Oct 17, 2018
Next week is One World Week. For forty years, One World Week has been helping to share understanding about global issues that affect us all, and also show that we can make a difference. This year, you can help by pledging, either as an individual or as an organisation, to make sustainable choices.
For 2018, the focus is on ‘The World is changing – How about us?' and the organisers are clearly setting us a challenge. How can we change our behaviour to ensure the planet is still a sustainable place for all life, from creatures at the bottom of the darkest corners of the ocean, to those animals being challenged by loss of habitat, reduced opportunities to breed and polluted ecosystems.
By taking on ‘The World is changing – How about us?’ you will also contribute to achieving one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, SDG 12 asks us to ensure ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’. Keep this in mind when you make your pledge, and use this to start the conversation within your organisation on how to be a leader in reducing your impact on the planet.
So, we are asking you and your organisation to make a promise to reduce your impact upon the world, the people around you, and the systems you use, and instead commit to your own and other’s responsible consumption and production.
As a start, you can pledge to:
- use a green energy supplier at home, and lobby your employer to do the same at your place of work. Then take action to make the switch
- buy Fairtrade products, for instance tea and coffee for your office and home
- read and share good news stories of how you - and others - have made a positive impact upon the world – and share these inspirational reports to motivate others to take action too.
Let us know what you pledge and then when you have made the move to change your behaviour.
With the publication of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report last month and the obvious need to take immediate action to reduce the temperature rise and avoid consequent dramatic weather and habitat changes, fresh food and water problems, to name a few, it is now clear that it is in all our local, national and international interests to take action to reduce our individual and collective impact on the world around us.
Your pledge is just a start, but it is clear we will all have to make changes, and the sooner we start the better it will be for business, not to mention our world.
You can find out more about One World Week here
Find out more information on the Sustainable Development Goals.