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INDUSTRY NEWS


19 May 2008

Environmental risk management 'a growing priority'


Pressure from stakeholders and customers, complex business relationships and the business threat posed by climate change are all conspiring to raise companies' awareness of the environmental risks that they face, it has been claimed.

According to a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), environmental risk is rapidly rising up the corporate agenda, but most companies are still failing to formally consider it when outlining their major strategic activities.

Questioning 320 risk managers, the EIU learned that most are increasing the resources being dedicated to environmental risk management, even if it is still being managed as a separate category from the overall risk management framework.

"Environmental risk management is rising up the corporate agenda, but many companies are in the early stages of addressing this issue," noted Rob Mitchell, editor of the report.

"While there are some companies that take environmental risk very seriously and have developed robust processes to identify, assess and mitigate their exposure, others continue to manage environmental risks in an ad hoc way."

Meanwhile, the EIU recently conducted research revealing that 77 per cent of global financial institutions now have a formal IT risk management strategy in place, recognition of technology's growing importance to business operations.

© 2006 Adfero Ltd.

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