The Board Toolkit is designed to help non-executive directors (NEDs) ensure their businesses have the strategic plans in place to respond to climate change.
The purpose of this Toolkit is to provide NEDs with evidence and support to address climate change as a strategic business issue on their boards, and to show how they can help their boards take timely, positive and decisive climate action through five clear steps.
It contains questions for NEDs to consider and pose to their boards, five clear steps to follow, checklists, tools and guides, and options for deeper reading.
The difference NEDs
can make and the purpose
of this Toolkit
Non-executive directors (NEDs) have the potential
to make a huge contribution in addressing the
challenges brought about by climate change, as well
as a duty to ensure their boards are fulfilling their
legal obligations in this area.
The purpose of this Toolkit is to provide NEDs with
evidence and support to address climate change as
a strategic business issue on their boards, and to show
how they can help their boards take timely, positive
and decisive climate action through five clear steps,
outlined in the ‘How’ section.
Ensuring boards fulfil their
obligations
As outlined in the ‘Why’ section,
the scale of the risks and
opportunities which climate
change poses to businesses make
it a strategic business issue that is
simply too material to ignore.
As a NED, you not only have a
fiduciary duty to highlight these
opportunities and risks, but also a
unique independent perspective.
This perspective enables you
to play a pivotal role in holding
executives to account and
helping your boards fulfil their
obligations to investors and
other stakeholders, by ensuring
climate and net zero imperatives
are adequately considered and
addressed.
Providing necessary judgement
for a just and equitable transition
When it comes to the challenge of
the net zero transition, more than
ever, the role of the board will be
to provide judgement in a rapidly
changing, volatile context.
As a NED, you and your boards
will need to navigate this complex
landscape to provide oversight for
the benefit of your businesses and
to encourage a just and managed
transition.
Difficult decisions will need to
be made. Staying informed is
increasingly important as the
landscape changes.
Using your network to
broaden impact
As a NED, you have significant
opportunity to drive change in
multiple businesses, because
you sit on several boards and/or
because you can influence change
via your own network.
It’s critical that you do not
underestimate the impact of your
voice in driving this issue to the
top of the agenda through some
carefully targeted questions and
through careful oversight of the
actions your boards are taking
Published:
20 July 2022
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