According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, climate change is “widespread, rapid, and intensifying”, but there is still time to act, if we can take systemic action fast.
Turkey has experienced the worst ever wildfires affecting the southern and western coasts of the country in July and August. It has been an ecological disaster and its impact on nature, agriculture and local communities are to be felt for decades to come. Disasters of this kind have also occurred in other parts of the world; floods in Germany, wildfires in Greece and USA, and extreme temperatures in various regions. Climate crisis is indeed not a crisis of the future but of our time.
According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, climate change is “widespread, rapid, and intensifying”, but there is still time to act, if we can take systemic action fast: “Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years. However, strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases would limit climate change. While benefits for air quality would come quickly, it could take 20-30 years to see global temperatures stabilize” [1].
As a systemic action against the climate crisis at European level, the EU Taxonomy is expected to help meet the EU’s energy and climate targets for 2030. It “is a classification system, establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities. It could play an important role helping the EU scale up sustainable investment and implement the European green deal. The EU taxonomy would provide companies, investors and policymakers with appropriate definitions for which economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable” [2]. The framework is to come into force at the beginning of 2022 and it will influence every industry and companies of almost all sizes; but there are many questions on its complexity and implementation-related challenges.
In our project, GTE4SME, we focus on sustainable SME- growth and -transformation and aim to support SMEs on various topics, including environmental and social impact of their businesses. During the last transnational project meeting, we discussed EU Taxonomy and worked on SME-cases in that context. Contact our team in order to get more information about our project.