Companies play an important role in providing proactive, constructive input for governments to create effective climate policies. While making a commitment to sustainability is important, it is also critical to connect the dots between this commitment and your corporate policy positions.
A number of organizations have come together to provide a framework to help you do so. The Caring for Climate initiative has partnered with the World Resources Institute (WRI), the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Ceres and The Climate Group. Together, we ask companies to take a leadership role and commit to engage responsibly in climate policy.
What You Can Do
To engage responsibly in climate policy, companies must adopt core elements of legitimacy, opportunity, consistency, accountability and transparency.
Specifically, we ask companies to:
- Identify the risks, opportunities and influences on your climate change policies
- Align your internal practices and external messages
- Report publicly on climate change policy influences
Corporate climate action plays an essential part in sending market signals for countries to enhance climate policy. More and more businesses are seeing opportunity in the zero-carbon economy and taking action on climate change. Governments must use this as a strong vote of confidence and advance ambitious policies that provide companies with the clarity and confidence they need to unlock further investments in climate solutions. This is the “ambition loop” — a positive feedback loop in which bold Government policies and private sector leadership reinforce each other, and together, take climate action to the next level.
In a time of global uncertainty, the COVID-19 pandemic is profoundly deepening existing inequalities and threatens to reverse progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement. “Uniting Business and Governments to Recover Better,” is a joint statement from companies in the Science-Based Targets initiative and its Business Ambition for 1.5°C aimed at raising the business voice and action for better recovery to a zero-carbon resilient economy, and encouraging governments to match this ambition in their recovery efforts.”
