A Final Call To Action; No Time To Lose
As India experienced its hottest March this year in a long time – setting a 122-year heatwave record for an otherwise warm and tolerably pleasant month – we were served yet another reminder of the rapidly mounting pressures of climate change on the earth’s already weakened ecology.
The occasion of World Environment Day on June 5 is another, opportunity, in an ever-shrinking window, to accelerate our actions (not commitments) in dealing with this looming threat to our very survival. Climate change needs to become the beginning, middle and end of all global strategy and the focal point for collective efforts to mitigate the damage and minimise future impacts.
Here is some context to understand how much we are at risk as a planet. The monthly peak levels of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere touched 414.8 parts per million (ppm) in 2019 - the highest level over the past three million years! The last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere, homo sapiens as a species didn’t exist!
Too abstract? A more relatable example is the growing numbers of adverse climate events in the last three years that demonstrate the havoc that climate change can wreak in our current daily lives. Record high temperatures in 2021 caused flash floods in China and Europe, deadly wildfires in California (US), Russia, Turkey and Greece, and severe and prolonged droughts in subtropical South America, among others. The unusually intense bushfires in Australia between 2019 and 2020 and the Arctic glacier melts including the massive one in Greenland last year, serve to highlight how closer home the risks of climate catastrophes actually are.
To put it succinctly, it’s not a climate crisis anymore; it’s a full-blown climate emergency. We need to put down the fossil fuel smoking gun and get the planet into the ICU now.
Making progress
Over six years ago, the Paris Agreement on climate change was perceived as a turning point of sorts in global efforts towards mitigating climate change effects. Since then, despite grand declarations and even more ambitious commitments, including emergency crisis meetings of world leaders, the needle simply isn’t moving fast enough in addressing this real and immediate threat. As a result, in 2022, there’s still so much more to be done, and with very little time on hand.
Business clearly has a pivotal role to play in helping stem and reverse the negative impact on the environment, through sustainable operating practices.
So, how do we make sure that commitments are translated into actions that are visible and outcomes that are measurable? Greater transparency in environmental reporting and mandating ESG-linked disclosures would be a start. A good example is the CDP disclosure for climate, water and forests. It is amongst the most neutral and globally accepted platforms in use globally for companies to benchmark, measure and improve ESG performance, and, through the cycle of continuous measurable improvement, validate corporate contribution to saving our planet. In essence, it shows transparently which are the companies that actually walk the talk. From our own experience, it has been one of the most important resources for us to identify the direction and heights we need to scale to create the impact we wanted.
It isn’t just from corporates; investors too have been demanding stronger ESG frameworks, policies, initiatives and actions from companies. It’s not hard to see why – Strong ESG principles fundamentally reduce risk and future proof companies, and over the last decade or so, there has been a direct correlation between ESG focus and profitability on indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Hence, it’s no wonder that sustainability reporting has seen a strong uptick – around 90 per cent of S&P 500 firms published sustainability reports in 2019, compared to 20 per cent companies in 2011.
While self-reporting by businesses is a good sign in itself, an institutionalised mechanism for transparent reporting on sustainability parameters is the need of the hour now. The announcement of SEBI guidelines on Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) in 2021 was a timely mandate that will widen and deepen the net for ESG reporting.
When it comes to critical actions, in the past decade, large companies have actually done well in moving closer towards the Net Zero goalpost. Bringing down greenhouse gas emissions and the deployment of offsetting measures using carbon sequestration have made a difference. However, a lot more still needs to be done. Reducing emissions in line with the new Science Based Targets (SBTs) initiative – to ensure the rise in global temperature is kept at 1.5 degrees or lower over the next few decades – are currently our best bet to reduce emissions. There is cause for optimism as most large companies, including us at Godrej, are signing up for SBTs but for medium and small businesses, it’s an elaborate process of validation that requires knowhow, time and resources, all of which are highly precious or unavailable. Hence, mitigation efforts must not only intensify now, but more importantly, with a greater sense of urgency and all-round participation of everyone in the economic value chain.
Working together
India cannot wait for the maturity levels of more developed countries which had many decades of so-called ‘brown growth’ that relied heavily on fossil fuel sources of energy, before they began switching to renewable sources. Instead, we must fast track our progression in this area through more contemporary approaches, aided by affordable and readily available renewable energy options.
Alongside, ‘green growth’ must also be made non-negotiable through government policy and backed by a more consistent and aligned approach both at the Centre and the states. The speed of such policy-level changes is paramount. Mechanisms for incentivizing, at first, and eventually penalising businesses based on their adoption of sustainable operating practices in place, could be one aspect that needs to be evaluated.
While leading companies with the resources and knowledge are at the forefront of green operations and reporting, they must come forward and support their MSMEs, who form a part of the supply chain, with onboarding the required protocols and process changes to cut down emissions and to bring them up to speed on the most contemporary practices in sustainable operations.
Another aspect that companies will need to relook at is the idea of promoting sustainable consumption – and this may seem like going against the grain of conventional business philosophy that has served them well so far. But it’s no secret that going forward, consumption must align with the evolving narratives and context on the use and conservation of limited natural resources. It is therefore imperative for leading consumer brands to educate end users in how they could be more responsible, keeping the impact of their consumption habits on the environment in mind.
It’s no exaggeration to say that we are running out of time. We must recognise the fact that we are all in this together – climate change and its devastating effects will spare no one, no matter which part of the world they live or work in. The earth’s natural resources don’t know any boundaries either. It’s important that we set aside any political differences as nations and do the right thing.
