Understanding and increasing the impact of private sector cooperative initiatives

Understanding and increasing the impact of private sector cooperative initiatives

Based on five running private sector initiatives addressing climate change mitigation, the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Ecofys have assessed their potential impact and major lessons learned. Apart from providing a number of economic and social co-benefits, the initiatives could jointly achieve emissions reductions of up to 500 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents by 2020 if scaled.

The five assessed initiatives offer an indication of which ingredients are needed to make a cooperative initiative in this field successful. Building on these insights, CISL and Ecofys have formulated a nine-point Action Plan to increase the impact of cooperative climate initiatives in the business sector. Others may use this Action Plan as a checklist for establishing their own sector-wide collaboration, replicating the successes of current existing initiatives.

The Action Plan advocates including a clear goal and transparent monitoring of the results into ones strategy, while leaving room to increase ambition, increase membership as well as cross-sector inspiration and effective communication. In addition, the report offers guidance to stakeholders such as policy makers on how best to support cooperative initiatives, e.g. by incorporating these bottom-up initiatives into their own climate strategies or through collaboration to address possible barriers.