Sustainable Business

Participant experts who took part in the World Economic Forum\’s Strategic Intelligence Outlook offered what they feel will be the trends for 2024—on everything from climate litigation and AI to disinformation and developing people’s “foresight.” One obvious and often overlooked fact: that over 50% of the world’s GDP comes from nature, and, as one attendee said, “if we start losing nature, so many businesses are dependent on it if not directly, then indirectly through their supply chains and clients.”

One concrete development to come out of the COP28 meeting in Dubai late last year was the launch of the Industrial Transition Accelerator (ITA), the world\’s largest industrial decarbonisation initiative to date. The ITA plans to pair up global industry leaders with policymakers, finance and technical experts. The goal being to unlock investment and rapidly scale implementation and delivery of projects needed to cut emissions and “to catalyse decarbonisation across heavy-emitting sectors, including energy, industry, and transportation, and accelerate the delivery of Paris-aligned targets.”

In addition to the rise of transition financing, not only will companies now be creating and hiring ESG controllers to adhere to various climate accountability acts (like those in California and the European Union), but the TNFD will help speed up the development of the “planet economy,” according to former Microsoft chief environmental officer turned private equity investor Lucas Joppa. An economy that will provide investors with more and better tools to invest in nature—at scale.

Just because companies worldwide have to operationalize ESG more fully in 2024, it won’t come without resistance, as it will require overhauls in everything from design processes and procurement strategies to financial management and marketing and communication practices. Transition is the keyword, as ESG evolves from “optional extras to integral elements of corporate strategy, essential for generating sustained value.” And since the release of the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) last September, biodiversity is going mainstream.