“气候风险可能对金融机构的资产负债表产生不利影响，特别是当市场没有将气候风险正确定价时，它可能影响金融稳定。”

欧洲中央银行于5月29日发布的《金融稳定评估报告》中阐述气候变化和金融稳定的“特色内容”中如是说。这不是第一次，也不是最后一次监管机构发表关于气候风险的类似论断，这代表着宏观审慎当局对此的清醒认识，以及其对金融业的警示。

在欧洲央行报告发布前一周，英格兰银行发布了《物理气候变化对财务影响的评估框架》。

同样在5月，欧洲证券和市场管理局建立了可持续发展协调网络，重点考虑“将可持续性政策纳入金融监管”。美国商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）也宣布，气候相关风险会成为6月12日市场风险咨询委员会会议的主题。CFTC专员Rostin Behnam说：“现在是时候让美国发挥更积极的领导作用，与国际同行一起来解决这个问题了。”

很难找出一个确切的原因，解释是什么引发了人们对气候变化风险的高度关注，以及其对金融部门可能的破坏性影响。

英格兰银行行长，时任金融稳定委员会主席马克·卡尼在2015年发表的讲话可能是一个关键的历史时刻。他提到金融稳定的“深远影响”，以及“气候变化将威胁金融业弹性和长期繁荣”的种种经济和科学迹象。

Another factor may have been Super Storm Sandy's direct hit on the New York financial center in 2012; it caused $64 billion in damage, flooding of infrastructure and a shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange. Fast forward to 2019, and the bankruptcy filing of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. – which faced an estimated $30 billion liability stemming from California wildfires – was dubbed by the Wall Street Journal “the first climate change bankruptcy.”

Natural catastrophes resulted in $160 billion in losses last year, according to Munich Re, with such climate-related events as wildfires, extreme storms, drought and heat waves capturing the attention of the financial sector and its risk managers.

Whatever the impetus, awareness of climate change and its risks – the challenges and opportunities for financial firms, their customers and the investment portfolios managed on their behalf – is on the rise.

“The topic is definitely on the table for financial firms, at the same time that the issue is coming to the fore in civil society and to the attention of regulators,” says Emanuele Campiglio, assistant professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and co-author of several papers on the topic including Climate Change Challenges for Central Banks and Financial Regulators.

A big question for Campiglio and other observers is whether the upsurge of interest and activity will sufficiently and successfully stem the environmental impact. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have only 11 years to ensure that a rise in global temperature is kept to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius, beyond which even a half degree increase will significantly worsen the risks of drought, flood, heat and poverty for millions.

Global coalitions such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), which was founded in 2015 by the Financial Stability Board and is chaired by Michael Bloomberg, have acted to push the agenda.

At the start, the task force called for entities in all sectors to be transparent by adopting a standardized approach to monitor and categorize climate change risk using scenarios and other tools. In 2017, it asked member companies – including financial institutions – to organize climate-risk disclosures around governance, strategy, risk management and targets. Participants are to explain how their programs for identifying and managing climate-related risks are integrated into their overall risk management frameworks, as well as set climate risk reduction targets in view of the 1.5-degree scenario.

The TCFD has grown to more than 500 supporters, including more than 280 financial firms such as Barclays, BlackRock, BNP Paribas Asset Management, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Swiss Re. 

In a September 2018 status report, TCFD said that a minority of companies disclose forward-looking climate targets or address the resilience of their strategies under different climate-related scenarios, a key goal. Financial companies, facing regulatory and shareholder pressures, are more likely than others to disclose how they have embedded climate risk into their overall risk management.

CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, has aligned its information-gathering with the TCFD framework. CDP said that out of more than 6,000 companies reporting for its 2018 Global Climate Change Analysis: 73% have board-level oversight of climate-related risks; 72% integrate climate risk into their business strategy; and 55% integrate processes for identifying, assessing, and managing climate-related issues into multi-disciplinary risk management. “This is an important step in escalating climate-related issues from a siloed or isolated CSR/ESG department issue to a company-wide issue,” CDP said.

A more recent call to action came from the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a group of three dozen central banks and supervisors from around the world – including the Bank of England, Bank of France, and People's Bank of China (but none from the U.S.). The network said in an April report that climate-related risks must be viewed as a form of financial – not merely a reputational – risk, and thus they fall squarely within the mandates of central banks.

