GARP Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR) Certificate
International · Global Association of Risk Professionals · professional
512practice questions written to this syllabus
20subjects
Format
80 multiple-choice questions and one multi-part case study, 4 hours, pass/fail. Offered in April and October windows. GARP suggests 100–150 hours of preparation.
Sections
Foundations of Climate Change
Sustainability
Climate Change Risk
Sustainability and Climate Policy, Culture, and Governance
Green and Sustainable Finance
Climate Risk Measurement and Management
Climate Models and Scenario Analysis
Net Zero
Climate and Nature Risk Assessment
Transition Planning and Carbon Reporting
Over the years
Read from the official SCR page. The ten areas map onto this track's climate-system, climate-models, carbon-accounting, carbon-markets, reporting and climate-finance subjects.
Original questions written to this exam's published syllabus and pattern. Not past papers.
1. What did later comparisons find about the Limits to Growth 'standard run' scenario?
Its standard run matched real trends in key variables
It was proved entirely wrong by the year 1980
It predicted unlimited growth with no environmental problems
It was never compared with real data
Answer and working
A. Its standard run matched real trends in key variables
Studies comparing historical data with World3 runs found reasonable agreement in several variables, though interpretations differ. The report did not predict unlimited growth.
Sustainability Science: Concepts, History & Ethics · History of environmental thought: Malthus, Leopold, Carson, Limits to Growth
2. A student argues: 'Climate has always changed naturally, for example during ice ages, so present warming is probably natural too.' What is the strongest scientific response?
Past changes show climate is sensitive to forcing; fingerprints and isotopes show today's forcing is human
Ice ages are too far in the past for any reliable evidence to exist, so palaeoclimate cannot be used in the argument
Natural changes stopped once the Holocene began, so any change in the present era is human by elimination alone
Past changes were all caused by volcanoes, which are now monitored and known to be inactive across the whole planet
Answer and working
A. Past changes show climate is sensitive to forcing; fingerprints and isotopes show today's forcing is human
Palaeoclimate shows that climate is sensitive to forcing, which strengthens concern rather than weakening it. Present attribution rests on identified forcings: the isotopic signature of fossil carbon, tropospheric warming with stratospheric cooling, and energy budgets. Ice ages were orbitally paced, not volcanic; the ice-core evidence is rich; and natural variability did not stop in the Holocene.
Climate System Science · The climate system and its components
3. Syukuro Manabe shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics. Which contribution is most associated with him?
The development of the first carbon-pricing mechanism for national economies
The statistical method of optimal fingerprinting used to detect climate change
The discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica from ground-based instruments
Physical models showing how increased carbon dioxide raises surface temperature
Answer and working
D. Physical models showing how increased carbon dioxide raises surface temperature
Manabe's radiative–convective and early coupled models quantified warming from CO2. The ozone hole discovery was by Farman and colleagues; carbon pricing is economics; optimal fingerprinting is linked to Hasselmann, who shared the same prize.
Climate Models, Scenarios & Downscaling · Model hierarchy: energy-balance, GCM, ESM and regional models
4. Why are simultaneous harvest failures in several major breadbaskets treated as a systemic risk for global food supply?
Breadbaskets share one irrigation system, so a single canal failure stops production in all of them
World prices are fixed by treaty, so supply shortfalls never reach consumers in importing countries
Each breadbasket grows a different crop, so a failure in one is always offset by surplus in the others
Patterns such as ENSO link them, and joint shortfalls overwhelm trade and stocks
Answer and working
D. Patterns such as ENSO link them, and joint shortfalls overwhelm trade and stocks
Teleconnections such as ENSO can cause correlated shocks across regions; when several exporters fail together, stocks and trade cannot buffer the loss and prices spike. Breadbaskets do not offset each other automatically, prices are not fixed by treaty, and they share no single irrigation system.
Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture & Food Systems · Pathways of climate impact on food systems
5. Why can design standards based only on historical flood or drought records understate future risk?
Design standards ignore probability and are based only on the most recent event
Climate change makes hazard statistics non-stationary, so past return periods shorten
Return periods are fixed physical constants that cannot change with the climate
Historical records always overstate extremes because older gauges read too high
Answer and working
B. Climate change makes hazard statistics non-stationary, so past return periods shorten
With a changing climate, the probability distribution of extremes shifts; a flood that was a 100-year event may become more frequent. Old gauges are not systematically biased high, return periods are statistical estimates, and standards are probability-based.