October 24. International Day Against Climate Change

On October 24, the International Day Against Climate Change is celebrated, the annual event in which the United Nations Organization promotes action against global warming and its effects. But what is the current reality of our environment? Are we noticing the benefits of the measures we are applying to reduce the impact of our activity on the environment? We will try to give you an answer in this post.

The Day against Climate Change constitutes a global platform for climate action from all its perspectives, focusing on the establishment of strong policies, severe changes in the production model, effective technological developments and, above all, creating climate awareness.

After the publication of the latest IPCC report, we cannot let passivity condemn the planet to a path of no return. To ensure that the increase temperature increase does not exceed 1.5ºC at the end of the century, it is essential to generate agile and sustained large scale GHG (greenhouse gas) reductions, a scenario from which we are still far from.

Climate change means a significant global risk in the economic, environmental and social fields, so climate action is necessary and urgent. According to The Global Risks Report 2021, the climate action failure is perceived as one of the most important risks globally, in terms of severity and probability.

This risk, together with the world population exponential increase and a generalized increase in industrialization in almost every country, make it essential to adopt measures to combat the effects of climate change, from a mitigation and adaptation perspective.

In this task, the role of the private sector is essential. It needs to act on the matter, incorporating climate change in its management and strategy, controlling the risks inherent to it and acting on it in order to mitigate them and thus protect its assets.

In this sense, Abengoa has increased the presence of renewable energy in the energy mix of the countries in which it operates and works to guarantee access to drinking water in the most disadvantaged areas.

At the same time, the company has an internal climate risk assessment procedure to comprehensively analyze possible regulatory or physical changes related to climate change. For that, risks derived from the company’s own activity are considered, as well as those from (external) climatic aspects and events that could impact on its activity.

In addition, in 2019, Abengoa incorporated the climate disclosure recommendations of the Financial Stability Board, through its Working Group on Disclosure of Climate-Related Financial Information (TCFD), responding to the financial market needs in terms of transparency, completeness and quality of information. All this, with the aim of reducing global warming and achieving a more sustainable, intelligent, and resilient economic model.

These days, more than ever, the sights are set on the celebration of the next climate summit, COP26, which will take place in Glasgow (United Kingdom), starting on October 31, under the slogan “Uniting the world to tackling climate change”. It will be time to analyze how we progress in the climate race.

Pablo Collazo,responsible for Environmental Sustainability at Abengoa.