Article

How Do We Build Resilience Before the Next Heatwave?

2026-08-24 · By Dr. Sally Uren OBE, Chief Acceleration Officer & Executive Director, Forum for the Future

Businesses must act now to build climate-health resilience before extreme heat causes greater disruption. Heatwaves, droughts and air pollution threaten workforce wellbeing, productivity and supply chains. This article outlines why integrating climate and health into business strategy is a commercial imperative, and highlights practical actions businesses can take to protect people, strengthen resilience and maintain performance.

Heatwaves around the world are fast becoming a regular occurrence in our daily lives.We are now beginning to understand the profound direct and indirect impacts of extreme heat on our health. We are also beginning to understand the equally real and significant impact on our economy. From lost productivity to disrupted supply chains, heat impacts business performance in multiple ways. Heat is bad for us, bad for business.

But heatwaves are only one expression of a much bigger climate-health crisis. Droughts, floods, air pollution and rising temperatures are driving worsening health outcomes, from heat-related illness to respiratory disease and mental health impacts.

For business, the message is clear: climate, health and commercial performance are no longer separate issues. They are deeply interconnected.

The question is no longer whether businesses will be affected by climate-driven health risks. It is whether they will build resilience before those risks become even more disruptive and costly.

Why it matters

Businesses, especially those in healthcare, consumer goods and supply-chain dependent sectors are most vulnerable to the intensifying effects of climate and health on their business success and so must act fast

Yet, too many businesses still treat climate action, health equity and enterprise risk as separate agendas, owned by separate teams. That approach is increasingly out of step with reality.

Corporate leaders need to break down internal silos, embed health and climate resilience directly into core commercial strategies, and recognise that prioritising climate resilience is a long-term commercial imperative.

The business case for taking action

As extreme weather and health impacts escalate, the commercial case for proactive adaptation is clearer and more urgent than ever before. Here are four compelling reasons to act:

1. Protecting business continuity: Supply chain disruption and declining workforce productivity pose significant risks to business operations. Floods, droughts and heatwaves disrupt supply chains, delay production, increase costs and create unsafe working conditions. In addition, workforce productivity faces threats from extreme heat and air pollution. In June 2026, a single severe heatwave week in the UK resulted in an estimated 24 million lost working hours and £1.15 billion in lost economic output.

1. The cost of inaction is rising: As a result of recent heatwaves the financial implications of inaction are finally being discussed in the business community – but what we need now is action and not more rhetoric that slows down when weather cools. Economic losses, declining productivity and mounting mental health challenges are piling up. A 2023 survey found that 43% of workers experience eco-anxiety frequently, leading to demotivation and loss of focus.

1. Protecting social license and de-risking portfolios: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations remain central to long-term enterprise value and investor scrutiny. With 88% of asset managers in the U.S. viewing ESG metrics as an escalating priority, proactive climate-health alignment protects corporate reputation, lowers the cost of capital, and attracts top-tier talent.

1. Navigating policy gaps and opportunities: Businesses play a key role in filling gaps that public policy does not cover – In the US, for example, states including California and Oregon have introduced heat-safety protections for workers, while national standards remain uneven.

What can businesses do now?

The good news is that building climate-health resilience does not require businesses to create another standalone strategy. It requires them to connect the dots between the strategies they already have.

Businesses can start by:

• Integrating climate and health into business strategy: Move from a siloed approach to issues on climate and health and instead view climate impacts on health as both a key risk, to be included in risk registers, but also an opportunity for product and service innovation.
• Strengthening workforce and community resilience: Invest in climate-adaptive infrastructure, safe working conditions, and policies that protect worker and community well-being.
• Fostering multi-sector partnerships: Collaborate with policymakers, NGOs, and communities to remove systemic barriers and scale equitable solutions. A great example of this is the Leeds Anchor Network (LAN) in the UK, a coalition of 13 major institutions (including local government, NHS trusts, and universities) leveraging collective purchasing power to foster inclusive growth, tackle poverty, and reduce health inequalities locally.
• Building resilient supply chains: Rethink sourcing to prioritise living wages, localised production, regenerative agriculture, and community health.
• Advancing health literacy and education: Equip employees, supply-chain partners, and communities with practical knowledge to prepare for and mitigate extreme weather risks.
• Measuring and reporting impact: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) linking carbon reduction directly to tangible public health and community outcomes.

What this looks like in practice

Businesses do not need to choose between the health & safety of workforces in extreme heat and economic productivity. Done well, they can reinforce one another.

Wates Group, a leading UK construction and property services company, is putting worker health at the centre of its response to rising heat. As UK and European heatwaves intensify, construction workers are increasingly exposed to dangerous working conditions. In May 2026, Wates Group required all sites to reassess working arrangements for heat stress, dehydration and UV exposure.

Sites were instructed to reschedule work to cooler periods, increase shade and rest breaks, reduce exposure to direct sunlight and adapt plans throughout the day as conditions changed. This sits alongside Wates’ longer-term work to assess how climate scenarios could affect its operations and how buildings can be designed for a warmer climate.

The result: Wates reported no injuries or ill-health resulting from hot weather.

It is a powerful example of what resilience looks like in practice: anticipate the risk, adapt operations and protect people before disruption becomes harm.

From rhetoric to resilience

Protecting people and protecting business performance are becoming two sides of the same challenge.

In a more volatile climate, early adaptation can protect productivity, secure supply chains, strengthen workforce loyalty and reduce the cost of disruption. Waiting until risks materialise will only make those interventions more expensive, and potentially less effective.

As I look ahead to New York Climate Week, I hope this summer of extreme heat on both sides of the Atlantic serves as a wake-up call.

The next heatwave is coming. The question is whether your business will be ready for it.

Editor’s note: Dr Sally Uren OBE is Executive Director and Chief Acceleration Officer of international sustainability non-profit Forum for the Future, following eleven years (2013 – 2024) as Chief Executive. During this time, she has worked alongside many of the recognised leading businesses in sustainability, across the UK, Europe and the US, and has delivered a number of Forum’s multi-stakeholder collaborations.

As an ecologist, Sally has always been interested in interconnections, and it was back in 2017 when she first began to see the connections between climate change and health, realising that everything a business does to mitigate and adapt to climate change has a health benefit. Three years later Sally founded the Climate and Health Coalition, which aims to unlock private sector action at the intersection of climate and health. Since then Sally has been working with healthcare companies, food companies, insurers and infrastructure providers to galvanise action on issues as diverse as heat resilience and air pollution.

Sally received an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for services to sustainability in business. She is also an expert judge for the Kings Awards for Sustainable Development.