Personal Action Plan Template Pre-Program Exercises 1 Welcome From all of us at the Harvard Alumni Climate and Environment special interest group (“HACE”) welcome to the Harvard Climate Action Training. We’re thrilled you’re here, and continuing your journey as a sustainability advocate and transforming your organizations. This Personal Action Plan Template (“the Template”) will guide you to create an action plan to begin to combat climate change within your organization, while being mindful of environmental sustainability and environmental justice. The Template can be: • a tool to record and make sense of the information you’ll get through the Training Sessions; • a framework to prioritize action and focus on areas where you’re most likely to make an impact; and • a presentation you can share with others to incorporate their views and gain their support. Scope of the Action Plan Template The Template is designed for a busy individual (you) to begin to act within your organization. It assumes your organization doesn’t yet have a full climate or sustainability strategy and needs leadership (you again) to get them started. Climate is the focus of the Template. The tools can be applied to the broader scope of environmental sustainability. As you proceed, you should also take a view beyond your organization to consider environmental justice and how people and communities around your organization are also affected. 2 Overview of the Template Sections of the Personal Action Plan Pre-work Motivators Understand your motivations and your organization’s starting point Session 1 Issues Select an issue that you want to work on Session 2 SWOT Assess your your organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities And Threats Session 3 Stakeholders Identify your stakeholders and allies Session 4 & 5 Plan Set a SMART goal and make your plan Using the Personal Action Plan Template Start with a draft and iterate. You can return to exercises throughout the Climate Action Training. Begin with information you know already and learn in the Climate Action Training. You can dive deeper with additional research if you need. You can do this work alone, but you’ll do a better job and build community by engaging with others, including in Small Group Actions Sessions. The Template has plain formatting so you can easily cut and paste into your organization’s format if needed. 3 Pre-work Motivators Understand your motivations and your organization's starting point The purpose of this pre-work is to deepen your understanding of your motivations for joining the Climate Action Training, and of your organization’s actions and attitude in relation to climate change. Here are some ADDITIONAL RESOURCES if you would like to go deeper: • Watch ‘How to transform apocalypse fatigue into action on global warming’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5h6ynoq8 uM • Read ‘The Journey to a Sustainable Business Whitepaper’ https://www.erm.com/insights/the-journey-toa-sustainable-business-navigating-the-roadahead Understanding where we start is essential to moving forward and building a realistic action plan. There are three exercises: • Self reflection • Talk to some colleagues within your organization or industry • Identify your organization's current attitude(s) to climate change 4 Pre-work Motivators Exercise 1: Self-reflection Instructions: • Take a moment to think about what brings you the most joy and meaning: Your relationships & family? Your experiences of the world? The wellbeing of your community?... • These are your sustainability motivators. They are the reasons WHY you would invest in sustainability and combat climate change. • Now think how climate change could impact these important motivators. • Express these in some way – either write them down in the table, draw a picture or make a video that tells the story. • You’ll have an opportunity to share these (if you want) in your Small Group Action Sessions. 5 Pre-work Motivators Climate change motivators These things bring my life joy and meaning… Climate change could impact them by… <Insert a picture or a drawing that represents one reason climate change matters to you> 6 Pre-work Motivators Exercise 2: Talk to colleagues Instructions: • Talk to three people in your organization or industry with different functions (e.g. operations, finance, HR, product, sales...) and ask them five questions listed in the interview guide. • The goal is to learn, not to convince them of anything (yet). • If you find an ally, you may want to involve them somehow in the Climate Action Training. • It’s OK if people do not know answers to every question, that is also information. 7 Pre-work Motivators Baseline interview notes <Person/Title A> How is climate change impacting our organization, our vendors/clients, our industry now? And in five years? What are our organization’s greatest contributions to human-caused climate change1? What is our organization already doing/planning to do to combat human-caused climate change? What else would you like to see our organization do to combat human-caused climate change? 1. Human activities cause climate change in two main ways. First by releasing ‘greenhouse gasses’ such a carbon dioxide and methane. Second by releasing fine particles into the air (air pollution) that retain heat. Black Carbon (or soot from burning things) is the main one in this second category. 8 Pre-work Motivators Baseline interview notes <Person/Title B> How is climate change impacting our organization, our vendors/clients, our industry now? And in five years? What are our organization’s greatest contributions to human-caused climate change1? What is our organization already doing/planning to do to combat human-caused climate change? What else would you like to see our organization do to combat human-caused climate change? 1. Human activities cause climate change in two main ways. First by releasing ‘greenhouse gasses’ such a carbon dioxide and methane. Second by releasing fine particles into the air (air pollution) that retain heat. Black Carbon (or soot form burning things) is the main one in this second category. 9 Pre-work Motivators Baseline interview notes <Person/Title C> How is climate change impacting our organization, our vendors/clients, our industry now? And in five years? What are our organization’s greatest contributions to human-caused climate change1? What is our organization already doing/planning to do to combat human-caused climate change? What else would you like to see our organization do to combat human-caused climate change? 1. Human activities cause climate change in two main ways. First by releasing ‘greenhouse gasses’ such a carbon dioxide and methane. Second by releasing 10 fine particles into the air (air pollution) that retain heat. Black Carbon (or soot form burning things) is the main one in this second category. Pre-work Motivators Exercise 3: Identify current attitude(s) to climate change within your organization Instructions: • Understanding where your organization starts is essential to identifying the best opportunities for action, and how to communicate internally with key decision makers. • Read the five approaches to sustainability and their indicators on the following slide. Listen for these in your conversations within your organization. • In column 3, identify your organization’s main approach. Different people inside your organization may have different approaches: you can also include these in column three. • To go even further you could also research and include your main competitors. 11 Pre-work Motivators Organizational attitude to climate change Attitudes to climate change How organizations within each category think/act regarding sustainability Compliance-driven • • Focus is on compliance/managing regulatory risks and meeting reporting requirements. Internal leadership typically from Environmental, Health and Safety professionals. Stakeholder-driven • • Focus is on avoiding/responding to external pressure (e.g., investors, customers, media). Internal leadership often comes from Marketing and Communications. Risk-driven • • Focus is on reducing climate/sustainability risks on existing operations. Finance and investor relations are often fully involved or leading the agenda. Growth-driven • Focus is on climate/sustainability as a growth driver, competitive differentiator or source of new markets. Internal leadership from CEO and/or C-Suite. • Vanguard • • • Select for your organization Focus is on environmental or social impact as an intrinsic goal, not only as a pathway to business outcomes. Willing to prioritize environmental or social goals over commercial goals. Internal leadership from CEO and C-Suite. 12 Note: This framework has been adapted from ’The Journey to a Sustainable Business Whitepaper’ developed by ERM