Climate Change

strengthening the enabling environment for climate action

Our Approach

Communities around the world are confronting the impacts of the climate crisis. To meet the moment, we must ensure that every dollar invested in climate action delivers effective outcomes and that those actions are shaped and owned by local communities. As a purpose-driven consultancy, we are compelled to address the climate imperative by strengthening individual and organizational capacity to drive systems change and to build human and natural resilience to adapt to climate shocks.

Climate Chats

We confront the impacts of climate change across our work. To facilitate ongoing learning, staff have stepped up through incubators to target our experience and expertise to finding strategic climate solutions. Discover some of their insights in our Climate Chats video series.

Transport in canoe along the rivers of the Amazon River Basin in

Advancing Locally Led Adaptation

EI uses a systems-strengthening approach to help clients and communities shape and sustain solutions to climate adaptation challenges. We help each of our partners adopt practices to engage local actors more effectively, respectfully, and sustainably, so that those actors can define strategies, control interventions, and become long-term stewards of the outcomes that will increase the resilience of their communities.

Desert landscaping in Palm Springs California

Leveraging the Potential of Nature-based Solutions

Our innovative program design approach incorporates research and analysis to build the evidence for investments in nature-based solutions (NbS). We develop tools and metrics to help decision-makers understand the effectiveness of NbS and measure progress, support learning through communities of practice, and translate technical information to accessible and actionable forms.

Mr. Telesphore Ngoga at the NatCap inception workshop. Photo by Nathan Chesterman for EI.

Integrating climate metrics into decision-making

We develop robust monitoring and metrics frameworks, systems, and practices for learning and decision-making, so that the right people have the right information at the right time. We understand the needs of diverse clients and climate-impacted sectors to apply relevant theories of change for effective programming. Our approach means metrics are useful for decision-making and adaptation target setting, communicate urgency, and accelerate the pace of change. Photo of Mr. Telesphore at the NatCap Inception Workshop by Nathan Chesterman for EI.

Living Our Values

We hold ourselves accountable to living our values and the requirements of our B Corporation certification. As part of our internal sustainability initiative, we are working with the global carbon emission platform, Greenly, to understand our carbon footprint and design an action plan. Our 2022 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report measures and establishes a baseline of our emissions from all facilities leased and controlled by EI, as well as the carbon footprint of remote work. In 2022, our combined Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions measured approximately 22 tCO2e and our Scope 3 emissions measured approximately 1,115 tCO2e. We are committed to further reducing our GHG emissions and will establish annual reduction targets beginning in 2023.