Recently in Climate Stabalization Category
"While most executives agree that a green strategy is a good idea, few know how to value or prioritize their initiatives," said Kimberly Knickle, Practice Director, Emerging Agenda, Manufacturing Insights, an IDC company. "They struggle with the business case, waiting to implement strategies until outcomes can be predicted more reliably."
According to a McKinsey survey [1] , environmental issues including climate change top the agenda in executive suites worldwide. But measuring and managing environmental impact is difficult, intricate work that stretches across an organization's operations.
Causal relationships connecting issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, use of scarce resources, ethical sourcing and regulatory compliance make it extremely complex to invest in green technology and expand sales of products and services with measurably better environmental performance.
"Lessening our impact on the environment and mitigating the future risk of depleting our planet's natural resources is becoming a priority in shaping every organization's strategy," said Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS. "With SAS, organizations can optimize business strategies for minimizing risks and costs, developing new lines of business, and improving resource use, environmental or otherwise."
Cisco is using SAS to support its sustainability efforts. "Cisco believes that new innovative technologies and the power of collaboration are keys to achieving our sustainability goals and minimizing our impact on the environment," said Laura Ipsen, Co-chair of Cisco's EcoBoard and Senior Vice President of Cisco Global Policy and Government Affairs. "By partnering with SAS and utilizing SAS for Sustainability Management, Cisco can better prioritize projects and resources that create a positive return for the environment, shareholders, and our employees. The SAS solution will enable us to simulate the impact on carbon footprint, waste reduction targets, greenhouse gas emissions and other goals so we can more effectively predict and manage the impact of our operations on the environment."
SAS for Sustainability Management, based on the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, uses the Global Reporting Initiative
framework to report on Triple Bottom Line indicators. These indicators
relate to the three spheres of sustainability – environmental, social,
and economic, using SAS' predictive abilities to validate strategies,
identify causal relationships, forecast improvement scenarios and drive
innovation.
The SAS Corporate Social Responsibility Report (PDF) conforms to the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines developed by the Global Reporting Initiative.
A key lesson is that companies seeking to develop their strategies
should first analyse their value-at-stake under a variety of
scenarios. Among the objectives that matter most in preserving
natural resources for raw materials and support of human life (and
other species) are strategies such as:
- Energy performance of buildings
- More efficient use of electricity and natural lighting and ventilation
- More efficient use of materials in buildings and furnishings
- More environmentally effective use of chemicals in maintenance, production and packaging
- Vehicle fleet and transport reduction of miles traveled and emissions produced
- Reduce total number of miles traveled by staff, goods movement and consumers
- Muse of more efficient vehicles and more sustainable modes of transport
- Replace non-renewable sources of energy and raw materials with renewable sources that are sustainable produced.
To increase understanding and awareness of our impacts upon the
environment and how we can all reduce those impacts for long term and
distributed social responsbility.
The rapid emergence of the carbon market has significant commercial and
reputation impacts for companies. It provides a strong rationale for
taking a proactive approach to designing and implementing strategies to
manage their emissions of GHGs. Over the past decade, ICF Consulting
has worked with approximately 50 companies among the Global Fortune 500
to help develop climate change strategies that are aligned with broader
commercial and corporate responsibility strategy.
ICF is an International, professional services firm that partners with government and
commercial clients to deliver consulting services and technology
solutions in energy, climate change, environment, transportation,
social programs, health, defense, and emergency management.
RESOURCE:
www.icfi.com
The threat is dire. "No tropical forest on earth has come closer to total destruction," says Claudia Picone, an information resource coordinator for The Nature Conservancy.
The Atlantic Forest is a spectacularly complex and biologically diverse expanse of tropical rainforest on the coast of Brazil. Once twice the size of Texas, only 7 percent of the original forest remains—it has been ravaged by ranching, illegal logging, agriculture, and other pressures.
The campaign to plant one billion trees in the Atlantic Forest continues The Nature Conservancy's mighty efforts to preserve the very special ecosystem. According to Picone, "We've finally turned the corner, and people are starting to realize that there are economic benefits to leaving the forest standing instead of cutting it down."
Since The Nature Conservancy's founding in 1951, it has protected more than 117 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers around the world. The group has more than a million members and works in all 50 states and more than 30 countries.
Give to the Conservancy's Plant a Billion Trees campaign
www.plantabillion.org
To prepare businesses for this new landscape, three organizations have launched a set of guidelines designed to help companies proactively develop strategies to manage risks and opportunities arising from ecosystem degradation.
The guidelines, called the Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (3.5 MB)
were developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in collaboration
with the Meridian Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (WBCSD). Five WBCSD members - Akzo Nobel, BC Hydro, Mondi,
Rio Tinto, and Syngenta - "road-tested" the methodology and provided
input to its design.
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Ecosystems provide companies with a wide variety of benefits or services including
- Freshwater
- Wood
- Pollination
- Climate regulation
- Protection from natural hazards,
"Ecosystem services are often unacknowledged, yet they underpin many corporate activities," said John Ehrmann, Managing Partner of the Meridian Institute. "I am pleased with the feedback from company managers who are finding the guidelines helpful for developing strategies that improve both corporate performance and ecosystem stewardship."
Guideline Benefits
The road-testers found that the guidelines can provide a number of other benefits as well.- They can help companies anticipate new markets and government policies that may emerge in response to ecosystem degradation.
- They can strengthen corporate environmental impact assessments by adding considerations traditional methods may overlook.
- They also can help companies better manage conflicts over resources, identifying options for better trade-offs between ecosystem services.
"The methodology helped us identify and rank emerging problems, and provided us with a framework for turning risks into opportunities," said Peter Gardiner, natural resources manager at Mondi, a leading international paper and packaging manufacturer.
Mondi's newfound strategies include a number of operational changes that will increase the company's efficiency in using freshwater, a scarce ecosystem service, and lead to new markets for the company's byproducts.
"The Corporate Ecosystem Review helped us to better understand how a number of emerging environmental changes are likely to affect our business and how our company might best position itself to respond to these changes," said Steve Hunt, Senior Vice President, Asia-Pacific, Eka Chemicals, a division of chemical giant Akzo Nobel.
Some road-testers, such as Mondi and BC Hydro, used the guidelines to gain insight into the direct implications that ecosystem trends pose for them.
Other road-testers, such as Akzo Nobel and Syngenta, applied the methodology to understand the risks faced by a segment of their customers due to ecosystem degradation and, in turn, discovered opportunities for new products or services that address these risks. The guidelines profile these and other road-test experiences.
"We're going to be hearing a lot about the Corporate Ecosystem Services Review. A couple dozen more WBCSD members are already taking it up this year," said Björn Stigson, President of the WBCSD. "Leading companies realize that they need to be prepared for the business challenges posed by ecosystem decline."
Download Corporate Ecosystem Services Review"
About the sponsors of this ecosystem review
The World Resources Institute is an independent, non-partisan and nonprofit organization with a staff of more than 100 scientists, economists, policy experts, business analysts, statistical analysts, mapmakers, and communicators developing and promoting policies that will help protect the Earth and improve people's lives.The Meridian Institute is a neutral, nonprofit organization that helps decision-makers and diverse stakeholders address society's most contentious public policy issues through process design and facilitation.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development brings together some 200 international companies in a shared commitment to sustainable development through economic growth, ecological balance, and social progress.
