Travel companies have a new tool to set and actually achieve climate goals

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a partnership of several non-profit organizations, is on a mission to end corporate “greenwashing” – the making of dubious or unverifiable sustainability claims by companies to brandish their image. SBTi provides a way to verify and measure businesses’ true eco-progress, and the travel industry is signing on, says Tim Wenger from Matador Network.

SBTi brings together the United Nations Global Compact, the World Resources Institute (WRI), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and CDP Global, a nonprofit that helps companies disclose their environmental impact. SBTi aims to persuade businesses to reach the targets set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, confirm that their claims are legit, and actually measure whether or not they follow through. If successful, the brand will receive SBTi-certification. If it isn’t willing to commit to science-based targets to curb climate change, it won’t.

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Companies and governments regularly release statements on sustainability targets and initiatives. While many are credible, others may just be angling for good publicity when they tout environmental initiatives that are misleading, tough to verify, or that don’t actually require real change in their operations. […].

SBTi verification works like this: a company sets a sustainability target, say to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent below 2018 levels by 2030. SBTi verifies that this is doable, and that the environmental impact is in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement – to keep warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and/or to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The SBTi allows companies to measure their efforts based on real data, eliminating boldface greenwashing and, hopefully, holding the companies they verify accountable for their claims. The efforts appear to be working. Follow-up studies on 338 companies with SBTi-approved targets found that they reduced their environmental impact 25 percent since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015. The SBTi verification process is good for companies, and the customers who use their products.

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This is an excerpt from an article originally written by Tim Wenger and published by Matador Network.