Sustainability is good business – here’s how you can start your journey

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Green Building; Sustainable energy performance (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

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Economic uncertainties and sustainability challenges hit the headlines every day across the world. Experts, journalists, business leaders and politicians most often discuss the technology, engineering and science that can slow down the effects of climate change and make organisations more resilient for the future.

In this scenario, people are often presented as consumers demanding a sustainable change, or citizens who must take personal actions for the good of the planet. But people are also staff members, suppliers, boardroom members and investors. Together, we decide how an organisation is run. Together, we control the strategies, products and market trends that we hope to be sustainable.

Being sustainable is not only the right thing to do, it also builds organisational resilience to ensure you are successful while complying with environmental laws and legislation. To be sustainable, you need the right culture, dedication, skills and knowledge to act responsibly.

At IEMA, we work with more than 350 corporate partners both in the UK and internationally. We actively engage with our partners’ in-house sustainability professionals and their executive leadership teams. We have more than 19,000 individual members across the world working in the environment and sustainability professions to deliver on the economic and societal transformation necessary to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement.

We provide, via our training partners, the materials and qualifications critical for environmental and sustainability education. The qualifications issued by IEMA are the international gold standard – many sustainability employers today seek out candidates who are IEMA-accredited.

Although the environment and sustainability profession is working diligently to address the challenges presented by the climate emergency, IEMA and our members can’t do it alone. We need to transform all jobs by ensuring green skills are present in every function, at every level. We are seeking climate leadership at all levels of society which will enable us to move from business-as-usual towards reducing global heating, and to build resilience to the changes which are already being experienced by millions.

Most people recognise sustainability is important, but where do you start? Start by investigating the current levels of green skills and knowledge within your organisation, as detailed in our joint report with Deloitte. By making a commitment in your strategies, you can make decisions aligned with sustainability and people, as well as profit. A first step should be offering training and education to all your workforce to enable this to happen.

On a global level, IEMA will continue to lobby for change in policy and investment. We want to see plans acted upon, especially around individual nation-state efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions (nationally determined contributions in the language of the negotiations), to keep temperature increases to well below 1.5°C. Temperature rises beyond 2°C, according to the experts at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the World Meteorological Organisation, would result in catastrophic impacts on both human and non-human systems.

These impacts should be factored into corporations’ balance sheets, and we are working with public and private sector actors to make sure everyone has the tools necessary to assess climate risks and to mitigate them as best they can.

We know that policy confidence at national and international levels, in regulation, standards, guidance, fiscal decisions, trading schemes and supply chains, is the key to unlocking the private sector investment needed for the urgent and far-reaching changes required.

As the UK hands the presidency of COP over to Egypt, IEMA calls on the UK government to create and retain world-leading environmental standards legislation, policy and regulations, along with the essential capacity to enforce all of this.

We all have a role to play in turning our economy green and making our economy resilient and fit for future generations.

Start your sustainability journey with IEMA.

Originally published on Business Reporter