Filipe Ferreira, Chief Sustainability Officer at Vicaima Group and Vicaima Indústria Board Director, discusses the vital role of an ESG strategy, now even more than ever due to rising GHG emissions
The alert from the United Nations (UN) is clear – instead of falling, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions increased by 1.2% between 2021 and 2022, reaching a new record of 57.4 Gigatonnes of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (GtCO2e). According to the “Emissions Gap Report 2023: Broken Record Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again)”, recently released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the global thermometer is cruising towards a rise of 3°C, well above the 1.5°C threshold required to maintain normal human living conditions on this planet.
In view of such fact, which cannot be denied, demystified, or debated, the question that speaks louder than any other is crystal clear – should we even try to deny, demystify, or even debate it?
The password to unveil the phenomenon of the ever-changing global temperature cannot be found among any of those listed but is instead shorter and simpler. It is action. Planning, implementing, and executing an integrated and effective ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) strategy are the terms of order that every Director, CEO or Executive must place at the centre of every Organisation’s decision-making desk.
In this regard, the endeavours of the European Union are to be praised, in particular the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Set to come into force in the 2024 fiscal year and to be considered for the reports to be published in 2025, it will be an important step towards standardising, giving credibility to and leveraging the information reported by companies, a clear acknowledgement that the missing piece in the ESG sphere is a common agenda.
To believe or not to believe in climate change? I don’t think this should be the heart of the debate, notwithstanding the prominence of such term. What should matter most is the acknowledgement of the facts and what we are witnessing – the planet faces an alarming transformation and living conditions could deteriorate rapidly, whether for those who believe or those who don’t believe in climate change.
This, in fact, is one of the issues I would like to address in greater depth. As first appears in the acronym ESG itself, environmental responsibility must embody the guiding principle of the policy of a company and can be embraced transversally in an Organisation, as an entire attitude is not reflected solely in one single act.
Alongside production processes optimisation and consumption reduction, it is crucial to translate this into the increased ability to develop creative, innovative, and long-lasting solutions that extend the lifecycle of a product and which, precisely based on that competitive advantage of the company, eliminate the continuous need for repairs or replacements, thereby bringing benefits to the customer itself.
Products or services lie at the core of a company and must therefore take centre stage in the sustainability debate, prompting a series of organisational shifts that contribute to GHG emission reductions. It is a far-reaching topic that brings us to, for instance, freight shipping methods, where we must also point out the possible alternatives for reducing GHG emissions, whether by selecting local suppliers, streamlining logistics planning or even developing lighter or more compact products while maintaining the performance of the base version.
I believe this is the ultimate ESG challenge – how to balance environmental sustainability with financial viability and the priority of user satisfaction and the various stakeholders involved, because all these vectors are mutually supportive. The solutions are endless.
During unstable circumstances, my appeal is clear: let’s convert collective indecisiveness and overthinking into actionable decisions. Let’s recognise that we could all be mistaken and put the preservation of the future of humanity at the forefront of the global agenda.
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