Ever felt overwhelmed by all the information and facts about climate change and all urging of actions to combat it? In the earthforce blog, we teach about how to take climate action as a professional career. If you're not sure what climate action actually means, this article is for you to get an understanding of its definition and meaning. We recently conducted a survey investigating hundreds of people’s standpoint on climate action, and many then asked us what climate action even means, so you're not alone.
The definition can be very scientific and complex, but we want to keep it simple and provide a crisp definition and how to use it in different context. Climate action is actually one of UN's 17 Sustainable Development goals. Reading about the UN’s goals might not be the most exciting read, but it help us grasp the big perspective of it and why it's their goal. The UN Goal number 13 is to “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. Ok, to combat climate change is the essential part of the UN's goal - understood. But in essence, what does that mean? According to UNDP, climate action is defined as “stepped-up efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-induced impacts…”. That's the start of a long, complicated, fancy, and well-formulated sentence, but inside it is actually the essence of climate action, and we will bring it out for you:
Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
If we simplify UN’s definition per the above, it means that climate action is equal to "efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions". UN’s plan is to “integrate climate change measures into national policies[...]and mobilizing tens of billions US$ annually to address the needs of a low-carbon economy”, but how do you as an individual contribute to such an immense plan? You can take action as an individual, such as choosing to have a plant-based diet. The UN's action is obviously very different from that example in everything from size, to people involved and effect. But in fact, where they don’t differ from each other is that they both have the ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The typical information we are fed are either what political leaders are suppose to do, “the government should do this” or actions we should take as individuals, “as a private person you should do this”. But what we want to help you realise is that there are so many solutions to climate change that you can work realising by dedicating your career to it, taking climate action professionally, by working with companies that has climate action as their mission. It is true that climate change affects, to different degrees, every country on every continent. We can without a doubt see how it affects lives and disrupts economies. We have evidence of higher temperatures, more extreme and unreliable weather patterns and rising sea levels. The purpose of climate action is to prevent further escalations of this. Climate change is a cause of human activities, therefore our activities are also what should revert this trend. Individual consumer action is good, political leaders' actions are great, but we believe the action of working professionally with climate action is at least as important, if not more important. We believe combating climate change while earning a salary needs more attention, and you can read more about opportunities to take professional climate action in this article.
It is documented that the last decade (2010's) was the warmest decade ever recorded. To put the definition of climate action to the test, we could try to switch out the words “climate action” to the definition, in the same sentence, and see if it makes sense:
It works, right?
To wrap up this blog about climate action, we want to emphasise why we are defining this for you. As mentioned above, earthforce focuses on educating aboout climate action. Or, if you will, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But not through politics or government, volunteer work or consumer behavior. The method of taking climate action we focus on is to do it as an individual (and as a collective) professionally by working with solutions to combat climate change. Ask yourself: how can I have a professional career working every day with climate action? We hope we can answer that question for you, that’s why earthforce was created, and that’s why you should continue your reading by starting with this article.
And remember, when you hear the word climate action in the future, we want you to remember this simple definition: "Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions".
Any important aspects of climate action we left out? Let us know by reaching out below:
Sources:
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-change/
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/E_infographics_13.pdf
https://www.sdfinance.undp.org/content/sdfinance/en/home/sdg/goal-13--climate-action.html
https://sdghelpdesk.unescap.org/learn-more-about-climate-action
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/13_Why-It-Matters-2020.pdf