NZ's Business View on Climate Change & Other Emerging Risks?

In a survey conducted and released by Marsh in 2006, NZ companies were asked to comment on the World Economic Forum's identified key emerging risk area's.

• Terrorism
• Oil Price Spike
• Fiscal Crisis
• Pandemic
• Climate Change
• Liability Regimes
• Counterfeit Goods
• Increasing Corporate Governance Requirements
• Exchange Rate Fluctuations

(The full report is available from www.weforum.org)


When these risks were ranked in reference to their own businesses:

" . . . respondents showed that despite huge media profile around the issue of climate change, pandemic preparedness rates as number one of the emerging risks".

This result may simply indicate a pragmatic assessment by business leaders whereby a Pandemic does represent greater risk than climate change. Even so, some commentators are asking whether NZ business are failing to grasp the true impact of climate change to its primary industry (diary, beef, and lamb) based economy.

So just how far progressed is NZ when seriously considering the impacts of climate change?