COVID-19 and Climate: Risk, Mitigation, and Resilience

RMI argues that the COVID-19 pandemic mirrors the systemic, unpredictable risks of climate change, highlighting the failure of traditional economic and financial models to manage externalities. The document advocates for a combined approach of mitigation and resilience, emphasizing the role of collective financial sector action and 'green' infrastructure to transition to a low-carbon, stable world.

• The COVID-19 pandemic and climate change both exhibit characteristics of complex, stochastic risk where effects are exponential, causation is often indirect or hard to pinpoint, and impacts are compounded by the interplay of health, economic, and social factors.
• Current political and economic systems are ill-equipped to handle systemic risks like carbon emissions because they are designed for human interaction rather than the human relationship with nature, failing to effectively manage unmanaged externalities.
• Traditional financial risk management is inadequate for climate change because it relies on historical data and 'normal' distributions, whereas unmitigated climate change would create a 'new normal' exceeding the capacity of any single institution's financial models.
• Collective action within the financial sector can drive decarbonization, as evidenced by climate-related shareholder resolutions for fossil fuel companies and the Poseidon Principles, where banks holding over 25% of global shipping debt aim to decarbonize the shipping sector.
• Mitigation and resilience can be mutually reinforcing through specific policy and infrastructure projects, such as weatherizing homes, building EV charging networks and transmission lines, or implementing solar-powered microgrids that are hurricane-proof.

APA

RMI (2020). COVID-19 and Climate: Risk, Mitigation, and Resilience. https://rmi.org/resources/covid-19-and-climate-risk-mitigation-and-resilience/

Chicago

RMI. COVID-19 and Climate: Risk, Mitigation, and Resilience. 2020. https://rmi.org/resources/covid-19-and-climate-risk-mitigation-and-resilience/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=RMI |title=COVID-19 and Climate: Risk, Mitigation, and Resilience |date=1 April 2020 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/covid-19-and-climate-risk-mitigation-and-resilience/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{rmi2020covid19, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{COVID-19 and Climate: Risk, Mitigation, and Resilience}}, publisher = {RMI}, year = {2020}, month = apr, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/covid-19-and-climate-risk-mitigation-and-resilience/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }