Member Article

Collaboration will be crucial to resolve sustainability issues

Leading figures from business, academia and policy have called for greater collaboration between communities, corporations and governments to push for better frameworks, and more investment to tackle sustainability challenges.

Gathering in London for the Sustainability Summit 2018, hosted by The Economist Events, prominent industry figures discussed the key environmental challenges facing the world and businesses, including leadership and responsibility, counteracting short-termism, and the impact of lobbying and campaigning on the sustainability agenda.

Delegates heard from various speakers throughout the conference, including Mike Coupe, Sainsbury’s chief executive; Kate Brandt, lead for sustainability at Google; E.ON’s chief executive Michael Lewis; Christopher Davies, the international director of CSR and campaigns at The Body Shop; and Hege Sæbjørnsen, the UK & Ireland country sustainability manager for IKEA.

During the keynote panel discussion on Reframing the Mission: From Responsibility to Leadership, all agreed that companies who can change their leadership structure to place more responsibility on effecting change are more likely to embed sustainability into their business model and future-proof their organisation. Mike Coupe emphasised this by saying that “we are judged in the court of public opinion and we need to be able to say to our customers that we are doing the right thing”. Jean-Marc Duvoisin, chief executive of Nespresso, added, “young people want to consume in a good way. Before it was about the cheapest brand, now it’s different. We need to leverage this wave of positivity from millennials”.

As the discussion evolved to focus on the constraints within which businesses operate, Mike Coupe reasoned that “it’s a failure of UK public policy that we don’t have a unified recycling policy. Politicians abdicate responsibility further down the food chain. We need global frameworks to make this happen. Businesses need to go beyond the minimum standards set by government when it comes to recycling plastics or sustainability, because we need to be judged by a higher standard”. Ending the discussion, Ayesha Imam, the board chair at Greenpeace concluded that “leadership is about moving from talking about responsibility, to action and accountability. We need to start setting standards, without waiting for governments to do so for us”.

The theme of responsibility and government support was continually revisited throughout the day, becoming a particular point of discussion between Michael Lewis and Giulio Boccaletti, global managing director of water at The Nature Conservancy on Counteracting Short-termism in Business Strategy and Investment.

Michael Lewis argued that “when you’re going through a massive transformation, policy and business strategy need to be aligned. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that we would have delivered our huge investment in renewable energy and driven costs down this fast. We were in a very challenging position but we were backed by and aligned with government. One of the most important things we can do is show we can create solutions within the right policy framework. This then serves as examples that we can bring that to other countries”.

Giulio Boccaletti summarised what would become the general consensus of the day. “It’s important to bring communities, businesses and governments together. It’s the only way we will come to the solutions that we need”.

Jan Piotrowski, Environment Correspondent of The Economist, said:

“With lots of people doing lots of good and interesting things around the world, we don’t know how to value all these actions. And if we are not able to put a value on them, it’s very difficult to prioritise what we should and shouldn’t be doing going forward. We are going to need a more systematic, collaborative approach if we’re going to become a more sustainable society.”

Taking place at County Hall, the one-day summit brought together senior executives responsible for sustainability at global organisations, leading industry commentators, entrepreneurs, media representatives and analysts.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sarah Goldsmith .