Climate Impact
10 Marketing Tips to Communicate Your Commitment to Sustainability.
Effective Strategies for Sustainable Hotels to Engage Eco-Conscious Travelers and Promote Responsible Tourism.
June 2, 2023
Effective Strategies for Sustainable Hotels to Engage Eco-Conscious Travelers and Promote Responsible Tourism.
As eco-consciousness continues to rise among travelers, sustainable hotels have a unique opportunity to tap into this growing market by adopting environmentally friendly practices and promoting responsible tourism.
The Paris agreement outlined a plan to keep global warming below 2 degrees celsius, since then environmental reports have stressed the importance of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC.
In order to meet the world’s climate goals, individuals and companies alike have to achieve significant carbon reduction. This article offers 10 simple actions you can take to reduce your carbon footprint.
From carbon offsets to biodiversity and plastic credits, this article is a detailed explanation of the different types of climate assets you will find on the ClimateTrade marketplace.
This year, the United Nations has chosen February as the month to focus on SDG 5, gender equality. In this article, we dive into a key concept connecting gender issues with climate action: gender-just climate finance.
Football, the world’s most loved sport, is taking positive steps towards sustainability and aiming to become carbon neutral.
When it comes to combating climate change, women are a key part of the solution. In this article, we explore the importance of gender equality for climate action. March 8th is International Women’s Day, and throughout the month, many organizations increase their focus on supporting women in various ways. For the UN, this is also the month of Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5) relating to gender equality. While some progress has been achieved in recent years, we are still very far from gender equality: worldwide, women still earn 24% less than men, and no country has managed to close this pay gap. Around the world, 750 million women and girls were married before the age of 18, and in 18 countries, husbands can legally prevent their wives from working. Women’s vulnerability to climate change Covid-19 has worsened gender inequality: new projections of global poverty by UN Women, UNDP and the Pardee Center for International Futures estimate that globally, 388 million women and girls will be living in extreme poverty in 2022 (compared to 372 million men and boys). According to these new forecasts, 83.7% of the world’s extremely poor women and girls would live in just two regions: Sub-Saharan Africa (62.8%) and Central and Southern Asia (20.9%). More women than men live in extreme poverty today, and as such, they are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. But they are also a key part of the solution, which is why any efforts to mitigate climate change must also tackle gender equality challenges. Women and agriculture Agriculture is at the center of the climate crisis both because the effects of global warming are threatening global food security, and because more sustainable agricultural practices could provide climate solutions. For instance, the latest IPCC report on climate change adaptation and mitigation highlighted agroforestry as a climate-resilient way of growing food while also creating wildlife habitat. Globally, women are just 13 per cent of agricultural land holders, yet they represent around 43% of the agricultural workforce. In the least developed countries, 64.3% of women were employed in agriculture in 2015. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30%, which would raise total agricultural output in developing countries by up to 4%, providing solutions to food security challenges. Gender-responsive climate finance There is increasing evidence that shows that gender equality and women’s empowerment would yield greater returns to economic growth and, more broadly, to sustainable development. It is therefore clear that incorporating gender awareness and gender criteria into climate financing mechanisms and strategies would make climate finance more efficient. But women still don’t have adequate access to funds and other resources to adapt to the consequences of climate change: 9 in 10 countries in the world currently have at least one law impeding women’s economic opportunities, including access to credit. Gender considerations were only recently included in climate collaboration: there was no mention of gender in UN climate change negotiations until 2008. Today, climate finance mechanisms are beginning to include gender-related criteria in their assessment of projects. For instance, the Green Climate Fund, a financing body focused on mitigation and adaptation to climate change, adopted a gender policy in 2015, which says that a gender and social assessment must be included with every funding proposal, and that a gender and social inclusion action plan must be developed for every project. Watch the UNFCCC’s video below to understand what gender-responsive climate finance is and what benefits it can bring to women and men. ClimateTrade projects focused on gender equality On the ClimateTrade marketplace, climate mitigation projects are organized by SDG, so you can offset your carbon emissions while supporting the causes most important to you. We currently have 14 projects with a particular focus on gender equality (SDG 5): browse them here.
