The Article in Brief Global warming is affecting the business, no matter what industry theyre in.

They face numerous climate-change risksincluding tough emission-reduction legislation, damaging backlash from environmentally concerned consumers, and weather-related damage to physical assets. Consumers are increasingly taking the environmental record into account when they make purchasing decisions. And investors are already discounting share prices of firms poorly positioned to compete in a carbon constrained world. But the risks of climate change also offer new sources of competitive advantage, say Lash and Wellington. They suggests seizing those opportunities by first, measure your firms contribution to global warming. Then assess your climaterelated risks and opportunities. Reinvent your businessbefore rivals doto mitigate those risks and seize the opportunities. This article offers a systematic approach to mapping and responding to climate change risks. According to Jonathan Lash and Fred Wellington of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, the risks can be divided into six categories: regulatory (policies such as new emissions standards), products and technology (the development and marketing of climate-friendly products and services), litigation (lawsuits alleging environmental harm), reputational (how a company's environmental policies affect its brand), supply chain (potentially higher raw material and energy costs), and physical (such as an increase in the incidence of hurricanes). The authors propose a four-step process for responding to climate change risk: Quantify your company's carbon footprint; identify the risks and opportunities you face; adapt your business in response; and do it better than your competitors. This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice, along with suggestions for further reading. Future comment and recommendation

This article acknowledges the brand risk companies face as a result of global warming, but it fails to include corporate communications strategies in its recommendations for improving your companys climate competitiveness. In our opinion, the absence of appropriate reputation management or the ability to effectively communicate the changing requirements of this new era, both internally and externally, presents a serious flaw in any business strategy designed to address and exploit the impact of global warming. Actually, we believe that corporate communications will need to play a central and more integrated role in this newly emerging paradigm than ever before in the history of companies. Many corporations define eco sustainability as a platform for their CSR department. This approach works well when companies empower their CSR department to manage issues that are business critical. Oftentimes, that is not the case, as argued by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review. According to the authors, frequently CSR efforts are counterproductive, for two reasons. First, they pit business against society, when in reality the two are interdependent. Second, they pressure companies to think of corporate social responsibility in generic ways instead of in the way most appropriate to their individual strategies. Given this tangential structuring of CSR within business, the opportunities and threats related to eco sustainability greatly eclipse traditional CSR. In other words, either companies assign CSR a more operational and significant role above and beyond attempting to generate positive perception or they find a different structure to elevate the issue to the C-suite and the board room. The role of communications From a communications standpoint, this new global systems perspective changes the game. It requires an entirely new communications strategy that utilizes an ongoing dialogue, as a new set of audiences responds to the companys environmental actions, alongside their traditional communications. For the first time in history, the negative global effects of pollutants generated by human activity are forcing corporations to adapt their strategies: to become more ecologically sustainable and address the economic opportunities associated with this change. This raises the question of who facilitates the organizational change that is

necessary in the increasingly aware green marketplace. In other words, eco sustainability has turned out to be a media virus that is in the process of becoming the major communications platform of corporate America and society at large. We think this concept is very applicable to the communications aspect of eco sustainability, and it offers a theoretical framework for predicting that global warming is in the process of infecting public opinion so profoundly that it will become ubiquitous and develop long-lasting staying power. Hence, as global environmental issues increase, we will be continually inoculated. This view is supported by a recent opinion survey among consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Entitled What Assures Consumers on Climate Change, the study found that respondents want more information from businesses about how they are addressing the climate impacts of their products. The same study shows that many consumers dont trust information from business on climate change. Aligning operations with communications To create the basis for transparency in companies marketing eco sustainable products and services, the corporate functions of communications and operations need to be inter-linked. In most corporations, there has been a limited connection between the operational processes of a company and its communications efforts. Operations on the one side, and marketing communications on the other, have traditionally co-existed peacefully by simply not relating to one another. In a world where eco sustainability takes center stage, this disconnect no longer represents a viable business strategy. For instance, when a company that markets organic food does not employ eco sustainable operational processes, it will risk being deemed hypocritical in the court of public opinion. If operations and communications are unsynchronized, companies face the risk of making promises they cant deliver on. These failed promises will be exposed, leading to a vicious cycle that communications alone cant remedy. These pressures will be most immediately visible for corporations that have a clear negative eco impact, such as energy and transportation companies. The bar is likely to be even higher for those businesses that already market clean or green products and therefore disseminate corresponding communications messages. However, the pressure is already starting

to build up for corporations that manufacture or service anything, no matter what that is. In other words, this wave will reach the utilities and organic food companies first and then quickly spread to manufacturers of bed sheets and popcorn makers, and eventually even to services companies. Its important to note that this applies not only to external communications, but also to internal communications as businesses compete for the best and the brightest talent. As consumers become more aware of green and clean issues, employees and prospects are beginning to ask questions about what kind of neighbors businesses are. Companies that make promises must understand that these must be kept, or employees who sign on with this in mind are likely to disengage by becoming disheartened or simply moving along.

http://www.coolearth.org/306/news-32/rainforest-news-155/malaysia-announcesglobal-warming-plan-1309.html

Paul Nunes & Tim Breene , 2011, Reinvent Your Business Before Its Too Late, Retrieved from http://hbr.org/2011/01/reinvent-your-business-before-its-toolate/ar/1