The recently released 6th Sustainability Report of ITC has unveiled the company's 4-pronged strategy to meet the challenges of climate change. The Report, prepared in accordance to the G3 guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative at the highest 'A+' level is a voluntary and transparent disclosure of the Company's sustainability initiatives and its contribution to building economic, environmental and social capital to secure the long term interests of its stakeholders. Recognising the challenges of climate change and global warming and its impact on competitiveness, ITC has adopted decisive strategies to progress its own efforts to support national and international endeavours in mitigating the effects of climate change. ITC is 'carbon positive' for 4 consecutive years, currently sequestering twice the amount of carbon that emitted from its operations. For 7 years, it has also sustained its 'water positive' status, creating rainwater harvesting potential that is more than twice that consumed by the Company. Irrigating water stressed areas is a critical need following the impact of climate change on India's farming sector. ITC's sustainable agricultural practices also help farmers adapt to the vagaries of climate change.

The four pronged strategy implemented by ITC includes identifying climate change risks in various ITC businesses and implementing adaptation measures, improving competitiveness through innovations in products and technologies, minimising its GHG emissions by achieving minimum specific energy consumption in each of its businesses as well as expanding its renewable energy portfolio and enlarging its carbon positive footprint with large scale social and
farm forestry programme.

ITC has already pioneered research in clonal propagation that has enabled tribals and farmers to create plantations in over 1,00,000 hectares. This has also enabled the creation of 45 million person days of employment and has established a large green cover, helping mitigate the effects of climate change. ITC’s social forestry project in Khammam has received CDM registration from the CDM-EB of the UNFCCC and is the first of its kind in India and second in the world to have received such a registration. The Paperboards division of ITC has also become the first company in India to become a member of the WWF-GFTN for responsible forestry and one of its units has already received FSC certification. Apart from this, ITC has also registered another 7 CDM projects that contribute to climate change mitigation efforts. ITC Sonar, the luxury hotel in Kolkata is the only hotel in the world to have earned carbon credits.

Benchmarking international best case scenarios, several of ITC's units have reported reduction in specific energy consumption, given that energy usage is a large contributor to climate change.
Currently, over 30 % of the energy consumed in ITC's operations are from renewable sources.

Recently, at the 98th AGM of the Company, Chairman Mr Deveshwar had pointed out that the post-Copenhagen era would bring in new challenges to competitiveness of firms unless companies adopted low carbon strategies of growth. He had said that "The ability of a business corporation to adopt low-carbon operations as well as sustainable business practices will be one of the key determinants of competitiveness in the years to come. Going forward, competitiveness and profitability will be increasingly linked to the ability of business to make carbon reduction and the creation of sustainable livelihoods an integral part of their value proposition to consumers." ITC's strategy on climate change addresses these issues of competitiveness, thereby investing in the future security of its stakeholders.

Click here to ITC's Sustainability Report 2009