Originally posted on Porch.com The phrase ‘digital carbon footprint’ might sound like an attempt to add one more thing to your growing plate of environmental concerns, but don’t worry – it’s real, but it’s also easy to mitigate. A digital carbon footprint is the sum of energy required from all of your online activities. This number includes things that are very tangible to us, like the power necessary to keep all of our online electronics charged and running. It also has some more far-reaching factors, like the energy required by the servers hosting our favorite TV shows, movies, videos, and games. The energy needed for the manufacturing process of consumer electronics is another element to consider, as is the fossil fuel consumption for shipping these products. Yet another piece of our digital carbon footprint is our devices’ lifespan and disposal methods. All of these things combined create our digital carbon footprint. It’s looking a little more real now, right? Your normal, everyday carbon footprint is something you probably hear about and factor into your choices. Choice of vehicle, packaging of consumer products, recycling habits, choosing local produce, all of those things would not have crossed the mind of the average person daily. That’s where we’re at with digital carbon footprints. The impacts of our online activities are mounting, so it’s time to consider how to mitigate those effects. More on this topic: Sustainability and remote work What are carbon-neutral products and services? Ways you can help Avoid streaming, auto-play, and playing videos while you are out of the room. This is the modern equivalent of your parents drilling into you not to leave the lights on when you walk out of a room. It adds up! Download instead of stream. If you have a favorite Netflix show that you can download, do that instead of repeatedly streaming it. When you download a show, you’re only using your device’s energy to watch it, not that of all of the technology required by a streaming service. Adjust your online shopping habits. If you, like many of us, have some pretty robust online shopping habits, you can make a difference by making sure your tabs are closed and you aren’t leaving items in your online carts that you have no intention of returning to. Remember – these actions all mean that somewhere, energy is being consumed! Do “clear” searches and reuse your searches. Regularly clearing your cookies and search history means that cookies are not being triggered to track your online behavior when you run a new search. Good for your privacy and energy consumption. Reusing searches means that your browser is reloading a search that the results are already cached for, not using energy to run a novel search. Adjust power settings. This one should be pretty obvious – like the analogy of your parents hounding you about turning off the light as a kid, turn your power consumption settings down! Brightness, sleep time, etc.—it all matters. Adjust brightness. Speaking of brightness, you’ll notice a pleasant boost in your device’s battery life if you get used to a lower brightness setting. Not to mention that you’ll be using less power overall and reducing your digital carbon footprint. Recycle, upcycle and dispose of your electronics properly. Give away, upgrade, or responsibly dispose of your old devices. Tossing a ten-year-old cell phone in the trash? Not so environmentally responsible. Source an electronics disposal facility in your area and ensure you’re doing your part! Don’t upgrade devices until you actually need to. Despite what your service provider might have you believe, you won’t perish if you don’t have the latest release of your device. Waiting longer to upgrade reduces the amount of demand for consumer electronics and has a downstream waterfall effect positively on your digital carbon footprint. Power. Down. Many of us have gotten into the habit of letting our devices go into ‘Sleep’ mode instead of shutting them down at the end of our days. Don’t do this. There is still a draw on energy when they are in Sleep mode. Powering them off is good for your devices, your electricity bill, and the environment. Eliminate superfluous use of technology. Where you can, go old school. This is the modern version of eating local. We always used to ‘eat local’ because shipping in food from across the world daily was a luxury most could not conceive of. Today, go tech-free. See how your life changes (likely for the better) with less tech! Change your light bulbs to eco-friendly, LED ones. They might be more expensive in the short term, but they’ll save both you and the environment in the long term. Find the best spot to place your lamps in order to have the best lighting. Optimize! Just because you put a lamp in that one place when you moved in doesn’t mean it has to stay there for eternity. Move things around and see how you can optimize the light use in your home. Clean out your cloud space. Go through your cloud service periodically and delete the files you no longer need. Be aware that even now that they are safer, cloud storage still experiences data breaches, so mind the information you have there. Periodically review and keep it secure. Consider transferring archived files to an external hard drive. This is safer and uses less energy. Email more mindfully. Delete old emails, declutter your inbox, unsubscribe from mailing lists you don´t need. You’ll feel more accomplished while reducing your digital footprint. Find the smart app that works for you. There are numerous smart apps on the market that are created to connect to and monitor your home’s carbon footprint. Do some research and find out what one works the best for you based on your type of home, technology, and devices. Moving to sustainable and renewable energy sources Analyze your home’s electric use. Move to greener resources when possible, from solar panels to LED bulbs—everything helps! As technology moves forward