“We’ll have an equivalent to that Paris number. In some cases, it’ll be a statement like zero loss of land or zero deforestation. But we’ll have some sort of apex target, like the 1.5C figure, that the methodology delivers against,” he said.
“I’m not anticipating or expecting the CEO of a company to know what the apex targets are for each area. I want the CEO to to say to their people, OK we’ve got 180 locations, I want every one of those locations to be compliant with SBTs.
“So that’s how I see it. A complicated set of scientific issues being rolled up into a simplistic dashboard for an executive team.”
Alexis Morgan, the global water stewardship leader for the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), agrees. He says that so far companies have set incremental targets on reducing water use, compared with their existing practices, without considering the wider picture.
“The way in which water is being used right now doesn’t account for how much is available in nature, and when you don’t account for that properly, then the numbers that you’re setting are divorced from reality,” he says.
“By reducing demand without understanding supply, you’re just operating with half an equation. And so science-based targets are needed to add that second part of the equation into the mix.
“Some people believe the technology can indefinitely extend and stretch our ability. But I think in many systems we have already gone past planetary boundaries. We have gone past system limits. And we don’t seem to be recognising that.
“There needs to be some level of recognition that we cannot continue to do the business-as-usual, status quo approach. Our business model needs to not just seek to have less impact but to begin to be a solution to that problem.”
Morgan insists that we now have the science – with modern weather forecasting and flood projection technology – to set meaningful targets on water.
“It’s not a matter of is it doable, it’s a matter of is it a priority? Increasingly as businesses see the impact of this hitting their operations, they begin to realise that, yes, it is a priority because it affects communities, businesses, tax revenue – it affects all of those different things,” he argues.
“The challenge is developing a methodology and approach that everybody finds acceptable. It’s that proverb of if you want to walk fast, walk alone, and if you want to walk far, walk together. But walking together is always much slower.
“Bearing in mind that getting to a number like the 1.5 Celsius Paris Agreement target took 15 to 20 years. We’re trying to accelerate that process. It will be an evolving pathway but I think we’ll see something in the next 12 to 18 months.”
And, while the focus for WWF has been on water so far, Morgan agrees that other issues, like biodiversity and land, are equally as important.
“There’s still a bit of a question in my mind of how the integration of those is going to work because nature doesn’t operate as distinct systems. The line in the sand between land, climate, water and oceans is a very thin one, if there’s one at all,” he said.
“But I don’t see any of them as being more or less important. What I would say is that they all have to be addressed because they’re all linked at the end of the day.”
