Context, balanced narrative, global focus - key mantras for communicators today

Recently, Vedanta was recognised by Dow Jones Sustainability Index for its contributions towards a sustainable tomorrow. In less than an year Vedanta’s commitment has improved its rankings to 12 from 21. As the world moves towards embracing climate conscious organizations, companies are forced to rethink about managing their climate related business risks and management strategies. In this episode of Mrigashira, Gaurav Sarup, Director, Carbon and Social Performance at Vedanta Resources Ltd, talks to Charu Raizada about the sustainable development initiatives by Vedanta, its impact on society, and the environment.

Listen to the podcast here: https://mrigashira.podbean.com/e/charu-raizada-speaks-to-gaurav-sarup-of-vedanta-resources-limited-on-sustainability/

What measures has Vedanta taken towards becoming a climate conscious company?

Vedanta is one of the world’s largest natural resources company. So, when you have a setup like that, from a sustainability standpoint, is to ensure that your systems and standards are consistent across all of your group companies. With that kind of philosophy, Vedanta began formally working in this area of sustainability in 2010. We have a general philosophy on zero harm, zero waste, zero destruction, and the work that we are doing is driving towards achieving the vision of that philosophy.

We’d started measuring and monitoring what our emissions were. But serious work on this kind of began around the 2016 timeframe, about a year after the Paris accords in 2015. India had made some fairly ambitious goals in 2015. And Vedanta decided to align with those goals. We revised our energy and carbon policy and in that we said that we as a company want to substantially decarbonise our operations by 2050. At that point in time, we also reconstituted an internal body, known as the carbon forum, to set our mid-term targets for 2025 and our long term for 2030. A lot of the work that we are currently engaged in is focused on improving the efficiency of our processes.

Could you share with us how you are communicating the sustainability story with your stakeholders?

Our primary means of communication has been our sustainability report. What we’ve been doing over the last 12-18 months now is trying to distil all of that information and put things out on our social media handles. So, if you’re following with Vedanta’s Twitter handle, or if you are following us on Facebook or LinkedIn, you will see a lot of ESG related stories in that space.

There are a few international platforms like the carbon Disclosure Project CDP, there’s the UN Global Compact, there’s the Dow Jones index. These are all other areas where people can attend to go out and look for information on sustainability. For those stakeholders for whom English is not the primary language, or who might not have easy access to the internet, or to our reports, there is a lot of communication activity that’s happening at our business unit level, either in the local media, or through various other community interactions.

Any tips to communicators for enhancing the sustainability narrative…

There are three or four things I think that any communicator should keep in mind when you’re talking about your sustainability narrative. So, it is always important to understand the context – what you do, where you operate, who your key stakeholders are, what kind of challenges you face, etc.

Secondly, be balanced in your narrative. Now, if you look at sustainability, communication, and disclosure, generally, people tend to talk about only the good news stories. But also talk about areas where improvement is needed. And so, like any other form of communication, if you are genuine, it shows and people these days are very, very quick in determining whether something is empty rhetoric or is greenwash.

The third one I would say is on the global context – sustainability as a subject has been evolving every year. Unless you understand that and frame your conversation and your narrative along those lines, you will seem very outdated. And then the last thing that usually we communicators tend to overlook is showcasing your sustainability efforts to our internal stakeholders. I think internal stakeholders like your employees and your contract workers are very, very, can be very strong brand ambassadors for the work that you do. Those would be my four tips for a successful communication and sustainability.

(Mirgashira is a podcast for Indian PR and Communication professionals anchored by Radha Radhakrishnan. To listen to all episodes visit https://www.digitales.co.in/industry-insights/mrigashira-podcast/)