As the world celebrates World Environment Day today under the theme “Time for Nature”, we at GlobalCAD are publicly launching our own Commitments for Environmental Sustainability.
2020 is a critical year to take serious action to reverse trends on global greenhouse gas emissions, to halt biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, to drastically reduce the pollution of our air, water and soils and to move towards truly circular and regenerative economies. This is particularly the case in times of a global pandemic, which is linked in some many ways to homo sapiens’ relationship with “nature”.
At GlobalCAD, enhancing the state of the environment and natural resources is not only among our key thematic areas of interest and expertise when it comes to implementing projects; also beyond that, we have always considered sustainability issues and “eco-friendly” options when doing our work. We have been doing that without a clear framework so far. Now we have put together our commitments with concrete targets in this document that we launch today.
As an overall goal, we commit to applying sustainability criteria in all aspects of our work to reduce the ecological and carbon footprint of our operations and create a positive net impact on people and the planet.
To do so, 15 commitments will guide our actions in relation to environmental sustainability at all levels, with objectives, actions and targets on:
- 1. How we identify our projects: All of our projects provide a tangible contribution to society, particularly environmental sustainability and social cohesion.
- 2. How we implement our projects: By 2025, all of our projects are implemented with a zero-emission and environmentally friendly approach.
- 3. How we manage our workspace: We reduce our resource consumption, waste and emissions through an environmental monitoring and management system.
- 4. How we communicate what we do: We communicate our commitments, actions and progress in a proactive and transparent manner and inspire our team, partners, clients and our community to take action and promote change within their organisations.
The lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic has drastically influenced the way the global development community is currently implementing projects and activities, with a sharp drop in international air travel and a boom in online collaboration and virtual meetings. While these are exceptional times and involuntary measures, this has also been an important leap in introducing low-carbon alternatives in the sector.
Putting our commitments into practice is a collective effort of our entire team, as well as part of our engagement with partners, clients and our wider community. We invite you to get to know our commitments and we look forward to any questions or feedback you may have.
