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Is sustainability and climate change still on the agenda?

March 1, 2010 by  
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While the planet continues to warm, Australian politicians are using the science around climate change as a political football. The question has to be asked, is this political “static” causing the issue to slip off the agenda in the world of C Level decision makers?

The Opposition leader in Australia , for example, says  that we  simply have to get used to a world with an average mean temperature 3 degrees hotter, despite the impact this will have on usable land for food production and water resources a. So is the issue still on the corporate agenda?

PWC’s 13th Annual Global CEO survey released in January 2010 had some interesting feedback from major decision makers from companies in every region.

Their key concerns (those rated ‘somewhat concerned’ to ‘extremely concerned) on sustainability, were:

  • Climate Change 2009 – 26% and 2010- 37% or a 42% increase in the level over  the previous year’s survey. So the issue is growing in importance and ranks even higher than terrorism.
  • Energy Costs 2009- 50% and 2010- 54% or an increase of 8% on the previous year. A high level of concern. (Yet OgilvyEarth has created internal programs that have reduced companies’energy use by 8- 12% in twelve months with added benefits of high levels of employee engagement and improved employer brands. So why are companies fighting internal programs when there are both brand and cost saving benefits attached?) The same report showed that 75% of these CEOs saw employee engagement as a key issue after the GFC. So an easy win.

PWC’s report re-inforces our own OgilvyEarth research findings in which C-level executives link sustainability strongly to corporate reputation. The PWC report found corporate reputation as a key concern:  “ Participation in industry initiatives to improve the sectors reputation” at 64%, ‘Expansion of CSR programs ‘ at 50% and ‘Engagement with NGO’s that affect reputation” at 31%.

But back to the specific issue of climate change : The PWC report revealed that 60% of CEOs are making preparations for the impacts of climate change. An average of 48% of CEO’s in developed nations saw that climate change would lead to significant new products and services and for the same group 61% reported that acting would increase their reputation.

So the issue of sustainability is not only still well and truly on the agenda but is also going to have significant opportunities for those business leaders who have the vision to invest in a solution.

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  • Kevin

    Interesting, however the climate shows no statiscally significant warming since 1995 according to Phil Jones of UEA when questioned by the BBC. While the earth is emerging from an ice age and hence is warming I think the CEO's might well not sell their ski gear. The IPCC datasets are being shown to based on bad data, fraud at worst and mani[ulation at best. The IPCC rely for their alarmist view of the future on modelling using the UEA CRU datasets. Garbage in Gargage out, as it is currently proving to be the case. Apparently 90% of the US climate stations don't meet the fundamental sighting requirements. Before CEO's start making financial decisions they might spend some time checking the real situation.

  • Stephen Hale

    Hi Kevin

    Thank you for the response. I’m afraid that I can’t agree with your point of view given that the over whelming evidence globally does support a problem related to manmade environmental abuse. If 1000 doctors advised that there was something wrong and you needed an operation and 10 said that it was all fine would you ignore the advice? Even from a logical point of view I personally doubt that any human being could feel that the amount of pollution created by manmade sources since the dawn of industrialisation has had no effect. So let’s look at another angle for CEO’s. Most organisations are experiencing a major increase in the cost of energy and yet they are wasting massive amounts within the various operations they control. So we have a situation where the business has a rising but necessary cost and they can mitigate the risk through an effective sustainability program. In Australia as water supplies dry up they will have to consider a price for water. A decision becomes a bottom line driven decision but also provides a positive environmental result, improved corporate reputation and happier employees so a no brainer. The fact is that most major companies need to and are considering this a real issue so we continue to see the growth of sustainability strategy in businesses.