Every year on the last Friday of November, known as ‘Black Friday’, consumers around the world are bombarded by communications designed to encourage mass spending ahead of the holiday season. But each year, the earth’s resources continue to be used up at unprecedented rates, and nature’s worth is underestimated, as we use up more resources than we can sustainably replace.
Climate-conscious businesses, like Agulhas, encourage and support ‘Green Friday’ as an antidote to the impact of the season-of-spending; to give a little extra back to nature, and take stock of their sustainable business actions so far.
This year, as part of our climate commitments, we reflect on progress, and look forward to what more we can do and support, in order to minimise the negative effects we have on our planet, and accelerate positive impacts in our local and global sphere of influence.
The SME Climate Commitment
As an SME (small-medium sized enterprise), providing knowledge services, our environmental footprint is small compared to many international businesses. However, we believe that all organisations should commit to responsibly managing their environmental impacts, no matter their size. SMEs are a critical part of the global business architecture, and therefore have a collective value, footprint and impact.
The SME Climate Commitment states that: ‘Recognizing that climate change poses a threat to the economy, nature and society at large, our company commits to take action immediately in order to:
- Halve our Scope 1&2 greenhouse gas emissions before 2030
- Achieve net zero emissions across all Scopes by 2050
- Share our annual progress
In doing so, we are proud to be recognized by the United Nations Race to Zero campaign, and join governments, businesses, cities, regions, and universities around the world that share the same mission.’
What does this mean for Agulhas? As a service-based organisation working from a small, leased office in North London, our propensity to produce is small; we don’t make ‘products’ or create industrial waste, for example.
However, we do understand what impacts we do have – as a people-based business with staff who work from the office on a hybrid basis, we create general waste such as food waste. To stay in compliance with government standards on IT security, we are also required to procure new laptops every 3-4 years. On the delivery side, our biggest carbon emissions stem from flights to and from countries we travel to, in order to do evaluation, research and assessment services.
So, how are we trying to limit our climate impact?
B Corp
In 2022, as part of our B Corp Certification, we amended our Articles of Association to ensure environmental awareness in decision making at Director and Board levels, in line with our organisational values of respect, equity and integrity.
Furthermore, as our work supports clients in addressing the global challenges set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including climate change and environmental protection, Agulhas acknowledges the responsibility we have to do the work ourselves. As part of our commitment, an Impact Report, published annually, keeps us transparent about our goals, realistic about our ambitions, and accountable for our progress.
Normative Carbon Calculator
The SME climate hub endorses the business carbon calculator, powered by Normative. It was specifically developed for smaller businesses. It considers
- our size,
- our sector
- It uses our business data such as our spending on electricity, heating, travel and assets, taken from our annual accounts and calculates.
It calculates an approximate total emissions from our direct, scope 2 and scope 3 emissions using Normative’s methodology and data sources and following the globally recognised Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
We know from our baseline carbon calculator that our client flights are our largest carbon footprint. It’s also the one over which we have the least control; our work may take us to regions across the world, and while much can be done via virtual means, it is not always replaceable. We also do not have control or influence over the progress made by the aviation sector to invest in sustainable solutions.
Earthly
We have partnered with Earthly, which supports organisations to invest in projects that remove carbon, restore biodiversity and improve livelihoods, to mitigate against our carbon footprint by investing in verified nature-based solutions. The Earthly ‘rating’ of projects is the industry-first holistic project assessment. Earthly researchers analyse 106 data points, aggregating information across the three vital pillars of carbon, biodiversity and people.
Agulhas is currently funding 2 projects, which have social value beyond their environmental impacts; an Agroforestry project in Upper Tana, Kenya, and another project which supports regenerative farming in the Indo-Gangetic Plains in India.
The Upper Tana-Nairobi Water Fund (UTNWF) project is the first water fund in Africa, which aims to use green infrastructure such as forests and wetlands to address the root cause of diminishing water quantity and quality in the region. The project is using a combination of agroforestry techniques (including fruit orchards, alley cropping and boundary planting) to restore forest habitat and prevent further agricultural expansion that damages water supplies. They have worked with over 165,000 local farmers to plant over 3 million trees to stabilise soils, sequester carbon, and improve the income security of local farmers.
In the Indo-Gangetic Plains in India, over 51,000 farmers, across 600,000 acres, in seven Indian states are already a part of this ambitious project. Their mission is to accelerate the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices to cut greenhouse gas emissions, restore degraded land, and boost soil health and crop yields. Using regenerative techniques like reduced tillage, Direct Seeding of Rice (DSR), crop residue management, crop rotation and cover crops, it replaces harmful traditional methods. Since launching in 2019 in Punjab and Haryana, the project now extends to maize-wheat, sugarcane and cotton systems, incorporating pulses and mustards as cover crops. This initiative stands out for its contribution to the 12 Sustainable Development Goals, making a significant stride towards sustainable agriculture with far-reaching impacts on the environment and local livelihoods.
We acknowledge that both regenerative farming and agroforestry are necessary for strides to be made. Therefore, we have decided to invest in a mix of 80% mitigation and 20% adaptation projects. The 80% contributes to our verifiable carbon mitigation, and 20% in innovative, ambitious projects for carbon removal.
Small actions make big impacts
While our impact on the planet may seem negligible in the grand scheme of global businesses, it’s exactly this kind of thinking that can make all the difference. If we all, as individuals and organisations, make a small but conscious effort to reduce our climate impacts this holiday season, then the aggregate effect will be far greater than the sum of its parts. As B Corp, an SME, and a collective of climate-conscious individuals, Agulhas is keen to live up to our values, and recognise our duty to contribute towards a more sustainable, greener future.
