EEF Framework for NFs | EEF Sustainability

BUILDING YOUR ORGANISATION SUSTAINABILITY STRATEGY

An end to end framework for all EEF Members

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ABOUT THE STRATEGY CREATOR

The EEF ‘Sustainability Strategy Creator’ is a tool that will enable all European Equestrian Organisations to establish their own pathway to a sustainable future. The framework is designed to support organisations in creating their own unique strategy, which is relevant to the circumstances in their country, and will drive meaningful change.

The framework will guide you page by page through the process of creating a document, that should be used to support discussions internally and the creation of an onwards roadmap of change. In each section there are tips and resources to support your understanding of key themes and a template to begin you on your journey.

We recommend that you look through the whole tool before beginning the process with your team, so that you understand what will be required at each step and what resources are provided for youthroughout the process.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF SUSTAINABILITY TO EQUESTRIAN ORGANISATIONS

“Sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
United Nations Brundtland Commission

As European federations, we have influence over the actions of equestrians across the continent. We could deliver profound change and benefits to our horses, humans and the natural world if we strategically choose to. The need for robust horse welfare standards is well understood, and maintaining these standards relies on all the people involved in our sport. Equally important is our impact on and understanding of environmental change. In 2023, the planet breached 1.5°C, marking a critical tipping point. We must act now or face climate breakdown within decades. As a sport enjoyed by millions across Europe, utilising significant grassland and agricultural land, we can significantly impact a positive future. Our united actions will define the future for the next generation. Without action, we risk losing our sport in the future. Climate change could make it unfeasible to keep and compete horses. Flooded fields, drought, extreme temperatures, and wildfires will impact our infrastructure, land, and horse welfare. Additionally, our treatment of horses and welfare standards are intrinsically linked to our social license to operate. We must adapt and be open to change to move forward.

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WHY DO EQUESTRIAN ORGANISATIONS NEED A STRATEGY?

In order to act, each equestrian organisations needs a sustainability strategy to provide a foundation for activities and discussion. The strategy is an agreement within the organisation’s board members to communicate to its membership and stakeholders what it believes, what its goals are and how it will achieve those goals.

This creator tool will enable each organisation to devise a strategy that is suitable for the scope and scale of its own operations and the legal and meteorological backdrop of its own country.

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WELCOME!

Congratulations! You are on the first step to completing your sustainability strategy.

By the end of this process, you will have thought through all of the key sustainability themes and how they relate to your organisation and produced a document that you can use to inform your actions and create meaningful change.

A downloadable template is provided at the beginning for you to complete each section. We recommend that you follow each stage in turn. However, you may choose to focus on specific sections in an order that works for your own operations and working group.

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YOUR NOTES TEMPLATE

Before you begin, we recommend downloading our strategy workbook, so that you can make notes as we progress through the journey. You can then use these notes to create your final document.

DOWNLOAD NOTES WORKBOOK

Tip: look out for this icon which will prompt you when to use the template during the framework process

DOWNLOAD EXAMPLE

We have completed an example version which you can download here. It will support you in understanding the kinds of answers you may be adding and how to use the workbook.

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STEP 1

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CREATING YOUR STRATEGY

Why sustainability?
For each individual country, there are legal requirements to prioritise the environment. Some requirements are already in place and others are coming into effect in the coming years. It is important that your strategy reflects an understanding of the basic levels of compliance the sector needs to follow, in order to ensure that actions meet with the expectations of both the European Union and individual country laws. There are also differing meteorological and ecological considerations, which may impact the actions needed and goals that you wish to set. Finally, the EEF and FEI have specific resources and guidelines relating to horse welfare, which may support your strategy.

In order to ensure that your strategy meets with the minimum standards, we have created a resources hub. We recommend that you make a note of the considerations that you will need to factor in, using the workbook. This will help to steer your decision making as you consider the changes you need to make as part of your strategy.

