The Future of Sustainability 2023

The climate crisis. Inflation. Price volatility. Rapidly changing reporting and disclosure standards. Growing geopolitical tension. Right now, businesses face an extremely challenging operating environment.

In these immensely unsettled times, there is little guidance for businesses on what action can be taken, yet growing pressure on them to lead. This creates a risk that longer-term transformational efforts will be undermined or even derailed by a focus on short-term crisis management.

In a bid to enable leaders and change-makers to remain ambitious and focused on transformation, Forum for the Future’s latest
Future of Sustainability report, Courage to Transform, provides a new analysis of how businesses are responding to today’s crises.

It highlights:

Four very different yet plausible ‘future trajectories’ emerging today
Five key shifts businesses can make to transform why and how they operate

Download the full report

The Business Transition Trajectories

Profit Supreme: sees resistance to or opting out of change;
instead maintaining a focus on maximising short-term
shareholder value and profits
Shallow Gestures: sees us attempt what we can, but
ultimately delivering only incremental progress that
will likely fall short of what’s needed
Tech Optimism: sees us leverage technology, but
risk an overreliance on it as a solution to all problems
Courage to Transform: sees businesses ask existential questions on why they exist and how they operate, ultimately unlocking the courage to make transformational changes commensurate with the scale of our social and environmental challenges.

The Trajectories are a futures tool intended to provoke a deeper examination of the mindsets dictating how and why — even whether —various actors respond to the crises we face.This then allows you to observe — or imagine — where transformational potential exists.

Profit Supreme

Profit Supreme is characterised by the need to maximise short-term shareholder value and profits above all else. Some hold the perspective that integrating environmental and social considerations into business operations might be considered a violation of fiduciary duty. Others opt not to address environmental and social concerns due to uncertainty over what to do. Or some may choose to capitalise on opportunities arising from a warming climate.

The cascading impacts of climate change—such as heatwaves,
droughts, floods, as well as biodiversity loss and inequality—are
perceived as being too distant from their current operations to be
considered a material risk to the business. Decision-making
power, authority, and influence remain primarily the same.

What you might hear:

“We will continue to maximise our profit from fossil fuel as long as it remains a profitable endeavour. We anticipate being able to exit at the right moment.”

Shallow Gestures

Shallow Gestures is characterised by the mindset, ‘attempt what
we can.’ It’s here businesses showcase their determination to address environmental and social crises, but struggle to navigate the ‘trade-offs’ required between short-term profits and longer-term investments — or divestments — that could foster ecological and social resilience.

Tackling our environmental and social crises are primarily left to
voluntary market forces. People publicly advocate for and explain
the virtues of ‘win, win, win’ scenarios, but businesses broadly maintain a ‘business as usual’ approach, with only incremental shifts being made.

The cascading impacts of climate change — from extreme heatwaves and droughts to floods, biodiversity loss and worsening inequality — are anticipated, but it’s difficult to allocate resources towards a suitable response.

What you might hear:

“We’ve set bold targets for transformation in… 2050.”

Tech Optimism

Tech Optimism is characterised by the harnessing of data and
technology to confront environmental and social issues. There’s
real optimism that tech innovation can prove game-changing.
Enterprises rely on agile, technology-driven platforms that
emphasise quick experimentation and emerge as crisis-driven
solution providers. Yet, technology’s progression can also
provoke challenges such as job displacement and the
underestimation of social cohesion in contributing to resilience.

The cascading impacts of climate change — such as extreme
heatwaves, droughts, floods, biodiversity loss and inequality — are
somewhat anticipated and there are signals of more distributed
decision-making power, authority, and influence.

What you might hear:

“There is too much doom and gloom around climate change.
Humanity has a long history of innovation and overcoming
challenges. Have faith.”

Courage to Transform

Courage to Transform is characterised by a fundamental reset in
the purpose of business, enabling transformational responses
commensurate with the social and environmental crises we face.
Businesses, governments, financial actors and civic leaders
recognise that continuing to prioritise profit at the expense of
human and planetary well-being is no longer tenable. While there
is no blueprint, market actors are beginning to take action to
address the root causes of issues.

The cascading impacts of climate change are anticipated and
resources are being allocated to adequately prepare for them.
Decision-making power, authority, and influence are becoming
more distributed, contributing to long-term resilience.

What you might hear:

“We made the rules. We realised that we can change them!”

Five Principles to Transform Through Crisis

Forum for the Future believes that only the Courage to Transform trajectory will deliver the just transition urgently needed if we are to avert the worst of the social, environmental and biodiversity crises we face.

So where can businesses focus?

Business leadership and innovation has become critical in determining whether we will be successful in creating a just and regenerative future in which both people and the planet can thrive.

Yet conventional ‘sustainability’ strategies and tick-box approaches to ESG are falling short of the systemic and urgent transformation needed. Transformation amid crisis cannot be achieved alone; afterall, systemic challenges require systemic approaches.
It can seem daunting; that’s why we’re honing focus on enabling five key shifts in business.

Download

1. From a risk prevention mindset to a transformational one,

which involves seeing opportunity, not risk, in change, while investing in climate adaptation as well as mitigation measures

2. From addressing the symptoms of our crises to tackling their root cause,

which necessitates moving beyond incremental ‘solutions’ that might ultimately fail to recognising underlying causes and the potential unintended consequences of any interventions

3. From passively responding to their operating context to actively shaping it,

From influencing policy to better engaging their stakeholders and customers, businesses must increase their agency

4. From slow centralised decision-making to more agile distributed governance models,

Instead of consolidating power, businesses must distribute responsibilities and value creation across multiple levels and stakeholder groups

5. From failing to acknowledge the influence of individual, organisational and contextual bias to identifying and removing this bias in risk assessment.

Businesses making this shift will see more equitable and balanced decision-making longer-term.

Continuing this inquiry

Forum for the Future will continue to explore aspects and implications of the report through regular insights, published on the Futures Centre. These insights will enable businesses, governments, and changemakers to dive deeper into the shifts needed to create a better future.

We will explore key questions, including:

What might it practically mean to realise the fourth trajectory, Courage to Transform? How can we harness the potential to create change at scale and pace?
Why is it crucial to recognise that profit cannot come at the expense of human and planetary well-being? How are businesses fundamentally rethinking how they respond to sustainability challenges?
How are new mindsets, practices, decisions, and management contributing to more resilient models of value creation?
How does this inquiry and the guidance offered contribute to shifting narratives on climate risk and the role of businesses in enabling long-term change?

Using the Business Transition Trajectories

As the world more frequently and more severely experiences the impacts of climate change, tackling the crisis will inevitably become more complex. Businesses require practical steps and pathways to navigate this.

To supplement this report, we aim to provide a guide to bring the Business Transition Trajectories to life within your team or organisation.

Explore how you can recognise and understand the different mindsets at play that contribute to resisting or enabling responses to crisis and begin to imagine where transformative potential exists within your team, organisation, or sector.

It’s time for courage. Let’s explore the future, together

The future is not something that happens to us, but is something that we can actively create with every action we take, and with every choice we make.

Forum for the Future believes that Courage to Transform must become the dominant version of our future if we’re to deliver systemic change at scale and pace. If your business is interested in transforming, please get in touch.

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