Sustainability firm folds due to shift in climate policy
Change By Degrees co-founder Tara Shine. File picture
A conversation following a swim off Sandycove beach in Kinsale Co Cork led to the formation of an award-winning company that would teach more than 25,000 people globally about sustainability.
However, the current shift in global politics to the right and changes to EU regulations forced that company, Change By Degrees, to announce its closure this week.
Change By Degrees taught businesses globally how to build sustainability into everyday work practices and helped them meet environmental policy regulations.
It was co-founded in 2018 by scientist, documentary maker, and government climate policy adviser Tara Shine, and media strategist and entrepreneur Madeleine Murray.
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Over its eight years, it collaborated with some 300 organisations across Ireland and the world sharing information, guiding teams to create sustainability strategies, engaging employees, and inspiring leaders to think and act differently.
Ms Shine, who lives in Cork, was formerly a climate negotiator at the UN and was a special adviser to the Mary Robinson Foundation on climate justice. She also chaired the board of trustees of the International Institute for Environment and Development.
Ms Shine told the :
Such political headwinds began to shift after the election of US president Donald Trump, who is openly sceptical of climate change.
His administration has been working to remove climate regulations across all sectors.
The US has also withdrawn from multiple international organisations working on climate change, including the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Europe has also been shifting to the right politically, towards populism and away from environmental protection.
The recent omnibus package, approved by the European Parliament on December 16, aims to simplify the reporting and due diligence requirements businesses must meet when operating in the EU.
It has been described as one of the most wide-ranging reform packages ever made to sustainability legislation.
As part of the omnibus package, the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) have been significantly scaled back.
Under changes to the CSDDD, only very large companies — those with more than 5,000 employees and $1.5bn/€1.26bn in annual turnover — will have to comply with the due diligence directive.
This will reduce the number of companies required to comply to approximately 1,600 across the EU.
Maximum penalties have been lowered to 3% of global turnover, while the harmonised liability regime has been removed completely.
The new rules, weak as some would argue they are, will not take effect until July 2029.
Amnesty has said that limiting the due diligence law to the largest companies effectively excludes most businesses from meaningful accountability.
Under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), only companies employing more than 1,000 staff and generating turnover in excess of $450m/€380m will be obliged to report, excluding some 90% of companies covered by the directive, according to .
This major policy and regulatory change in the EU has hugely shrunk the market Change by Degrees planned to operate within. Ms Shine said:
“It should have been that, this January, 50,000 companies across Europe had to do mandatory sustainability reporting and action. That got watered down and delayed for two years.”
The CSRD and the CSDDD were to make it mandatory for many companies to address sustainability, she said.
“So if you’re selling a product that helps upskill people on sustainability, which is what Change by Degrees was doing, this was great because it was going to bring 50,000 companies into your market.
“And then last March, when the European Union — post the elections in the EU, the swing to the right in the European Parliament, a strong new policy on industrialisation, and simplification of rules for business — they changed their minds on sustainability regulations and other things and they launched the omnibus decision.
“This pushed all that reporting out for two years, but also took the vast majority of those 50,000 companies out of the net for those regulations.
“So the market then shrank and for us basically faded away to not enough to keep running a business.”
Change By Degrees was a business operating commercially.
But NGOs operating in the sustainability space have also been badly hit financially by the shifting tides of politics.
“The demise of USAid, for example, in the US, removed an awful lot of funding from international development cooperation,” Ms Shine said.
The Center for Global Development estimates that up to 1m people will die due to USAid cuts made last year. It also estimates that up to 1.6m preventable deaths may have occurred last year due to USAid cuts in their commitments to future spending.
With decades of experience of working in sustainability, Ms Shine said she knows the global agenda will shift again.
“But the fear is that that may not be until about 2028. All the momentum we lose in that period of time is troubling.
Even a relatively short period of time where climate and environmental policy are sidelined could herald the end of civilisation as we know it, she fears.
“I don’t want to sound melodramatic. [But] we’re messing with the climate system, with the natural world.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has always told us that every part of every degree of warming matters. But that means that every year and every month that we don’t take action on climate change and to protect nature, we make the problem worse.
“If we continue for too long along the wrong path, we’re a danger to ourselves.”
Ms Shine said winding down the company is “sad”, but she vowed to continue working on sustainability.
Change By Degrees has already had an impact on the more than 25,000 people it taught and influenced over its eight years in business, Ms Shine said.
“Through the organisations we’ve worked with we had tremendous impact on their people, on their leaders, on their mindsets, on their behaviours.
“That’s something we’re really proud of.
We educated over 25,000 people in sustainability, worked with over 300 organisations, created 28 online courses.
“Each one of those people that we’ve had an impact on is now someone that’s leading this positive change within their own organisation and within their own lives.”
“So even though Change By Degrees might be winding up, I think our impact will live on through the people that interacted with us. She said:
“I think that’s important for people. Even if it feels like people are ignoring what seems important to many of us - about equality and human rights and looking after the natural environment — there are lots of things we can all do in our own communities, in our own homes, in our own workplaces. And that doesn’t change.
“It’s not totally doom and gloom.
"Yes, there are things to be worried about. But certainly I’m proud that we’ve had a great legacy.“
And there’s still a lot people can do in their daily lives.”
Ms Shine said three areas for people to examine and try to improve in their own lives is at their energy consumption, the food they eat, and their travel. She said:
“So think about how you can make your energy green, how you can get around in ways that are sustainable and how can you eat locally, sustainably, with more plants on your plate. Three easy things."
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