A panel argues that treating climate action as a business opportunity drives faster solutions than regulation alone. They highlight energy efficiency, renewable energy, waste-to-income models, and impact investing as proven ways to make climate work profitable for farmers and businesses.
Chapters
We're sort of approaching climate change with a stick rather than a carrot. And so if you try to make somebody change their behavior, you can either scare them or you can lure them. I think the business community in particular is somebody who's going to be very much incentivized by turning this upside down and saying, where is the opportunity? And that's something that I see more and more happening in entrepreneurship that entrepreneurs actually enter. Any crisis, any problem you see is also an opportunity if you turn it upside down. And therefore the whole range of issues that we're facing, if you're approaching it as a business opportunity, I think the solutions that you're going to find are going to be much more innovative and also work much faster than if it's something that's simply. And I don't mean only, I mean only left up to government regulations and things like that.
Andreas, the ambassador here in studio with me would like to respond to that a moment.
No, I would like to support your argument. And having read the report, I see that there's a lot of real reasons for a business to focus on a more efficient economy in the long run. In the short run, they can make a lot of money. It totally makes sense. Looking for opportunities of being more efficient with energy. You can save a lot of money by not using energy, less energy, diversifying the sources of energy to wind, solar and hydro. Also not to be totally dependent on one source of energy, generate income from waste with recycling, etc. And efficient use of agricultural land worldwide and reinvesting into the populations, the farmers in say, African countries, Asian countries, Latin American countries to make sure that they are happy and they know how to not overuse the land. And there will be a business case for both sides for a long term.
Andreas Vidmer, if it seems to be so clear that this is where the business should be investing, why did you say that so little progress has happened so far?
I'm not, I'm actually not saying that so little progress has happened so far. It's just something. It's a bit of a curve, right? It's, it's. Any investment curve, starts with innovators and so on and then the early majority and it goes up and it becomes more. I think it's an issue that we're just dealing with in the past. If we're looking at the paradigm that we used in the past, we have really looked to aid organizations and governments to tackle poverty in places like Africa or South America and not business. And it's only since the 90s maybe in the last 20 years or so, where we have looked and said, this whole idea of the bottom of the pyramid investment, the whole idea of impact investing, that's something that has only developed in the last 20 years. And during that time, there has been a lot of development.
If we're going to speak about economic change, we're going to speak about a whole new way of doing things, then the frame of reference is going to have to be a clearly accepted vision in which there is a harmony between all the efforts on behalf of environment and those who promote integral human development, including economic. I think the human ecology aspect of this is going to be the point that will catch people's imagination and I hope have them recognize that economic development and an awareness of the good of our environment go hand in hand.
