We’re very excited to get behind Climate Action Week Marlborough 2023 and bring together our community to benefit from shared expertise and greater collaboration. We’re 100% behind their vision of ‘becoming good ancestors in our community’!
So on Wednesday 15th February our Managing Director, Stephen Leitch and General Manager, Glen Proffit will be joined by Fiona van Petegem (from Regenerative Business Development) in hosting a ‘Climate Action Workshop’ for attendees. We’ll be doing a very ‘hands-on’ exploration activity around the facts distilled from the 2000-page Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report – then looking at the return on investment of a low-carbon approach, and crucially, the ‘how’ (putting the theory into practice).
Taking care of our environment is one of the cornerstones of our company, by which we measure our success as a business.
It has always been important to us as a company to be able to hold our heads high and demonstrate we work in an environmentally-sound manner – as verified by external accreditation and additionally validated by awards (such as the Cawthron Marlborough Environment Awards).
SWE has been certified under the world-leading Toitū net carbon zero programme since 2017. This marks our commitment to environmental leadership, assuring customers with the most robust evidence that our efforts to manage, reduce and offset carbon emissions for our business are effective and credible, and emission reductions have been independently verified.
SWE has a net-zero carbon footprint – ensuring our clients and community know we meet and exceed international standards and best practice.
We also work hard to support our clients to meet their environmental goals and aspirations.
With all aspects of water and power as our core focus, this is where our efforts most deeply lie. This is critical. About 4 billion people – representing nearly two-thirds of the global population – experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year – and this is expected to increase to over 5 billion by 2050.
“The impacts of climate change are often felt through water – more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal rainfall and accelerated melting of glaciers – with cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas has said.
“And yet, there is insufficient understanding of changes in the distribution, quantity, and quality of freshwater resources.”
Given the uncertainty about what the climate will throw at us in Marlborough – for next summer or the next decade – at SWE we advocate a ‘climate resilience’ approach which may be multi-pronged, such as building a dam as a contingency plan for water scarcity, optimising systems, so no drop is wasted, future proofing equipment and so on.
In effect, we should prepare ourselves to weather the storm, whatever that may be.
As Greek philosopher, Heraclitus said in about 500BC, “The only thing constant is change”.
Preparation is key. Let’s get local businesses – and Marlborough – “climate-ready”!
Check out all the great things planned – visit https://bit.ly/climateactionweektickets for more information.
Reprinted in the Marlborough Express, February 15th 2023
