One small step for climate change

[Standard Bank Team]

With the United Nations Climate Summit taking place this past week, Karin Ireton, Head of Sustainability Management at Standard Bank Group, shares her experiences of the summit.

New York in the week of the UN’s General Assembly meetings is a crazy place to be. This year, in addition to the General Assembly, the UN Secretary General held a Climate Leadership Summit which attracted hundreds of people from the private sector and non-governmental organisations.

Hotels were crammed full, restaurants buzzing with a cacophony of different accents and there were policemen and secret service everywhere. Streets blocks from the UN precinct were blocked off to road traffic and even pedestrian access was limited.

With all the noise and the buzz, one hopes that governments and corporate leaders were listening to the more than 300,000 people who marched through New York on Sunday calling for leadership and action on climate change. As my hotel’s handyman - Carlos on his name tag, says in heavily accented English. “Are you here for the climate change? They must do something, even one small step at a time, before it is too late”.

That’s the point. It is time for action and globally individuals are concerned that their governments are not acting fast enough or decisively enough. Climate change isn’t some future, maybe, event. It is happening already. It can be seen in changing rainfall patterns, in rising temperatures and disappearing glaciers and melting ice sheets. The question is no longer whether it is happening but what to do about it. And there is so much that can be done and must be done.

Some of the most obvious steps are reducing energy consumption and switching to renewable energy sources wherever possible. Firstly it is about using less energy to produce more and it has the added advantage of saving money in the long term as well. In South Africa we have seen government’s programme to ensure that some of the energy being sold by Eskom is from renewable resources. Some of the first units financed by Standard Bank are already feeding energy into the national grid. They have come on stream on budget and on time and have been real contributors during the winter power shortages. But, we need more action, and faster. And, we need individuals and companies to make smarter choices. It isn’t anymore what “they” are going to do but what we collectively are going to do.

It is about changing light bulbs and improving energy efficiency but it is also about rethinking what we do, when we do it and more importantly how we do it. At Standard Bank Group, for example, we are constantly looking at how we run our buildings, what technology we use and whether we can be more efficient. This has led to substantial cost savings over time but also to real reductions in the energy we consume. Which means there is more available so that other businesses can get access to grow and run their production facilities.

One of the big focus points at the UN this week is how to take the steps taken by leaders, like Standard Bank, and scale them up so that everyone is doing it. There are some great examples being talked about but more is needed. You can count on Standard Bank to do its bit, but what are you doing as an individual?”

See www.standardbank.com/sustainability for more on how Standard Bank Group has responded to the need for renewable energy.