Turning sustainability ambitions into reality

The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report assesses the effects of climate change on our natural world and makes for somber reading: 3.5 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate impacts and half the world’s population suffers severe water shortages at some point each year. Rising temperatures and rainfall are increasing the spread of diseases in people, such as dengue fever, and in crops, livestock, and wildlife.

Meanwhile, the multiple and overwhelming demands related to rising energy prices, the Ukraine crisis, soaring inflation, and an ongoing health pandemic, all against the backdrop of a climate crisis, threaten to slow or even pause the ESG agenda, despite the need, now more than ever, for robust ESG measures.

We all know this is a critical time to act. We’ve built industries and economies based on global value chains that rely on take-make-waste principles and it will take a monumental operational shift to reset end-to-end supply chains and carve a new type of economy built on sustainable and circular value chains. We’ve passed the point of waiting until we have a perfect solution. Starting somewhere, doing something—every action counts.

It’s time to turn our sustainability ambitions into reality.

Despite the challenging situation, the path to a more sustainable business model is paved with incredible opportunity. The breadth of innovation we’ve seen in the past few years, and the sheer imagination involved, is humbling. For those with vision and ambition, sustainability is not a cost or a threat, but a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redesign all that has gone before and build a better future. I am excited to see what we can all achieve.

In this special sustainability edition of Impact, we examine the challenges and opportunities of decarbonization, reveal the most sustainable apparel brands and customer attitudes to sustainable products, explore the potential for circularity in the tire industry and the possibilities of sustainable steel, recommend five ways to deliver ESG shareholder value across automotive component manufacturers, and discuss social platforms for good.

As always, if you want to talk about any of these topics in more detail, we’re here.

Best wishes from Oslo,

Getting to net zero

In the race to net zero, everyone wins

Circular economy

Creating systems that don't cost the earth

ESG transformation

Embedding sustainability throughout the organization