Our commitment to cutting carbon

World Habitat believes that the climate crisis presents the greatest threat to our vision of a world where everyone has a safe and secure home.

The climate emergency has the potential to affect everyone. But its effects are far greater, and the consequences felt far harder by those in the poorest communities and those with the poorest housing with the fewest resources.

We acknowledge that the worst affected communities are also the least responsible for causing the problem.

Like all organisations, our activities consume energy and generate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. We believe we have a duty to reduce these emissions as much as possible, as quickly as possible, to play our part in limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, as set out in the Paris Agreement.

During 2024, the trustees of World Habitat approved a new carbon strategy, which committed to:

• Being a carbon responsible organisation: Reducing our carbon emissions as far and quickly as possible without causing a reduction in the quantity or quality of our strategic outcomes.
• Innovate and challenge ourselves to find better and lower impact ways of achieving our mission.
• Develop an ambitious aggregate target which should state the minimum level of annual carbon emissions we believe we need in order to achieve our objectives. This target will be set following a thorough review of our activities, to identify where improvements and efficiencies can be made. We should seek to achieve this target as quickly as possible.
• Additionally, budget to reduce our carbon emissions by at least 5% per year in line with our Planet Mark accreditation until we have reached our target.
• Take a pro “climate justice” approach. This means prioritising the need for safe and secure housing to those who are least responsible for climate change. This may mean, for example, acknowledging the need for solutions that have high resilience value over the “lowest carbon” options. We will consider any such trade-offs as they arise.
• Use our influence with our partners and other organisations in the housing sector to encourage rapid decarbonisation.
• Offset all our carbon emissions, ensuring that our offsetting investments contribute to our wider organisational mission, moving to a validated offsetting scheme as soon as possible and in any case by 2030.