Managing the climate crisis and pensions
Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency speaking at the Investment & Pensions Europe Conference & Awards, 2 December 2021
This year, the IPE conference and awards comes hot on the heels of COP26.With $130 trillion committed to a low carbon economy, we can see the enormous tanker of global finance beginning to turn.But, as COP President Alok Sharma made clear in his closing speech, we have a lot more to do.A couple of weeks before COP26, the Environment Agency launched our third Report to Ministers under the Climate Change Act about how we are helping England prepare for climate impacts. The report shows last year, more than 76,000 incidents were reported to the Environment Agency’s incident management service, including flood, drought, fires, fish kills and pollution incidents. One every seven minutes, 24 hours a day.Climate change is increasing their severity, frequency and duration. In the press release I said it is a case of “adapt or die”. This summer, 200 people died in the German floods. In the last year we’ve also seen the devastating heatwave and flooding in Vancouver, the drought in Madagascar, and the polar vortex in Texas.
Everyone needs to Plan, Adapt and Thrive. The goal is a new era of climate prosperity to the whole world.
And pensions can help deliver that. Because we are talking about making sensible savings for people’s retirement. People saving for a pension today do not want to be locked in a Catch-22 whereby their savings are contributing to a climate that will be much less hospitable by the time they retire. But, don’t be fooled, there is no great generational divide here. Parents and grandparents don’t want their children to inherit that world either. Last year, the Environment Agency Pension Fund was delighted to win IPE’s ‘Best Pension Fund in the United Kingdom’ Award.
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