INTHEBLACK April 2025 - Magazine - Page 40
F E AT U R E
“At the IPCC, [in Singapore] we’ve seen cases of people
choosing to move to a safer place for themselves and for
their families, and usually these are the people that have
high amounts of knowledge capital and financial capital.”
WINSTON CHOW, UNITED NATIONS’ INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Change (IPCC) Working Group II, says
there has been a shifting baseline of warmer
temperatures that are reflected not just in
the averages, but also in the extremes.
“If nothing is done in terms of capping
greenhouse gas emissions over the next
10 years, we’ll see more hot spells and
we’ll see more periods where the heat index
that combines heat and humidity will be
more intense.”
Chow notes that, on average, rainfall
in Singapore is not projected to change
substantially. “We still get almost 2.4 metres
of rain a year, but the challenge is that
there appear to be increasing periods
of more intense and short-duration
rainfalls that occur,” he says. “And, once
it hits the ground, if it can’t go into drains
or enter the soil, it ponds and floods, leading
to traffic disruptions and inconveniences
in public transportation.”
Along with the impact on physical
infrastructure, Chow says climate change
may also affect social infrastructure.
“At the IPCC, we’ve seen cases of people
choosing to move to a safer place for
themselves and for their families, and usually
these are the people that have high amounts
of knowledge capital and financial capital.
“If you are a city manager in a coastal city,
this means your tax revenue may drop when
people start leaving and, for c-suite folks,
your best and brightest personnel may want
to relocate.”
A key climate impact for Singapore is
food security, Chow says.
“We import more than 90 per cent
of our food from elsewhere,” he says.
“The short-term fluctuations in terms
of price can have massive downstream
cascading impacts on markets that Singapore
depends on for importing agricultural and
food products into the island.”
SYDNEY AND MELBOURNE
Flooding in New South Wales (NSW ) costs
the state’s economy about A$250 million
every year and the NSW Government notes
WHAT IS IFRS S2 ALL ABOUT?
IFRS S2 requires an entity to disclose information about climate-related
risks and opportunities in their annual financial statements. These include
physical risks as well as transition risks associated with moving to
a lower-carbon economy.
Information to be disclosed includes:
• governance processes, controls and procedures related to climate-related risks
and opportunities
• strategies for managing climate-related risks and opportunities
• processes used to identify, assess, prioritise and monitor climate-related risks
and opportunities, including whether and how they are integrated into
and inform the overall risk management process
• performance in relation to its climate-related risks and opportunities.
40 INTHEBLACK April 2025
