Business experts say Australian companies should stop ignoring the future effects of climate change.

“Climate change is upon us but the business community has not yet fully considered the implications,” says Dr Martina Linnenluecke, from the University of Queensland’s Business School.

“Companies should be planning now to safeguard their long-term future.”

Dr Linnenluecke and UQ’s Professor Andrew Griffiths have spent 10 years working with businesses to develop climate change strategies, and have now published a book - The Climate Resilient Organisation - to spread their expertise even further.

“Some firms are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there has been little discussion of how to cope with the physical impact of climate change,” Dr Linnenlueke said.

Storms, floods and other climate events were likely to be more damaging for businesses than higher temperatures, and few areas would escape the effects.

“Even where businesses sustain no direct damage, they are likely to be affected by power cuts or damage to infrastructure,” Dr Linnenluecke said.

“With companies increasingly reliant on high-tech systems, any outages can result in large-scale disruption.”

Professor Griffiths said the key difficulty for individual firms was in determining the likely effects on their business and how best to respond.

“With the increase in intensity of extreme events, business leaders need to think in terms of recovery and risk, as well as longer-term resilience,” he said.

“These events are not going away.”

The book argues that businesses have two courses of action: reducing greenhouse gas emissions to try to prevent further climate change, and adapting to change.

The authors suggest companies do both.