Adaptation to Climate Change

Edited by ESG News

What is adaptation to climate change

Climate change and its dramatic impacts are evident for everyone to see. In 2024, the rise in the Earth’s average temperature exceeded the 1.5 °C threshold for the first time - a limit identified by the Paris Agreement as the maximum beyond which the damage caused by global warming becomes more severe and difficult to contain. According to the scientific community, any further increase would make extreme events more frequent and intense, with growing impacts on ecosystems, economies, and societies.

Climate change adaptation strategies refer to all actions aimed at making territories and natural, social, and economic systems less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Adaptation, therefore, does not directly address the causes of rising temperatures but seeks to protect existing infrastructure from the inevitable consequences.

The atmospheric lifetime of greenhouse gases is very long. For example, carbon dioxide (CO₂) remains in the atmosphere for around 100 years. This means that, under current conditions, even if all countries fully met their commitments, global warming could still reach approximately 2.8°C by the end of the century.

Mitigation efforts therefore remain essential, but they do not appear to be sufficient on their own. There is an urgent need to strengthen adaptation strategies in order to limit the growing risks and impacts on ecosystems, economies, and societies.

For businesses, adapting to climate change means assessing physical risks, integrating resilience into strategy, innovating products and services, and strengthening business continuity in an increasingly unstable environment.

The strategies that can be implemented therefore begin with a careful analysis of one’s own risks and include, subsequently, the development of drought-resistant crops, the implementation of physical barriers to protect civil or industrial structures from flooding, early warning systems for hurricanes or wildfires, and even financial aspects such as insurance coverage for damage caused by extreme weather.

Since these measures are primarily implemented at the local level, the involvement of local governments and communities is crucial to their success. However, this does not eliminate the need for supranational coordination, both to ensure adequate financial flows, which are currently insufficient, and to strengthen data availability, risk assessment, and governance [1]. This led to the decision to enshrine the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) within the Paris Agreement. In the subsequent rounds of negotiations, leading up to the COP30, significant progress has been made in developing common indicators and strengthening financial commitments to support adaptation efforts [2].

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In 2021, the European Commission launched [3] an adaptation strategy aimed at making the European Union fully resilient to the inevitable impacts of climate change by 2050, working on three fronts: knowledge, policies, and the implementation of actions.

The European State of the Climate 2024 [4] describes European cities as particularly proactive, with 19,000 adaptation actions in 2022, primarily targeting the water sector (17%), buildings (13.6%), the environment (11.7%), soil (10.8%), agriculture (9.3%), and health (7.6%). More than half of the EU’s cities now have an adaptation plan: a significant step forward from the 26% recorded in 2018. Italy also has a national plan, approved in December 2023 [5] .

But transforming strategies into results requires adequate resources. A study [6] commissioned by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Agency (CINEA) estimates that Member States will need approximately 70 billion euros per year in adaptation investments through 2050. Specifically, about 30 billion euros are needed for infrastructure, 21 billion euros for ecosystems, and 12 billion euros for food security. The figures are substantial, but it is also true that, for both public and private stakeholders, investing in adaptation is economically beneficial. An analysis of 320 cases across 12 countries finds that every dollar spent can generate over $10.5 in benefits, with average annual returns ranging from 20% to 27% [7] .

Climate Change Adaptation for Angelini Industries

For an industrial group, adapting to climate change means equipping itself with tools and strategies to manage impacts that are already visible and those that may emerge in the coming years, protecting operations, people, and supply chains. With this in mind, in 2024 Angelini Industries conducted the Group’s first climate risk assessment, mapping vulnerabilities related to physical risks - such as extreme events or water stress - and transition risks, in order to provide a more solid foundation for industrial and investment decisions.

Adaptation also translates into design and operational choices. In 2024, Angelini Pharma integrated the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach into its strategy, expanding the analysis beyond climate-changing emissions alone. Five strategic products across different therapeutic areas were evaluated throughout their entire life cycle - from production to disposal - to identify the most significant environmental impacts, including water consumption, waste generation, and resource use. This analysis provides a technical foundation for guiding eco-design decisions and product portfolio innovation, making industrial choices more informed and aligned with long-term objectives.

Building effective partnerships across the supply chain is equally essential to identify the most significant risks throughout the value chain and encourage suppliers to integrate sustainability into their business practices. To this end, Angelini Industries has included sustainable procurement targets in its ESG Plan, including the commitment to assess more than 90% of its strategic suppliers against ESG criteria by 2027. As of 31 December 2025, the Group had already achieved 66% of this target.

From this perspective, adaptation contributes to a sustainability strategy that encompasses diverse and interconnected areas, with impacts manifesting in both the short and long term, and which guides the Group’s overall evolution.