WWF Earth Summit 2025 - Keynote Speech: Paul Polman

Thank you so much, Manuel, for those inspiring words and showing us the Global Risk Matrix. I don't want to keep you and Paul waiting, but I do have a question. How many of you watch football? Can I have a raise of hands, please? Okay, keep it, keep it. How many of you play football? Okay, lesser hands. I wish more of us are more fit, but I play cricket, football. So the next video, before we bring Paul on stage to set the scene, is actually based on a football game, but it's called Climate Games. This is how us adults in the society are playing games and ping-ponging on action for climate. So can we have the video for Climate Games, please?

The stage is set. What a sense of anticipation!

Wherever you're watching this in the world, I really, really hope you're set for a spectacular evening.

The arena is heating up.

Here we go.

Set. It's a European record to Greece. Unbelievable! What's happening with Mozambique? They got something. They got it. Grant joins the race! Pakistan! Wow, where did they come from?

It's now or never for Brazil. A national record! The place erupts!

More challenges coming up, all very similar in the way they attack. What a heat! A world record!

So as we welcome Paul on stage, who obviously needs no introduction for many of us, can I again have a raise of hands from all of you? Let's warm it up. Thank you. Please welcome on stage Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, and the author of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, Paul Polman.

Okay. Good morning, everybody. I have one slight problem. I left my voice either on the plane or in the hotel this morning, but I think the long plane ride or the humidity got to me. If you bear with me, I hope you can understand me. But thanks, and happy to see some familiar faces in the audience. It's a great privilege, obviously, to be here at the Earth Summit 2025 and to be back in Singapore. My daughter-in-law is from Singapore, so I have 2 of my grandchildren being Singaporeans. So somehow I feel at home anytime I come here. But let me begin by thanking WWF, obviously, and our local hosts, not just for convening today's summit, which is important, but also for the years of tireless work. Now in over 100 countries, over 5 million-plus members, 13,000 projects since 1961. I need to lift the mic. Good, thanks. Is this better? Make him move a little closer. So you've become one of the most trusted voices in sustainability leadership, and that's highly appreciated. People like Vivek Kumar or Yong Fu Hua or Manuel Pulgar, which my dear friend, which you just heard give a wonderful speech, they continue to demonstrate what leadership looks like when it's rooted in science, when it's driven by communities, when it's aligned in action and all these things we need, obviously supported by thousands of passionate colleagues around the world, many I had the chance to meet, which make all this work vitally possible. So thanks once more. When I led Unilever for over 10 years, WWF was a critical partner for us. We collaborated in fighting illegal deforestation, if you want to. We co-created the Marine Stewardship for Sustainable Fisheries. We fought food waste, advocated for regenerative agriculture, and worked to embed nature into corporate governance. And the list goes on. You showed over and over again how industry could be part of the solution and not just a problem. And here, right in Singapore and this region, WWF is helping business Turn vision into action. As part of the government's City of Nature strategy, 400 meters of coral reef are being restored in Kusu Island with the help of citizen volunteers. Southeast Asia's first seagrass nursery is scaling up blue carbon and biodiversity. AI tools like FinFinder are actually enabling enforcement against illegal wildlife trade. And I should actually move the clicker forward so you can see it. And this is what it looks like when cities become engines of regeneration, not just resilience. That is what systems change that Manuel talked about actually looks like. It's grounded, it's credible, it's practical, and it's scalable. But as we gather here today, We cannot ignore the systemic crisis that we are in, and the film brought it well to life. It's not a climate crisis over here or a biodiversity crisis over there. We simply face a systemic breakdown, a planetary emergency that is actually playing out in real time. We're halfway through the decade of action, and trends unfortunately are moving in the wrong direction. Nature loss is accelerating. Climate disruptions are deepening, and they're feeding off each other. We're starting to see tipping points. The Amazon, which is one of our greatest carbon sinks, is actually veering towards becoming a source of carbon. The coral reefs, the nursery of the oceans, if you want to, are vanishing before our eyes. The Arctic ice is melting faster than any model has ever predicted. And this isn't just about nature, to be clear. It's actually about us. It's about public health. It's about economic resilience. It's about the kind of future we set in motion for our children and theirs. For countless generations, humanity has inherited a priceless endowment: a stable climate, fertile lands, flowing waters, a natural system that has quietly sustained every civilization that has ever existed in this world. It was never really earned. It was entrusted. But in just a few short decades, we have betrayed that trust. The natural system that once gave so freely are fraying under the weight of our rampant excesses. The decisions we make now will determine whether we steward this irreplaceable gift for those who come next or frankly squander it, condemning future generations not just to less but to loss of security, loss of dignity, and of the chance to thrive. in a world that, frankly, we all took for granted. We're now breaching— and you're familiar with this— we're now breaching 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries that keep Earth in balance. That's not a forecast. It's actually a status report. Here you see the difference