Role of Civil Society
- Civil societies are not-for-profit, voluntary community-based groups, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
- They cover a wide range of interests, including:
- Environmental groups such as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
- Women's rights are advanced with the UN Women group
- Amnesty International cares for human rights
- The Red Cross is a humanitarian group
- Climate change groups include Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth
- Civil societies play an important role in pushing for new laws, programmes, policies, or strategies on climate change
- They hold governments accountable for their
- Commitments to reducing CO2 emissions
- Lack of coordinated responses to climate change
- National policymaking includes the poor and vulnerable
- The WWF uses numerous strategies to help combat climate change. They:
- Urge people to adopt a more eco-friendly lifestyle and use modern energy-saving technology
- Pressure developed and developing countries to cut their CO2 emissions
- Urge nations to ratify global agreements to cut fossil fuel use
- Encourage 100% reliance on renewable energy sources by the year 2050
One-in-Five Challenge - WWF and the UK
- Aim - to reduce business travel and improve their environmental impact by:
- Saving time and money
- Improving productivity
- Improving work-life balance
- Maintaining higher staff retention
Vodafone and One-in-Five Challenge
| Company | Initiative | Outcome |
|
Vodafone UK |
£600,000 spent on video conferencing equipment in 2010 |
In the first 5 months they spent 3,600 hours on video conferencing and travelled 320,000 km less In 1 year, Vodafone cut business flights by 3,749 Reduced CO2 emissions by 617 tonnes Reduced business flights by 2.5 million kilometres Reduced travel costs by 1/3 |