Examples of HRH’s leadership range:   From domestic initiatives within The Prince's Responsible Business Network to help ensure UK businesses and communities are resilient to the effects of climate change;    To launching the ClimateWise Principles and encouraging the insurance industry to take a leading role in addressing risks posed by climate change;    To support for our hosts Accounting for Sustainability, who have for many years given practical guidance to firms on how to embed sustainability considerations into business decision-making. I have had the great pleasure of engaging with HRH on a number of occasions, and I can think of few people more knowledgeable about the sustainability agenda or as committed to it. Four years ago, he rightly put me on the spot, highlighting that climate-related risks will have serious financial impacts, and asking what regulators were doing about them. HRH’s challenges are even more germane today as the impacts of climate change continue to mount and the time to act continues to shorten. This year has seen blistering heatwaves in North America and Europe, hurricanes in North America and typhoons in South East Asia; droughts in Southern Africa and Australia; unprecedented rainfall causing deadly landslides in Japan; and now the devastating wildfires in California. The human costs of these events are immeasurable. And the financial losses are significant. Last year set a record for weather-related insurance losses at around $ Losses in 2018 may again be among the worst in history.
Based on the backdrop of the economic development and the outlook for continued high energy prices ahead, a mechanical application of the 4 per cent fiscal rule implies that the use of petroleum revenues will increase by more than NOK 31 billion from 2006 to 2009. With continued solid growth in the Norwegian economy, it would be in line with the fiscal rule if the use of petroleum revenues is lower than the expected real return on the Government Petroleum Fund – Global over a few years. We estimate an approximately unchanged structural non-oil deficit in 2007, and assume that fiscal policy will provide some stimulus to aggregate demand and output in 2008 and 2009, but somewhat less than a mechanical application of the fiscal rule based on our oil price assumption would imply. The authorities conduct fiscal policy knowing how monetary policy will react. Today’s flexible inflation targeting regime, giving weight to both variability in inflation and variability in output and employment, establishes a firm framework for monetary policy and provides clear guidelines on how monetary policy is to respond in different situations. Monetary policy in Norway is oriented towards low and stable inflation, with annual consumer price inflation of close to 2.5 per cent over time. Flexible inflation targeting builds a bridge between the longterm objective of monetary policy, which is to keep inflation on target and provide an anchor for inflation expectations, and the more short-term objective of stability in the real economy.