Despite the predictions, the Paris games did not surpass those held in Tokyo in 2021 as the hottest on record. It did, however, increase awareness of the need for more robust heat protection strategies from employers and establishing a culture of acclimatization for workers to protect them from escalating risks of heat-related illnesses.

CSO Partner’s summer reading list includes guidance on how individual bodies can adapt to the heat and the growing interest in hiring professionals who specialize in climate responses to mitigate the impact of extreme heat. Acclimatization is an imperative. According to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), almost half of heat-related deaths occur on a worker’s very first day on the job and over 70% of heat-related deaths occur during a worker’s first week. Gradually increasing your exposure to very hot or very cold conditions helps your body adapt, making it better at managing temperature extremes. This adaptation process improves your body’s ability to produce heat in the cold and cool down in the heat, helping you stay comfortable and safe in extreme temperatures.

One often missed opportunity is the use of mindfulness and yoga to help bodies acclimatize to extreme heat and cold. Administrators globally are updating their occupational heat guidance, including incorporating consideration of the mind-body connection by recognizing that how different people feel about, and react to, extreme heat stress make a difference in its impact. Incorporating practices like mindfulness and yoga improves body awareness, and reduces stress, both of which improve your ability to regulate your physiological responses to extreme temperature change. You can find out more about nature-based wellness programs in in CSO Partner’s senior specialist Dr. Cristina Allen’s blog.

We’re also taking some of our downtime this summer to dig into the ESG backlash and how corporate leaders can best navigate short-term “political opportunism” on ESG. Navigation requires balancing valid business reasons for focusing on specific ESG issues with what could be legitimate concerns over some companies’ ESG strategies, particularly where they stray too far from ESG’s original intent to address factors of interest to investors. We like the focus on defining and then controlling a credible, relevant sustainability narrative in this 2023 Barron article. And maintaining perspective!

CSO Partner senior ESG specialist Dr. Dinah Koehler shared her insights on identifying, evaluating, and managing ESG issues that are material to a company’s future financial performance in a two-part blog series with Practical ESG. Dinah goes beyond a static “materiality analysis” to outline a more strategic approach for corporate responses within a dynamic economic environment.

Susan McGeachie is a CSO-in-Residence with CSO Partner, a fractional sustainability office service that helps businesses address sustainability-related challenges and capitalize on opportunities. She is also a founding partner of the Global Climate Finance Accelerator, which convenes partnerships across business, finance, government, and academia on strategies, policies, procedures, and tools to finance climate solutions.