ACCESS RESOURCE HUB HERE

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STEP 1

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DOWNLOAD

At this slide you will find links to country specific and where appropriate, EU and worldwide laws and regulations which will impact the sector in the short, medium and longterm. Using these resources will help you to shape specific areas of focus for your sustainability strategy. You should consider how these laws and planned changes will impact areas like equestrian transportation, energy to supply your offices and waste produced through your operations and those of your stakeholders, as well as biodiversity targets and water management.

Click here for access to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and click on your country of interest for live data Click here to access the latest horse welfare information from the Equine Ethics and Wellbeing Commission

Albania

Austria

Belgium

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bulgaria

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Germany

Great Britain

Greece

Hungary

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Latvia

Liechtenstein

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Malta

Monaco

Netherlands

North Macedonia

Norway

Poland

Portugal

Romania

San Marino

Serbia

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Turkey

Ukraine

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CREATING YOUR STRATEGY

Why sustainability?
Finally, sustainability is about both mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is about ensuring that we are doing everything we can to minimise the worst impacts of climate change, for example reducing our emissions. Adaptation is about planning for the inevitable changes to come, for example installing flood defences. Here is a short video which explains the process of mitigation and adaptation and how to consider both in your strategy.

Mitigation and adaptation explained

Using the template you downloaded at the beginning, consider the risks in your country presented by climate change and other environmental factors and how your federation will need to adapt to those changes.

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STEP 1

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CREATING YOUR STRATEGY

Creating a project plan - who needs to be involved?
This strategy will have an impact on how you operate now and in the future. Therefore it is important to devise the strategy with the support of a range of colleagues from across your organisation. You can do this in a number of ways that suit your normal internal processes.
1. Write a list of everyone who will be impacted by your strategy within the organisation and invite them to form a working group to discuss the strategy.
2. Identify who will be required to sign off the final strategy
3. Consider whether you wish to engage with your wider stakeholders in the development of your strategy. This can be done through a questionnaire to your members or holding focus groups with key people and organisations.

Each of the three considerations are found in your workbook for you to complete.

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STEP 1

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CREATING YOUR STRATEGY

Creating a project plan - who needs to be involved?
Once you have established answers to the above three considerations, devise a plan of engagement. This can include setting up a meeting with the working group, identifying the timelines for the next Board meeting to present the sustainability strategy, and creating a questionnaire to send to members. This engagement plan will form the basis of your timeline for creating your sustainability strategy.

Secondly, you need to ensure that you have established how and when you will launch your strategy. How will you disseminate it to your staff and members, who will write the press release, where will it be positioned within your website and who will be responsible for uploading it. All of these details should be entered into your project plan, so that you can clearly see a pathway for the delivery of your strategy before you work on the content.

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STEP 1

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CREATING YOUR STRATEGY

Creating a project plan - the final stages
It is important to understand that the strategy is not a static document to be filed away, it is a working document that tells everyone how you intend to act now and in the future. Therefore before producing and publishing it, time should be spent on agreeing how actions will be delivered. This may be in the form of agreeing a ‘green team’ who will take ownership of the strategy, or adding key milestones into the work plan for the Executive.

Within your ‘How to create a sustainability strategy’ workbook, you will see that we have left a space for you to enter the names and details of the key personnel who will be responsible for the onward work. It is useful to ensure that these people are engaged in the strategy development from the beginning and to support them in their understanding of what is expected of them once the strategy has been launched

Now that you have understood the motivation for creating your strategy and how you are going to do it, it’s time to begin. Click on the button below to begin the process of writing your strategy.

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LET'S START

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LET’S BEGIN

In this section we are going to be producing the document itself. To do so, we have provided template pages which should be used as a guide. You should think about your own brand guidelines, images that you like to use that best represent your organisation and plans, as well as infographics.

