Widespread greenwashing is compromising efforts to prepare for climate impacts like floods and heatwaves, the chair of the Environment Agency (EA) has said.
Emma Howard Boyd, who is also interim chair of the Green Finance Institute, said businesses are “embedding liability” and “storing up risk for their investors”, by giving a false impression they are addressing the climate crisis and the danger is people “won’t realise this deception until it is too late”.
She warned that nearly £650 billion of public and private infrastructure investment planned by 2030 is at considerable risk unless increasingly severe climate impacts are considered in planning and delivery.
She said:
“The more businesses are transparent about their plans to transition to net zero and prepare for climate shocks, the easier it is to benchmark best practice, set standards and celebrate the companies that really are delivering on their commitments.
“As with the government’s ambition for net zero by 2050, delivering on climate resilience and nature recovery requires robust, consistent and trusted data.
“If we fail to identify and address greenwashing, we allow ourselves false confidence that we are already addressing the causes and treating the symptoms of the climate crisis.”
Boyd said that the importance of driving private investment into climate adaptation was demonstrated earlier this year through the Bank of England’s first climate stress test.
It showed that UK banks and insurers will end up taking on nearly £340 billion worth of climate-related losses by 2050 unless action is taken to curb rising temperatures and sea levels.
She continued:
“Such action will require collaboration between the public and private sectors. Around the world, just 5% of climate finance goes towards resilience and virtually none of that comes from the private sector.”
