A new initiative is filling a gap by helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to manage climate change risks, supply chain resilience and business continuity.
The SME adaptation platform – due to be launched in early 2025 – is a response to the need for practical, accessible and free information and resources to help SMEs identify and manage the increasing impact of climate change on their businesses.
Climate Connect Aotearoa has collaborated with Sustainable Business Network, BusinessNZ, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), Ministry for the Environment, Auckland Council, Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA), Sustainable Business Council, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and Auckland Emergency Management to put this programme together.
Meeting a very real need
SMEs are the backbone of the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and New Zealand economies, with 98.7 per cent of all businesses in the Auckland region employing fewer than 50 people. These businesses are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Last year, in the wake of flooding and other extreme weather events, Auckland businesses made 7693 insurance claims worth $670 million. This underscores the importance of prioritising climate change risk management for many business owners.
It’s not just the immediate physical impacts that drive the need for action. According to Charlotte Kootstra, Sustainability Manager for Climate and Environment at Sustainable Business Council, supply chain resilience is becoming an increasing priority. “In the wake of the growing disruptions caused by intensified climate events, businesses must ensure their supply chains are prepared. Suppliers with a climate adaptation plan signal to their customers that there is a lower risk of disruption to the flow of products or services, particularly during adverse weather events.
Charlotte Kootstra, Sustainability Manager for Climate and Environment, Sustainable Business Council
“That’s why corporates, and larger businesses in particular, increasingly expect their suppliers to identify their own climate risks, and have an adaptation plan in place to manage them. Those that don’t can risk losing business, as well as disruption to their own operations.”
While larger businesses can look to climate change legislation and regulation for help and guidance, SMEs can find it difficult to access the knowledge and capability needed to put a plan in place. But help is at hand.
With a proposed launch in Q3 2025, the SME adaptation platform will provide a range of tools and resources designed specifically to help SMEs make their businesses more resilient in a changing world.
Practical, simple, easy
The first step in developing the platform was holding a series of workshops with a range of SMEs – including Māori and Pasifika businesses – to understand what they needed and how to deliver it in a way that was accessible and useful. These discovery sessions identified that SMEs need easy-to-understand tools and resources.
“SMEs are very busy,” says Climate Risk and Resilience Consultant Paddy Pringle from Tonkin + Taylor, who facilitated the workshops. “You can’t give them a 300-page document full of complex climate science. That’s not going to be helpful. So, what we focused on is something that is bite-sized, practical and gives people a simple way to start to manage their climate risks.”
Paddy Pringle, Climate Risk and Resilience Consultant, Tonkin + Taylor
The first resources available through the platform will be a series of videos, simple guidance and downloadable templates to support SMEs in thinking through the potential issues climate change might pose for them, and then taking the first steps towards ensuring their businesses are more resilient.
The focus is to help SMEs to identify their climate-related risks and opportunities, and then to support them in developing a business continuity and/or adaptation plan.
“The platform provides a starting point and a practical process that SMEs can use in their existing business planning,” says Paddy, who also led the development of the adaptation resources with Climate Connect Aotearoa. “It’s about recognising that climate adaptation is an ongoing process. The science tells us that we will experience increasingly extreme climate change impacts and that businesses will need to continue to adapt. It’s a continual process of adjustment and improvement.”
Complementary resources
The platform is designed to complement other resources available to help SMEs become more sustainable and resilient. SBN Climate Programme Manager Kimberley Savill, who has been part of the project group working on the SME adaptation platform, says it will complement existing resources that help SMEs reduce emissions and lower their environmental footprint, such as the Climate Action Toolbox.
Kimberley Savill, Climate Programme Manager, Sustainable Business Network
“Part of our collaboration with Climate Connect Aotearoa is to focus on the links between adaptation and reducing emissions (mitigation), so we face less severe impacts in the future and can better adapt to those that we may experience,” says Kimberley. “Both are important pieces of the climate action puzzle”.
An ongoing project
The second phase of this project will feature the development of a ‘train-the-trainer’ programme and support to help develop the skills and capabilities needed to build climate resilience.
The platform is part of Climate Connect Aotearoa’s mission to accelerate the uptake of innovation to support Te Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri: Auckland’s Climate Plan and its goals to reduce emissions by 50 per cent by 2030, build resilience and establish a low-carbon, regenerative economy.
Find out more
Learn more about the SME adaptation platform here. If you are an SME with experience in managing the impacts of a climate event or adaptation planning and would like to volunteer your business to be featured as a case study on the platform, get in touch!
