Supported by WBCSD members
Physical Risks Are Financial Risks
Extreme weather and ecosystem degradation are disrupting value chains and markets — causing US$327 billion in losses in 2024 alone, over half uninsured. Investors and Boards are demanding action. WBCSD’s CEO Handbook on physical risks helps leaders:
– Build resilience into strategy and governance
– Learn from leading company case studies
– Turn risk into long-term advantage
Turn systemic risk into strategic opportunity
By proactively addressing physical climate risks across operations and value chains, companies can transform disruptions into competitive advantage, earning investor and stakeholder confidence..
Build resilience that pays off
Embedding resilience into strategy, capital planning, and risk management delivers measurable returns through avoided losses, faster recovery, and enhanced long-term competitiveness.
Lead with integrated sustainability
Combining resilience with emissions reduction and nature protection ensures organizations are not just surviving escalating risks, but positioning themselves as forward-looking, reliable, and investment-ready leaders.
Addressing the Rising Impact of Physical Risks
Extreme events and chronic environmental shifts are accelerating, causing immediate and systemic threats to operational continuity and financial performance of businesses across sectors and geographies.
Despite these growing challenges, corporate risk management has largely focused on climate-related transition risks, while physical risks are often addressed with narrow scope on own assets and operations, missing the broader network effects and cascading impacts that can affect business continuity through and beyond their value chains. This limited visibility heightens operational, financial, legal, and reputational risks, and limits businesses’ competitive advantage.
The Need for a Systemic Approach
Today’s Enterprise Risk Management frameworks and processes do not adequately capture compounding and systemic risks, impairing executive decision-making, while inconsistent financial reporting structures fail to provide a clear picture of companies’ value-at-risk and risk management actions, including investments to boost resilience and risk transfer mechanisms. Without a standardized approach to measure, manage, and mitigate these growing threats, businesses struggle to deal with disrupting global value chains.
WBCSD response
Recognizing the urgency and opportunity for business leaders, WBCSD has been working across teams and with key knowledge partners on the “why, what & how” to build resilience in own operations and value chains.
In September 2025, WBCSD and BCG, in collaboration with several WBCSD members, launched a CEO Handbook on Physical Risk and Resilience in Value Chains.
Check out our resources on Physical Risk and Resilience in Value Chains
Getting Ahead of Physical Risk
designed to engage CEOs on the critical importance of managing physical risk to business continuity.
A CEO Handbook for Executive Engagement
created to support meaningful discussions between CEOs, C-Suite executives, Boards, and investors on managing physical risk across value chains.
Together, these resources equip leaders with the insight needed to begin a structured journey: identifying, measuring, and managing physical risks across value chains to strengthen resilience and long-term business value.
These resources draw upon insights from over 40 interviews with corporates, experts, and financial institutions, reflecting both today’s business realities and the emerging challenges of tomorrow.
Click here to download the resources and explore more.
Additional WBCSD Resources
Physical risks are financial risks. At CPP Investments, we factor them into our investment decisions across companies, own assets and their value chains.
