Business domain
Strategy
A climate transition plan sets out how a company will adapt its strategy and business model as it responds and contributes to the transition. The Roadmap helps companies ensure that impacts on people are integrated into those choices from the outset, whether they are developing a transition plan for the first time or reviewing and updating an existing one.
Climate transition plans can be developed without fully considering how the choices they involve may affect people, with those impacts addressed only after key decisions have been made. Strong strategic integration means considering impacts on people as part of the strategic and business-model choices that shape the transition plan, and revisiting those choices as the plan evolves. Evidence from implementation and feedback from affected stakeholders, including through grievance mechanisms, can inform periodic reviews and adjustments. In this way, the transition plan evolves in response to real-world outcomes rather than remaining a static commitment, helping companies anticipate challenges, avoid costly course corrections and develop more credible and resilient transition pathways.
Key questions to ask
- Does your company's climate plan or strategy (decarbonization, adaptation, offsetting) explicitly address impacts on people?
- Does your company understand how features of its business model may heighten risks to people as it pursues its climate transition, and use those insights to inform strategic choices?
- Does your company review and adjust its strategy based on outcomes for people and feedback from affected stakeholders?
A practical pathway to greater maturity
Strategy
Beginning
- The company has identified where its climate strategy could affect people in at least one priority area, and has begun to consider which features of its business model or transition pathway could heighten those risks.
Developing
- The company has developed a time-bound action plan to address the most severe impacts on people related to the priority areas of its climate-related plans, informed by its risk management processes. In developing this plan, the company has considered how features of its business model and transition pathway could create or exacerbate these impacts (e.g. sourcing and pricing models, the pace and sequencing of change)
Established
- The company has integrated consideration of impacts on people across its full climate strategy, including decarbonization, adaptation and offsetting. Its understanding of how its business model may exacerbate risks to people informs key strategic choices, such as the design, priorities and sequencing of its transition pathway.
Leading
- The company's business strategy and transition plan are shaped by a clear understanding of how its business model affects risks to people, and can show how this has informed strategic decisions and the commitments in its plan.
- This “just transition” strategy and action plan are periodically adjusted based on ongoing evaluation of outcomes for people, feedback from stakeholders (including through grievance mechanisms) and the developments in the company's climate responses
