Over a short period, climate change has become routinely included in government and business scenario planning and risk management strategies, having been on the margins until the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed strong scientific consensus. The signs are that related water and biodiversity risks will begin to be included in the near future.

Risk management is a structured approach to managing uncertainty related to a threat, a sequence of human activities including: risk assessment, strategies development to manage it, and mitigation of risk using managerial resource¹.

The strategies include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.

Some traditional risk managements are focused on risks stemming from physical or legal causes (e.g. natural disasters or fires, accidents, ergonomics, death and lawsuits). Financial risk management, on the other hand, focuses on risks that can be managed using traded financial instruments.

The objective of risk management is to reduce different risks related to a pre-selected domain to the level accepted by society. It may refer to numerous types of threats caused by environment, technology, humans, organizations and politics. On the other hand it involves all means available for humans, or in particular, for a risk management entity (person, staff, organisation).

A range of guidelines for environmental risk assessment and management are available, e.g. DEFRA (1995)