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58 documents from Project Drawdown
Pathways to Reduce Black Carbon
The report highlights that black carbon emissions are rising in low- and middle-income countries due to a lack of binding international agreements and its exclusion from the UNFCCC list of climate pollutants. It proposes that emissions can be rapidly reduced by 2030 through the deployment of proven technologies and targeted interventions. A primary focus is the transition to clean cooking fuels, noting that 42% of global residential black carbon emissions come from seven specific countries, with the Indo-Gangetic Plains being the largest hotspot. The document emphasizes that government subsidies and favorable policies, such as India's Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana scheme, are essential for the adoption of clean fuels.
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Document type: Report
Product Design
The document argues that product designers are uniquely positioned to mitigate climate impact because over 80% of emissions from product use are determined during the design phase. It provides a comprehensive framework for 'making your product design job a climate job,' offering specific tactics for digital products (such as minimizing energy-intensive UX/UI elements), physical products (such as dematerialization and designing for repair), and general organizational practices (such as creating sustainability-focused KPIs and reducing business travel). The guide also emphasizes the integration of behavioral science to nudge users toward sustainable actions and the necessity of embedding climate justice to protect vulnerable communities.
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Document type: Guide
Sales and Client-Facing Roles
The document outlines how individuals in sales, consulting, and creative roles can leverage their positions to drive climate impact. Key recommendations include refusing to work with fossil fuel and extractive companies, integrating carbon fees into pricing, and shifting sales models toward services and repair to reduce waste. It also suggests using client relationships to encourage the adoption of science-based climate targets and minimizing carbon-intensive business travel.
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Document type: Guide
Engineering
The document argues that sustainable product engineering leads to increased revenue, lower costs, and better relationships with customers, investors, and employees. It highlights that a majority of customers and investors prioritize sustainability in their decision-making, and that a significant proportion of US workers, particularly those under 30, value a company's environmental record when seeking employment.
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Document type: Guide
Grantmaking
The document argues that philanthropic funding for climate change is severely underfunded and misaligned with scientific needs. It provides a framework for grantmakers to elevate climate as a key award criterion, integrate climate justice into administration, align endowments with climate goals, and foster organizational education to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future.
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Document type: Guide
Procurement
The document outlines how procurement professionals can leverage their purchasing power to reduce climate impact and increase business resilience. It suggests selecting suppliers with science-based emissions targets, optimizing logistics for efficiency, and collaborating with designers on circular product development. The guide emphasizes that sustainable procurement can lead to revenue increases of 5–20 percent and supply chain cost reductions of 9–16 percent, while also providing a mechanism to integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice strategies through supplier diversity programs.
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Document type: Guide
Finance
The document argues that finance professionals can significantly impact the climate crisis by directing corporate funds toward climate solutions and divesting from fossil fuels. It asserts that divesting does not lead to negative financial performance, citing BlackRock's findings that institutions with strong environmental records often have better social impact and corporate governance. The guide offers specific steps for banking, lending, insurance, and cash management, such as prioritizing banks that prohibit loans to coal and oil industries and shifting employee retirement plans to climate-safe options. It also lists various reporting standards and tools, including SASB, TCFD, and GRI, to help companies disclose climate risk and greenhouse gas emissions.
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Document type: Guide
Marketing
The document outlines how marketers can leverage their roles as storytellers to drive climate action, avoid working with fossil fuel clients, and implement sustainable production and communication practices.
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Document type: Guide
Sources, Regional Patterns, and Trends
The report identifies the residential sector as the largest global source of black carbon (BC), accounting for 48% of emissions in 2017, followed by transportation (24%) and industry. While emissions have declined in North America, Europe, and China due to stricter standards and fuel switching, these gains are being offset by increases in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where reliance on unclean cooking fuels remains high. The document highlights critical hotspots, including eastern China and the Indo-Gangetic Plain, and notes that global BC reductions are not currently on track to meet the Paris Climate Agreement's 1.5°C warming limit.
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This summary is written by a language model reading the source document. It is not the publisher's words and is not a substitute for the original.
