Creating momentum around your Climate and Environment projects
Increasingly strategic for the majority of companies, the topics of Climate and the Environment are nonetheless profoundly divisive. How can we move forward on these issues while avoiding the perils of polemics?
How are Climate and Environment projects perceived in your organization? What place do they occupy among your priorities? The answers to these questions largely determine a company’s capacity to achieve its evolution toward a sustainable business model—that is, one that can eventually be reconciled with the planet’s ecological limits. Existential questions, the answers to which are far from being obvious.
According to the EY consulting firm’s survey of 1,200 CEOs and 300 asset managers across 21 countries, over half of them say they attach a growing importance to sustainability. More and more companies are becoming aware of their vulnerability to climate risks and their dependence on nature. Through their Climate and Environment projects, they are seeking to ensure their resilience, to protect their margins and brands, to find new sources of growth, etc. And yet, the same survey reveals that 23% of companies no longer consider sustainable development to be a priority. A trend confirmed by Gartner: decarbonization and environmental transformation have slipped back down the executive agenda, eclipsed by the adaptation to AI and the revival of growth.
More than a trend reversal, this retreat may be indicative of the difficulty of mobilizing people around climate and environmental issues. Complex, divisive, uncertain or tardy in their effects, these projects do not always withstand periods of recession and changes in leadership.
Despite this, some companies have stayed the course and are reaping the fruits of their efforts. Having committed as early as 1994 to a goal of zero CO2 emissions, flooring manufacturer Interface has already reduced its emissions by 96%. Unilever has reduced its own by three quarters in ten years, all while doubling its sales numbers. The common points shared by these pioneers suggest a winning approach: taking a dispassionate approach to environmental issues by placing them on an equal footing with other strategic challenges; impelling change through the involvement of senior leadership, while at the same time drawing on the organization’s collective intelligence; adopting an incremental approach, in which small steps are acknowledged as such, but progressively add up until representing real advances.
A source of inspiration to (re)energize your own projects!
In this synopsis:
– Four test questions to ensure the credibility of CSR objectives
– Mobilizing around your Climate and Environment projects
– Educating people about Climate and Environment projects
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