#OnlyOneEarth – World Environment Day

This article belongs to series of articles written by our Group ESG Officer, Nontokozo Khumalo. Nontokozo is responsible for driving Multitude's ESG and sustainability programme. She has over 10 years of experience in financial services working in ESG and client management. She was previously Corporate Engagement Manager for the Climate Disclosure Standards Board covering the EU, and prior to that, a Sustainability Manager at Standard Bank Group in South Africa.

Download the ESG report and read more about how Multitude is approaching its own ESG strategy and ambitions. (https://viz.tools.investis.com/multitude/esg-2021/)

#OnlyOneEarth – World Environment Day

Sunday the 5th of June is World Environment Day. The event led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was first held in 1973 and has since grown to be largest global platform on environmental outreach. This year’s event themed #OnlyOneEarth and hosted by Sweden marks 50 years since the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, widely deemed the first international meeting on the environment.

The #OnlyOneEarth campaign “calls for?collective, transformative action on a global scale to celebrate, protect and restore our planet.” The campaign highlights the need to reset the balance with nature through transformative changes in how we eat, live, work and move around.” This, as the world moves dangerously close to the lower end of the 2015 Paris Agreement target of limiting global temperature increase during this century to 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C.?

As part of the World Environment Day #OnlyOneEarth campaign a Practical Guide has been launched outlining transformative actions that organizations and people can take. At Multitude, we are also working on transformative actions:

1.????Measuring the carbon footprint of our activities.

2.????Integrating ESG into our processes and governance.

3.????Developing common principles on how we manage our environmental impact.

4.????Improving our reporting on ESG, including on environmental impact.

In the lead up to World Environment Day, we have started sharing our draft new environmental principles with our internal stakeholders to get their input ahead of its publication in July. As an integral influence on our ability to implement actions to protect the environment, we are engaging staff on the environmental impact of our offices, purchases, and lending.

As a digital financial platform, we are also able to support efforts to reduce plastic pollution, for example, by offering our customers cardless banking through our SweepBank offering. According to the OECD Global Plastics Outlook Report, the world is producing double the amount of plastic waste it produced two decades back. The rapid growth of plastic waste problem means organisations need to consider their contributions within product and service offerings and be an active part of the solution.

To support the #OnlyOneEarth campaign we are challenging our employees and community to take the actions recommended in the Practical Guide and as many of our customers, employees and community members head off for their breaks, we have picked our top 5:

1.????Use all your food - Buy only the food you need and use it all up

2.????Ditch the flights - Explore nearby holiday destinations, your local ecosystems or how far you can go by train, bus and bike.

3.????Go cleaner - Swap to environmentally friendlier options like electric vehicles and cleaner fuels, and reduce your overall kilometre-count, for instance by limiting weekend trips to local areas.

4.????Enjoy the journey - Staying local for outings and holidays can reduce your carbon footprint, save you money and allow you to travel more slowly, without the stress of long journeys. If you do go the distance, do it less often but stay longer.

5.????Choose Experiences - Consider spending more time and resources on experiences that add value to your life without leaving a heavy environmental footprint. It could be cultural events, team sports, a course to learn new skills, or volunteering for an ecosystem restoration initiative.

Test your knowledge using this quiz: https://www.worldenvironmentday.global/did-you-know/take-quiz

Nontokozo wrote about the three ESG trends in FinTech previously. Check out that article from here!