In the mind of Marina Bylinksy, Sustainability Manager, Gardena division

As the year 2025 unfolds, and many crises shake up the world, there is one that has been pushed to the background of the public space: climate change. Just a few days ago, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released yet another report highlighting that we have, once again, reached new records of global warming. It hardly made it to the headlines. And still, there will be a positive milestone that we can look forward to this year: the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the first ever global accord on common temperature targets to limit climate change.

While it is tempting to conclude that we have so far fallen short of the ambition set in Paris, I also believe that a lot of progress has been made since then. Progress that was made possible by small, incremental, bold steps by people who…care. The company director who invests in new battery technologies long before they become mainstream, the policy-maker who sticks to unpopular legislation to make polluters pay for their emissions and the citizen who chooses to favour local produce in the grocery store.

The Paris Agreement anniversary coincides with my personal 10-year-anniversary of working on climate change. Over these years, I had the incredible privilege of collaborating with people from various backgrounds - business, politics, environmental groups. In the many discussions I had with them, one of the most prevalent topics was the question of responsibilities. How many times did I hear the statement, “But my company/my industry/my country is only responsible for a very small fraction of greenhouse gas emissions. Why should it be me who takes action? I would only penalise myself and not achieve any significant outcome for the climate.” Well, what makes climate change mitigation so challenging is precisely that we are all a small part of a bigger problem. Depending on how you look at it, different actors will appear as more responsible than others. Is a fossil fuel producer more to blame than the consumer who purchases their product? Are the countries with the highest emissions in 2025 more responsible than those who have lower emissions today, but have had significantly higher impact on the climate over more than a century? Global warming is not the result of one big culprit’s deeds, but of a multitude of different contributors.

We may be hoping for that one big ground-breaking decision, taken in spheres outside our control, to fix the problem for us. But the solution inevitably hinges on the action that we, the small pieces of a big puzzle, do take – or not. Therefore, do not have doubts the next time when you can speak up for a new initiative to reduce emissions in your business area, even if its impacts may appear negligeable at first glance. And make sure to switch off your computer when you leave the office. It does make a difference.

You and I have the heavy responsibility, but also the unique opportunity, to make the right choices, caring for people and other living beings with whom we share this beautiful planet. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), one of the most reputable voices in this domain, put it in one of its recent reports, “[t]he choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”1

Let us live up to this mind-blowing challenge.

......................................................................

1 IPCC, 2023: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 1-34, doi: 10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647.00, p. 24