between 2009 and 2023. We've treated nature as if it were infinite. And for much of the history, that belief made sense. But now we live in a different world. You take a fisherman in the 18th century. If you would have talked to him about warning him about overuse of the oceans and that it might be empty one day, I think probably he thought you'd gone mad. But if you look at it today, we live in a different world. A single supertrawler can hold 250 tons of fish from the oceans in a single day. Some hold storage capacities of 6,000 tons, just shy of the weight of the Eiffel Tower. Dozens of these individual giants are emptying our oceans at a pace we've never seen before. In fact, Manuel referred to the WWF's Living Planet Report, 73% average decline in wildlife since the '70s, just in basically 50 years. During my lifetime, we've actually destroyed almost 40% of the world's forests, dumped about 150 million tons of plastics into the oceans, and bleached well over 50% of the coral reefs. Critical wetlands have shrunk by over 50% or 85%. Whilst our carbon footprint has actually exploded by a factor of 30. And that's in a single human lifetime— less, actually. An incomplete one, I may add. There are boundaries to how much we can extract before the whole system begins to crack. And we're now living far beyond these planetary boundaries. And beyond the toll on people and planet. The suffering of species, the loss of ecosystems, the human costs, often borne, to be frank, by the ones least responsible. The economic toll is mounting too, including for business. Just in the last few weeks, Tesla was building a Gigafactory in Mexico and had to stop because of the absence of groundwater that they desperately needed. PG&E bankrupted as a company because of forest fire litigations. JBS, one of the largest meat producers, losing contracts due to having deforestation in their value chain or halting production due to droughts. And the list goes on. Nature-related disasters are costing the global economy trillions and trillions of dollars through extreme weather, biodiversity collapse, and supply chain shocks. There's no business case for the wholesale destruction of nature, and there can be no thriving enterprise on a planet in ecological freefall. Asia-Pacific actually is amongst the regions where the stakes are the highest. The region is home to 4 of the world's 17 megadiverse countries: Indonesia, India, China and the Philippines. Southeast Asia alone, just 3% of the Earth's surface, holds 20% of our known species, more than half the world's mangroves and a third of its coral reefs. But in the last 2 decades, only 20 years, Indonesia has lost 28 million hectares of forests. That's a third of its cover. Mangroves and coral reefs are vanishing at the fastest rates we've seen. Coal still powers the majority of the region's electricity. And by 2030, half of the Asian population will face serious climate and nature-related risks from heats, from floods, from the effects of water and food insecurity. Now, I don't say that this should fuel despair. In fact, quite the opposite, because here is the twist, in my opinion. Despite everything I've just told you, we still have agency. We have the tools, we have the capital, and we have the solutions. As was mentioned before, what we lack is the impetus and frankly the courage to act. In their 6th assessment report on climate, the IPCC laid out 3 broad pathways for climate change. One where we take immediate action, cutting emissions sharply, restoring ecosystems, and keeping global warming around 1.5 degrees. One where we take no action. Looking into catastrophic chains with rising cost, instability, and irreversible damage. But a third one, one that many experts believe was the most likely, not because of the science, not because of basic human psychology, but because we simply waited. We delay until the impacts become severe, until the impacts are undeniable. And personal. Then and only then do we respond rapidly and at scale. And we've seen in recent years in some other cases how fast we can respond when that happens. When COVID hit, the world didn't wait. Governments unlocked trillions in emergency funds. Companies retooled overnight, redirecting supply chains, protecting workers, and delivering breakthroughs in record time. Faced with systemic shock, we chose speed. Bureaucracy bent, priorities shifted, and a new tempo of execution actually became possible. Timelines that once spanned decades collapsed into months. We treated it, rightfully so, as the emergency it was, and we moved at emergency speed. We know we can do the same for nature, and we're entering the crunch point now, in my opinion. The first stirrings of action are actually emerging. Take the latest Biodiversity COP, which was just held in Rome, delivering a permanent biodiversity finance mechanism under the CBD. Countries committing to mobilize $200 million annually for nature by 2030. A new monitoring framework adopted to track national implementation. So yes, policy can open the door, but we know ultimately it's business and it's finance that often decides whether we actually walk through it. And here too, we're seeing the beginnings of action. Nature Action 100, Backed by $23 trillion in investor capital. It's pushing companies for credible nature strategies. 129 financial institutions representing about $18 trillion of assets under management, they have adopted the TNFD reporting. Biodiversity-focused funds now manage over $3.7 trillion. which shows that investors, in my opinion, are starting to redirect the capital to where it's best used. And corporates are moving too. Companies representing about $6.5 trillion in market cap have already adopted the TNFD. This is no longer fringe, to be honest. It is becoming the new baseline for credible, future-fit business. Because many companies now recognize that their dependence on nature and that the actions that come with it is not just a moral thing. It's actually the best way for them to ensure their future success. This region is actually no exception. In fact, it's where some of the most decisive leadership is emerging. Singapore raising the carbon tax fivefold. Indonesia are restoring 600,000 hectares of mangroves. Thailand's PTT, which is the state-owned energy company, committing to net zero before their own government even does it. DBS, the bank here, giving sustainable financing of around $90 billion Singapore dollars. So some of the fastest TNFD adoptions, by the way, are also in this region. 