TMP

Our work promotes the responsible extraction and use of essential minerals like copper, lithium, and rare earths, crucial for decarbonization efforts. We offer data-driven insights and convenings with key decision-makers, communities and other important groups. Our work catalyzes urgent and targeted action to address climate and conflict risks that might hinder production of key transition minerals. This initiative is pivotal for a variety of stakeholders, including but not limited to the automotive and energy sectors; battery manufacturers; the mining sector; as well as governments and global and regional regulatory bodies.

Our work on Transition minerals is funded by Hewlett Foundation and Quadrature Foundation.

Click the button below to learn more about our work on Transition minerals.

We analyze how climate change threatens global food security, from production to supply chains. Our insights help businesses, investors, and governments devise robust strategies to sustain food availability and stabilize market prices. Our approach to addressing climate change impacts on food security involves rigorous analysis of regional production concentrations, trade flows, and processing activities. We generate unique geospatial datasets and combine them with fieldwork insights to identify regions at risk and assess potential disruptions. Our analyses and solutions help strengthen the resilience of key actors on both supply and demand side, increasing their preparedness for near-term shocks and disruptions due to changes in agricultural market prices and supply chain dynamics.

We do this by building on our previous work and experience providing risk analyses to corporations (Unilever), governments (UK, Japan, Sweden) and research institutes (CGIAR). Examples of our work include:

• Developing complex risk profiles of agricultural productive regions
• In depth industry risk analyses (e.g., on the fragility of the cocoa sector)
• Rapid risk reviews (e.g., for the UK government during the 2020 Lebanese port explosion)
• Developing financial systems to improve agricultural insurance management

Our modeling suggests that ongoing declines in biodiversity are likely to be intensified by shifts in climate behavior in the next 5-10 years. These shifts will pose both acute threats to specific species and drive longer-term irreversible shifts in ecosystems.

TMP is responding by providing research and analysis, and through the development of systems to provide financial and technical support for communities on the front line of these shifts.

• Research and analysis

  We produce quantitative modeling and accessible analysis to provide insights on how near-term weather shocks will feed into longer term shifts in land and seascapes. This insight is targeted at conservation practitioners, funders, the private sector and governments to inform both longer-term planning and rapid responses. Our approach draws on consultative processes with diverse stakeholder groups to ensure it reflects realities on the ground and is geared towards informing appropriate responses.

• Systems for support

  For over a decade, we’ve been supporting and developing systems that drive local conservation and boost economic empowerment. Notable successes include the Dryad system, which has safeguarded over 80,000 hectares of tropical forest in Central Africa with backing from the UK government and the Ford Foundation; and our work with Bonsucro to develop community-based monitoring systems for sugarcane growers to help improve environmental impacts alongside business objectives.

Building on this progress, we are now testing a novel approach (developed by ASRA), to assess and respond to systemic risks that threaten global biodiversity. There are two strands to this work:

• First, developing a global model that identifies priority areas for biodiversity conservation, augmenting approaches focused on the connectivity and longer-term resilience of landscapes with unique data on near-term climate and social risks. This modeling approach aims to provide a systemic perspective to understanding risks to biodiversity to support targeted and effective responses.
• Second, engaging biodiversity, conservation, and economic development experts through workshops to elicit local perspectives and to develop effective responses to protect biodiversity in the areas identified as priority targets by the model. Our prior experience demonstrates that catalyzing locally-led responses and action is crucial to generating positive and lasting results both for biodiversity and for communities.

This pilot initiative is funded through ASRA by the United Nations Foundation. Outputs from the project will be available starting in January 2025.

Governments, militaries and other security apparatus are dramatically underprepared for the impacts of near-term climate change on global and national security environments. TMP is in a unique position to address these shortcomings in planning and preparedness, reducing the risk of conflict and increasing opportunities for peacebuilding.

Our discussions with researchers and practitioners in the defense arena suggest there are three problems that we can help with:

• Conservative climate modeling: Like many other government functions, security is overly dependent on IPCC data and scenarios. This leads many to underestimate the urgence and severity of climate security risks.
• Simplistic cumulative climate analysis: The way that contextual factors are linked with climate risks in both quantitative and qualitative analysis is very basic and must be radically enhanced.
• Weak linkage to priorities and decision-making processes: Climate security is still seen as a sideshow or silo. There is a real need to demonstrate its central relevance to immediate security priorities and decision-making processes.

