Auckland flooding on 28 January. Photo: Supplied/ Raewyn Flexman
Company directors are being told it is time to get down to the nitty gritty of tackling climate change.
Chapter Zero, set up under the auspices of the Institute of Directors, has gained about 1,000 members in its first year as a springboard for broad company action to meet the goal of carbon free by 2050.
It is one of 23 business groups in the global Climate Governance Initiative.
Chapter Zero chair Dame Therese Walsh, who heads the boards of Air New Zealand and ASB Bank, said it has been gathering and compiling information and resource tools for directors to improve their own skills and make informed climate-related decisions.
"Awareness of the role of the director in this climate change battle has certainly been elevated."
Surveys before the chapter was set up showed less than half of boardrooms had engaged with climate change and less than a quarter had disclosure regimes.
Time for the 'nitty gritty'
Walsh said directors now had to get down to the serious business of guiding their companies to adopt policies that not only reduce emissions to be Carbon Zero by 2050 but also be prepared for disclosures, which for big companies and organisations were going to be required by law.
"I think the next couple of years that we will get into the more sort of substantive, specific, nitty gritty issues that we're all facing in our boardrooms, for example, how do you incentivise your leadership teams, how do you structure your board to deal with climate change?"
Directors had not just professional but personal reasons for needing to get on top of the issue, she said.
"We are really needing to hold the organisation and leadership and ourselves to account and not only that ... legislation and other sorts of frameworks are going to hold us as directors personally accountable for these things, and so we need to be really engaged."
Directors who do not meet the disclosure standards could face penalties of up to $5 million and even five years jail under the Climate Disclosures Act.
Chapter Zero has assembled a tool kit to set up a practical framework for small and medium sized organisations to ensure climate change is being addressed in the boardroom.
Directors would need not just to hold their own executive leadership to account but also needed to work collaboratively with other companies, agencies, and government, Walsh said.