Towards a low - carbon economy : business solutions on climate change
Student name: Mr Varun Aggarwal
Guide: Dr Vivek Kumar
Year of completion: 2008
Host Organisation: Center for Business and Environment, Yale University
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Bryan Garcia
Abstract: The ever-increasing importance and popularity of the concept of sustainable development led the UNGC, along with UNEP and WBCSD, to develop “Caring for Climate: The Business Leadership Platformâ€, a voluntary reporting initiative, with its own set of commitments which the signatories (companies) pledge to achieve.
This project report will serve as a preliminary to the first report which will examine implementation efforts by the current signatories to be released in August 2008 in advance of the first annual meeting of “Caring for Climate†signatories in October 2008. The first report, in turn, will serve as a preliminary to the report titled: “Towards a low-carbon economy: Business solutions on climate changeâ€, planned by UNGC to be published just in time for the 15th COP to be held in Copenhagen in 2009.
Hence, the key objective here is to provide empirical analysis of the actions taken by the signatories in order to identify the impact of such actions in addressing climate challenges and their usefulness/ability to provide desired solutions to move forward. Also, nine other voluntary initiatives were identified to check the overlap of “Caring for Climate†signatories with them so as to help UNGC in identifying the companies to focus upon and the directions they are taking to act as the potential leaders.
While the sectorwise analysis spring surprises (so-called 'dirty' sectors taking conscious decisions for environmental protection, finance sector being a major contributor to environmental degradation but also taking corrective measures like innovating eco-products, etc.), the macro trend showed that out of the seven identified commitments, the signatories are most comfortable with acting on Joint Projects/Collaborations and Public Reporting, whereas more important measures to tackle climate change issues like Carbon Reduction, Capacity Building in Knowledge and Increasing Energy Efficiency turned out to be the least favoured commitments. The implication drawn was that, though the companies understand the importance of being environmental-friendly (in public eye at least), they actually need to do much more to fulfil their commitments towards "Caring for Climate", in the true sense.
The mainstay of this research work was no one-to-one interaction with the companies, as the project required online-tracking of the companies for quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data available. However, this became a major hindrance as well. Many companies did not have any relevant information on their websites, while possibly doing some major work in reality. However, this might also be perceived as non-fulfilment of the commitment to report publicly. Finally, in conclusion, some recommendations were made that can be used by UNGC to make the companies contribute significantly to the initiative and the environment.
