Climate change is the (polar) bear coming after the global community, and South Africa is in the invidious position of being one of the globe’s worst offenders when it comes to the greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change.
With that in mind, Flow Communications was thrilled to be able to design and develop a new information hub – the Climate and Sustainable Investment website – aimed at helping our country meet the climate change-related promises it has made to the international community.
South Africa has far to go. Our national goal is to reach a net-zero emissions economy – that is, one in which all man-made greenhouse gas emissions are removed from the atmosphere through reduction measures – by 2050. In 2022 the World Population Review ranked South Africa as the world’s 14th-highest greenhouse gas emitter.
Going together to go far
But, as the African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” And that is what this new website does: it gives organisations, from businesses to government departments, the information, tools and resources they need to do their bit to aid the battle to save humanity from climate change. Together, the actions taken could take South Africa far down the pathway to a more sustainable world.
Four organisations came together to put this concept together:
The National Business Initiative, a voluntary coalition of South African and multinational companies that works towards sustainable growth and development in South Africa
The World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature’s South African office. The WWF’s primary goal is to inspire people to live in harmony with nature for the well-being of all
The Just Share activist organisation that believes that responsible investment is necessary to create a “just, inclusive and sustainable economy”
The Lewis Foundation, a private, independent philanthropic organisation
The website offers users an array of tools and resources, including a newsletter, podcasts, videos and other information on climate- and sustainable business-related events.
The four organisations gave Flow the task of taking elements of each of their corporate identities and merging them into a new look, just for the Climate and Sustainable Investment website.
The website needed to look businesslike and its purpose had to be clear. It is, after all, a project targeted at business people that aims to enhance the South African financial sector’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) analytical services: to improve governance, skills and awareness in the financial sector, and to provide access to tools and data that will lead to better investment decision-making.
Flow uses the latest in user-experience and user-interface research to design websites that are easy to use, graphically rich (without being bandwidth-gobblers), and optimised for Google indexing.
The main feature of this particular website is the media it hosts, which includes newsletters, podcasts, videos, events notifications and a long list of resources for visitors to look through. Given the amount of content, there is a fairly robust search page to help sort through it all, along with the original listing pages that contain a large amount of filters to also help visitors find what they want