Learning Brief: A Broad Definition of Climate, Without Greenwashing.
We’re excited to share our latest Learning Brief: A Broad Definition of Climate, Without Greenwashing. 🌿
At The Sweef Institute, we believe in a broader understanding of climate impact, grounded in rigour. We see an opportunity to bring more businesses into the climate conversation by helping them understand, measure, and improve their environmental and social footprint, regardless of whether climate or gender is central to its work.
Climate entrepreneurship programs have traditionally focused on businesses with direct and easily identifiable climate models, such as renewable energy, carbon accounting, waste management, or electric vehicle technologies. Yet climate impact extends across nearly every sector of the economy. Food systems, agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare all influence emissions, resource use, and resilience through their everyday operations, but are often overlooked by funders using narrow climate screens.
Through the KINETIK Sweef Entrepreneurs Program, we look beyond climate labels to help businesses identify their material environmental impacts and build more credible approaches to measuring and communicating them. A broader definition means rigorous measurement and transparent reporting are crucial to ensure that greater inclusion does not come at the expense of credibility.
Ternakin is an excellent example of this approach in practice. Through the Fellowship Program, the team developed climate and social impact metrics and tested a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis, arriving at a baseline of approximately 1.2, prioritising transparency over inflated claims. Their experience shows how climate impact can emerge through everyday operations, waste reduction, and stronger livelihoods, even when climate is not the main focus of the business.
Programs that seek to avoid greenwashing must therefore invest in storytelling, measurement systems, and capabilities that help businesses understand, improve, and communicate their impact honestly.
Read the full Learning Brief: A Broad Definition of Climate, Without Greenwashing, to explore how this approach can help shift climate support towards the wider economy: