1. Stay calm!
Great news that your organisation has made a progressive step and recognition of the pressures the planet is facing. This is one step on the road to tackling climate change, but what are you actually going to do? If your organisation isn’t at this stage yet what can you do to help them?
2. Assess
This might seem quite daunting, but what can you do to help? Firstly, what are the current causes of carbon in your organisation? Secondly, what impacts can you mitigate? You should have the target for reducing local climate impacts in mind. Thirdly, who is going to drive this forward? Some actions are easy (with senior staff buy-in) to implement on a short-term basis; sourcing sustainable consumables, promoting sustainable travel and reducing conference travel. Check out the University of Leeds and Anglia Ruskin University’s efforts to drive down carbon in this article.
However, if your target is to be truly carbon neutral (more on this in another blog), what do you need to do now for longer term actions? Introducing courses/training around sustainability, developing strategies to meet your carbon commitments, sustainable construction, restructuring your energy supply choices, all need to be up for discussion.
3. Act
It is clear that engaging with colleagues, staff and contractors from a large cross section of your organisational community is key to enacting behaviour change for good. Therefore, getting supporters on board to take individual tangible climate emergency actions can create a groundswell of change. Shifting company/university attitudes and culture no support sustainability and wellbeing activities is no easy thing.
Ask us for a demo of how the first Climate Emergency University in the UK, Bristol University, are using the Jump programme to help engage staff and students and drive forward their declared Climate Emergency.