“The financial risks we face through climate change are analytically difficult, unprecedented and yet very urgent,” said Frank Elderson, executive director of the Dutch Central Bank and chairman of the NGFS.

The NGFS report says that a transition to a green and low-carbon economy “is crucial for our own survival,” and failure could result in increasingly severe and frequent heat waves, landslides, floods, wildfires and storms, all affecting such financial variables and stability factors as economic growth, productivity, food and energy prices, inflation expectations, and insurance costs.

The key risk, the NGFS notes, is that global warming is irreversible, and there is no mature technology to ensure that climate-induced problems will go away.

In May, 20 institutional investors from 11 countries – including Rockefeller Investment Management and Manulife Asset Management – were convened by the UN Environment Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and announced guidelines, in line with TCFD principles, to help investors assess climate change risk and opportunities. Other investor groups calling for financial sector participation in the reduction of climate change ills include Climate Action 100+ and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.

A few months earlier, former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen spoke in support of a carbon tax. It is an initiative of the Climate Leadership Council, a bipartisan group that includes other former government officials and Nobel laureates and has corporate supporters including Allianz, MetLife and Santander Group.

Money is flowing into environmental, social and governance (ESG) funds. At the start of 2018, $11.6 trillion in assets were overseen by U.S. money managers who consider ESG criteria as an investment factor. That increased from $8.1 trillion in 2016, according to the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment.

Research firm Aite Group said in an April report that spending on ESG-related services by asset owners and managers is expected to grow from $111 million in 2015 to $322 million in 2021.

“Institutional asset owners, particularly in Europe, are leading the way in terms interest and use of ESG ratings and analytics,” says Aite analyst and report author Paul Sinthunont. He notes there are at least 20 ESG rating and analysis systems, with ISS, MSCI, Refinitiv, Sustainalytics, and Video Eiris as the most prominent, alongside Bloomberg as a leading data provider.

In April, S&P Global introduced an ESG evaluation service through its Trucost subsidiary. The company describes it as separate from credit ratings and “a new benchmark that provides a cross-sector, relative analysis of an entity's capacity to operate successfully in the future,” that “is grounded in how [ESG] factors could affect its stakeholders and potentially lead to a material financial impact.”

证券交易所的关注

Exchange companies are also bolstering their ESG positioning. The Eurex exchange, for example, introduced ESG index futures early this year; they recently launched in the U.S. with CFTC approval.

In May, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing opened a two-month comment period for an update to its stock market's ESG reporting guide and listing rules,  saying, “Investors are increasingly willing to allocate capital in sustainable investments which take into account climate change concerns and ESG reporting of issuers, and are thus demanding more information on how issuers manage their ESG risks.”

On June 3, London Stock Exchange Group announced its acquisition of Beyond Ratings, a provider of ESG data for fixed-income investors.

Climate Change: Managing a New Financial Risk, a February report and survey by consulting firm Oliver Wyman with the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers, advised that to prepare for the changing climate landscape, banks and other financial firms need to be in line with TCFD recommendations and treat climate risk as a financial risk. They should also integrate climate considerations into financial risk management programs.

“It is the risk team at financial firms – not the corporate social responsibility team – who need to be the owners of the climate risk assessment exercise,” says Oliver Wyman partner and report co-author Ilya Khakin.

The firm recommends adopting the TCFD methodology to assess not just physical risks that may result from climate change, but also transition risks – those associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy, resulting in “stranded assets” and the loss of value in carbon-intensive assets such as reserves of oil, gas and coal.

“Climate risk is a new type of risk that firms are grappling with,” Khakin says. “It is still too early to make precise measurements, but applying some measurement such as the TCFD guidance and climate scenario analysis is important, and so, we work with clients to help them integrate this data and analysis into their risk management organization.”

全球风险管理专业人士协会（GARP）致力于为风险管理条线上的各级人员，包括各大金融机构的风险从业者和监管机构人员提供风险教育和最新行业资讯。GARP China微信公众号将持续转载“GARP Risk Intelligence”系列文章，介绍科技、企业文化与治理、能源等领域对操作风险、信用风险、市场风险和资产负债管理的影响。让我们一起全面认识风险，防范风险，化解风险。