and the federal government’s adoption of its net zero target, have seen important progress on sustainability, but Australia is coming from some way back.
“I think you see a nice comparison between the two nations, and policies and settings, and the speed in which they think they can achieve these goals,” he says. “We need to move rapidly into execution.”Aside from government policy settings , the survey reveals a lack of the basic building blocks that will be needed to deliver on 2050 ambitions.The biggest challenge is skills, with 40 per cent of respondents saying getting staff with sustainability expertise will be a major challenge.
A more holistic approach is to make sustainability part of as many roles as possible across an organisation; helping finance teams, for example, understand sustainability reporting, or procurement teams understand the supply chain implications of reducing emissions.Steve Worrall, Microsoft Australia managing director
“What you want to do is try and … embed it in your culture, so that everyone’s got, and should be on, the sustainability effort, and your collective effort sort of sustains you,” he says.Again, this is easy to say but may be difficult to do given 38 per cent of respondents said their organisation’s efforts were held back because a clear, enterprise-wide sustainability strategy has not been developed.The technology gap exposed by the report is fascinating.