Climate Change and Management
Over the past years, climate change has inevitably become the most discussed matter in terms of both social and scholarly contexts. The major reason behind this interest is the fact that people try to identify what anthropological actions contribute to the emergence of a worldwide natural disaster that endangers both human lives and the planet’s existence. However, in the context of today’s rapid globalization and industrial development, the notion of climate change remains rather unimportant for the ones who are the most related to the process of natural pattern modification. These people are the enterprise owners neglecting the idea that climate change is either affected by industrial endeavors or affects the manufacturing and management patterns themselves. When looking at the statistics presented in Figure 1, it becomes evident that the process of industrialism and mass manufacturing is explicitly correlated with the amount of disastrous carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the atmosphere:
However, regarding the following data, a few people accept their responsibility and contribution to the rapid climate change modifications. Indeed, according to the 2020 study conducted by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD, 2020), practically no boards considered climate change a major challenge in terms of risk management, placing emphasis on the socio-political environment of businesses. Thus, the primary aim of the following paper is to define the notion of climate change in terms of project management, risk management, and business communication in order to identify the overall patterns of its perception in the management paradigm. Moreover, some of the most efficient strategies aimed at reducing the impact on the environment will be discussed.
The Notion of Climate Change in the Context of Project Management
Unquestionably, the notion of climate change has now become an integral part of any socio-economic aspect, as there is an increased need to pay attention to the implications of any endeavor taking place in the ecosystem. To begin with, it is of crucial importance to outline the definition of climate change and its major characteristics. Hence, according to the United Nations (UN, n.d.), the term “climate change” stands for the process of change in the accepted temperature patterns, eventually leading to agriculture, rising sea levels, and other natural disasters. When speaking of the climate change features, the following aspects should be outlined:
- Climate change contributes to the lengthening of the frost-free season, causing major disruptions for agriculture and sea levels.
- Climate change causes major disturbance to the precipitation patterns and their consistency. Some areas are covered with heavier precipitation than usual, causing natural disasters. Other areas, on the contrary, suffer from unprecedented drought periods.
- When speaking of the climate change in the urban clusters, the overall probability of heavy precipitation, poor yield, and longer frost-free seasons will inevitably lead to struggles in the community health patterns and agriculture (National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA], n.d.).
Thus, having considered the aforementioned challenges for the environment, it may be concluded that climate change ignorance is no longer an option for enterprises. Thus, when speaking of the notion of project management paradigm, it is necessary to outline two ways in which projects may be related to the global issue. The first aspect concerns the integration of climate change risk management when accounting for the strategies to mitigate its effect on the project outcome. Another aspect deals with the role of project management as a profession in the context of addressing and limiting the worldwide effects of climate change.
Climate Change and Risk Management Strategies
The notion of environmental studies is inseparable from any socially predetermined action due to the fact that society today presents itself as ecologically aware and ready to take action. For these reasons, modern business enterprises are faced with the need to modify their activity in compliance with climate change responses. In order to do so, project managers apply one of the following risk-handling strategies:
- Reactive strategy. This strategy requires no reconsideration in terms of the project’s working patterns. In fact, when adhering to this strategy, managers tend to overlook the opportunities presented by climate change, whereas the labor resources are focused on the rapid response to the emerged risks.
- Creative strategy. When employing this strategy, managers are focused on the contribution to the overall fight against the human-made contribution to climate change. This strategy, besides outlining the blueprint for a specific enterprise, also assists the overall collaborative action in reducing climate change risks and implications.
- Proactive strategy. The following framework is aimed at reducing the risk probability to a maximum extent. Thus, in the climate change context, such an approach deals with employing pro-environmental policies, as the issues related to climate change are regarded as an opportunity for growth rather than a costly threat to the project.
- Anticipatory strategy. The following process implies an extensive assessment of the evidence-based data in order to foresee the potential challenges correlated with climate change. Briefly speaking, this approach is frequently used by the management when they anticipate any environment-related crisis. Thus, in order to respond to it, project managers anticipate the outcome and modify the situation by presenting policies and direct legislative actions to minimize the risk.
- Stable strategy. The last approach is perceived as rather irrelevant in terms of climate change management, as it presupposes the existence of a framework able to respond to any climate change-related problems through a well-developed system (Bui & De Villiers, 2017).
Considering the strategies above, it may be concluded that among the variety of response patterns, strategies that perceive climate change as an opportunity to create a manageable project are generally more successful in terms of both internal productivity and the global environment. Thus, one of the most well-known collective management efforts aimed at reducing the impact on the environment is the Carbon Disclosure Mandate issued by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP, 2021). The primary aim of the following project is to make sure that the enterprises take major action in terms of minimizing the emission of CO2 and climate change deterioration. In 2020, a study was conducted aimed at identifying how CDP framework integration affected the financial performance of the corporations involved. The results of the study revealed that no significant damage to the enterprises’ economy was caused, whereas the positive impact on the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere was noted among all the business units (Downar et al., 2020). Hence, it may be concluded that the overall idea of pooling efforts in order to combat climate change has now become more accepted in society than an individual response to already existing crises.
Project Managers’ Role in Climate Change
Today, business enterprises have a significant impact on the various social endeavors due to their ability to support to criticize any of them while having authority in terms of people’s decision-making. Hence, when it comes to such important topics as climate change or any other environmental issue, enterprises and projects managers regard these precedents as an opportunity to become ambassadors of social change (Hossain & Farooque, 2019). For example, European countries such as the UK try their best to promote various environmentally aware initiatives, including governmental programs like the National Adaptation Programme (Morris, 2017). However, while explicitly promoting the reduction of CO2 into the atmosphere, such initiatives do not present any tangible strategy to address the upcoming natural disaster.
There exists a variety of points of view regarding climate change management. In fact, some of the executives think that one of the major issues that make it difficult to deal with the lack of climate change management is the fact that the government is moving towards large-scale endeavors (Briguglio et al., 2020). Hence, it may be concluded that in order to secure an efficient framework to manage climate change, it is not efficient to develop response strategies and promote ecological awareness on the legislative level. Instead, action should be encouraged starting from the small projects. The future implication of the study of climate change should compare the efficiency of locally applied tangible CO2 reduction strategies and national policies. Moreover, worldwide initiatives such as CDP should be promoted, as they do not address unsupported allegations, paying attention to the actual data influencing carbon dioxide emission and climate change instead.
References
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Bui, B., & De Villiers, C. (2017). Business strategies and management accounting in response to climate change risk exposure and regulatory uncertainty. The British Accounting Review, 49(1), 4-24. Web.
Carbon Disclosure Project. (2021). What we do. CDP.net. Web.
Downar, B., Ernstberger, J., Reichelstein, S. J., Schwenen, S., & Zaklan, A. (2020). The impact of carbon disclosure mandates on emissions and financial operating performance. ZEW-Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper, (20-038).
Hossain, M., & Farooque, O. (2019). The emission trading system, risk management committee and voluntary corporate response to climate change–a CDP study. International Journal of Accounting & Information Management. Web.
Morris, P. W. G. (2017). Climate change and what the project management profession should be doing about it – A UK perspective. Web.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (n.d.). The effects of climate change. Nasa.gov. Web.
National Association of Corporate Directors. (2020). Climate change: The implications for boards – Article series 2020. Web.
Union of Concerned Scientists. (2021). How do we know that humans are the major cause for global warming? Web.
United Nations. (n.d.). Climate change. un.org. Web.