Certain Uncertainty

9Leading Sustainability Transitions

Matt Gitsham

It's a tough time to be a business leader. Governments, and businesses, are grappling with the impacts of the war in Ukraine on the cost and security of energy and food supplies, wider inflationary pressures and impacts on the cost of living. And all this after only just beginning to catch breath and pick up the pieces after the Covid‐19 pandemic.

In this context, it is becoming harder for leaders to retain focus on achieving Net Zero and dealing with the biodiversity crisis and wider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues around sustainability and human rights challenges. One recent study by KPMG found that 86% of CEOs feared a recession over the next 12 months, as a result of which half were planning on “pausing or reconsidering their existing or planned ESG efforts in the next six months,” and 34% had already done so.¹

Keeping ESG issues high on the agenda may have become more difficult, but the imperative to do so remains as pressing as ever. We continue to witness more and more temperature records being broken, and experience the effects of extreme heat, wildfires, crop failures, storms, and flooding across the globe. The authors of the February 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report concluded:

The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well‐being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and ...