At the heart of an effective and successful ESG reporting program are the sustainability goals an organization sets themselves. Without sustainability goals, an ESG reporting program lacks direction and motivation for change. This is why it is so important for organizations to put the time into crafting the right sustainability goals for their program, that are achievable but also challenge them to continuously grow and improve.
In this article, we dive into what sustainability goals are, how to select ones for your organization, and how to develop a climate action plan to support achieving these goals.
What Are Sustainability Goals?
Sustainability goals are specific objectives set to promote environmental health, social equity, and economic viability. These goals aim to address challenges like reducing greenhouse gasses, improving human rights in the labor force, or adopting transparent leadership practices. They often align with global initiatives such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), which provide a framework for countries, organizations, and communities to work towards a more sustainable future.
The UN SDGs include 17 goals to be achieved by 2030. These are:
- No Poverty
- Zero Hunger
- Good Health and Well-being
- Quality Education
- Gender Equality
- Clean Water and Sanitation
- Affordable and Clean Energy
- Decent Work and Economic Growth
- Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
- Reduced Inequality
- Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Responsible Consumption and Production
- Climate Action
- Life Below Water
- Life on Land
- Peace and Justice Strong Institutions
- Partnerships to achieve the Goal
THE UN SDGs are just one resource you can use to help guide you in creating sustainability goals for your organization. Other resources you can use to craft sustainability goals for your organization include ESG and sustainability reporting frameworks and standards like the CSRD-ESRS, GRI, ISSB, and many more. These frameworks and standards provide structured guidance that helps organizations establish, implement, and measure their sustainability goals.
Here’s how they contribute to the goal-setting process:
- Establishing a Baseline
- Data Collection: Frameworks often require organizations to gather data on current practices, resource use, and emissions, helping to identify areas for improvement.
- Benchmarking: They allow organizations to compare their performance against industry standards or peers, highlighting gaps and opportunities.
- Guiding Goal Development
- Best Practices: Frameworks offer best practices and benchmarks for creating realistic and impactful sustainability goals, ensuring alignment with industry standards.
- Specificity: They help organizations define specific, measurable, and time-bound (SMART) goals tailored to their unique contexts.
- Prioritizing Actions
- Risk Assessment: Frameworks guide organizations in assessing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks, helping prioritize which sustainability goals to focus on first.
- Stakeholder Input: They often encourage stakeholder engagement, ensuring that goals reflect the needs and expectations of employees, customers, and the community.
- Providing a Roadmap
- Action Plans: Sustainability standards often include guidelines for creating action plans, detailing the steps needed to achieve each goal.
- Implementation Tools: Frameworks may provide tools and resources to facilitate the implementation of sustainability initiatives.
- Measuring and Reporting Progress
- Metrics and KPIs: Standards provide key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to track progress, ensuring organizations can measure their impact effectively.
- Accountability: Many frameworks require regular reporting, fostering transparency and accountability for sustainability commitments.
- Enhancing Credibility
- Certification: Achieving certification or recognition from established sustainability frameworks can enhance an organization’s credibility and reputation.
- Stakeholder Trust: Adopting recognized standards can build trust with stakeholders by demonstrating a commitment to sustainability.
- Continuous Improvement
- Feedback Loops: Frameworks often encourage regular reviews and updates to goals and strategies, promoting a culture of continuous improvement.
- Learning and Adaptation: Organizations can learn from successes and challenges, refining their goals and approaches over time.
By utilizing these frameworks and standards, organizations can effectively create and pursue sustainability goals that align with broader environmental and social objectives.
How To Develop a Climate Action Plan to Achieve Your Sustainability Goals
To effectively achieve your sustainability goals, you will need to have a climate action plan in place to help guide your organization. A climate action plan is essentially a roadmap that takes organizations from commitment to results. They’re focused on achieving emissions reductions, while also bolstering climate resiliency and implementing climate adaptation strategies, and they outline specific actions organizations will take to get there.
