Wildfires in Corfu: A climate call to action for your organisation

It is difficult to believe when considering the magnitude of the problem we face, that anything you or I can do can make any meaningful contribution to addressing our crisis. This despair is something that I have wrestled with for the past four or five years especially. I swing between hope – that we still have time to limit ourselves to ‘only’ the impacts brought on by a 2.5% earth-warming (I accepted 1.5% as a fantasy a few years back) and hopelessness – in fearing that society and its powerholders are by their very design incapable of making the immediate radical change needed to change our trajectory to something more hopeful.

Action by us as individuals is worthwhile, undoubtedly. But any endeavour required on a mass scale, on a country-wide basis, on a worldwide level, is something that can only be achieved by government action. Legislation, government policy and regulatory framework are the only means to achieve the uniform, harmonised and mass-scale change required. But there is an additional sphere of action that I move in that is not: individual or state. It is the sphere of work; of business; of the corporate. If we are to become legalistic about this, in law, there are three entities with legal personality – the individual; the state; and the corporate.

So, what is the corporate? It’s a limited company, a PLC, a charity, an LLP, a co-operative, a CIC, a CIO – all of these are legal constructs, concepts that have been awarded ‘legal personhood’ such that they have rights and responsibilities, they can be represented in court as their own ‘corporate’ identity, they can be held to criminal account. As a legal entity, their actions can have an impact in just the same way that an individual or the Government does. And in fact, this type of legal personhood shapes our lives just as routinely as our government, friends and family… Facebook, Twitter, Greggs, Mcdonald’s, Tesco, Amazon, Netflix, Disney – these are daily, familiar presences that have a profound influence upon us and humanity’s culture.

So, what is this ‘third’ sphere doing to address this crisis?  

Even less is the answer. They do not have the imperative to act. Abstract concepts do not lay awake at night feeling guilty about forgetting to put the recycling out last Monday; they don’t feel the pressure of voters’ demands to create policies to solve matters; the extent of their powers don’t wax and wane with an election – they persist no matter what. Because of that, they escape under the radar. We look to individuals, and we look to the Government, because they are tangible, they are naturally identifiable entities.

But this third form of legal entity can be a profound influencer. And it is entirely within our control to cause them to act. Because their action is created by us – a PLC is comprised of shareholders; a limited company is led by directors; a charity is shaped by trustees. This third sphere is us at the end of the day. When we ask, “Why aren’t organisations doing more to stop the cause of the climate crisis?” The answer is ‘us’. We are not causing it to.

Last week I presented a session to procurement heads from a number of household-name charities. A group where none but two of the charities had made a commitment to net zero. None but three of the charities in fact had acknowledged the environmental crisis in their strategy. So at face value, it would seem desperate. But, in contrast, I ended that 90-minute session feeling I had made a definite positive impact. That was 25 influential charities whose procurement department now had the ambition to assess every contract under their control to look to amend it to serve the planet. And to ensure that protecting the planet was as primary an objective for their contract drafting as profitability was.

There are so many ways that a business/charity/CIC/PLC/LLP can contribute to addressing the environmental crisis through its drafting of legal documents. Every single contract that a business enters into can be used to cause positive action. If each corporate entity adopted a green approach in their contracting practices, the entire landscape of the third sphere would become one which created the resolution, instead of the problem.

If you would like further information or advice on how you can address the environmental crisis by adopting a green approach in your contracting practices, please contact Natalie Barbosa.