About the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
In September 2015, the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that sets forth a plan of action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity and peace for all by 2030. The Agenda is made up of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are broken down into 169 targets that set out key quantitative and qualitative drivers of sustainable development.
The SDGs build upon their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals, and are ambitious, integrated, and universal. The goals aim to combat the most pressing global issues by balancing economic growth, social development, and environmental protection, and are bound by the principle of “leaving no one behind”.
Climate Action and the SDGs
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time for achieving sustainable development, and the adverse impacts of climate change have the ability to undermine the progress of all countries in achieving the SDGs. Action towards combatting climate change therefore underpins the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
Given the importance of tackling climate change on a global scale, the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015 which calls for ambitious climate action and sets the target of limiting a global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
CO2balance and the SDGs
Through our commitment to delivering high impact projects to mitigate climate change in some of the poorest areas of the world, CO2balance delivers real and measurable benefits to the communities that we work with. As well as producing significant emission reductions, our projects are dedicated to achieving demonstrable impacts towards sustainable development.
Our projects are certified under the award-winning Gold Standard accreditation body. In 2017, Gold Standard launched Gold Standard for the Global Goals – a standard that requires projects to demonstrate a clear and direct contribution to at least 3 SDGs, to accelerate global progress towards climate security and sustainable development.
Through Gold Standard for the Global Goals, our projects monitor qualitative and quantitative indicators towards key SDGs, producing Gold Standard recognised SDG contributions.
SDG Contributions:
SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing: our projects reduce exposure to household air pollution and water borne diseases, reducing health risks
SDG 5: Gender Equality: our projects reduce the time poverty of women who disproportionately carry out unpaid domestic duties
SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation: our clean water projects provide access to safe water for communities without improved water sources
SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy: our improved cookstove projects provide households with improved clean cooking technology to replace inefficient traditional cooking methods
SDG 13: Climate Action: our projects reduce carbon emissions by reducing the amount of biomass being burned to cook and purify water
Gold Standard Certified SDG Impacts
Under Gold Standard for the Global Goals, projects can add additional certification for their impacts towards specific SDGs. This involves a rigorous audit process and requires project developers to carry out supplementary activities and assessments to demonstrate how their project directly addresses an SDG. To date, the Gold Standard has developed certification methodologies for assessing several SDGs such as gender equality, health, and water/sanitation.
In 2017, CO2balance became the first organisation to pilot the certification process for Gender Equality: SDG 5. The SDG 5 impact contributions are audited externally, adding an extra layer of rigour to the certification process, assessing and certifying impacts to a wide range of SDG 5 indicators to ensure that the projects make a vital contribution to gender equality.
To find out more read about Borehole Rehabilitation in Uganda
CO2balance SDG services:
One of the key challenges of the SDGs is how to demonstrate and communicate real impacts and contributions to sustainable development targets. Choosing to offset through CO2balance’s high impact projects offers more than just emission reductions: our projects provide verified contributions towards at least 3 SDGs that can enhance your organisation’s leadership on tackling global sustainable development challenges.
CO2balance offers SDG impact reporting to communicate tangible progress towards sustainable development that can be measured, accounted for, and reported upon, using quantitative and qualitative indicators.
We also offer the opportunity for NGOs to certify their projects’ SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing, SDG 5: Gender Equality, SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation impacts through Gold Standard methodologies. This will allow your organisation to demonstrate and verify the positive local impacts of your projects.
If you would like to find out more, please get in touch.