Is Your Business Open for Climate Dialogue?
A lot of businesses are doing good climate work — setting and improving climate targets, leading the way in climate transition — while their audiences hear little to nothing about this. There’s a detrimental gap between the climate work being done and stakeholders’ engagement in it — and that’s often because the stakeholders aren’t given the opportunity to be empowered stakeholders.
Climate Dialogue bridges that gap, creating a two-way channel of communication. It gives companies a way to speak to their audiences about their climate work — in an everyday, easy-to-access way. And it gives those audiences a way to speak back — to offer ideas, ask questions, give praise or critique, and press for progress.
Launched in June, Climate Dialogue already has 19 client organizations onboard, including Exponential Roadmap, Goodwings, Karun, Sweden’s Mariestad Municipality, SPP, The New Division, and Urbangreen. Now certified as Open for Climate Dialogue™, these businesses have committed to responding to any climate review that receives at least 100 agrees on their page.
We recently spoke to two of these organizations to find out how — and why — they’re using the new Open for Climate Dialogue™ platform.
Urbangreen — inspiring, educating, reaching new audiences
Therese Lundstedt is CEO of Urbangreen, which is bringing more greenery into cities through planning, developing, and constructing green roofs. Therese says she wanted to sign up her business for Climate Dialogue from the moment she heard about it.
“We Don’t Have Time is a great way for us to reach a new audience, a different set of people we don’t normally meet,” she said.
“You don’t just stumble into the Urbangreen homepage by accident, and with Climate Dialogue we can reach people who don’t know anything about us or green roofs yet. Plus, it’s easy for those people to talk to us there. It’s got to be easy, or they just won’t do it.”
Right now, Urbangreen’s Climate Dialogue platform is in its early days. They’re using it to educate and inspire, showing what green roofs are all about and why they’re so needed in urban areas — for instance, to lower temperatures in individual buildings and whole cities, , to detain and purify stormwater, and to increase biodiversity.
Therese thinks it’s important for Urbangreen to be proactively communicating this work because, “It’s important to reach beyond just big businesses, to let smaller businesses and the larger public know that green roofs exist, that they’re beautiful, and most importantly, that they have a big positive impact on the environment and the climate.”
Mariestad Municipality, Sweden — engaging their people
Mariestad, Sweden, is a UNESCO-recognized model for sustainable development, and they’re known for taking sustainability seriously.
The town’s unique ElectriVillage features renewable energy systems, like Sweden’s fifth hydrogen station, and is testing sustainable transport technology, like different types of fully electric vehicles and charging technology. Logistics and purchasing are also a part of the ElectriVillage concept, with a logistics hub that replaces heavy transport in the city with smaller, electric distribution cars.
Susanné Wallner is Mariestad’s business strategist who manages the ElectriVillage project and has recently overseen the creation of the municipality’s “Climate Bank” of ideas, which utilizes the Open for Climate Dialogue™ platform.
The Climate Bank is a webpage for municipality employees to “deposit” ideas for climate actions they want Mariestad to take.
To kick off the Climate Bank and encourage engagement, Susanné organized a contest among employees for the best climate ideas. However, we’ll have to wait to find out which ideas won, she told us. The winning ideas — all of which will be put into action — will be announced by autumn.
A next step in Mariestad’s Open for Climate Dialogue™ plan is to open up the Climate Bank to citizens of the municipality. The vision is for the people and small businesses of Mariestad to be able to take a stronger stakeholding share in their town’s sustainability actions. Susanné stresses that it’s important for every idea to be evaluated to see if it truly can be implemented, so she and her colleagues are carefully creating a plan for how to do that.
Susanné describes that active transparency is important for any government or company doing sustainability work, and that’s part of why she’s so excited about being Open for Climate Dialogue™.
“If we want to make real progress, we can’t be so afraid. We’ve got to be willing to open up and maybe make mistakes. Then we can improve upon them! Let’s stop being afraid of the mistakes. The fear is holding us down.”
Want your business to Open for Climate Dialogue™?
There are many ways to be Open for Climate Dialogue™, and we’ll keep writing about them over time to show you how companies, governments, and non-profits are utilizing and benefiting from We Don’t Have Time’s platform in this way.
If you’d like your company or organization to open up for this kind of transparent, proactive Climate Dialogue, read more here or contact sara.ellsater@wedonthavetime.org.
Win 5000€ when you give a climate review!
Right now on the We Don’t Have Time app we’re hosting a competition for the best climate review. Give a climate review to any company or organization, and if it’s selected you’ll win 5000 Euros. It’s simple, and here’s how to do it.
(And we suggest visiting some of the Open for Climate Dialogue™ organizations to review their climate work — support their willingness for proactive transparency!)
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