45 or 47% of the TNMD— I'm on their advisory board— is actually in Asia-Pacific. You understand that from fishery to finance, nature-positive strategies are no longer about compliance. They're becoming a competitive advantage. And that when you work with the natural world rather than against it, the dividends are deeper and longer-lasting. WWS, as I mentioned before, is already playing a catalytic role, helping define the global standards for nature-positive finance, piloting the TNFD tools, supporting businesses to align with these frameworks while stepping into new markets. We're beginning to move in the right direction. Now we must accelerate. The Kunming Framework was agreed by 196 countries, and it gives us a clear roadmap. It sets targets, timelines and financial ambitions. But roadmaps don't move us. Leaders do. Right now, out of the 196 countries, 137 have committed plans. More than half did not commit yet. They did not commit to protecting 30% of the land or the seas by 2030, a minimum we should all agree on. Corporate contributions to the Kali Fund still remain at zero. Only 5%, actually, of the Fortune 500 companies have set biodiversity targets. Nature-positive growth is probably one of the biggest opportunities we have. It could unlock $10 trillion in value, create nearly 400 million jobs, and give us resilient food, water, and commodity systems that we all need. So to get there, we all need to align climate and nature plans at the national level, close the $700 billion financing gap for biodiversity, and redirect the about $7 trillion that we still have in harmful subsidies into better use. But we can only ask more of governments if the private sector itself mobilizes as key partners. If you're aligned with TCFD, you're also halfway to the TNFD. The TNFD framework works with the ISSB or the CSRD or the GRI or the GDP, so you can build on what you already have. It really doesn't take that much. And we're seeing examples of leaders here. Temasek investing $120 billion in sustainable forestry. DBS issuing sustainably linked loans. TCC, a leading cement company in Thailand, having now 37% of their revenues in what we might call green products. The Mahindra Group, with my friend Anant, pioneering climate planet-positive strategies. This region doesn't lack examples. One promising breakthrough is actually the Tropical Forests Forever Fund that deserves all of our support. We're working on that to launch that at COP30. But the model is bold, but it's also frankly fairly simple. We pay a country $4 per hectare to preserve the forests, and we penalize a country $800 per hectare if there's deforestation. It aims to raise about $125 billion, and we'll use that to get the support of Indigenous people and local communities as frontline stewards of nature to actually protect. It's a powerful, powerful example, in my opinion, how governments, business, and Indigenous peoples can join forces to scale nature-positive solutions at the speed and scale that the planet demands. But above all, as was said before, we need a mindset change. We're not short of ideas. We're not short of money. We're not short of technology. We are short of courageous leadership. But we're seeing here also a new story taking shape, one that rejects The false trade-off between growth and restoration. It indeed needs a mindset change. In this room, you are undoubtedly the stewards already of capital, influence and innovation. So I'll ask you the same question I asked, for example, the board of Unilever and of the many companies that I work with. How can you profit from solving the world's problems? Not creating them. And very simply, is the world better off because your business is in it? Yes or no? The principle of net-positive businesses are actually that the current CSR system continues to be in the bad situation. It might be less bad than your predecessors, but it's all being a little bit less bad. Less carbon in the atmosphere, less deforestation in your value chain, less plastics in the oceans. But when you've overshot your planetary boundaries to such an extent, less bad is simply not good enough anymore. We need to start thinking and running these businesses with a mindset of being regenerative, restorative, reparative. And that is what we call net-positive companies. Taking full responsibility of all of your impacts. Optimizing for the longer term, not just the quarters. Serving all stakeholders, including the planet, building transformative partnerships across sectors, including partnerships with nature, and advocating for the common good rather than lobbying for our own self-interests. There are a few simple things that you can do. Understand your impact, your impact on land, on water, on species. Measure your dependency on soils, pollinators, stable climate, etc. Share information. Transparency builds trust and raises awareness across stakeholders. Set science-based targets. No deforestation, regenerative sourcing, water use. And act across your entire ecosystem. Align procurement, partner with suppliers, collaborate with peers and customers, for greater impact. These are challenges we simply can't do alone anymore. Now, you don't have to do everything that I'm asking you to do, but you do have to start. What we fail to measure, we actually fail to manage. And what we ignore becomes tomorrow's disruption. 2025 must be the year we stop treating it as somebody else's problem. and start making it core to how we lead. Because no one else is coming here to help us. It really is up to us. So there is no business case for enduring poverty, nor for runaway climate change or the destruction of the natural world. Thanks for what you're doing, and let's get going. Thank you very much. Thank you.