Listen "Game Changers: Rewiring Australian regulation for long-term climate resilience"
Episode Synopsis
Ashurst’s Elena Lambros welcomes special guest Dr Dariel De Sousa, a former Director of Compliance and Enforcement at the Australian Energy Regulator, who is now a leading voice in climate risk, regulation and governance. Dariel draws on her deep professional and academic expertise to reveal the urgent need for regulatory reform in the face of systemic risks caused by climate change. The discussion traverses from the fragmented regulatory frameworks that have been inadequate to effectively respond to past natural disasters (e.g. Queensland’s 2011 floods and Victoria’s 2009 Black Saturday bushfires), to more promising regulatory progress in the US and in Victoria that reflect a system-wide approach to managing climate risks. Dariel argues that we cannot afford to wait for natural disasters to occur before we reform regulatory frameworks. Instead, regulation should embed a proactive risk governance approach so that climate risks can be pre-empted and managed in a similar way to how large corporations manage the spectrum of risks they face across their diverse operations through their enterprise risk management frameworks. This episode is a powerful call to action for governments to codify climate resilience into law, to adapt society’s critical systems to the shocks stemming from our warming world. Listen to more episodes in the Game Changers mini-series – featuring an array of thought-provoking guests – by subscribing to ESG Matters @ Ashurst on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.