Introduction
Having drafted both the vision, aims, and themes, and the priority actions for your plan, it is now time to finalise your forward strategy, assign responsibility, and ensure costing and resourcing is sufficient. This is the step in which you should seek agreement on the different aspects of your plan, and sign-off from your working groups and senior executives. Ideally this step can be done in tandem with the finalising of your adaptation plan, to have the most efficient discussions with senior leaders, and to promote a joined-up approach to the entire climate action planning in your organisation.
Aims
Agree actions to reduce emissions and finalise plan
Objectives
Consider undertaking this step in tandem with Step 4 of your adaptation plan
Agree ownership and resource for each action
Agree your level of ambition and monitoring framework
Finalise the text of the plan
Sign off your Mitigation Plan as necessary (e.g. working groups, senior staff, committee, public consultation)
1. Finance and Costing
2. This step will likely require one–to–one meetings, especially with Heads of Departments, to agree ownership, resource and accuracy of actions.
3. Ambition – Have you covered:
- Proposals and policies to reduce emissions
- Timescales for implementation
- Cross Border issues
Finance and Costing
Governance and Stakeholder Engagement
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Public Body Reporting
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1. Hold one to-ones with relevant action owners on draft action plan to agree ownership and resource of actions.
2. Agree your ambition as an organisation, by finalising your action plan along with setting out what indicators you will measure as part of your monitoring framework.
3. Develop text of the plan (including any case studies) – Keep this short and usable
4. Finalise plan and gain agreement through required organisational processes. This can include officer working groups, senior staff, relevant senior management committees, elected officials or public consultation.
-Seeking third party verification of your GHG inventory from an accredited organisation can assist you in identifying gaps in your results, and will lend credibility to your plan going forward. The verifying body must be fully independent both of the organisation providing the data and the standard against which they are using to perform the verification. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) provides a list of accredited third party verifiers here, however this is not a comprehensive list by any means. The CDP provides a platform for organisations to then disclose this verified climate data for their stakeholders, which can have several benefits including improving an organisation’s standing as a climate leader, benchmarking progress, and potentially even providing access to funding.
-UNFCCC Global Climate Action Portal: Organisations that have uploaded their information to an initiative like CDP can have their information recorded by the UNFCCC as contributing towards global efforts to mitigating climate change. In addition to CDP, local authorities can also contribute through the Climate Bonds Initiative, The Global Covenant of Mayors for Carbon and Energy, The Climate Group, or Carbonn. See here for more information. This portal can also act as a great resource in tracking and getting inspiration from similar organisations on the path to decarbonisation.
Step Four Complete
This step is never fully complete, as a focus on climate action should become a default way of working; assessing the level of acceptable emissions in any of your organisation’s activities against your targets. Your plan needs to be reviewed and monitored for effectiveness at regular intervals, so head to Step 5 to find out more.
