Business-facing organisations

Trade associations and other business-facing organisations have an important role to play both in terms of representing the interests of business to Government and in providing support and advice. Their activities include setting standards and accreditations, lobbying, training, research, running networks, producing guidance documents and disseminating best practice, all of which are useful vehicles for building adaptive capacity.

UKCIP works with business-facing organisations to assist them in embedding climate impacts and adaptation considerations into their activities in order to help build the adaptive capacity of UK business.

Below are some examples of the adaptation activities of business-facing organisations:

• The British Standards Institute is considering how the codes and standards that it is responsible for could be used to support adaptation.

• The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers is taking steps to address climate change in their technical guidance. See the Business case study.

• The Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment have included adaptation in a range of training programmes, workshops, magazine articles and discussion topics in order to support the important role of environmental professionals in delivering adaptation.

• The Institution of Mechanical Engineers commissioned a study into what engineers need to do to adapt. See the Business case study.

• The Association of British Insurers have set up ClimateWise, a collaborative insurance initiative through which allows members to work together to respond to climate change risks and opportunities.

• The National Association of Cider Makers carried out an industry led adaptation study, looking at the impacts of climate change on the UK cider impacts and potential adaptation responses. See the Business case study.

• The Chartered Institute of Marketing worked with Horizon South West and Climate SouthWest to run two sets of action-learning workshops to help delegates take advantage of climate change-related opportunities.

• The Institute of Hospitality ran an article in their trade press magazine, “The threats and opportunities for the hospitality industry”.