• global warming
• water sources and threats of droughts
• effect on int'l business

WTGR

International
Business
effected by
Natural
Disasters

Basically, the point I was trying to establish is that you can pretty well count on a natural disaster having a big impact on your business, either effecting your supply of component parts, or effecting the region in which your customers live - and therefore one could say that your ability to be a successful business person depends not exclusively on doing the right things in terms of marketing and customer relations, but also being prepared for a bad event cause sooner or later we all get hit by something so it is the businesses that can recover faster that will survive and thrive.

The segment was recorded and a .mpeg clip is available
see  http://www.robtv.com/articles/rob.tv/2
specifically 
 http://people.senecac.on.ca/tim.richardson
/audio/audioROBTV-DEC-2005-WITIGER.wmv

WTGR

WTGR

We have seen so many situations were businesses plan their activities based on various combinations of what customers may or may not do, only to be “sandbagged” because of an outside variable such as a violent storm effecting suppliers of one of their component parts in another region of the world

Packaging

    o Companies will be more diligent in shipping in terms of packaging for unforeseen weather damage.  Spending more money on packaging is a cost that has to be passed on to the consumer. If you can reduce the number of damaged products in transit (by having more robust packaging), this is a saving,  so the strategy of spending more on packaging might end up being cost effective.

Shipping
RFID, GPS
 

Contingency
Plans
 

Communications
 

Successful companies in 2006 will be ones that have several communication systems that could operate if weather effects telecommunications in one part of the country. Companies also need “what if” steps to follow in case there is no communication for several days and certain important situations need to be dealt with. eg.. If the phone lines are out, should we leave the transport trailers where they are, or keep driving north because we eventually need to get to the warehouse depot anyway.

Diversify
Supply
 

Money
 

Weather
Prediction
 

Essentially, maintaining some of the efficiencies that a large organization enjoys but having the ability to operate in modules as parts of the company are effected by region-wide or nation-wide emergencies.

what 
are
the 
specific
risks

Weather
(the
Geographic
Environment)

natural disasters and weather extremes, 

requires evacuation of personnel and recovery of equipment and property
- see http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/climate_change/news/news.cfm?uNewsID=2659
• storms, 
• Hurricane Katrina, Louisianna, Mississippi, Sept 2005
• Tsanami South Asia, Dec 2004
• Hurricane Ivan, summer 2004
• Hurricane Isabel, Sept 2003 

         National Hurricane Center  nhc.noaa.gov
• earthquake Iran January 2004
• wild fires - British Columbia summer of 2003, California 2003
• flooding - U.S. mid-west 2002, China 2001
• tornado
• volcano

• food production - people starve for many months afterwards
• habitation - a house in which to live
• transportation - sometimes the roads are wiped out and relief workers cannot access the bady effected areas
• all of which which effects the sovereignty of a country and in turn effects national security
• North Korea
• Indonesia, Sri Lanka

Canadian biologist and activist Dr. David Suzuki has a paper on his web site that discusses some of the things we can expect. Some of the points from his paper contributed to the list I made below
see http://www.davidsuzuki.org/files/weather_extremes.pdf

In terms of specific threats, what are some exact examples of weather extremes that we can expect in the future.
 

• Rain - we will get circumstances of flooding caused by intense rain that will overflow sewers in many modern cities and the result will cause lower floor flood damage to cities that are not necessarily close to coastal areas.
• contingency considerations
• flood insurance is uncommon for many Canadian businesses that are not in coastal communities - it should be investigated
• IT systems and critical infrastructure could be located on 2nd story structures
• drains, gutters and overflow pipes should be checked and maintained

• Ice storms that knock out power lines will leave cities without electricity for days or even weeks because the repair crews will find it difficult to navigate their trucks on roads blocked by fallen trees. The problem will be hampered by the simple fact that working on hydro lines is a skilled trade and there would not be a lot of people qualified to assist in an emergency beyond those already trained for this type of work.
• contingency considerations
• power generator back up
• gas powered appliances

