Sustainability, social justice, creating meaningful change – how do you accelerate progress within your firm on an international, national, business and individual level? How do you unify the strands of these vital agendas to encourage colleagues to break down silos and increase collaboration? Law firm Pinsent Masons found the answer lay with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (aka SDGs – sometimes also known as the ‘Global Goals’).
We spoke to Mike Harvey, Head of Responsible Business and Sharon Smith, Head of Learning & Knowledge for Climate & Sustainability at Pinsent Masons about how they harnessed the SDGs to inspire colleagues and clients to engage with their responsible business agenda. LSA member firm Pinsent Masons is a multinational law firm which specialises in the energy, infrastructure, financial services, real estate and technology, science & industry sectors.
Having signed up to the UN Global Compact, both Mike Harvey and Sharon Smith wanted to accelerate progress.
“We were both passionate about the SDGs and felt we should be doing more. The initial step was to raise awareness about SDGs – what we do as a firm, what our clients are doing and what we do as individuals.”
Sharon
The Sustainable Development Goals are 17 interlinked goals designed to serve as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.” They are ambitious and radical. They act as a comprehensive pathway and were the first of their kind to achieve global consensus, a magnificent example of negotiation and perseverance, a multi-stakeholder engagement process involving governments, businesses, intergovernmental organisations and civil society. It helps that they come with recognisable visuals which are engaging and easy to use. In fact the simple graphics are quickly becoming iconic.
“The SDGs are a useful framework to talk to our clients and suppliers – a common language that we all work to and a tool to build deeper relationships.”
Mike
“With things that are going on in the world it can feel like ‘it’s out of my control’. The SDGs can help people feel empowered. They can help people find purpose and meaning in what they are doing. It can help to build morale and a sense of community.”
Sharon
Each of the SDGs represents a complex but important area. The team ran an internal survey asking, amongst other things, what is your awareness of the SDGs? Awareness was low, but they sensed there was an appetite to find out more. Mike and Sharon decided that the key to building an enduring and resilient campaign was to spend a month on each SDG, but not to be limited by this schedule. If one SDG remained relevant for longer, because of an international event or diary date, then the schedule would facilitate that.
Certain SDGs seemed to fit certain times of the year – for example SDG 2 – Zero Hunger was scheduled to coincide with Christmas and incorporated the work that they were already doing with food banks and schools. SDG 14 – Life Below Water, fitted in with Plastic Free July and SDG 13 – Climate Action ran alongside the UNFCCC COP.
An SDG Working Group including Mike, Sharon and members from the firm’s Spark Board and Responsible Business team was set up to work on campaign actions, and SDG Champions, including senior partners and managers at the firm, volunteered to champion specific SDGs. They used MS Viva Engage to share internal communications, including YouTube video explainers to engage with colleagues.
The team set KPIs to measure impact, the key one being – would individuals in the firm start talking about the SDGs independently of the campaign? Monitoring social media and internal comms they soon realised this was happening. That was a moment of celebration! The campaign, which both admit was a learning process, had evolved into a grassroots movement.
“We decided it would be a slow burn – a longer process. We wanted to combine the SDG campaign with other initiatives so they all joined up. We didn’t want this to be just another campaign.”
Mike
The campaign kicked off by using the SDGs as an umbrella to unite responsible business activities and raise awareness, but the team soon found that the framework was highlighting areas in which they could do more, which in turn inspired them to engage internationally and find commonalities so they could take action to plug those gaps.
Highlights of the campaign saw the London office being lit up in the colours of the SDGs and SDG icons, (including on flags, pin badges and visual media) being placed around the firm, generating conversations and galvanising action. The campaign engendered a feeling throughout the firm that they were moving forward as one.
Crown Place lit up in the colours of the SDGs
We asked Sharon and Mike what advice they would offer to a firm considering using the SDGs to amplify and consolidate their ESG activity.
“Just start! It can feel so big and overwhelming. The best thing to do is just start.”
Mike
“I agree with Mike. Try and find which SDGs resonate with people in your firm and just start!”
