ENVIRONMENT, SUSTAINABLE, GOVERNANCE (ESG)
GTE IMBUES ESG DERIVED FROM
U.N. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs)
COP26 & COP27
Cop26 in Glasgow in November 2021 and Cop27 in Egypt in 2022 sent the world a powerful message that ESG values are the beneficial base for affirmative corporate action and responsible investing.
The ESG values of today are the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) factors of yesterday and the clarion call for companies looking to do good and for their customers and investors seeking to conduct business with socially conscious organisations.
The CSR sustainability agenda has since been replaced by ESG – which call for greater transparency and effort for the greater good. Thus ESG is a collective consciousness for corporate operations and governance, instilling social and environmental values that define a company’s reputation and its commercial and legal realities.
ESG provides organisations with a shared set of social and environmental values, shaping corporate practices and public perceptions.
But ESG standards can be challenging to measure and assess as they are qualitative, discretionary, and not codified.
They build business resilience and long-term value but demand transparency and regular reporting to a range of stakeholders about a company’s socially responsible practices and positive impact on the world.
SDGs – THE FORERUNNER FOR ESG values
The inspiration for ESG and the forerunner was the collection of 17 interlinked global goals established by the UN in 2015 to achieve a sustainable global future by 2030, known as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
SDGs are the “why”
ESG values are the “how”
Greening the Earth is the “means”
Greening the Earth projects deliver pivotal action From SDGs that link practices to the environmental, social, and governance values of ESG.
ESG has been the domain of major corporations, but GTE projects enable ESG factors to apply to all within an emitter’s network via sponsorship or engagement in projects as stakeholders and customers for carbon positive action and products.
Where surplus emissions are involved – those that are not required to achieve carbon neutral or zero emissions status for a primary emitter – can be held in escrow or transferred in rem to others as beneficiaries known as Scope 3.
FROM ASPIRATION TO INSPIRATION
THE UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs)
The value of soil organic carbon (SOC) action as a solution for global food, water and health security and its acceptance by the United Nations was highlighted in the UN-published chapter released in September 2018 at the 73rd UN Forum in New York, in a book entitled A Better World: Life on the Land. Actions.
The chapter, written by GTE personnel, Gabriel Haros; Dr John Leake and edited by Dr John White is entitled: “Are the outcomes required for the survival of mankind achievable in an era of global warming?”
It highlights the Tjilkaba/Scotdesco project, as the first and only chapter from an Australian source published to date about soil carbon and the SDGs. (see: Vol. 4 – Life on Land “Are the outcomes that are vital for the survival of mankind achievable in an era of global warming?”).
SDG No. 1 - NO POVERTY
GTE delivers permanent, new jobs; flow-on business opportunities; requirements for downstream professional services and trade practices from and for rural and Indigenous communities and the people of Australia, Africa and the world.
GTE programs increase agricultural yields and present opportunities for a range of valuable co-products and resultant co-benefits for wealthier and happier communities; improved land productivity and enhanced land values that generate carbon credits; create resultant new industries and services for jobs and outcomes that reduce the incidence of poverty and reliance on social welfare for communities living remotely on harsh, climatically challenged land.
SDG No. 2 - ZERO HUNGER
GTE projects reduce hunger by restoring the natural capital of degraded land for improved grazing and new perennial cash crops.
The result is superior land management and improved natural resources from enhanced soil measures in a manner that does not compete with existing fertile land required to support the global food chain.
GTE projects achieve food security; improve water resources and deliver processing opportunities for livestock fodders and pellets and production of high-level protein, nutrient and vitamin rich food ingredients and additives.
SDG No. 3 – GOOD HEALTH
Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all is achieved from the host of new, permanent jobs from improved farming outcomes and a flywheel of resultant cash flow opportunities.
These activities create additional downstream needs for marketing, transport and related teaching, training and services for processing protein, vitamin and antioxidant-rich ingredients as food supplements for improved diet and for better health for humankind that address global food security, medicines and wellness products.
SDG N0. 4 – QUALITY EDUCATION
Improved standards of education and the opportunity to gain experience and valuable life and job skills are fundamental values of GTE.
These arise by increasing communal wealth that diverts funds away from welfare to provide new amenities and facilities for equitable education services for remote and disadvantaged communities.
Funds can be used to secure more teachers; better training and the opportunity for all to complete at least secondary school with access to higher levels of education – enjoying scholarship; retraining; skills upgrades and qualifications that enhance the opportunity for permanent jobs especially for the disabled and minority groups.
SDG No. 5 – GENDER EQUALITY
Achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls to perform equally is derived from the holistic series of social programs and improved education opportunities arising from widespread employment for all genders with diverse abilities within newly empowered communities.
This attribute emphasizes education-based community involvement for gender equality that moves towards ending discrimination against women from unfair practices based on improved education standards that result in a happier and wealthier sense of community.
SDG No. 6 – CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION
This ESG ensures available water is sustainably managed for best outcomes for appropriate water use and sanitation. The ability of GTE crops to accept seawater, bore water and other forms of saline effluent and waste for irrigation, delivers environmental services that reduces the volume of potable water needed for crop irrigation.
Potable water is extracted from Halophyte species as freshwater as a resource for both domestic purposes and irrigation.
