David is Managing Director of VIRIDI - a specialist consultancy that helps organizations address their most important sustainability challenges through integrative solutions that transform conventional thinking and create sustained system value. He has extensive experience in advising public (sovereign governments, multi-lateral development institutions), First Nations and private sector clients on the financial, operating and strategic risks and opportunities of the clean energy and low-carbon transition and of changing climatic conditions. He specializes in assisting clients in identifying, innovating and accelerating climate-smart investments and technologies, and in incorporating climate risk into strategic decision-making and development financing.

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David has developed proprietary climate change vulnerability and risk assessment processes (e.g. Climate Value-at-Risk) and financial risk/ cost-benefit modelling and spatial visualization tools for climate impacts and resilience strategies. He has developed Climate Risk and Resilience toolkits to enable the integration and mainstreaming of climate change risk management and adaptation strategies into development financing programs, as well as enterprise-wide, organizational, facility and community level planning (including Indigenous communities), programming and operations.

David is the National Focal Point and Director of the United Nation’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) ARISE Canada (Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies) initiative – Canada’s leading private-public collaborative platform for disaster risk reduction and climate resilience. 

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David sits/has participated on numerous climate change advisory boards and committees including:

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• National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy’s Expert Panel on Climate Change

• UNISDR-led Climate Financial Risk Management Initiative

• ISO Working Group 10, Technical Committee 207 (Climate Finance Standard – ISO14097)

• Carbon Bond Initiative - Hydropower Standard Industry Working Group

• Canadian Climate Forum

• Global Water Forum - Climate-Related Precipitation Extremes

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David is also the Founder and first Country Director of the Carbon Disclosure Project (Canada) where he led efforts by Canada’s leading pension funds and institutional asset owners to leverage the power of measurement and information disclosure to improve the management of environmental risk within Canada’s largest publicly traded companies.