So, our analysis decodes how climate risks reshape security landscapes. We have two broad and interconnected workstreams that leverage both our experience and our current understanding of what security decision-makers will be most interested in.

• International security

  Showing how climate will impact on international security and particularly great power relations, with a focus on identifying the risks and opportunities that this shift creates for a range of different state actors. Examples of this work include projects on:

• • Logistics and trade

    How will climate change create challenges for military logistics and possible disruptions in international trade? This will consider direct physical impacts on infrastructure as well as cumulative impacts on the security environment around it.

• • Strategic readiness and diplomacy

    What impacts will climate change have on existing diplomatic and security arrangements? Where will it exacerbate competition and where can it create opportunities for closer collaboration? How can we develop a complete view of international risks and opportunities to adapt logistics, strategy and tactics?

• National security

  Showing how and where climate change will lead to deterioration in national security, with a focus on subnational dynamics and military capacity. Examples of this work include projects on:

• • Domestic and humanitarian deployment

    How do changes in national security requirements (e.g. domestic military deployment for disaster response) lead to military capacity overburdening and an inability to provide humanitarian support internationally?

TMP is working with partners like RUSI in the UK and the Atlantic Council in the US to produce powerful, incisive and unique analyses on the way that climate will shape security. These analyses often feed into tabletop exercises and wargaming processes that help decision-makers to understand and relate to the interconnected risks and opportunities that climate change contributes to.

Debt vulnerabilities in many countries have risen sharply over the last decade, exacerbated by the impact of the COVID-19 shock and Russia’s war in Ukraine. This means that countries around the world are already facing fiscal constraints and may not be able to adequately deal with climate impacts.

The increasing costs of responding to climate change, combined with shrinking fiscal revenues caused by climate-related disruptions to economic activity, is likely to further strain countries’ fiscal space. Without sufficient levels of debt relief and remediation plans, these countries will not be able to invest in urgently needed climate adaptation initiatives. Solving this issue is particularly important for countries critical to global stability and decarbonization, such as producers of key minerals, key food producing countries or countries with biodiversity hotspots.

TMP staff has decades of experience in the financial sector. We use this experience to help inform debt repayment strategies in the face of climate-induced fiscal pressures. Our approach uses cutting-edge data to forecast costs and guide fiscal strategies, bringing together various parties – from governments to international organizations to private creditors – to agree on collaborative and data-driven solutions.

As climate change takes hold, many local governments, community organizations, and companies are becoming aware that we have entered a new era of extreme and highly disruptive weather. Unfortunately, those same communities often lack realistic, practical and clear information that helps them plan for what’s about to happen. To fill this gap, TMP has created a new philanthropic initiative to help local communities prepare for near-term climate change impacts.

We empower communities with actionable, high-quality climate risk data and implementation support to enhance resilience. Our mission is to close the gap between climate adaptation goals and real-world preparedness by providing practical, locally tailored solutions.

Using locally-led processes, we enhance context-responsive solutions to strengthen the local social fabric and create a shared vision to tackle the growing challenges of climate change. Through our inclusive and participatory approaches, the project is anticipated to yield relevant, equitable, and enduring solutions and generate important co-benefits, such as health, livelihood, and economic improvements.

We do this by delivering timely information to help local governments, communities and businesses to address climate near-term risks, prioritizing simplicity and customization. First, we engage with local communities to understand their specific needs. Then, we tailor our data and analysis to these requirements, ensuring it’s easy to interpret and actionable for decision-making. Lastly, we offer hand-on support to local leaders to empower governments, communities and businesses to recognize risks and opportunities and to cooperate in designing and implementing solutions.

The system is undergoing rigorous testing before broad implementation. In 2024, our first pilot project will launch in Coyhaique, Chilean Patagonia, with additional pilots planned across Latin America and Asia in the coming year.

Stakeholders include:

• Municipal Governments
• Regional Authorities
• Investors
• Financial Institutions