THE CLIMATE CHANGE TIME BOMB IS TICKING. CALL FOR ACTION

The 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on #ClimateChange (IPCC) was released yesterday in a press conference by Antonio Guterres, UN General Secretary. There was bad news about the reality of Climate Change progression due to increased GHG in the atmosphere and significant CO2 increase. The increase in those gasses is expected to continue due to the economic growth of many countries in large regional areas in Asia and Africa. “Climate Time Bomb is ticking” was the strongest statement made by Antonio Guterres.

Besides this drama realistic call to any Nation and citizen in the world from such a relevant authority, the Secretary of the United Nations gave a piece of hope in his speech about the actions and technologies that can be taken and used to meet the goals to keep the global temperatures about 1,5C over pre-industrial levels. The guiding route for this hope is written in the annual  #IPCC report presented yesterday.

In summary, the report includes an urgent global action plan with a more significant financial commitment for the wealthiest countries represented in the G20 club. The extra efforts, acting as a pledge, includes a demand to accelerate the path to Net Zero by a decade for those countries from 2050 to 2040. For emerging countries, this acceleration demand was requested to move ahead to a deadline of 2050. It is important to remember that one of the largest worldwide economies, India, was committed to a Net Zero plan by 2060. Finally, Antonio Guterres called for all G20 countries to create a combined effort by their public and private sectors together with their scientific and new available technologies to achieve these new goals and agenda.

This call for action to the private sector in the wealthiest countries is relevant for any industry, but mainly for the ones that are the most significant polluters contributors. The call for action against climate change was a short-term plan, but the time is getting shorter to change things at a breakneck pace. The UN General Secretary urged fuel and Gas Companies’ CEOs to elaborate “credible transition plans” towards this shortened #Netzero agenda while requesting the rest of private sector leaders to accelerate the transition to renewable energies, assuming “extra efforts”. These extra efforts mentioned for all private sectors include a committed and real Net Zero target by 2050 worldwide.

Following this urgent call for action to the world Nations by UN General Secretary. Still, especially to the G20 countries, it would be desirable that the US Biden administration, EU commission, UK government and other members of the G20 club agree to revise their own Net Zero plans to assess the “what” and “How” will get the investment, regulation and subsidies to support this pledge.

Focusing on the fashion-sports goods sectors, acknowledging the positive movements that have been already done, this new call for urgent action will demand an acceleration of sustainable strategies implementations with short-medium and long-term targets to be achieved in the fastest way. CMOs will need to rethink strategic marketing to create a higher public awareness about the steps made by their companies towards this acceleration and how to persuade #consumers towards sustainable product consumption.

It is probably the time for shareholders and other relevant industry stakeholders to accept that growth and profit need to be measured with a long-term vision plan to invest for the sustainability of the sector considering the 3P model, #People, #Planet and #Profit, beyond what has been done.