Climate Science and Policy

Corporations operating in California are now required to publicly disclose their exposure to physical climate hazards under Senate Bill 261 (SB 261), yet these disclosures remain structurally disconnected from local and state adaptation planning processes. This study provides the first systematic empirical comparison of SB 261 corporate climate risk disclosures and California's public sea level rise adaptation planning ecosystem, examining the extent to which private and public actors assess comparable risks, operate at compatible spatial and temporal scales, and produce information that is decision-relevant for adaptation implementation. The research proceeds in two phases. Phase One analyzes 146 SB 261 disclosures alongside 20 public adaptation planning documents across six California coastal jurisdictions, with a comparative assessment of the risk assessment frameworks, tools, and methodologies used by each sector. Phase Two conducts semi-structured interviews with six corporate sustainability professionals and nine public adaptation planners to validate Phase One findings and surface the institutional conditions that would enable cross-sector collaboration. Findings reveal consistent and consequential mismatches between the two systems: corporate disclosures operate at portfolio scale with limited spatial resolution, short planning horizons, and no reference to public hazard tools, while public planners work at parcel level with standardized projections extending to 2100 and no awareness of what corporations in their jurisdictions have disclosed. Materiality divergence is the most fundamental gap, most corporations with mobile portfolios do not rate sea level rise as material, while every public planner treats it as central to their work. Despite these structural gaps, both sectors express conditional interest in collaboration, and specific institutional conditions, including mission alignment and fixed coastal asset exposure. Port-level regulatory authority and regionally embedded multi-jurisdictional agencies point toward viable entry points. The study concludes with five policy recommendations spanning data bridging, temporal alignment, cross-sector risk mapping, a coastal resilience credit framework, and a cross-sector industry network through which corporate disclosures can be made decision-relevant for local adaptation implementation.