Risk and Resilience: Shared Opportunities for Science and Capital

August 25-29, 2014

Rockefeller Bellagio Conference Center

The meeting in Bellagio brought together core members of two converging initiatives, one anchored in the global science community working at the nexus of water/energy/food/climate, and one firmly moored in the world of global capital focused on integrating disaster risk and resilience into finance.  These efforts share a common goal of marshaling science, technology, and capital to create risk-resilient societies.

 

The “science” community in this initiative is a structured collaborative assembled over several years with specific intent to create in curated, shared, public/private space improved “knowledge systems for sustainability.”  The core members of this collaborative include the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the International Maize/Wheat Research Center (CIMMYT), and the Australian national research organization, CSIRO.  Additional participating colleagues were drawn from the International Council of Science (ICSU)’s Future Earth, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Boston University’s Pardee Center, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. (IIASA), AgMIP and GEOGLAM.

 

The “capital” team pulled together key members of the Integrating Risk into the Financial System coalition (the 1:100 Initiative) and the R!SE Initiative, a broad alliance between the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).  The team also included partners from Willis, the Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S), the World Economic Forum, Thomson Reuters and Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services.

 

This gathering reinforced the need to create and use methodologies that quantify systemic risks to the global financial community originating in food systems.  At the workshop’s conclusion, participants established an understanding of critical next steps focused on developing bodies of methodologies (including stress tests), assessing large-scale data demand for both conventional and unconventional assets, and identifying regulatory actions. The group gathered in Bellagio has met several more times to continue working on a suite of initiatives, written products and future activities. Future plans include collaborative efforts between the Knowledge Systems for Sustainability Collaborative, the R!SE Initiative and the Multiple Breadbasket Failure Initiative.

 

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Bellagio Center Report