Back in a previous era, otherwise known as two months ago, public and business momentum finally seemed to be gathering for a serious response to climate change.

Sustainability had risen up board agendas, and thinking was underway about not only how to satisfy environmental, social and governance compliance, but how to redesign business models for a net-carbon-zero world.

Faced with real threats to corporate survival from Covid-19 and the growing realisation that the world will wake up to colossal debt, the temptation will be to say: ’Not now, climate change! Can we really afford to pay attention to sustainability just at this moment?’ In any case, it will be argued, 2020 is likely to see a record fall in global carbon emissions, so we just bought ourselves some time.

“We need to prioritise sustainability more than ever to revive and rebuild the economy”

But the paths to a post-Covid future and to a more sustainable world lead us down the same track. In fact, we need to prioritise sustainability more than ever to revive and rebuild the economy. There are six reasons why:

  • Resilience will shoot to the top of board agendas, and government will insist it stays there. We’re being taught an expensive lesson about how ‘efficiency’ can imply sailing too close to the wind. Long, single-source supply chains and the just-in-time logistics of globalisation offer little margin for error. The world is becoming less predictable, and governments will want to avoid acting as the economy’s backer of last resort. Neither a pandemic nor climate change is a black swan, in that both have been predictable and indeed predicted. We can’t afford to be unprepared for the next ‘big one’.
  • Consumers will make the connection that the pandemic and climate change are both linked to mankind’s carelessness with human and planetary health. Responsible businesses will be seen to commit themselves to both agendas. Sustainable, healthy, safe and clean will be hygiene factors to regain customers’ confidence. Hence Starbucks making plant-based foods the centre of its post-Covid relaunch in China.
  • Norms forced on us during lockdown will stick at least to some degree, especially where they are more sustainable, such as online retailing, teleworking and reduced international travel. As President Macron put it, people will come out and say, ‘I no longer want to breathe this bad air’. Just a month ago, behavioural economists worried that lockdown was impossible, but here we are with strong compliance: invisible dangers can be understood. The notions of what collective actions are reasonable, possible and necessary may be very different from before.

“Gen Z and millennials have now weathered one or two economic crises respectively. They’ve seen their education and employment prospects blown as society moves to protect the wealth and health of older generations”

  • Governments searching for stimulus and recovery measures will, if they are smart, not look to prop up the pre-Covid economy, but to find ‘shovel-ready’ projects to build a new, green and clean one. Investment in clean energy, electric cars, decarbonised mass transportation, and water and waste management could form a Green New Deal. For companies, this will strengthen competitive advantage from early adoption of green tech and sustainable business practices.
  • Gen Z and millennials have now weathered one or two economic crises respectively. Each time, they’ve seen their education and employment prospects blown as society moves to protect the wealth and health of older generations. They are not in elected positions of power yet – but they are the majority of our workers in stores, bars and restaurants, they are our emerging small-business owners and entrepreneurs, they are retail’s core customers. Their insistence and their actions – through their choices of brands and employers and politicians – will ensure that we can’t make the same mistakes again.
  • The world’s poorest are only at the beginning of their Covid crisis, but without the healthcare and governance systems to provide a safety net for the sick, they are bracing for the worst. The impact of climate change is falling on them, too – more gradual, but no less disastrous. These are the farmers who bring us our food and our cotton. Livelihoods are being lost, economies are set to be devastated, and inequality is being ramped up. Together, these crises risk a massive reversal of gains made over the past two decades.

We can’t make plans solely to survive the bad times. We must maintain hope and ambition. Sustainability is not only the next challenge but a guide to building back better.