Sharon
The campaign has been such a success that Pinsent Masons are planning to keep it rolling, revisiting a new SDG each month, given the constantly changing nature of the ESG landscape and the appetite within the firm to evolve with it.
If you have a sustainability success story to share with us please email comms@legalsustainabilityalliance.com.
Matt Sparkes, co-chair of the LSA and Sustainability Director at Linklaters, spent last week at Climate Week NYC. We asked him for his thoughts…
Let’s get the irony over before we begin. Yes, there is some absurdity in travelling thousands of miles to bump into those who work just across the street and, yes, hours in a plane is, well…
Truth is, if we were not here in person, we would not find the time to talk, to listen and to learn. We wouldn’t be exposed to new developments, to get a feel for others’ progress and to strike new connections that may or may not be the partnerships of tomorrow. I would not now know – or be reflecting upon – the challenges of turning a city (Bristol) green. I would still be underplaying the importance of governance in a Just Transition. I would still be believing that everyone else knows that much more.
It has been a vibrant, eclectic and chaotic week. The United Nations Global Compact Leaders’ Summit was a platform for launches and celebrations of topics ranging from a living wage to corruption and from human rights to, of course, climate change. It was vast in range and vast in scale (and perhaps too vast for workshops, if truth be told). By contrast, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ‘Goalkeepers’ event was tightly-packed, brightly-coloured and unrelentingly moving as it showcased again and again how the SDGs really must be addressed. Alongside these was a thoughtfully curated Climate Action event which, with an eye to #COP, presented a good case as to why the bandwagon should relocate in its entirety to Dubai in a few more weeks. And that is why these things are tricky. In a virtual world where attention is hard to maintain, even without the cover of ‘camera off’, there is no substitute for meeting face-to-face and being focused and engaged throughout. Those moments where you bump into colleagues and have time to chat and those sessions where you really can follow up with questions, discussion and dates in the diary.
Perhaps we shouldn’t need to go far, far away to achieve these things but that’s the way it is and I’ll be heading home energised by conversation, reacquainted with some bright and engaging people and ready to pick up the baton once again. Bouncing from one capital’s conference centre to another (as many still seem to do) does seem an odd way of making progress but, for those of us for whom this is rather more annual, it is an injection of insight, energy and, yes, hope and we all need more of that every so often, don’t we?
About Matt Sparkes
Matt is co-chair of the LSA and Sustainability Director at Linklaters. Matt leads Linklaters work on responsible business globally, ensuring that the firm’s own ESG performance reflects all stakeholder expectations and the advice provided to clients on many related themes. Matt is active in a range of sustainability networks including as EMEA Chair of Business for Societal Impact and as co-chair of the Legal Sustainability Alliance. He is also a Board Member and Trustee of the UNGC-UK Network, is vice-chair of the Living Wage Foundation and, in his spare time, was until recently proud to act as chair of an east London employability charity.
The Law Society has issued an important statement on Ukraine which the LSA endorses and which is reproduced below. The statement can also be accessed via the Law Society website here.
The Law Society of England and Wales president Stephanie Boyce said:
“The Law Society stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian National Bar Association and the Ukrainian Bar Association. We also stand with the Russian people who oppose their government’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and lawyers who are defending the rule of law in the region.
“We condemn the actions of the Russian Federation, which are in contravention of international law. There is no doubt that these actions are a direct threat to the rule of law.
“We continue to support our members in the region at this difficult time.”
As we approach day 60 in lockdown, law students across the country are experiencing a very different summer term to that imagined at the start of the year. Graduations have either been postponed indefinitely or are to be streamed via Zoom – an anti-climactic end deprived fully of all the usual pomp and celebration rightly owed to this landmark achievement. A pronounced mixture of loss and frustration resonates with students and staff alike at the prospect of continued disruption into September. For me, the strangeness of the situation is summarised well by the fact that my would-be exam hall within the ExCel centre is currently kitted out with ventilators and empty beds, functioning as ‘NHS Nightingale’.
