How can you align your company's CSR with the Paris Agreement?

The current footprint of the business and its significance in the overall context will determine if any efforts will make a discernible impact or not. It would be good to align with the SDG goals and the subordinate indicators so that the work gets aligned to the larger objective. Then rallying with others to create a larger impact will be useful.

Aligning and assessing an Oil&Gas company's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), for example, with the Paris Agreement involves evaluating the company's efforts to reduce its environmental and social impact and contribute to the global goal of limiting climate change. Firstly, we need to familiarize ourselves with the key goals and commitments of the Paris Agreement, then to evaluate the company's strategies for reducing GHG emissions and carbon footprint. This may involve a transition to cleaner energy sources, implementing carbon capture and storage technologies, improving operational efficiency to minimize emissions, and creating a more sustainable future to the society.

For a full and integral approach to impact measurement, don't forget to assess: ➖Negative AND ➕ positive impacts. Only by showing both, transparency is assured. Additionally, conduct a benchmarking🔎 Determining your performance against other companies will allow you to better evaluate your impact and challenges to pursue.

After assessing your impact on the climate, the next crucial step is to innovate and implement solutions that actively contribute to climate action. This can involve investing in renewable energy projects, adopting energy-efficient practices across your operations, or even developing products and services that aid in carbon reduction. Embracing innovation not only helps in reducing your environmental footprint but also positions your company as a leader in sustainability. It demonstrates a proactive commitment to the goals of the Paris Agreement, showcasing your company’s dedication to a sustainable future. This approach goes beyond mere compliance, creating a positive impact and driving change within your industry and community.

Assessing your climate impact aligns CSR with Paris Agreement. Use tools like GHG Protocol, SBTi, and CDP to measure emissions, risks, and goals. Report through CDP, set ambitious science-based targets, and identify climate-related risks and opportunities. Develop clear goals for emission reduction and resilience, contributing to global climate efforts.

While setting targets it may be useful to look at the footprint of the indirect activities also, especially along the supply chain to the extent the company can influence responsible behaviour and then carry a baseline accordingly to se the targets possibly achievable.

A company should be clear about the layer of data collected under scope 3 emissions. Again, mere investment in green bonds and buying carbon credits for the sake of compensation against quantifiable damage must be discouraged. Instead, a company can reshape its business operations that is environmentally friendly in nature and contributes to carbon negative.

Here, adopting a participatory strategy approach can be highly effective. Engage a wide range of stakeholders – including those who might be critical or offer differing perspectives – in setting these targets. This could involve workshops, surveys, or focus groups with employees, suppliers, customers, community leaders, and environmental experts. Incorporating these diverse viewpoints does more than just enrich the decision-making process; it can also help to stress-test your targets against a variety of scenarios and assumptions. This ensures your goals are not only aligned with the Paris Agreement but also resilient to future challenges and changes in the business environment.

La evaluación inicial energética determinará la estrategia de eficiencia a implementar en el corto y mediano plazo, incluyendo las energías renovables en función del entorno natural donde opere. Los objetivos pueden formularse con base a indicadores de consumo, operacionales, de rendimiento y desempeño, etc. Las medidas eficientes para el cambio climático, la vulnerabilidad y la resiliencia dependen de los cambios base y de superestructura que se logren junto con los grupos de interés involucrados. Por ejemplo, Los corredores naturales en México no se consideran como medida y parte fundamental en el contexto del cambio climático.

Following my previous comment: Depending on your maturity you can first of all put everything on the table and draw a Vision and link it up with your Mission statement, fuelled by your Values. Why? Because doing CSR/ESG without a Vision, a Mission and Values is like wanting to go to New York meanwhile not knowing where it is, how to get there and why we want to get there. Then, prioritize. You have many possibilities to do so, with scoring or with an Eisenhower matrix. Put all of that into a 1 to 3 years roadmap. Now for each timeline, set targets for each top priority topics you've chosen following SMART principles. You can use OKRs for examples. don't forget to set measurement and review processes to ensure you're right on track

Implementing Climate Actions with Stakeholders 1. Map stakeholders: Identify key communities, partners, and rights-holders impacted by climate actions or have material issues related to organisation's climate risks. 2. Design interventions together: Collaboratively design interventions to address key climate issues. Implement inclusively: Engage stakeholders fairly and empower them to participate. Monitor and evaluate: Regularly assess impact and adapt approaches based on feedback. Focus on communities and rights-holders: Prioritise interventions addressing their needs and empowering them for climate resilience.

