Preparing Governments for Future Shocks: Building Climate Resilience

This post first appeared on IBM Business of Government. Read the original article.

Government leaders increasingly agree that “rare and unexpected events” are now neither rare nor unexpected.

Indeed, they are shocks—more frequent and more
destabilizing. While governments were exposed to a host of mostly unforeseen
challenges from the global pandemic, they have captured valuable lessons.
Leaders understand where they need to concentrate their readiness efforts for
“future shocks,” carrying the momentum from rapid, pandemic-driven innovation
into their preparation.

The IBM Center for The Business of Government and the IBM Institute for Business Value, in
partnership with the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and a range of other partners,
launched an initiative last year to help government leaders further identify those core capabilities
critical to building resilience. Collaborative action to address anticipated threats requires focus and
cooperation across a broad ecosystem of partners and stakeholders. Each step forward helps build
progress toward addressing major national and international priorities, including the Grand Challenges
in Public Administration put forth by the Academy.

Over the past year, we convened a series of international roundtable discussions with global leaders
from across the public, private, academic, and nonprofit sectors to capture lessons across multiple key
domain areas:

  • Emergency preparedness and response
  • Cybersecurity
  • Supply chain
  • Sustainability
  • Workforce skills

    In each of these domains, insights from the
    roundtables have helped to identify strategies
    and solutions for governments to address the
    challenges that lie ahead, by identifying a set
    of practical and specific recommendations for
    near-term implementation.

    A recent roundtable focused on climate
    resilience, identifying capabilities through
    which government leaders and stakeholders
    can move forward. The session addressed the
    overall sustainability challenge, as well as
    three major topics:

  • Clean energy transition
  • Sustainable development (including land
    management)
  • Water management

    This latest report in our “future shocks” series,
    authored by Academy Fellow Chris Mihm,
    addresses how governments can strengthen
    their climate resilience. We hope this report—
    which summarizes the six imperatives that
    emerged from the expert roundtable—provides
    government leaders and stakeholders with a
    practical and actionable roadmap to address
    this critically important issue.

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