Tackling the Climate Crisis
By Corra's Green Team
Should climate issues be left to specialist environmental groups and funders to tackle?
It is tempting enough, with so many great community projects out there that are addressing pressing human needs, to put all our energies toward this work, leaving ‘the environment’ to others. However, Corra is clear that we need to engage with the Climate crisis while continuing to focus on the social issues we have traditionally addressed.
While developing more ways to increase our impact in this area, we have made strides in the right direction. This journey began in late 2018 with the formation of Corra’s Green Team.
We achieved several positive changes:
Implemented recycling and other sustainable waste management practices within our office.
Held advocacy awareness conversations.
Engaged with Active travel/ Cycle to work incentives such as the ‘Bike2Work’ Scheme.
Supported Corra’s switch to using more sustainable office supplies.
More outward looking ways of addressing the climate crisis includes work from before the Green Team was formed.
From 2017-2019 we were delighted to administer the Scottish Government’s Climate Justice Innovation Fund. Through this work we distributed £1.54m to Scotland-based organisations, working in partnership with in-country partner(s), supporting innovative climate justice projects in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda.
More recently, Corra took a big step forward in 2021 by signing the Funder Commitment on Climate Change (FCCC) Launched in 2019. The FCCC describes itself as:
‘a holistic, high-level framework supporting funders to play their part in tackling the causes and impacts of climate change.’
Corra joined the FCCC as one way to help us identify where our work to support organisations and communities can also progress the fight against climate change. As part of this commitment, we produce an annual report tracking our progress against the six FCCC pillars. The most recent FCCC report was published in early 2023. We also have a staff member on the steering committee for the FCCC, embracing their call for non-environmental funders to have a stronger voice in this work.
Some of our key achievements toward upholding our commitment to the FCCC over the past 2 years are:
Achievement 1 – Carbon literacy training has been offered to all staff. We currently hold a Bronze Carbon Literacy Award and are working toward Silver.
Achievement 2 – We moved our investment portfolio to new managers and as part of the decision process we applied our commitment to decarbonise investments.
Achievement 3 – Corra makes a few Strategic Grants annually and through these we have supported work with an environmental focus such as the Young People’s Forest and BREATHE. Corra also supported the Environmental Rights Summit, organised by the Environmental Rights Centre Scotland in September 2023, with funding to assist community participation costs.
Achievement 4 – Making changes to internal processes to allow us to capture information on work we are funding with a climate focus.
Achievement 5 – Addressing Climate Change is now embedded in our ‘Ways of Working’, ensuring that we work to integrate climate considerations across the organisation and transparently report on progress.
We have further to go to fully integrate climate priorities into our overall work. We hope that the steps we have taken to date, along with our on-going engagement with the Funder Commitment on Climate Change, will keep us on the right trajectory for this vital aspiration.
If you’d like to find out more about our work to address Climate Change, please get in touch with us at hello@corra.scot.