Business must step up in new era of environmental activism

Earth Day is an annual event on Apr 22 first held in 1970 in the United States. It has since grown to become a major moment in the global environmental calendar with events in around 200 countries with over 1 billion people participating.

This year’s theme is “investing in our planet”, with a call for all stakeholders, especially business, to act boldly, innovate, and implement in a partnership to drive a greener and more prosperous future. The timing of this year’s event comes as a landmark report this month from the United Nations-convened Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned we are on track for an “unliveable world”.

Amid the Ukraine conflict, and with the pandemic not yet over, there are growing concerns that with so many challenges facing the world, the green agenda will get sidelined again. So global processes needed to put the world onto a more sustainable pathway require not just a serious injection of political urgency, but also greater participation of business. 

Climate change has long been seen as a challenge with which there are decades left to combat. Yet this month’s hard-hitting report from the IPCC has the stark message that it is “now or never” to act.  

The IPCC warns that global emissions must start declining in under three years with “immediate and deep cuts” to limit average temperature rise to the 1.5 degrees Celsius agreed by nations under the 2015 Paris Agreement. In short, we are at a crossroads on whether we will seize the opportunity to avoid climate catastrophe.

One of the most alarming report findings is that, even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments put in place by the end of 2020 are fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2 deg C this century.  So it is almost inevitable the 1.5 deg C threshold will be exceeded, but it could dip below again by 2100 with big negative emissions in the second half of the century.

Whatever the future might hold, technology-wise, by mid-century to help deliver on this, measures are needed now.  This includes rapid expansion of solar panels and wind turbines which have never been cheaper, having fallen in cost by around 85 per cent over the past decade.

The hard-hitting report may mean pessimism will grow in coming months about the future of global efforts to combat climate change. Yet, while the scale of the challenge remains huge, there remains a pathway to ratchet up their emissions cuts in future to try to meet the Paris targets. 

Governments, which have traditionally led the global sustainability process, cannot do it all alone given the monumental scale of the challenge. Other players from the public, private and third sectors must now therefore dial up their engagement to ensure the level of ambition is delivered.

To take one example, the IPCC makes clear that more money is needed to finance the climate transition, and this is one area where the private sector can play a role. Finance levels are currently 3 to 6 times lower than amounts required by 2030 to limit warming to below even 2 deg C.

So the time is ripe for a new era of environmental activism that better harnesses the power of the private sector. If corporates are increasingly engaged, they can help create the foundation for genuine sustainable development for billions.