How to adapt business planning to the scenario of the coronavirus pandemic and the emergency of climate change? That is the question that was posed in a webinar carried out by Climate Action with the support of Eurochile, in which Juanita López, director of Climate Change and Sustainability of KPMG Colombia participated as main speakers; and Luis Felipe Ross, partner at Matrix Consulting.

Given the rapid spread of Covid-19, companies have had to quickly adapt the use of remote work technologies, in the midst of a massive change where we must plan new ways of adapting to a pandemic crisis that, in its later stage, will lead the world to face a “new normal” that will require companies to reconsider their business models.

According to the experts, in this scenario companies should involve organizational rethinking within their strategic planning, taking into account both current changes and new forms of adaptation to a pandemic crisis and climate change, exploring the feasibility of low development carbon that can represent an opportunity for economic, social and sustainable growth, not only in future decision-making but in the short and medium term.

Both presentations analyzed the importance of planning to overcome the crisis generated from Covid-19. According to the experts, it is important to establish a high standard of flexibility and pragmatism in the short term, in order to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on companies. With this, it is substantive to consider post-pandemic reactivation strategies with critical points to address, first distinguishing the urgent from the important.

The importance of planning was also discussed to prevent health disasters like the one we are experiencing, but also to prevent possible future disasters caused by the climate emergency. In fact, an aspect that was also commented related to the fact that the effects associated with climate change are on a larger scale than those that depend on Covid-19.

For this reason, they concluded, making the right planning often involves significant investments in the short term, but in the long term, reality shows that, it is definitively a saving. “It is cheaper to prevent than to cure, or to deal with disaster,” they said.