The vision

The following Climate Reporting Canvas guides companies in drafting a sustainability and climate strategy. It starts with a broader vision, then outlines challenges for achieving the vision, and suggests not only actions to address the challenges but also opportunities that arise in the process. 

Vision: A company needs a vision beyond writing a Climate Report - a "why" it wants to become more sustainable and climate-resilient. A well-articulated and thoroughly integrated vision helps a company's leadership to anchor and communicate its long-term strategy, can raise employee engagement and signals to stakeholders the sincerity of any commitment.  

• Challenges: A company will encounter challenges and obstacles while moving towards its vision. Some of the challenges are more pronounced depending on the stage of the company; other challenges are universal.  

• Actions: Companies must define steps to achieve the vision and address the challenges. If no direct compliance pressure exists, a simple rule-of-thumb prioritises low-hanging fruit by considering activities with the most significant leverage or impact, propelling the company towards its vision.  

• Opportunities: Companies can initiate change much faster if the benefits of more sustainable business practices are concretely linked to the activities rather than focusing on the costs. Ensuring the actions are seen as an investment into the company's longevity addresses doubts or hesitations towards sustainability and Climate Reporting that many companies face for the first time. 

Setting a vision for your climate reporting

Having a shared vision for a strategy, particularly in the context of Climate Reporting, is of utmost importance. It ensures that all stakeholders, including the organisation's leadership, employees, investors, and other relevant parties, are aligned, and working towards a shared understanding and commitment to addressing climate-related challenges. Your climate report should be:  

• Goal-oriented: Climate Reporting should be goal-oriented, provide a clear framework for organisations to measure their progress, drive meaningful action, and ensure accountability in addressing climate-related risks and opportunities.  Transparent: Climate Reporting needs to be comprehensive and transparent and disclose all the company's climate-related risks, starting with the material ones. 

• Accurate: Data on which Climate Reporting relies must be valid, detailed, robust and traceable, allowing for independent verification.  Comparable: Climate Reporting needs to follow standards that allow effortless comparison between reports to foster a global understanding of climate risks.  

• Accountable: Companies and their leadership should be accountable for the climate targets they set and communicate.  

• Actionable: Climate Reporting should support the implementation of a credible and orderly global path to <1.5°C. It should demonstrate net-positive impacts and be common grounds to derive actions and be decision-useful. 

In summary, a vision for climate strategy, specifically in the context of Climate Reporting, is crucial for setting clear goals, fostering transparency, creating accountability, ensuring comparability, and driving action, by ensuring that organisations effectively address climate-related challenges and opportunities.