A global context of heightening political turmoil has surrounded COP27. In view of the current stakes, John Elkington, Chairman & Chief Pollinator at Volans Ventures and ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree, urges all of us in sustainability to learn to do politics. And to shift our lens to COP28.

We long dreamed of sustainability becoming part of mainstream politics—often overlooking the inconvenient truth that politics can make mincemeat of even the most urgent and well-founded change agendas. With politics now in turmoil wherever we look, the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference—aka COP27—will find it hard to capture and hold the attention of the global media and political classes.

So, while in no way wishing to undermine the efforts of the COP27 organizers, and this year’s summit coincides with the merging of the sustainability and security (energy, food, water, climate, social, health, etc.) agendas, we also must urgently expand our focus from Sharm el-Sheikh, where Egypt is hosting COP27, to Dubai Expo City where the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is due to host COP28.

The logic is simple. The current disarray in global politics is so great that climate change, yet again, will often be drowned out. That said, Putin’s vicious invasion of Ukraine means that most EU countries are advancing their targets for moving away from hydrocarbons. Several—notably Austria, Denmark, and Portugal—have already committed to having 100% renewable electricity by 2030.

Anti-ESG, pseudoscience and PR

But then there is the less-good news. Who would have predicted a few years back that American states would now be announcing their intention to step away from funds offered by BlackRock—one of the world’s leading asset managers? Louisiana, to take just one benighted example, has said that it plans to pull an extraordinary $794 million out of BlackRock investment funds, blaming the asset management giant's push to embrace environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment strategies. The apparent logic: capitalism should have no truck with sustainability and the fossil fuels sector should be allowed to cripple the planet, wherever profits can be made—and jobs, taxes, and assorted inducements, legal or otherwise, protected.

State Treasurer John Schroder explained, "This divestment is necessary to protect Louisiana from mandates BlackRock has called for that would cripple our critical energy sector." Delusional—and profoundly anti-capitalist—but symbolizing a new phase in the sustainability arms race.

BlackRock, as the firm has counter-argued, remains a major investor in fossil fuels. But its overall direction of travel—as prudence dictates—is away from fossil fuels. Despite the current uptick in demand for fuels of every sort, driven by Putin’s energy war, the evolutionary trajectory is clear. Whatever Putin (and Schroder) may imagine, fossil fuels are headed for the boneyard.

Again, who would have predicted that United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres would say in public that, “We seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested heavily in pseudoscience and public relations—with a false narrative to minimise their responsibility for climate change and undermine ambitious climate policies.”

Sustainability is going seriously political

For decades, the change agenda was sufficiently remote from the core political debate that it was generally handled by lower grade officials and, in business, by specialist managers, many of them public relations specialists or lawyers. No longer. What is remarkable now is that sustainability is crashing into mainstream politics and mainstream markets. One of the results is that the change agenda is becoming increasingly politicised.

Witness the U.S. Republican Party’s push-back against the climate elements of the recently legislated Inflation Reduction Act. And we have seen it in my own country, the UK, where a chaotic Conservative Prime Minister took a wrecking ball to the country’s environmental rules and reputation for good governance.

She also took the idiotic step of banning the country’s new king, Charles III, from attending COP27. Ridiculous because he has a considerable standing in the world of climate action and could have represented the country’s better sides. One popular newspaper ran a live camera focused on a lettuce, to see whether the vegetable of the Prime Minister expires first. She lost to Rishi Sunak.

Similar trends are now seen in countries like Italy and Sweden, with right-wing populists winning support—and almost never supporting any meaningful elements of the sustainability agenda. You see it in Brazil, too, where I spoke recently at a major business forum hosted by the forestry, pulp, paper, and packaging company Klabin. In the background, the news media were full of increasingly angry exchanges between supporters of the presidential campaigns of Jair Bolsonaro, who had been president since 2019, and former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as “Lula.”

The world sensed that this was a truly consequential election, with massive ecological implications for Amazonia—and hence the rest of the world. Those voting against Bolsonaro—and many people in the wider world—knew that he has been incompetent, corrupt, and an aggressive champion of the intensifying destruction of the Amazon ecosystem.

They also suspected that a Lula government would be unlikely to address the country’s current unsustainability with anything like the urgency needed, but many concluded that it could hardly be worse than what has been happening recently. In the event, Lula won by a thin margin, but Bolsonaro supporters retained control of the country’s Congress, suggesting major battles ahead.

An inflection point

The key message from all of this is that we must learn to do the politics. And that is why we are now developing a new Volans program focusing on Corporate Advocacy, looking at how companies and business leaders can play a legitimate and effective role in driving the new politics. Early partners include Unilever and the Porticus Foundation.

Ahead of COP28, we are also partnering with the UAE Government and the First Abu Dhabi Bank on a global commission on access to clean fuels. One question that will need to be asked there is how a fossil-fuels-based economy like theirs can adapt to a future world where selling coal, oil, and then gas will be viewed in the same light as selling hard, addictive drugs?

The sustainability paradigm has been building for over 60 years. Given that revolutionary new paradigms take 70-80 years to engage fully, I sense that we are at an inflection point—and that the next 10-15 years will be decisive, whether the outcomes are good, bad or ugly.

PHOTO: Neil Palmer | Wikipedia

About the Author:

John Elkington
Chairman & Chief Pollinator
Volans Ventures
ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree