As we announced in our Annual Meeting in February, SwissBorg is making sustainability a key focus on our roadmap. But what does sustainability mean, and why is it important?
And, essentially, what actions is SwissBorg taking to ensure we actually walk the talk? In this article, we’ll share more about our stance on sustainability, as well as current environmental, social and governance initiatives.
The case for sustainability
While sustainability might just sound like a buzzword, there are real business benefits to growing with a sustainable mindset. In fact, according to Bloomberg, ESG assets will be valued at $53 trillion by 2025 - that will be one third of global assets. (And don’t panic - we’ll explain what ESG is shortly.)
Meanwhile, in early 2021 more than 50% of ESG Funds outperformed the S&P 500.
Finally, the United Nations General Assembly has set out Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030 by all member states, meaning that sustainability is no longer an option - it is mandatory.
Beyond the business rationale for a sustainable roadmap, however, is the fact that SwissBorg is a purpose-driven organisation. Our mission is to democratise wealth management, and that mission can only be achieved sustainably if we contribute to and add value to our planet and society, rather than taking away from it.
As a result, we are making sustainability an integral part of our way of thinking. Making individuals richer at the expense of our societies and our planet is not an option.
What do we mean by sustainability?
When most people hear the word ‘sustainability’, they tend to think of the environment - how we can make business and consumption cleaner and greener. However, the environment is just one part of the puzzle.
To create true sustainability, we need to consider three key pillar: environmental, social and governmental.
- Environmental: This pillar involves responsible growth, in a way that carefully manages the environmental impact of our activities.
- Social: This pillar involves growing in a way that serves society, or our community. SwissBorg already has declared goals of empowerment, meritocracy, inclusion, and the democratisation of finance - these are clear signs of strength and purpose on our community and social goals.
- Governance: With growth in size, entities and services comes our need to ensure our structure and governance remains fit for purpose to serve our needs and those of our community.
Keep reading for an overview of the actions that have already taken place and those that are in progress, with more details to come regarding specific initiatives.
SwissBorg’s environmental roadmap
Partnerships
SwissBorg swiftly signed up in May 2021 to the Crypto Climate Accord (CCA), a private sector led initiative that was created to bring together the crypto and blockchain industry to develop and adopt digital solutions to decarbonise the industry. In this way, CCA members would act as a new standard for other industries to follow.
By supporting the CCA, SwissBorg is contributing towards two important goals:
- Achieving net-zero emissions from its electricity consumption by 2030
- Participating in the development of standards, tools and technologies alongside other CCA supporters to accelerate the adoption and verify progress towards 100% renewably-powered blockchains by 2025.
Finally, we have also established an internal green taskforce to look at the environmental arm of the ESG framework, which is pursuing initiatives to make SwissBorg greener.
Decarbonisation roadmap
We are currently working on a decarbonation roadmap. In very broad terms, SwissBorg plans to address its energetic consumption in the following three pillars:
- SwissBorg’s CHSB token - SwissBorg recognises its responsibility in prioritising the measurement and offset of the onchain energy required to power the CHSB token, at the heart of SwissBorg’s ecosystem and value proposition
- SwissBorg’s corporate energy - all other energy consumed as part of our corporate activities, ranging from the powering of our offices, our services, the procurement of supplies of various kinds as well as the commute of our employees traveling to different locations, conferences and meetings, and so on.
- All cryptos supported on the SwissBorg app - the onchain energy required to power and support all other coins and tokens enabled to be transacted by our users through the SwissBorg app
In a future article, we will share how we calculated the carbon impact of CHSB as well as our plans to offset it.
Product roadmap
As shared at our Annual Meeting, there are two projects currently underway for our environmental product roadmap.
The first is developing ESG ratings for all tokens listed in the SwissBorg app, including CHSB. These will be added to the Supported Assets page of our website in the coming weeks, and will later be added to the Marketplace tab in the SwissBorg app. This will empower investors to make informed decisions about the tokens they choose to invest in.
The second is the long-awaited thematics launch. We are planning to release the first thematics in the coming months, and the very first one will be a green thematic - we will share more details on thematics in the coming months.
Social and governance initiatives
For the social element of the sustainability trifecta, the first step was to create a Women In Crypto taskforce, which intends to increase the presence and participation of women in the cryptosphere - both within the SwissBorg team as well as among crypto investors in general.
This initiative is essential to helping SwissBorg achieve its growth goals, as well as for pushing crypto towards mass adoption. Currently, we estimate that about 17% of users of the SwissBorg app identify as women - that is 102,000 out of 600,000 users.
Imagine if we made the split 50/50 - that would be another 500,000 users for the SwissBorg app, and potential investors in our beloved CHSB token! Not to mention how representing a broader community will help us develop more products and features suitable for a wider range of users, thereby making crypto wealth management accessible to all.
Learn more about our Women In Crypto taskforce.
Finally, on the governance side, 12 months ago we launched the SwissBorg National Council. This was intended to be a council of 200 community members who represented different segments of our community, like large token holders, DAO members, employees and women, who could then propose initiatives that would be added to the SwissBorg roadmap.
Due to changes in how SwissBorg manages our roadmap, which involve becoming laser-focused on a handful of core projects for the year, the SwissBorg Nation team is currently reviewing the National Council structure, and finding other channels through which these valuable community members can continue to have a voice.
That then sums up our sustainability roadmap. We’re very excited about the road ahead and everything that is still to come!
You might also like
