“Europe will reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030. It puts us on a clear path towards climate neutrality in 2050”, Ursula von der Leyn, the president of the European Commission, the EU executive.
The EU’s updated climate goal will now be written down into a draft European Climate Law and transmitted to the United Nations as the bloc’s formal commitment under the Paris Agreement.
Irish Boards are now considering upcoming legislation, and how they can contribute to climate action in their organisations. The questions below may help, they are developed for Irish CLGs and clients of ArtsGovernance:
Questions for Boards
-Have you included sustainability in your organisational strategy and goals. Have you communicated this to your people and stakeholders.
-Have you identified where you can make improvements to your carbon emissions and your usage of natural capital.
-Have you considered benchmarking your carbon emissions and usage to enable you to show improvements from year to year in the future, (or better still from month to month).
-Have you considered setting up operational metrics to measure the potential and existing environmental impacts of your company’s activities. Typically, these metrics are developed to track four main environmental aspects: material use, waste generation, pollution, and resource consumption.
Have you updated your risk register to include climate change risks
· The risk of legislation requiring you to reduce your carbon emissions
· The risk of unexpected expenditure arising from unforeseen climate events e.g. floods affecting your buildings and or your business continuity.
-Have you assessed your suppliers to ensure that they are compliant with your sustainability goals.
-Are your supplier’s polluters? can you replace them with more sustainable suppliers?.
-Could their supplies be disrupted by climate change
-Do you consider sustainability goals when you are procuring?
-Is sustainability on your Board’s agenda, and your leadership team agenda.
Consider an appropriate disclosure of your sustainability policy in your annual report, for the questions above where you answered “Y” for Yes. Use your own comments to build a disclosure for your annual report.
Request the short paper and questionnaire from me penelopekenny@artsgovernance.com