Bharti Airtel has just announced its commitment to help build a sustainable planet to mitigate the impact of climate change. What’s worth noting here is that Bharti Airtel has become the first telco from the Indian ecosystem to join the United Nations (UN) Global Compact - the largest corporate sustainability initiative in the world. Bharti Airtel will be aligning its comprehensive Environmental, Societal and Governance (ESG) initiatives to the global body’s ten principles spanning Environment, Human Rights, Anti-Corruption and Labour.
Bharti Airtel Already a Part of Paris Climate Record
It is worth noting that Bharti Airtel is already a part of the Paris Climate Record. The telco is continuously finding new ways and implementing clean, fuel-based power solutions for its towers, data centres, switching centres and other facilities. Airtel has achieved a 97% reduction in network emission intensity for mobile operations (from FY16) besides a 25% increase in renewable energy deployment in operations over the same period via various green power wheeling agreements, which helped in saving CO2 emissions. For the FY ending 2021, the Airtel e-bills initiative saved 667 tonnes of paper sheets), besides 5,554.3 tonnes of e-waste was recycled. Airtel has joined the Science-Based Targets initiatives (SBTi) ‘Business Ambition for 1.5°C’ campaign and adopted targets to significantly reduce its carbon footprint and emissions from its network operations. With this, Airtel joins the league of leading global corporations who have committed to the 1.5°C pathway outlined by the SBTi - a partnership between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Vidyut Gulati, Director, Legal, Bharti Airtel, said that climate change is currently the biggest challenge that humanity is facing. Gulati said that Airtel had undertaken an ambitious target in the direction to help the planet with climate change impacts, and the telco will report its progress about the same consistently.
