Consistency of UK climate risk approaches with new ISO guidelines

Abstract

The management of climate-related risks have become increasingly important and more frequently practised across many sectors of society. Concurrently, there has been a proliferation of guidance documents designed to help public, private, and civil society organisations conduct these activities. This study compares the UKCIP climate risk management framework and the implementations of climate risk management embodied in CCRA2, TE2100, and Oasis LMF to the new ISO 14091 standard, published in February 2021. We find general consistency among ISO 14091, UKCIP, and the three implementations, but also important differences in focus largely explainable by variations in context and the time at which the approaches were developed. Based on this analysis, the study provides recommendations for various stakeholders. All the approaches could benefit from providing more explicit guidance in certain areas highlighted by the analysis, a suggestion for their respective authoring organisations to consider. Climate risk practitioners may use the findings to determine which approach to use and how depending on their objectives. In addition, UK and other government officials might develop guidance documents to aid practitioners when making these decisions. Finally, the typology of key elements of climate risk approaches developed in our study can help scholars with future research.

Keywords

• Climate risk management frameworks
• Climate risk assessment frameworks
• Climate risk guidance
• Decision support
• Decision making under uncertainty