And yet the natural world beyond our screens provides reason to remain positive. Now living back at home in north Northumberland, I’m lucky enough to be within walking distance of my nearest beach, which is now mostly undisturbed save for a handful of locals. Coming home, the difference in air quality alone of my recent halls of residence (just off Euston Road, infamously known as one of the city’s most polluted streets) and Northumberland was stark – but happily now lessened by the sudden drop in London air pollution since lockdown!
Similarly, today’s news that global carbon emissions have dropped by 13.6% is welcome but to be taken with a pinch of salt, as Corinne Le Quéré of Natural Climate Change warns: ‘Just behavioural change is not enough, […] we need structural changes [to the economy and industry]. But if we take this opportunity to put structural changes in place, we have now seen what it is possible to achieve.’ Quéré’s caution is no doubt part of a wider, necessary conversation concerning the future of societal behaviours centred around an international green recovery effort.
To this end, a joint statement made on the 18th May by 150+ big corporate names – among them Coca-cola and Vodafone – called for the economic recovery to be aligned with a net zero agenda and to be based on science-based climate goals. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said of the statement: ‘many companies are showing us that it is indeed possible and profitable, to adopt sustainable, emission-reducing plans even during difficult times like this’, a narrative which could well be replicated soon in the legal sector.
Whilst we all get used to a new normal in terms of how we are having to live our lives in response to coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid 19), at least for the next few weeks or months, it is important to remain positive and recognise that we will get through this challenging and, for many, distressing period. All our hearts go out, I am sure, to those who are suffering and have lost loved ones as a result and I wish good health to all reading this short piece.
At a time when it feels we are being buffeted by so much gloomy news about the spread of Covid 19 and its impacts, it is good to hear some good news blown in on the wind – quite literally. According to the latest Energy Trends report (March 2020)published by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (DBEiS), the amount of renewable electricity generated in the UK in 2019 reached a record high – 8.5% more than in 2018 at 119.3 TWh, largely due to increased capacity. Renewables accounted for 36.9% of the UK’s total electricity generation – an increase of 3.8% on 2018 and a record high. Wind power accounted for an unprecedented 20% of this.
This switch away from fossil fuel electricity generation towards renewables has had an impact on the UK’s total CO2 emissions – provisional estimates show that these fell between 2018 and 2019 by 3.9%. This means that the UK has almost halved its CO2 emissions compared with 1990 levels – an encouraging result.
In response to this good news Melanie Onn, the Deputy Chief Executive of RenewableUK, a membership organisation whose membership is for organisations involved in wind and marine renewables, said:
“Today’s record-breaking figures show just how radically the UK’s energy system is changing, with low-cost renewables at the vanguard. This will continue as we build a modern energy system, moving away from fossil fuels to reach net zero emissions as fast as possible. As well as wind, we’ll use innovative new technologies like renewable hydrogen and marine power, and we’ll scale up battery storage.”
So, good news and exciting stuff! But, just as science coupled with personal decisions and behaviours changes will help us crack the Covid 19 challenge, so it will need both these to help decarbonise our energy supplies and achieve the UK Government’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. As many of us spend more time at home perhaps we might consider switching our domestic energy supplier to one who guarantees a genuinely 100% renewable source? Or better still, encouraging our businesses to make that switch – for example by joining theLSA’s Legal Renewables Initiative and taking advantage of the discounted tariff being offered to LSA members by Good Energy (with associated domestic discounts for those signed up to the LRI).
So, mingled in with the current ill wind of Covid 19 there is also some really good news being blown in on the wind which gives us all hope for the future!
Here’s hoping that all readers stay safe and healthy in these challenging times.
Oscar Wilde’s quip, spoken by Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere’s Fan, that a cynic was “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing” is often quoted. In my less optimistic moods (which I hope are few and far between!) I wonder if some of us may be in danger of slipping into a somewhat cynical view when it comes to what we buy and consume and its impact on the natural environment. One which perhaps puts short term economic gain above understanding the longer-term value of our natural habitats and species? A view, perhaps, which considers the destruction of tracts of ancient forest or woodland in the interests of commerce to be an acceptable price to pay without fully appreciating and factoring in the longer term value of the “ecosystem services” associated with tracts of land, mountains, streams, rivers, oceans and the air we breathe? These are often irreplaceable and sometimes hidden services which, collectively, add value to human’s quality of life, health and wellbeing and the long-term health and sustainability of this tiny planet of ours. As a consumer, do I care more about the price of goods I buy than the cost to the planet of getting them to me at that price?
