Adaptation to climate change of Moroccan companies: towards an appropriate climate risk anticipation tool

Abstract

In a fragile and unpredictable economic and health context, Climate Change (CC) is emerging as an eminent issue for businesses in Morocco. This planetary scourge is a double-edged issue. It exacerbates the vulnerability of these companies by affecting the supply of raw materials, energy, and water. It can also be an opportunity for companies that opt for innovative mitigation and adaptation solutions to address CC. Today, the tools and approaches for monitoring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are relatively standardized and known. However, the methods used to characterize vulnerability and develop adaptation strategies remain limited and little known. To this end, the Climate Expert tool (CE)† has been tested on a panel of Moroccan companies to enable them to characterize their vulnerability to CC and to develop relevant adaptation strategies. A global and detailed analysis was carried out on the evaluation reports, the results of a targeted survey, and completed by a SWOT‡ analysis on the consistency and use of the CE tool. Three groups of interlocutors were involved in this analysis: CE experts, economic operators, and state and project officials. To better plan adaptation measures, this analysis emphasizes the need to move the approach proposed by CE towards an integrated, standardized design. In addition, the implementation of adaptation requires, in particular the setting up of support and advisory instruments and entities in charge of steering adaptation actions within companies. The next stage of this work will be devoted to improving and adapting the CE tool to meet the needs of concrete actions in such companies to deal with CC.

Towards a standardized tool for improving the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation in Moroccan private companies

“…However, similar to other developing countries, Moroccan firms are already investing in adaptation measures without identifying them as such. Evaluations conducted among these companies have shown that almost all of the adaptation measures undertaken concern the production process or meeting and anticipating environmental regulations (Jaouhari, Stour, and Agoumi 2021a).…”

“…This tool was developed in three successive stages. As a first step, a literature review was conducted on the evaluation reports about twenty Moroccan companies using the Climate Expert (EC) tool (Jaouhari, Stour, and Agoumi 2021a).…”