Director insights: Starting the climate journey

“Where do we start?”,  is one of the most common questions directors ask when considering climate change.

When the health and safety legislation reforms arrived in 2015, directors asked the same question. The answer to both might seem like tautology, but you just need to start. That’s the advice given at a series of Chapter Zero Board Toolkit workshops hosted by the Institute of Directors (IoD) over the past few months.

Whether motivated by regulatory pressures and international trade measures, economic dis/incentives or stakeholder preferences, action on climate change is an imperative for all businesses and organisations, a responsibility for directors, and an opportunity for innovation and leadership.

Speakers involved in the series of workshops to date have brought a range of perspectives across infrastructure, transport, primary industries, service industry, research, finance, utilities, energy, local government, start-ups and not-for-profits.

And there’s nothing like stories from directors about what worked, and what didn’t work, and how they started their climate journey.

• Goodman Property Services (NZ) Limited has refined its investment strategy to meet the demands for sustainability among warehouse and logistics customers including building new facilities to a minimum 5 Green Star rating, retrofitting energy efficient technologies to improve the environmental performance of the portfolio, and focusing on brownfield redevelopment opportunities.
• Due to a combination of climate disclosure regulation, stakeholder expectations, climate litigation, scientific evidence on atmospheric CO2 and the impacts of climate change on the business, Infratil has put climate change as a standing agenda item for every board meeting.
• GirlGuiding New Zealand is reviewing how it delivers its outdoor programmes and Habitat for Humanity New Zealand is reviewing the impacts of climate change on their building programmes both in New Zealand and across the Pacific.
• In addition to changes within the organisation, Meridian Energy has also done work in the boardroom upskilling board members (including through membership of Chapter Zero New Zealand) and accessing climate expertise to support the board with their thinking and decision-making.

Most companies have “easy wins” they can look at implementing or enhancing action on straight away such as waste reduction and recycling, energy efficiencies, water conservation, procurement practices, and reducing travel. And once you start looking, it can be surprising how many cost efficiencies can come out of some of these measures, which provides an additional incentive, and conversely, delaying action could make for increased cost and a more challenging transition to a lower-emissions future.

Chapter Zero NZ Board Toolkit

The Board Toolkit was adapted for a New Zealand director audience based on the Chapter Zero UK toolkit. It aims to provide a simple yet useful framework for directors to work through with their boards to promote urgent and decisive action across every board table.

It focuses on a simple five-step process that any director, regardless of their background knowledge or organisational resource, can use to work through the challenge:

1. Ensure the right board oversight
2. Establish the need for change
3. Set direction and plan the change
4. Embed and sustain the change
5. Monitor and optimise

The Toolkit also contains questions for directors to consider and pose to their boards, checklists and options for deeper reading, along with an interactive Scorecard tool to help boards assess their current approach and promote further conversation. 

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Chapter Zero New Zealand is the home of climate change information at the Institute of Directors and is the New Zealand Chapter of the World Economic Forum’s Climate Governance Initiative (CGI). We encourage all directors and executives interested in climate change governance to become a Chapter Zero New Zealand supporter. It’s free to join and you’ll receive a bi-monthly newsletter with the latest news, resources and events to increase your climate change governance skills and knowledge.