Eight leading law firms have pooled their climate action budgets to fund what they claim is a first-of-its-kind scheme to protect vulnerable communities in Kenya. They will invest £4m over 10 years to support livelihoods affected by climate change, earning carbon credits in the process.
The project is a collaboration between Save the Children Global Ventures (SCGV), an investment offshoot of the charity, and Legal Charter 1.5, a forum 'that encourages and enables law firms to transition their strategies, operations and client work in line with a 1.5 degree world'. It marks the first time SCGV has used carbon finance to invest in child-focused climate adaptation and mitigation in vulnerable communities, ‘creating a scalable platform for private sector funding of climate action, while providing high-quality carbon credits’.
Initial funding is expected to be focused on agroforestry and reforestation around the tea-growing areas of the Nandi region, where the collaborators say child poverty is high, and climate change is affecting farmers. As a co-benefit, the scheme will generate ‘high integrity carbon removal credits’ for the firms funding it.
The law firms taking part include Freshfields, Clyde & Co, Slaughter and May, DLA Piper, Taylor Wessing, Charles Russell Speechlys and Simmons & Simmons. An eighth did not wish to be named.
Amanda Carpenter, co-founder of Legal Charter 1.5, said: 'Almost all economic activity has an impact on climate and lawyers are involved in much of it, including the governance, financing, contractual and regulatory architectures of business. Law firms can therefore play a vital role in supporting climate transition, both through their advice and the way they role model climate action. This ground-breaking collaboration demonstrates how law firms can support climate transition with new ways of working.'
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