What do the outcomes of COP27 mean for UK businesses?

In January, the CBI's Sustainability Community (‘the Community’) was joined by an expert panel and met to discuss what the outcomes of UNFCCC’s COP27 mean for UK Businesses.

The panel was hosted by Tania Kumar, Deputy Director of Decarbonisation at the CBI, and included: Louise Clark-White from National Grid, Andrew Hedges from Baker McKenzie, Duncan Oswald from Sage, and Helen Avery from the Green Finance Institute.

Following the panel, the Community shared practical insights, best practices around engaging with COPs, and the opportunities and challenges for businesses.  

Below are the top themes emerging from the discussions.

UNFCCC’s COPs as an opportunity to accelerate your sustainability journey

Several members of the Community go to COP every year. These businesses are convinced of the value of being there on the ground, including making connections and convening new partnerships. The global perspective on issues that you get at COPs cannot be underestimated and it is also an opportunity to be ‘on the same side’ as the UK government, working as a team to represent the UK case and strengthening the private sector’s relationship with the government. 

However, there was a strong sentiment from participants that you do not have to go to a COP to get the benefit of a heightened focus on climate. The opportunity to take stock, and promote what your business is doing internally and externally was a great way for organisations to move sustainability to the top of their agenda.

One example included the opportunity to prioritise sustainability in internal communications and ensure that employees from other departments understand the business's climate strategy, including sharing the opportunity to upskill employees through insights on how to reduce both their own and the organisation’s, carbon footprint.

Don’t forget about the SMEs

Going to a COP can be expensive, and with the UK’s COP26 Presidency now handed over, UK businesses’ engagement will be different. However, with the attention increasing on Scope 3 emissions, along with a focus on the role of land stewards in delivering biodiversity, the role of SMEs in delivering decarbonisation is moving to the forefront. To put simply, the pressure on large businesses to accelerate delivering on their sustainability target is already here, and they need the SMEs they work with to be engaged. Ensuring that their perspective is heard at future COPs is an important challenge to address given the financial and logistical barriers often involved in participating in person.

Progress over perfection: transparency is key

The discussion on COP27 covered the overarching theme of greenwashing and integrity around climate action and commitments, and importantly the need for businesses to keep moving forward with greater ambition and more transparency. Many at the tables noted that 2023 was the year to focus on transparency. 

In practice, this means that businesses must look at what they may not be saying in their net zero or sustainability strategies, to ensure that what they are saying is not misleading, and offers a true reflection of the action they are taking.

It was also observed that it is important for businesses to become comfortable with being transparent across success and failure. This carries a considerably more positive sentiment from the public and investors than the absence of a sustainability message whatsoever, or in the worst-case scenarios, false or inaccurate sustainability statements, resulting in greenwashing accusations.

To read the report from the UN-convened taskforce on addressing greenwashing concerns in the net zero targets of corporates see here.

Also, see our toolkit on communicating your decarbonisation journey here.

It is all about the implementation of ambition

Following the theme of focusing on integrity, the need to move the focus from just setting targets to delivering them also shone through the conversation.

COP26 brought in many ambitious commitments from countries and businesses, but moving forward we are looking to the implementation of these goals. SBTI had an influx of businesses looking to set credible, science-based targets with the aim to reduce their emissions. Now many have set targets, or are in the process of setting them, the energy, excitement, and momentum at COP26 needs to be followed through with meeting targets, and ensuring the same organisational push is put behind meeting targets year on year.

Embedding nature into business as usual

Following the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) and the significant progress made with the new global biodiversity framework, businesses are keen to know exactly how they should be engaging with biodiversity and looking to understand what their role in protecting and restoring the natural environment is. The reflections from the room were mixed. Broadly, they were divided into those that are still shaping what exactly this will look like for them, and those, either due to their business model having a close relationship with land stewardship, or nature as a priority from the top-down, who are already making strides.

To learn more, see the nature protection and restoration section of our COP27 case studies here and also the CBI Economics report on nature and business available here.

To engage in nature discussion for business see Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.

Start planning for COP28

COP28 in UAE is framing itself as ‘the business COP’ with some businesses in the room already planning how best to engage, whether that means travelling to UAE or engaging with the international climate negotiations from London. With the UK no longer holding the COP26 Presidency, many participants noted that COP28 would feel different. Those that were aiming to attend, were expecting that doing so may be more difficult than in the past two years. The advice from regular attendees of COPs is that planning is key, whether attending COP28 or not, to ensure your organisation gets the most out of the opportunity.

Want to be part of the next conversation?

Join the CBI Sustainability Community and sign up for our next focus group event on Enabling Organisational Change here, or our first webinar Sustainability Action: How to Accelerate change in your organisation here.

Are you a sustainability professional and still not a member of the CBI Sustainability Community? If your organisation is a CBI member, you can sign up via our webpage here at no extra cost.