DOWNLOAD STRATEGY PORTRAIT TEMPLATE DOWNLOAD STRATEGY LANSCAPE TEMPLATE

From this point forward, we will explore each page in turn

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COVER PAGE

Your front page should contain a few key elements, your logo, the title of the document and an image to set the tone for your vision. The document should utilise your brand colours and engage readers to want to open the document and read the contents.

Tip:Click on the photos to download the template for the selected page and format

portrait

Consider whether you wish to orientate your strategy portrait or landscape

landscape

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CONTENTS PAGE

You will need to complete your contents page at the end of the strategy creation process, in order to ensure that all of the headings and page numbers are aligned correctly.

Ensure your titles are aligned to the titles you choose for each section and place them in an order that suits your strategy style and focus

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INTRODUCTION PAGE

Your introduction is important as it will set the scene for the document. On this page you need to clearly explain the purpose of the document, the reason for action and the key themes within it. You may also wish to include a foreword either within the introduction or separately at the beginning.

Your introduction can be up to two pages long if you wish and may also be seen as an executive summary.

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BACKGROUND PAGE

It is important to support your reader in understanding the necessity for a sustainability strategy. Many people will not be clear on the environmental and welfare challenges impacting our sport and this is an opportunity to provide both an explanation for the strategy and some basic education to your reader.

In this section you may find it helpful to use the notes you made in your template, to draw out the external drivers for change. We have also created some wording to support you in communicating climate change.

You may also wish to use this page to inform the reader about work you have already carried out.

DOWNLOAD EEF EXAMPLE WORDING HERE

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VISION PAGE

Take some time as a group to decide what sustainability means to you as an organisation. Remember to refer back to the external drivers template to understand the motivations for changes. We recommend brainstorming answers to the following questions:

1. What matters to you individually and as an organisation?
2. How is your organisation impacted by climate change?
3. What steps would you like to see taken in the short, medium and long term?
4. What does success look and feel like?
5. What words best describe your role as a organisation in acting on the environment, horse welfare and social responsibility?
6. How do you consider your members will be impacted by climate change, horse welfare concerns and societal change?
7. How can your organisation positively impact horse welfare?
8. How can your organisation benefit the local community?
9. What future would you like to visualise?

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VISION PAGE

Utilising the answers to these questions, consider one or two sentences that best describes how you as an organisation visualise impacting on the future sustainability of the sport. This page is important as it sets the tone for what your organisation believes in and stands for, so consider your words and the images that you wish to use carefully.

Make sure your image inspires you as much as the words that you use. This page is the centrepiece of your strategy.

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ORGANISATION ACTIVITIES PAGE

In this section we consider the actions that you can take based on your scope of influence. This is about understanding what you have direct control over and what actions you can take that will support your wider community. Consider the following questions:

What are the different areas of the business we have control over?
What are the different areas of the business we are able to influence?

Your answers will provide you with the framework for considering where your negative and positive impact on the pillars of sustainability lay. To assist you, we have provided a grid that will guide you through identifying each area of the business that should be included within your strategy.

Click here to watch a video about influence and control in relation to horse welfare DOWNLOAD NF ACTIVITY MATRIX DOWNLOAD EXAMPLE HERE

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ORGANISATION ACTIVITIES PAGE

You may wish to outline the scope of your activities within your strategy document, in order to make clear how your organisation will tackle sustainability. Based upon the answers within your grid, you may use the template examples here to enter your scope of influence.

This page clarifies what is covered by your strategy. It is a useful way to signpost the areas that you will be tackling.

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OUR SUSTAINABLE ASPIRATIONS

Now that we understand the areas of our organisation and the influence we have in each aspect, we can consider the actions that we may be able to take. To do this, we will use the EEF green policy, which breaks down the core areas of sustainability, alongside the FEI horse welfare and ethics guidelines and 5 freedoms, which help to define our actions for horse welfare.

