Carbon Roadmap | October 2024 | Download PDF
The evidence is clear; environmental degradation, and in particular global warming has a devastating effect on health outcomes for everyone, everywhere. However, the worst affected, as ever, are vulnerable populations living where weak health systems are already overstretched, underfunded and struggling.
Recognising our role in national, regional and global health policy advocacy, we have now included climate change in our mission statement and updated our constitution to mandate our work in what is and will be for some time, one of the most significant health challenges of the 21st century.
It is essential then to recognise our own contribution to carbon emissions and put our own house in order. As a first step, we commissioned a carbon audit which assessed our CO2 footprint for the entire 12 months of 2023. Health Action International (HAI) has a small, shared office in Amsterdam, which does, of course contribute to our emissions.
Unsurprisingly though, by far the biggest contribution to our carbon footprint is flying, both as part of our work and the carbon cost of employees who live outside the Netherlands.
This audit provides us with a crucial baseline from which we can set our ambitions for carbon reduction in the coming years as we balance our mission objectives with the environmental costs of pursuing them.
Ambition
We have the ambition to drastically reduce our carbon emissions. Based on the results of the 2023 audit, this would be a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2035. However, changes in our projects and activities mean that this represents a moving target – for example we would by default travel less if we were to have fewer projects in Africa.
Therefore, we focus our attention on changing behaviours within the organisation that will have a lasting, structural impact on our carbon footprint.