SDG No. 7 - AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGY
Ensuring access to affordable, dependable, sustainable and dispatchable energy is vital for success globally, but especially for remote locations whereby research for biomass energy production is a priority for energy that simultaneously generates carbon credits and thus delivers the opportunity for world-first net negative emissions energy available 24/7 (often referred to as carbon positive energy) without the need for expensive energy storage.
GTE has engaged in a research partnership with CSIRO specifically to achieve this outcome. In the meantime, a supply of solar energy will deliver both adequate and surplus power to meet the communal need of surrounding districts for commercial benefits at both sites.
SDG No. 8 - DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
Promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth means full and productive employment and decent work for all.
This outcome is derived from the raft of permanent new jobs from improved agriculture and the range of consequential downstream economic and practical development opportunities that flow within areas such as transport, effective waste management and the development of new, job requirements for professional and trade industries around co-products and co-benefits for a better life on the land for all.
SDG No. 9 - INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
GTE projects are committed to building resilient infrastructure; promoting inclusive and sustainable workplaces and fostering innovation at the regional level.
Priorities include developing positive industrial programs with access to financial services for small business thus, retrofitting infrastructure for clean and sustainable technologies and providing innovative research and development in harmony with nature.
SDG No. 10 - REDUCED INEQUALITIES
Processes that reduce inequality between communities and sexes for living and working in harmony, support the range of permanent, new jobs and opportunities from GTE that generate income and growth from commercial practices within otherwise disadvantaged communities.
This in turn, delivers valuable societal roles where wages are paid at fair and appropriate rates – regardless of age, ethnicity, sex or religion – inclusive of basic factors such as permanency, wages and basic benefit structures for items such as overtime, rostered days off, long service leave, sick leave, superannuation and paid annual holidays.
SDG No. 11 - SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES
The creation of sustainable, self-empowered communities that no longer require the support and largesse of government is a hallmark of GTE.
This is a fundamental ambition for communities that seek to display their business and farming capabilities and resources by demonstrating farming, trade and professional skills at all levels for communities and settlements that are safe, resilient and sustainable.
SDG No. 12 - RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION
Sustainable and responsible consumption and production patterns are fostered in an environmentally appropriate manner whereby climatically suitable perennial crops are processed to produce high quality, nutrient-rich and allergen-free (organic) products that improve living standards and deliver responsible dietary and food routines.
Applying efficient natural resources; reducing waste and fostering new business in the form of eco-tourism development, waste management and control and developing constructive new business programs for training, reduce damaging factors such as substance abuse, domestic violence and child welfare.
SDG No. 13. - CLIMATE ACTION
Combatting climate change is the essence of GTE which explains the focus on regenerative agriculture that collaterally creates accredited carbon credits from the soil while concurrently generating the host of carbon positive co-benefits and the beneficial outcomes from the productive use of otherwise under-productive land.
This strengthens the core resilience and adaptive capacity of projects to alleviate and respond to climate-related disasters by offsetting carbon emissions.
SDG No. 14 – LIFE BELOW WATER
Conserving and sustaining oceans, waterways and marine resources by applying improved land management practices, reduced effluent runoff and topsoil loss, reduces marine pollution and establishes sustainable riverbank and coastal ecosystems and marine resources.
The beneficial reuse of saline water from industrial and mining runoff, improves farming and reduces the cost and carbon footprint of reverse osmosis plants, whereby associated water can be reused for productive irrigation purposes and reducing the level of residual salt cake and brine that may otherwise require disposal into waterways as discharge. This action is high on the list of GTE priorities a carbon positive emissions activity from the beneficial reuse of associated water from coal seam gas operations.
SDG No. 15 – LIFE ON THE LAND
This GTE commitment empowers First Nations communities for the permanent remediation of marginal and under-performing land affected by drought and salinity.
Halting, slowing down and enabling quick recovery for landscape affected by bushfire and flood; addressing global food security from the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems; combatting and reversing desertification and land degradation by increasing biodiversity, are all outcomes of GTE – reducing natural habitat destruction and restoring depleted ecosystems by preventing soil loss and reducing effluent runoff into rivers, waterways, oceans and streams.
SDG No. 16 - PEACE AND JUSTICE
Communication is a priority for GTE that brings people together for common causes to provide solutions applicable to the range of disasters that face the world of today.
The fundamental aspect for GTE is for peaceful and inclusive societies attuned to sustainable development which, in an era of religious, ethnic and territorial hostilities and the widespread increase in global disease, poverty, famine and statelessness, help to deliver unfettered access to fair, equitable and prompt systems of justice for all.
SDG No. 17 PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE GOALS
Strengthening global partnerships that sustain co-operative development is the basis for a better world where participation by national and international leaders and policymakers can represent a shift in mindset to address the global challenges of food scarcity, pandemics and political, religious and ethnic conflict based on the practicality of addressing climate change and sustaining the world by projects such as GTE.
The outcome is the permanent remediation of the natural capital of degraded and underperforming marginal land – monetised by the global sale of resultant carbon credits; increased farmland outcomes and a suite of downstream co-benefits that improves the lives of those who rely on the land for the livelihood.