Sustainability is not good enough anymore

SCIENTISTS delivered a “final warning” late in March in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)‘s latest climate change report, calling for drastic and swift action to avert irrevocable damage to planet earth. The comprehensive study that took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile has a simple but important message – act now, or it will be too late.

We know that the state of the global economy and the pressures it has placed on resources, people, and companies in the pursuit of growth and progress have been key reasons for this climate emergency. We recognise this as a global community, and have indeed acted to understand and address these pressures and embrace climate action.

Asia-Pacific, in particular, has shown immense growth in climate consciousness in the past decade. For instance, close to 3,880 companies across the region opted to disclose their emission targets and climate action in 2021, representing 14 per cent of global market capitalisation and marking a 29 per cent increase from 2020, according to a report by CDP and South Pole. Also, green bond sales have been consistently on the rise in the region, with BloombergNEF reporting that Asia grew the fastest in green bond issuance – its share of total issuance rose from 14 per cent in 2020 to 24 per cent in 2021.