Climate change presents a significant challenge to the business sector. As the threat of climate change increases, so will the risks for many businesses. These risks include disrupted supply chains, reduced availability of increasingly scarce natural resources, damage to vital infrastructure and utilities, disrupted transport and logistics routes, heightened price and market volatility, and unpredictable impacts on the workforce and consumers.

The Queensland Government is committed to supporting key economic sectors, like the small business sector, manage their climate change risks. As such, the Queensland Government Department of Environment and Science (DES) has engaged  NCCARF (National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University) and BMT to develop a climate change risk management tool for small businesses in Queensland.The tool will build on existing resources (Climate Change in Australia, CSIRO, BoM, NCCARF) and provide guidance on how best to use information to understand and manage climate change risks. 

We invite small businesses from all sectors e.g. agriculture, tourism, hospitality, retail, food and beverage, construction and trade, etc. in Queensland to participate in the consultation process and to help us understand the design requirements of this tool. Consultation will be in the form of an online survey and face-to-face interviews. Your responses to this survey will help us design a climate risk assessment tool that is more likely to suit the needs of small businesses, is useful and long-lived. 

We also ask that interested parties self-nominate and/or propose other important stakeholders for face-to-face consultation by contacting Dr Fahim Tonmoy (email f.tonmoy@griffith.edu.au). 

The online survey can be accessed in this link till the 15th of October 2018. Please forward this email to others who may wish to complete survey.