Implementation Organization : Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD)-Pakistan
Country : Pakistan
Project Area : Climate change
NetRes : SDPI
Duration of Project : 12 months
Status : Ongoing
Summary
Each year tonnes of energy and natural resources are consumed by offices around the world, severely impacting the environment and contributing significantly to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. While organizations in the west are waking up to this reality and establishing eco-friendly trends at work, their counterparts in Pakistan still remain unaware and unconcerned about the environmental impacts of their office operations and consumption patterns. To initiate eco-friendly and sustainable, resource conserving trends among corporations and private sector entities, LEAD Pakistan is planning a pilot project aimed at raising awareness and altering attitudes among mid-to-large sized corporations and private sector organizations working in Pakistan. Adopting a scientific and evidence based approach towards sensitization and education of the target audience, this project will bring to Pakistan the Ecological Footprinting (EF) technology and will use it to help target organizations find out in quantifiable terms the ecological impacts of their activities over a specified time period. This technology will be introduced to the target stakeholder group in a series of workshops across Pakistan where they will learn to use the tool for assessing the environmental as well as the associated business costs of different office functions, thus making a stronger case for altering consumption patterns. Besides learning how to use the EF technology as a resource management tool, organizations will also be trained on strategies and procedures for reducing the size of their EF’s and reaping cost benefits in the process. A LEAD case study and documentary will be prepared by the project to practically demonstrate the application and utility of the EF technology and the cost benefits of reducing carbon emissions through the conservation of energy and resources at the workplace. At the end of the exercise, participating organizations will be facilitated in drafting sustainable strategies and action plans for their respective work stations.
Key Activities
1. Development of an Ecological Footprint (EF) Calculator for organizations in Pakistan
The project will adopt evidence based and scientific methods for altering the attitudes of decision makers towards adopting eco-friendly practices at work. Towards this end, it will introduce the ecological foot-printing technology and train managers at target organizations on deploying it at work. The Ecological Footprint is a resource management tool that measures how much land and water area a human population (or an entity) requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes under prevailing technologies.
The concept of ecological footprinting, already catching speed in the west, has yet to find presence in countries like Pakistan where issues of sustainable development have still to be popularized and mainstreamed. Introducing the technology locally would require creating an Ecological Footprint (EF) calculator for local organizations, using weights and factors that are specific to the national context. Such a calculator will help organizations measure in quantifiable terms the level of ecological damage and carbon emissions generated by their work related activities and the amount of planetary resources required each year to maintain their current office practices. Moreover, the calculator will be designed to not only measure the total EF of an entity, but also provide a break-down of the impacts resulting from individual office functions (e.g. percentage of EF accountable to electricity usage in the office or impact from consumption of stationary). It is this break-down that will help users determine the functions that are contributing most to their office’s EF and see where cut-backs will have the greatest influence in terms of reducing environmental and financial costs.
To develop the tool, LEAD Pakistan will partner with the Ministry of Environment (MoE) and work with scientists and technical experts at the national as well as international level. Drawing on the knowledge resources of LEAD sponsored networks, the project will identify experts to further enhance, test and validate the EF measuring tool before introducing it to target groups.
2. Case-study Development
As a means of demonstrating the application and utility of the calculator, the project will initially use the tool to measure the EF of LEAD Pakistan’s head-office in Islamabad and identify the areas where consumption of energy and resources are contributing most to the size of the footprint. Based on the analysis, LEAD will select the areas of office function ideal for introducing cut-backs and eco-friendly measures in order to reduce the overall organizational EF. This selection will also be based on an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of potential reduction scenarios in-order to determine the financial benefits of turning into a greener and lower carbon enterprise.
The project will develop an Action Plan with strategies laid out for effectively introducing the curtailments and consumption changes within the selected office functions and for monitoring the results. The Action Plan will be followed for a period of three months, at the end of which the EF would again be measured to evaluate the effect of cut-backs on footprint size, emissions amount and business costs.
This whole exercise would be documented in the form of a case-study for presentation to target organizations. The case study will serve as a practical demonstration of the ecological and financial benefits of greening office practices and using the EF technology as a resource management tool.
3. Documentary Production
Partnering with Pakistan Television (PTV), a documentary will be developed based of the LEAD case study. This will serve as a visual presentation on the development, application and utility of the EF technology and will include messages on the importance of sustainability and resource conservation. Global examples of organizations that have successfully adopted eco-friendly policies and practices at work would also be represented in the documentary for greater inspiration of target group.
Once developed, the documentary will be screened on various media and CSO forums and presented at stakeholder workshops as well.
4. Training and Sensitization Workshops
To present the EF measuring technology and case study findings to target audiences, 3 workshops will be organized in major cities of Pakistan Each workshop will be primarily attended by representatives from 15-20 private sector organizations working in Pakistan. The trainees will include corporations (e.g. telecom, banks, law firms, media companies) as well as private enterprises such as educational institutions and NGOs. Additionally, representatives from public sector agencies and research institutions will also participate in the workshops to enhance knowledge on the issues and the technology.
A short survey will be carried out to identify and select the stakeholder organizations in each target city for the workshops. Besides organizational size, several other factors will be considered when selecting organizations for the project such as availability and willingness of decision makers and managers to engage in the process and previous CSR activities and experience. LEAD Pakistan maintains partnerships and working relations with several private sector entities operating in Pakistan and will utilize this association for the project purpose, as it has done so with past activities.
The workshop will serve to raise awareness of participating organizations on the need for GHG mitigation and resource conservation and it will sensitize them to the environmental impacts of business activities. The EF framework will be introduced at the workshop and participants will learn how to apply and benefit from the resource management tool within their own work spaces, following the LEAD case-study as an example. Not only will participants learn how to measure the EF of their offices but will also be educated on strategies for reducing resource consumption and waste generation within their organizations
The business case for conserving energy at work and switching to eco-friendly practices will also be presented to the target groups with the help of practical examples and case studies developed for the project. This will further motivate decision makers to develop and implement sustainable policies at their stations
5. Development of Organizational Action Plans
At the end of the workshops, managers from the participating organizations will be facilitated in drafting action plans for their respective organizations and chalking strategies to reduce the Ecological Footprints of their enterprises.
Contact Info
Ms.Hina Lotia, General Manager, Programme Development Department
LEAD House, F-7 Markaz, Islamabad, Pakistan
Telephone: +92-51-2651511
Fax: +92-51-2651512
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