Clyde and Co has launched its report, Building Better Resilience: A Climate Change Guide for the Built Environment in the UK, to help businesses operating in the built environment “identify and mitigate” specific legal risks arising out of the climate emergency.
The guide has been released in the wake of the COP26 summit and in response to the “continuing changes” in the legal landscape in relation to climate change to which businesses are responding.
The report aims to be an “informative and practical guide” to identifying and managing climate change risk for construction and property development in the UK, covering the sector’s contribution to climate change and explaining the “distinct” climate change risks across three areas of physical, transitional and liability.
On a commercial level, the firm said businesses operating in the built environment are “issuing declarations and implementing policies” to decarbonise their activities.
On a national level, the UK Government has issued the Energy White Paper, setting out a “roadmap” of regulatory reform, and local government bodies are “increasingly” declaring climate emergencies.
Lucy Frith, partner, said: “Working with our clients involved in the built environment, we know they are keenly aware of the pressure on them to reach net zero and what that means for them at a policy and strategy level. However, many organisations are unclear on what the specific short to medium term risks caused by climate change are and how to manage these as a business.
“These risks range from the regulatory to the practical and will transform not just how organisations govern and report on climate change, but also how projects are planned and built and the terms on which the stakeholders on those projects create contracts and collaborate with others.”
