Q2: What is the biggest contribution that companies or governmental agencies can make?
Lee Ann Dietz: I’m stepping out of my moderator role and tapping into years of experience working with governments, smart cities, and transportation. To be clear, governments continue to work proactively on these complex issues and are dedicating significant resources to address climate impacts.
In terms of data, what we see are enormous silos of data – where the opportunity remains for better integration in order to unleash the power of analytics. Unique solutions surely will follow. Advanced analytics, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, can ensure that public sector agencies transform data into actionable intelligence to serve the public.
Nyangon: Government, data analytics, and the role of the business community is a beautifully complicated trifecta of information. Governance models change, constantly and inconsistently. The amount of data that government agencies produce is rapidly growing. Businesses, on the other hand, operate in a world of regulatory complexity where government policies and regulations have direct and indirect impacts on their operations and returns on investment.
My view is that the future of government affairs looks very different from today. It will be more polycentric, meaning that government affairs will be bottom-up-led, cross-enterprise, and organized around citizens. It is for this reason that corporations need to leverage analytics and government relations to promote climate-sensitive business development opportunities.
Siddiqi: Many regulators are requiring climate risk disclosures right now – these certainly can be made better. At the same time, governments can play a role in enabling a smooth transition to a different mix of energy sources – via re-training, investment in “green” industries and so forth.
Julie Espy, who worked at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for 23 years: Governments can be more proactive in their efforts to protect our valuable natural resources. We do see the results of delay, inaction and a lack of investment in areas such as water quality. The Clean Water Act was passed 50 years ago, and today we have more information available to us than 50 years ago.
Agencies are in a position to lead the way in using that information to identify and advance environmental improvements, which will lead to healthy water and communities for all.
Seifi: Something that I learned at school (and always resonated with me) was that government can "internalize the externalities.” What does that mean? Pollution caused by factories may shift the burden of a negative externality to society, which releases harmful gases into the atmosphere - from outside to inside (external to internal). This only happens when an individual or a business is making decisions but does not have to bear the full cost, outcome or responsibility of that decision.
Society bears a major part of the costs associated with that decision. This is where the government steps in with regulations, standards or quotas, to limit externalities. Regulation that is efficient and equitable can drive innovation, as well.
Hunt: In 1961, John F Kennedy spelled out ambitious plans to monitor our climate and enable better information around weather events as part of STEM investments that also included NASA’s moonshot efforts. The mere fact that we are aware of our changing climate is attributable to these types of investments in data gathering and analytics. Today, with better technology, analytics can further evaluate and reward investment.
Still, governments can play an important role, serving as low-cost originators of data flows, while companies that lobby for and lead the integration of environmental metrics into their business practices are creating exceptional long-term value for their shareholders.
Williams: Urgent action is required to not only reduce emissions but also remove them from the atmosphere and start developing adaptation strategies in case we’re not successful. The IPCC is projecting that our planet could need as much as 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide removal by mid-century to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Data forecasts a sobering picture, one that tells us to set ambitious goals and take aggressive action. Those will require a scale of global collaboration between government agencies, corporations and other organizations unprecedented in human history.
