Our Climate Charter targets and progress

We've made commitments to improve the sustainability of our operations and respond to the growing needs of communities that may be vulnerable to climate change.

New Zealand Red Cross is a signatory to the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations. The Charter intends to provide a clear vision and principles to guide humanitarian action in the face of the climate and environment crises. As of July 2024, the Charter has 416 signatories across the globe, including dozens of National Societies that are part of our Movement.

On 21 June 2024, the National Board received an update on our progress against the targets we set under the Charter.

Our achievements

In the 2023/24 financial year we:

• laid groundwork to understand how we can start quantifying our organisation’s carbon emissions
• supported a Climate and Resilience advisor at the Pacific office in Suva, who has been working directly with Pacific National Societies on climate change programmes
• worked with the New Zealand Red Cross Sustainability Network to formalise its role
• prioritised environmental sustainability in our business planning cycle, and improved our processes to better capture our climate and environment related action in the process
• mapped our communities and stakeholders to understand who is already working on climate change initiatives so we can collaborate in the future
• planned improvements in our communications on climate change.

Our targets in the year ahead

Over the 2024/25 financial year we will be continuing our efforts to:

• review our property and fleet, which will help to identify our biggest sources of emissions
• review our procurement and travel policies to include more climate considerations
• support our Red Cross people to participate in climate reduction or manage the impacts of climate change, including through the Sustainability Network
• work closely with our Te Ao Māori Programme to strengthen our existing partnerships with Māori organisations, iwi and hapu.

The National Board has agreed that this year we will also set targets to:

• establish our first organisational greenhouse gas inventory to discover our emissions footprint
• identify areas for emissions reduction and set tangible reduction targets for future years, with a focus on our fleet and properties
• increase our reach with activities that address rising climate risk.