I was prompted to write this article by an unexpected exchange I had recently with a complete stranger living in Australia. She, like me and 5500 other part-time artists, has kicked off 2020 by taking part in a “Sketchbook Challenge”[i] – producing a daily sketch in response to a subject prompt provided by the organiser and sharing this on a Facebook group. One particular prompt was “Supermarkets” and, short of time and inspired by a walk in some local woods, I decided to sketch a line of tree trunks which reminded me of the ubiquitous bar code used by all stores to price up goods. (Perhaps, I thought, ‘bark code” might be more accurate in this context!)
My quick drawing (As seen above) obviously struck a chord with a fellow sketcher from down under who responded with a stark picture of a similar line of trees with the sad difference that hers were standing charred and lifeless as a result of the recent bushfires. She added
“Your “bark code” is a great thought. The tree image brings to mind our post bushfire scenes in Australia. What price are we paying?….In their distress, Australians have been hugely moved by the care and concern from other countries. And many of us hope it translates into far deeper global action”.
Image of woodland devastated by bushfires in Australia
At the time of writing the bush fires have claimed 28 lives and burned an estimated 100,000 km2 (15.6 million acres) of bush, forest and parks across Australia – equivalent of 40% of the entire UK. According to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) an estimated 1.25 billion animals have been affected, including 30% of the entire koala population in mid-north coast of New South Wales.
Whilst not new (and, arguably, in proportion, bush fires are a natural and necessary part of the way ecosystems regenerate), the scale, ferocity and duration of the current fires is exceptional. As WWF highlight “these catastrophic megafires are worsening the extinction crisis we are already facing”. Climate change is recognised as a significant factor in all this and yet, collectively, we still seem to be prepared to pay the price for carbon-fuelled goods and services that contribute to global warming without fully realising the damage being done and the value to long term quality of life on our planet that is being stripped out by them.
Sadly, the list is long of other aspects of the natural environment whose value – from our day to day buying choices – we appear not to fully appreciate:
One million species (about one eight of the total) are at risk of extinction due to the change of use of land and sea, pollution, climate change and over exploitation of resources
Eight million tonnes of plastic are thrown into our oceans each year – much of which breaks down into toxic microplastic. On average, we each ingest 5 grams of plastic each week (about one credit card’s worth)
17% of the Amazonian rainforest – the lungs of our planet – have been destroyed over the past 50 years
Despite the national commitments made via the 2016 Paris Agreement, carbon emission curbs are not currently enough to prevent global temperatures rising above the 2 degC target level
In his recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, HRH The Prince of Wales highlighted the importance of making the sustainable options the “trusted and attainable options for consumers”. He highlighted that, with consumers controlling an estimated 60 per cent of global GDP, “people around the world have the power to drive the transformation to sustainable markets. Yet, we cannot expect consumers to make sustainable choices if these choices are not clearly laid before them. As consumers increasingly demand sustainable products, they deserve to be told more about product lifecycles, supply chains and production methods. For a transition to take place, being socially and environmentally conscious cannot only be for those who can afford it. If all the true costs are taken into account, being socially and environmentally responsible should be the least expensive option because it leaves the smallest footprint behind. We must communicate better with consumers about the sustainability of the goods, services and investments we offer.”
Being better informed about the long term sustainability impact of the goods and services we buy is a key step in helping us to make sustainable buying decisions. Not only can we know the up front price but we can decide if that price is right considering the value of the resources required to produce or provide these goods and services. Through these decisions we can play our part in this critical decade to protect those resources. Perhaps the time has come for us to “bark code” all our forests, mountains, streams, rivers and oceans?
