Sustainability: Promises, targets versus action

World Environment Day — celebrated on June 5, with the theme of Only One Earth — saw corporate pledging to put in transformative policies to enable cleaner, greener and sustainable living.

However, new research from Bain & Company released at the recently concluded World Economic Forum, is not encouraging. Almost a third of businesses globally failed to deliver against decarbonisation targets set for 2020, says the research. Bain’s analysis of data from CDP, a non-profit that runs the world’s largest environmental disclosure system, shows 31 per cent of businesses who set and published scope 1 and 2 absolute emissions reduction targets due in 2020, did not meet them. More than a quarter missed these targets by a substantial margin — below 80 per cent of their target.

According to Bain & Company, many companies are struggling to match ambitious pledges, which also include more complex-to-tackle scope 3 emissions, with effective action. But that does not seem to be deterring them from setting more targets.

The report says the number of organisations who have committed to science-based targets has almost quadrupled from 775 in 2020 to 2,843 in April 2022. However, there remains a stark global divide. The majority (57 per cent) of science-based commitments to date come from businesses in EMEA, with 19 per cent coming from the Americas and 24 per cent coming from APAC.

Published on

June 05, 2022