• Heat waves of several days duration can put a strain on electrical power systems that lead to brown-outs or complete black-outs. An aging population in urban areas would die in large numbers if a blackout of several days happened at the time of a heat wave of several days.
• contingency considerations
• identify "at risk persons" and create action plan to deal with suffering, medication requirements and other health and safety issues
• Wildfires may increase in frequency in parts of B.C, Alberta and northern Ontario due to a combination of heat waves and increased frequency of lightning strikes. Wildfires effect the lumber industry but they also effect agriculture since the large amounts of particles in the air, as a result of smoke and ash, travel thousands of miles.
• Tornadoes are historically common in the central mid-west U.S. but in the later years of the 1990's and the first few years of the new millennium we have had increased instances of small tornadoes in south-western Ontario. Some climatologists are predicting larger scale tornadoes in the U.S. due to drastic changes in land use and global warming

Canada is one of the countries in the world with a generous abundance of fresh water and it may mean that in the future this has enourmous consequences for us in international business since water is the #1 most important thing for animal life.

WTGR

Chris Hawley, writer for Associated Press, writes about a United Nations report

"The world is turning to dust, with lands about half the size of Prince Edward Island becoming desert wasteland every year and the problem threatening to send millions of people fleeing to greener countries, the United Nations says."

"One-third of the Earth's surface is at risk, driving people into cities and destroying agriculture in vast swaths of Africa. Thirty-one per cent of Spain is threatened, while China has lost 93,000 square kilometres to desert — an area the size of Indiana — since the 1950s."

"It's a creeping catastrophe," said Michel Smitall, a spokesperson for the U.N. secretariat that oversees the 1994 accord. "Entire parts of the world might become uninhabitable. Slash-and-burn agriculture, sloppy conservation, overtaxed water supplies and soaring populations are mostly to blame."

Hawley writes
" By 2025, two-thirds of arable land in Africa will disappear, along with one-third of Asia's and one-fifth of South America's."
 

Weather Extremes

While people are trying to cope with the concept of hundreds, maybe thousands of drowned victims in the southern U.S., at the same time scientists and planners are suggesting that Katrina will NOT be the biggest natural disaster in the U.S. - it is suggested that the next earthquake, which will hit southern California some time in the next decade or two, will kill 10's of thousands of people.

Why are so many people being killed in natural disasters, like the tsunami in South Asia in December 2004? .It is argued by some experts that the answer is very simple - too many people living in large concentrated areas close to a threat. 

The threat could be a volcano ready to blow, like in parts of Latin America, or buildings constructed with shabby materials in an earthquake zone like Turkey, or houses built on low land that floods, like in China, Holland and other places.

It seems humans aren't willing to accept that "Mother Nature" is bigger and they place themselves in situations of risk, and when something bad happens, they demand the government look after them.

WTGR

Weather Extremes

Global Warming

It is tempting, in light of the recent events, (Sept 2005) in Louisianna and Mississippi to focus on the particular type of weather extreme that effected something so current - however, the fact is "...Category 4 and 5 hurricanes -- those with winds of 131 mph or higher -- rose from 10 a year in the 1970s to 18 a year since 1990."

A new study, published today in the journal Science in Sept 2005,  concludes that "... warming sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes, adding fuel to an international debate over whether global warming contributed to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina."

"According to data gathered by researchers at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the number of major Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years"
reported in The Washington Post Sept 16th, 2005

If concern over Global Warming becomes politically important to the point where it effects national government policy on energy consumption, then this will have a big impact on international businesses which rely on transportation systems that use oil and gas (which is almost everything except sail and some types of trains).

The Washingtom Posts says "Katrina reanimated a transatlantic argument over global warming policy as critics of the Bush administration have seized on it to promote mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Arguing that the science of global warming remains uncertain, President Bush in 2001 disavowed the Kyoto treaty that sets mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions..."

WTGR

Weather Extremes

Global Warming

Reported by CBC News 2007 Feb

"International scientists and officials hailed a report Friday [February 2, 2007]saying that global warming is "very likely" caused by man, and that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries" no matter how much humans control their pollution.

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, called it a "very impressive document that goes several steps beyond previous research.""

CBC added "A top U.S. government scientist, Susan Solomon, said "there can be no question that the increase in greenhouse gases are dominated by human activities.""

an
international
business
issue

Is Global Warming a reality - there are many arguments on both sides.
The pictures below show one side of the argument.

A picture represents a thousand words