Climate action is usually the most difficult part of the work for companies. The previous work, understanding your footprint and developing your goals, is a more technical piece, when things look great on paper. Getting the job done requires a candid assessment of the human and financial resources needed, the workload for the site and corporate personnel (depending on the business), and the relevance of the decarbonization planning for the company's strategic planning. Oftentimes, the first step for action is education. Educating the leadership team on the "how" to implement a decarbonization roadmap might shed some light on the need to engage a number of functions in the organization that were not necessarily part of the goal setting.

It is important to secure executive and board buy-in when it comes to climate action. The implementation of decarbonization initiatives requires significant upfront investments, and being able to articulate the future cost, reputational, regulatory, and additional benefits will be critical. Companies should target short- and long-term initiatives with the highest impact, and make use of environmental grants and incentives where possible. Solutions should ideally match and be prioritized based on high-emissions activities since these provide the fastest, greatest decarbonization potential.

Last, build up a way to track and measure progress on a regular basis with the right persons in charge. That being said, it involves having a good and approved governance model to be able to do it. Start in-house, small steps, from one department to another in order to master the process, meanwhile map your supply chain and stakeholders, prepare a communication pack and get ready to spread it outside your organisation to extend your scope of action that is part of scope 3 for GHG emissions, the usually most important and most difficult but also valid for others categories of the ISO 26000

Implementation is key to achieve our target. Innovation and adaptability can make the efforts look rational and even profitable for the company. Using renewable energy and improving energy efficiency is one example of how these efforts can help the company make more profit. Win-win solutions. Offsetting emissions can be done by engaging the community. We can develop an agroforestry area and make the community much better.

When we report our progress to our stakeholders, we have a few objectives. First, we want to report our achievements for recognition, celebration and benchmarking. Second, we want to share our concerns and seek understanding. Third, we want to solicit support from our direct and indirect partners. Fourth, we want to educate and engage our stakeholders so that together we can work on the betterment of our communities.

In Indonesia, we have the SRN (National Registration System) for all emissions mitigation activities. Besides communicating the mitigation activities in the media, using SRN makes it more credible and systematic. In SRN, we followed the standard scheme for mitigation emissions measurement.

Finally, when you have gathered all the progress you've made on all categories, mostly on GHG emissions for the Paris agreement, a best practice is to communicate on it using an impact report (also called extra financial reporting) where you can show all the work you've done, from building the vision up to closing the actions you've chosen to work on during the year and link it up to your roadmap to be able to show what's next now.

It is better to make a Gantt chart and seek quarterly progress updates from the cross-functional team members. In the third quarter of this assignment, prepare for the annual disclosure and and communications.

For larger objectives such as alignment to Paris Agreement, not much can be achieved without collaboration. The collaboration can be around a number of things, on common geographical boundaries, on specific components, on a specific policy support that is critical, for reducing the footprint of even implementation by joint hiring of a suitable company. Having a common dashboard to report back results itself can have a healthy competition and creation of new approaches and learning.

We can't support the Paris Agreement alone. Interdependence is the suitable word to make this happen. As a business system, we also can't stand alone; we need suppliers, stakeholders, and employees to commit to mitigating GHG emissions.

You impact report (or also called extra financial disclosure) is then a great tool to communicate to all your stakeholders, shareholders and clients. Use it to bring them onboard in your journey to decarbonize your sector and activities so they can learn from you and see you as a role model working towards the paris agreement

Collaboration should start much earlier. This is where we make mistakes - we tend to do everything independently - where it should have been done through the cross-functional teams.

Just having a data-driven review alone isn’t sufficient. Engaging with a broad spectrum of stakeholders is vital for a holistic evaluation. Regularly solicit feedback, input, or suggestions from employees, customers, community members, environmental experts, and other relevant parties. This approach provides diverse perspectives, helping to pinpoint your CSR initiative’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Based on these insights, be prepared to adjust your actions, targets, or policies regularly. This flexibility is key to staying relevant and effective in a rapidly evolving environmental and regulatory landscape. the goal is not just to meet targets but to foster a culture of continuous improvement and adaptation

Besides what you demonstrate to the outer world, regular inputs internally to make everyone individually aligned with the company objectives can be very empowering and build a sense of ownership in the employees

It is important to determine if the company supports policies and regulations that align with the goals of the Paris Agreement. This includes advocating for carbon pricing, emissions reduction targets, and other initiatives aimed at addressing climate change. In addition, company should compare its performance against industry peers. This can provide context and help identify areas where the company may need to improve its CSR efforts. As a last point, regular monitoring and engagement with the company's sustainability reports and public statements will help to stay informed about its progress and commitments.