There are different ways to approach the creation of a Climate Action Plan. The form it takes and the content it includes depends on what type of corporation, organization, or community (country, city, region, etc.) it’s being developed for. In some cases, certain aspects of a Climate Action Plan may also be prescribed by legislation or policy, and it should also ideally be Paris-Agreement compatible.
While there isn’t one standard path for creating a Climate Action Plan, there are general steps that are common to most processes. If you’re looking for a starting point, here are seven steps to consider:
1) Start with a leadership-backed commitment
The first step to developing a Climate Action Plan is to secure a commitment from senior leadership. Unless the organization is truly committed to change, the planning process will be an uphill battle. Find a champion and have them make a public commitment. Ideally, this will come from the highest-ranking person in the organization, and will be backed by a remuneration strategy or other accountability metrics.
2) Create a planning team
After you’ve secured commitment, the next step is to enlist the right people. This could look like a steering committee and might include directors, middle managers and technical experts from different parts of the organization. This team should ideally be supported by program specialists, project managers, and support staff so that committee decisions get executed.
3) Understand where you’re at and where you’re going
Typically, the next step would be to conduct a review of your existing policies, operational procedures, and targets to see which ones already support climate action, and which need to be adjusted. It’s also important to review data to understand your current emissions footprint, including scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions. You may wish to conduct a climate scenario analysis at this stage as well, to understand your climate risks, opportunities, and your options to navigate both. Armed with this knowledge, you can set targets that define where you need to get to.
4) Create specific goals and targets
It’s important that goals and targets be science-based. This ensures rigor and helps avoid greenwashing. The SBTi can be helpful during this stage. They provide extensive information and resources to assist with target setting, using a step-by-step approach. Some documents to look at include their SBTi Criteria and Recommendations for Near-Term Targets and Net-Zero Standard Criteria. They also offer sector-specific guidance for the following sectors: Aluminum, Apparel and footwear, Aviation, Buildings, Chemicals, Cement, Financial institutions, Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG), Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Maritime, Oil and Gas, Power, Steel, and Transport. Well-defined goals and metrics can make or break your plan, so take your time on this step.
5) Determine the steps needed to reach those goals and targets
Next is the task of creating your plan. This should look like a detailed plan for how your organization will meet your established goals and targets. It will often include near-term and long-term targets, and should confirm financial resources to ensure the activities are doable. A communications plan is also advisable. The more detailed you get during this stage, while still building in some flexibility for unexpected events, the more likely your plan is to be successful.
6) Choose the right tools to help
Keeping track of your Climate Action Plan can be a job in itself. Employing the help of a climate action software solution, like AMCS, can make a world of difference. The right software will help you reach your climate action targets with the assistance of machine learning. It does this by simplifying and streamlining your climate data collection, forecasting scenarios and visualizing outcomes, and managing actions and results. Rather than relying on a slew of different documents and spreadsheets, a software solution brings everything together in one place.
7) Implement the plan
Once your plan has been approved (and submitted, if you’re legally required to do so), it’s time to begin implementing it. This is where the rubber meets the road. During the implementation phase, it’s important to communicate often and with all stakeholders. It’s also important to track progress using a climate action tracker, and evolve the plan as you go. A Climate Action Plan is an evergreen document, rather than a one-and-done plan.
How AMCS Can Help Your Organization Achieve Its Sustainability Goals
The AMCS Sustainability Platform provides you with the tools you need to power your sustainability goals, boost performance, and achieve your climate pledges. Our all-in-one sustainability platform tracks a host of ESG metrics so you can do more with your data. Helping you automate reporting, engage with stakeholders, reduce risks, and inform your sustainability goals and strategy.
To find out how we’re supporting a more sustainable, more profitable, future, discover the AMCS Sustainability Platform today.
Army officials have acknowledged they “didn’t do enough” to safeguard Staff Sergeant John McKelvie, who tragically died following a vehicle crash during a training exercise at the country’s largest military base.
