks and how best to mitigate them.

Investor expectations have increasingly put pressure on issuers of both securities and bonds. While the SEC has proposed to mandate publicly traded corporations to disclose their risk mitigation activities, there is yet no public mandate that will require municipalities issuing bonds to do the same. Regardless, given the growing interest by the investor community, it’s believed that city and state entities will soon find increased pressure placed on them by potential bondholders to disclose what precautions are currently being taken to mitigate the risk of weather events and to make sure they have a sound business continuity plan that ensures resiliency to protect against growing climate change.

The risk mitigation experts at Portadam are happy to consult with both the public and private sectors on weather-related risk mitigation planning.

Financial Disclosures

Chronic Risks

Chronic risks are changes in climate patterns that can cause sustained extreme weather events. Primarily because of increasing temperatures throughout the world, experts predict continued sea level rise with dramatic consequences for land masses both coastal and inland. As a result of climate change, NOAA also foresees that precipitation patterns in the future will be more extreme than in the past—posing threats to all corporate assets—including, and especially, the safety of people. This is why corporations must take business continuity planning with greater urgency than ever. Investors of both corporations and government bonds will be increasingly interested in how issuers are preparing for the eventualities of severe weather events.

Climate Risk Disclosure

In 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed amendments to the Securities Act of 1933 and 1934 and new rules 17 CFR 210, 229, 232, 239, and 249 covering climate risks. Critical components proposed to be required for financial disclosures include both the registrant’s processes and operations subject to physical risk. For corporations that have determined a material impact on the business or consolidated financial statements, the SEC has proposed that organizations should be required to disclose the ZIP code of the properties at risk. It suggests that if the impact of the stressors, including severe weather events, natural conditions, transition activities, identified climate-related risks, and their accumulated cost is calculated to be greater than one percent of the total line item for the relevant fiscal year, the risk and risk mitigation plan will have to be disclosed to their investors.

Corporate Assets

While the makeup of corporate assets has become increasingly composed of intangible assets—including intellectual property, goodwill, and reputation—physical structures remain a key part of many organizations’ total mix of assets. Investors have repeatedly voiced their support for disclosing present and future climate risks, further reinforcing the importance of mitigating climate-related risks from both a compliance perspective as well a reputational perspective.

If the 2022 SEC proposal is adopted in full, climate risks will have to be reported in financial disclosures. It’s expected that investors will increasingly require companies to disclose all climate-related risks which could impact their ongoing operations, business continuity, and, certainly, their bottom line.

Risk Mitigation

By identifying and proactively mitigating the risks threatening not only physical assets and reputations, issuers -both corporations and municipalities- can protect their business continuity but also the safety of people. As predicted by FEMA and NOAA, the severity of extreme rainfalls and floodings is expected to increase not only by frequency but by severity, posing threats to both coastal and, increasingly, inland regions.

Our expertise can help you understand how water may impact your business by assessing risks and risk-mitigation plans.

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Infrastructure

Impact on Aging Infrastructure

Changing weather patterns have come to have a growing impact on aging infrastructure. According to NOAA and FEMA, over the last 50 years, both inland and coastal land masses have been increasingly affected by precipitation and, subsequently, floodings. Many structures were built for different weather conditions than they are exposed to today and may be even further susceptible to the consequences of future climate risks. Areas that were considered less prone to flooding just a few decades ago might today, or in the near future, experience active flood threats. The geographical areas prone to water-related extreme weather events are concurrently increasing with the severity of such events -effectively escalating the need to protect the structures.

Increased Risk

Aging infrastructure —from bridges and tunnels to dams and reservoirs— plays a vital role in the ongoing discussions of climate risks. Their age-driven vulnerability to severe weather events exposes them to increased risk of physical damage and disruption of operations for both businesses and municipalities. More critically, it compromises the safety of people. Future risks stemming from water include direct damage to structures through heavy rainfall and flooding and indirectly by the increased exposure to heavy water flows causing erosions. Mitigation can be done by identifying the risks and proactively implementing solutions to keep your infrastructure safe – either during restoration efforts or active threats.

Transitional Risk Financial Disclosures

Financial Disclosures

Businesses operating in jurisdictions subject to compliance with the United Nations’ Paris Agreement might need to update their operations to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To achieve the “net zero” goal, companies can face material risks due to the projected costs of any operational changes needed for emission reduction. Per the proposed SEC climate risk disclosure, companies would be required to disclose these transitional risks and their potential impacts on their operations, strategy, business model, and outlook. Companies will need to pay special attention to mitigating the threat that unforeseen water events may have on the company’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Our expertise can help your company control water to restore, upgrade and protect physical assets during this process.

Infrastructure

Restoring aging infrastructure plays a vital role in reaching the sustainability developments defined by the Paris Agreement signed by President Biden in January 2021. By modernizing such structures, we can build a more sustainable society with increased resilience to climate threats. By doing so, organizations and municipalities can keep both tangible and intangible assets, but foremost –people, safe.

Through our flood protection, water diversion, and containment processes, we can help municipalities and governments restore, upgrade and protect infrastructure during this process.

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We can help you develop comprehensive, proactive risk mitigation strategies.

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