As climate challenges intensify, businesses play a crucial role in driving climate change. By embracing innovation and technology, they can lead in addressing key environmental issues. Climate and nature contributions support actions beyond a company’s value chain, complementing direct carbon reduction efforts without claiming to offset emissions.
Climate and nature contribution involves support from a business for initiatives addressing climate change or biodiversity loss beyond its operations. This can include certified carbon credits, local projects with social benefits, or investments in advanced carbon removal technologies like Direct Air Capture (DAC) or mineralisation.
After measuring your carbon footprint, you may identify emissions in your supply chain that are difficult to reduce. While emerging technologies develop, climate and nature contributions can help to bridge the gap, enabling immediate action in addition to supporting supplier decarbonisation efforts.
SBTi offers guidance for designing BVCM strategies. We recommend partnering with one of our trusted climate contributors, who can provide access to accredited schemes and an easy-to-use platform for scaling impact. These Partners let businesses search projects by type, registry, or SDGs, making it invaluable for those aligning with specific SDGs and seeking to communicate their sustainability efforts authentically.
Businesses can also invest in local climate and nature projects, enhancing community ties and boosting employee engagement. Partnering on initiatives like wetland restoration or tree planting creates carbon sinks, aids flood prevention, and promotes biodiversity by restoring wildlife habitats.
Make it Wild, a Yorkshire business, restores land to support native wildlife and offers educational programs and volunteer days, giving employees hands-on opportunities to make a real impact.
Consumers are increasingly wary of businesses claiming carbon neutrality with low-quality credits instead of cutting their own emissions. While investing in impactful global projects is important, it must be paired with internal carbon reduction solutions and should not be used to claim neutrality over operational emissions.
Start turning ESG into measurable business value
