If you work in corporate sustainability, this pitch has become well-worn: climate resilience is good for business. Protect your assets, buttress your supply chains, and reap the rewards when trouble stirs.
It’s a compelling enough argument — but one that doesn’t go far enough. Today’s guests want companies to remember that climate resilience is not something they can achieve alone. They need the communities in which they operate in to join the fight, too.
Verena Radulovic and Libby Zemaitis at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions — better known as C2ES — are working to foster corporate-community partnerships on resilience that yield benefits for both sides.
Verena leads C2ES’s business engagement work, overseeing its efforts to push resilience and adaptation up the corporate agenda. Libby runs the Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator — a place-based program now operating across Colorado, Washington, and Texas — that brings together local government, businesses, non-profits, and first responders to build coordinated resilience plans against specific climate hazards.
In this episode, the two lay out why corporate and community resilience are two sides of the same coin, walk through case studies from AT&T, Meta, National Grid, and others, and make the case for stronger public-private partnerships to scale climate-proofing efforts across the US.
For anyone trying to understand the community-corporate resilience nexus, this episode is for you.
💡 Learn more about the C2ES Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator HERE
Listen below, download from the Podcasts page on Climate Proof, or tune in via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
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We talk about:
👉 Why companies are only as resilient as the communities and infrastructure they depend on
👉 How the Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator is breaking down silos between local government, business, and non-profits
👉 What corporate case studies from AT&T, Meta, National Grid, and others reveal about the real business case for climate resilience investment
👉 How C2ES is working to cut through the thicket of resilience frameworks and standards to scale up corporate adoption
👉 How public-private partnerships can move resilience from fragmented one-off projects to large-scale initiatives
Thanks for listening!
Louie Woodall
Editor
