A climate change wake-up call

Anew McKinsey Global Institute report, ‘Climate risk and response

- AMITA BHADURI

Anew McKinsey Global Institute report, ‘Climate risk and response: Physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts’, suggests that many assumptions about the potential damage climate risk could cause need to be revisited. The report finds that climate change is already having substantial physical impacts at a local level in regions across the world, and the affected regions are likely to grow in number and size.'

Hundreds of millions of lives, trillions of dollars of economic activity, and physical and natural capital may be at risk in a higher emissions and lower mitigation scenario, and an absent adaptation response. The report further finds that under a high emission, low mitigation RCP 8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway) scenario, India could become one of the first places in the world to experience heatwaves that cross the survivability limit for a healthy human resting in the shade, potentially impacting millions of people with knock-on socioeconomic effects.

The result of a yearlong research effort in collaboration with McKinsey’s Sustainability and Risk practices, this report focuses on physical risk—that is, the risks arising from the physical effects of climate change, including the potential effects on people, communities, natural and physical capital, and economic activity, and the implications for companies, governments, financial institutions, and individuals.