Document type: Report
Government Relations and Public Policy
The document outlines how corporate government relations specialists can align company policy with climate goals. It emphasizes the necessity of advocating for supportive legislation, such as clean energy standards, and ensuring that lobbying expenditures and trade association memberships do not contradict climate ambitions. Key recommendations include tracking climate-related policies, disclosing climate risks, avoiding 'double-dipping' lobbyists who represent the fossil fuel industry, and utilizing internal carbon pricing to maintain accountability.
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Document type: Guide
Legal
This guide outlines strategies for legal professionals to drive corporate climate action. It focuses on four key areas: enhancing corporate governance by tying executive pay to climate targets and diversifying boards; managing external counsel to ensure alignment with decarbonization; incorporating climate risk and emissions data into legal contracts and financial instruments; and navigating evolving environmental regulations.
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This summary is written by a language model reading the source document. It is not the publisher's words and is not a substitute for the original.
Document type: Guide
Product Management
The document outlines how product managers can drive sustainable innovation by incorporating climate criteria into product life cycles, prioritizing energy efficiency and circularity, and influencing organizational culture. It emphasizes the business case for sustainability, noting that in 2022, sustainable products accounted for at least half of recent purchases for 60% of customers.
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Document type: Guide
Reducing Black Carbon Emissions: A Win-Win for People and Climate
Black carbon (BC), or soot, is a potent short-lived climate pollutant resulting from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass. It causes significant respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, contributing to millions of excess deaths annually, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Economically, BC exposure and reliance on unclean cooking fuels cause trillions of dollars in losses. Climatically, BC warms the atmosphere by absorbing solar energy and accelerates ice melt in the Arctic and Himalayas by reducing albedo. The report argues that reducing BC emissions—especially through clean cooking fuels in sub-Saharan Africa and transportation improvements in urban areas—would prevent millions of premature deaths, reduce deforestation, and help limit global warming to 1.5°C.
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Document type: Report
The Problem
The document outlines the drivers of global warming, specifically the emission of climate pollutants from fossil fuels, land use, and industrial activities. It introduces Project Drawdown's approach to climate action, which prioritizes the deployment of existing, scalable, and economically feasible physical practices and technologies over theoretical future developments. The text distinguishes between 'solutions' (physical practices), 'levers' (policies and investments), and 'key actors' (the people implementing them), while detailing the transparent, open-source methodology used by the Drawdown Explorer to categorize and evaluate these solutions by their mode of action and sector.
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Document type: Guide
Human Resources and Operations
The document argues that integrating climate action into business operations improves recruitment and retention, particularly among workers under 30. It provides a framework for HR professionals to implement 'green' HR practices, such as offering climate-safe retirement plans, incorporating sustainability metrics into performance reviews, and reducing carbon-intensive business travel.
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This summary is written by a language model reading the source document. It is not the publisher's words and is not a substitute for the original.
Document type: Guide
Asset Management
The document serves as a checklist and action guide for individuals in asset management to assess their firm's climate readiness and advocate for the integration of climate risk and opportunities into investment portfolios.
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Document type: Guide
The Drawdown Roadmap
The Drawdown Roadmap is a strategic framework developed by Project Drawdown to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. It argues that while viable solutions exist, an organized plan is required to prioritize investments based on sectoral impact, the compounding effect of early reductions, and geographic 'hot spots'. The plan emphasizes maximizing co-benefits—such as poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation—and eliminating systemic barriers to accelerate the transition to a stable climate.
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Document type: Fact sheet
ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR COMMUNICATING ABOUT HEALTH AND EDUCATION SOLUTIONS
The document outlines essential communication tips for framing health and education as climate solutions. It emphasizes the intersection of gender equality, universal education, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in mitigating climate change and poverty. Key guidance includes recognizing the disproportionate impact of climate change on women and girls in emerging economies, framing education as a basic human right, and advocating for full bodily autonomy without promoting coercive fertility limits.
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This summary is written by a language model reading the source document. It is not the publisher's words and is not a substitute for the original.
Document type: Guide