Using the scope of influence grid you have begun to fill in, consider the ways in which your operations impact upon the pillars.
For each section make a note of the impact. For example you may have listed ‘production of marketing fliers’ under business activity and ticked the box for carbon footprint, resource use and creates waste. Now we want to consider what we may wish to do differently, for example we may decide to use recycled paper for our fliers, which we would enter into the column promote responsible resource use and encourage waste reduction.

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GOALS PAGE

Considering our impact and our vision, at this stage in the strategy we need to focus on what we want to achieve. Using the grid matrix, focus on how negative impacts can be improved upon, how, when and by how much and for positive influence, what actions can be taken and by when.

These goals will support you in creating the final action plan with a timeframe. Returning to your grid matrix once more, at the bottom of the matrix you will find a ‘goals’ column. Review all of the actions you have placed in that column and consider the themes. For example you may note that you wish to digitise your printed items to reduce resource use, or you may notice that you will be raising awareness in order to drive down emissions from transport. Look to the trends and identify one or more goals that relate to the activities highlighted in each column. This could be a percentage reduction, for example reduce staff travel emissions by 10%, or it could be an action, for example provide training to all our event organisers. Alongside each goal, add a date by which you wish to achieve the goal. This may be a day, month, season or year depending on how detailed you wish to be.

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GOALS PAGE

To build your goals page, lift each goal from the matrix and place them within your strategy in a format that appeals to you. As you look through the goals and actions you wish to take, it is important to refer back to the notes you made on the External Drivers Form. If you are required to remove single use plastics as part of legislation coming into effect in 2024, it is important that your goals align to this expectation and deadline.

You may wish to keep this as headline goals like ‘commit to Net Zero by 2050’ or have a large number of smaller goals like ‘eliminate single use plastics from our events’

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ACTIONS PAGE

To give the reader of your strategy a greater understanding of how you intend to tackle the core topics of sustainability, you may wish to include more detail in your document. These templates allow you more space to expand upon the specific activities you have chosen, reflecting upon both mitigation and adaption to a changing climate, environmental sustainability in general, horse welfare and social responsibility.

You may wish to use multiple pages for this section, addressing one topic per page, and give details of specific projects you intend to undertake

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ROADMAP PAGE

In our final section we will use the work done to date to create a strategic plan that will formulate the commitment to sustainability at the end of your strategy. Using the grid consider all of the actions that you will take as an organisation and place them in date order into one of the chosen formats. Remember that this is your final strategic plan, so ensure that your actions are meaningful, achievable and deliver on your vision. In this roadmap, it is important to ensure that you have met with all of the external drivers that you have listed and in the timeframe allocated. The following questions will help you in assessing if your roadmap is fit for purpose:

Have I met with current, pending and probable legislative changes?
Have I met with the expectations of my funders and key stakeholders?
Does my roadmap deliver positive change for sustainability

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CLOSING PAGE

Your strategy document should conclude with a page that sets the tone for a positive future and ambition to commit the changes outlined in the document. This can be achieved in a number of ways and we have provided templates to guide you.

As with your vision page, think carefully about the image you wish to use and the tone it sets for your next steps in this process.

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COMPLETION OF STRATEGY

Congratulations! you have completed all of the components of a sustainability strategy. Now it is time to launch your document and begin to deliver upon your actions to achieve your goals.

For more support and help with creating your sustainablity strategy, contact Katerina Liberi sustainability@euroequestrian.eu

You can also learn more in our sustainability hub by watching our webinars and enjoying other resources.

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IMPLEMENTING YOUR STRATEGY

Now that you have completed your strategy, it is time to progress to the next stage, delivery.

We have designed the creator tool in order that you can utilise the matrix as a project planner in which you can track progress.

We recommend that you use this tool in order to report progress to you staff, Board and stakeholders.

Equally we would like to positively encourage you to share you progress and examples of how you have achieved individual projects with our ‘good practice’ hub and at the EEF annual conference.

You can contact us directly with your stories by emailing sustainability@euroequestrian.eu.
And view other stories to inspire your progress in our ‘good practices hub’

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