By Bianca Flowers and Ross Kerber
(Reuters) – The new leader of high-profile climate organization said it plans to hire a director to handle complaints and concerns including about standards used to judge corporate environmental targets.
Luiz Amaral was named in February as the first Chief Executive of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a partnership of climate groups that helps corporations develop emissions targets in line with the goal of limiting the industrial-era global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
SBTi has faced criticism that it has not been transparent about its methods and faces potential conflicts of interest in
defining the standard and assessing companies’ performance.
Amaral said the new director position was meant to address such concerns.
“I’m the first one to recognize that we don’t have a complaints mechanism… We’re hiring a soon-to-be announced director whose responsibility will be to create (that),” Amaral said in a recent interview with Reuters.
A vocal critic of SBTi has been Bill Baue, a sustainability activist who was a technical adviser to the initiative until 2020.
Among other things Baue has said the organization has not properly explained why it favors certain methodologies over others to judge companies’ emissions claims.
Baue said Amaral’s plan for the new director was “long overdue” and said the person’s success will depend on how much distance they have from SBTI itself.
“The question will be, to what degree will they have independence and follow the best practices of a corporate ombudsman-type position,” Baue said in an interview.
(Reporting by Bianca Flowers and by Ross Kerber; editing by John Stonestreet)
