When Landmark took the Pledge to Net Zero – the first UK property data business to do so – we wanted to do all we could to act in the name of climate change, and to make a difference.
As a starting point we reached out to our colleagues across the property and real estate industry to get a better idea of what everyone else is doing to mitigate climate change and work out how we could help the community, as a whole, tackle the task ahead.
We had some fascinating conversations and comprehensive discussions with experts taking climate change very seriously, innovating and rethinking the property landscape for a better future both in the UK and abroad.
We must avoid short-termism
Keen to share our learnings, we published Climate Change Reports: The New Frontier of Real Estate Due Diligence. We asked Professor Robert Lee of Birmingham Law School to pen the executive summary, reflecting on the state of play between COP26 and the very different world at the advent of COP27. His headline is a warning against reactive short-termism:
“Harold Wilson is attributed as saying that a week is a long time in politics. A year in climate politics has produced almost a different era. Since COP26, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the dislocation of world energy markets, post-pandemic demands for energy and the rises in inflation are generating global crises in meeting everyday living costs. The danger is that we enter COP27 with governments minded to forestall climate action to ease immediate pressures.”
Where climate finance responds, he asserts, climate change reporting has a clear role.
“If the broad impact of a green finance agenda is to aid the transition to low carbon projects which will look to eliminate the externalities of the greenhouse gas emissions which themselves have created the need for net zero transition and climate change adaptation, reporting concentrates the investor’s mind away from longstanding support for unsustainable and high carbon enterprise and towards innovation and green infrastructure.
“There is ample evidence from Earth itself that there is no time left for prevarication or procrastination. Even at present levels of global warming, the climate impacts are as unpredictable as they are injurious. However good our efforts at decarbonisation, we cannot escape the need for widescale investment in adaptation, with stronger parties stepping up to protect the vulnerable.”
And that is exactly what we heard from many of the innovators we spoke with. They’re stepping up for the vulnerable using next-generation approaches, creating data gathered by satellites, heat tracking and framework that go far beyond the traditional.
To learn more about what’s happening and where climate change reporting is heading, download and reading our enlightening paper. It’ll educate and help you and your organisation respond effectively to the realities of climate change.
Read the executive summary of the white paper here:
