Climate Change and Its Impact on Businesses in Australia

Running Head: Climate Change and Its impact on Businesses
Climate Change and Its Impact on
Businesses in Australia
Report
System04104
9/30/2019

Climate Change and Its impact on Businesses
1
Introduction
Climate change is a global issue and it affects the entire world. It has also some negative
effects on the business practices apart from affecting human and animal lives. The major
issues related to climate change is that it affect the production process and increases the cost
of overall business operation because almost every business organisation depends on energy
and water sources for the successful operation of the business and energy and these sources
are directly related with pollution and emission of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases and
pollution are the major cause of climate change because these factors increase the
temperature of Earth as well as affecting the Ozone layer1. This report discusses all these
factors and its impact on Australian business organisations.
Current Issues related to Climate Change and Its impact
on Business or the Businesses
Climate change is related to extreme cold or hot temperature, strong winds, untimely seasons,
and number of natural disasters like Earthquakes, cyclone, draught, and flood etc. The major
thing that is related with climate change is pollution, which is generally comes from the
carbon emission on the Earth. However, the major impact of these factors that an organisation
that depends on the natural resources like coal or oil may have to cut the consumptions of
these energy sources to meet the national regulatory requirements and laws, which applies on
every business to protect the nature and environment2.
Another factor this is related with the climate change is weather conditions. Without human
resources, no organisation can run for long time. Every organisation has large numbers of
1 Kjellström, E., Bärring, L., Nikulin, G., Nilsson, C., Persson, G. and Strandberg, G., Production and use of
regional climate model projections–A Swedish perspective on building climate services. Climate services, vol.
2, 2016, pp.15-29
2 Mran, A., Ooi, S.K., Wong, C.Y. and Hashim, F., Business strategy for climate change: An ASEAN
perspective. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, vol. 23, no. 4, 2016, pp. 213-227

Climate Change and Its impact on Businesses
2
people who are working all around the clock to achieve the objectives of the organisation.
High temperature or extremely cold conditions may affect the productivity of the people and
it will directly relate with the business performance. Every employee wants a safe and
comfortable place for the work and ensures that there should be work and health safety in the
organisation. However, if such type of climate change issue arises in the organisation then it
directly affect the performance of these people and make the fatigue and exhausts. The rise in
temperature or extremely cold temperature may result in fatigues, heat stroke, cramps, rashes,
and exhaustion. However, the Australian fair work policy, 2009 does not have any specific
leave entitlement for employees who cannot join the work or their duties due to such type of
extreme hot situation of cold temperature3.
Analysis of the impact of the issue on the Business
Climate change directly affects the performance and profitability of the organisation. The
government of every country including Australian is forcing the business organisation to
recycle the waste products and rely less on natural or fresh raw material. This will reduce the
carbon emission in the country4. Although, it is really difficult for the business organisations
that how they can completely rely on wastes products or recyclable products. Recycling of
waste products and use them again is a costly technique of production or manufacturing
products that cannot be adopted by every business organisation.
This also affects the profitability of the organisation because to reduce the carbon emission in
the country, every business organisation must implement the latest technology equipment in
the organisation and for a low budget organisation; it is really a costly technique. The
organisation also needs to make changes in their schedule plan and consumption of energy to
produce the products. For example, a manufacturing company that uses coal as a primary
energy resource and that is a low cost energy resource cannot afford the natural gases or oil,
3 Rodríguez-Olalla, A. and Avilés-Palacios, C., Integrating sustainability in organisations: An activity-based
sustainability model. Sustainability, vol. 9, no. 6, 2017, p.1072
4 Soares, M.B. and Dessai, S. Barriers and enablers to the use of seasonal climate forecasts amongst
organisations in Europe. Climatic Change, vol. 137, no. 1-2, 2016, pp.89-103.