Our thinking

Populism and sustainability

17 January, 2025

What does populism mean for sustainability? And how should progressive businesses and the sustainability movement respond? These are big questions, and while we at Good Business definitely don’t have any easy answers, it is something we have started to think about a lot this new year. With recent polls suggesting Reform in touching distance from Labour, it’s become clear this is very much a UK, as well as a global issue. And as if to hammer the point home, next week Trump will be inaugurated. On the guest list for the ceremony? A who’s who of the global populist far right – from Farage, to Meloni, to Milei to Orban, and many more.

If there was ever any doubt that this was relevant to the world of corporate sustainability, the first few weeks of the year have made it strikingly clear that businesses are facing in to the new world order. Perhaps most striking was Meta’s surprise move last week to abandon its fact checking program and disband its EDI division. Hot on the tails of that came this week’s announcement that the Net Zero Now Asset Manager’s Alliance, a flagship coalition aimed at aligning the asset management industry with global climate goals, is suspending its activity, citing ‘recent developments in the U.S. and different regulatory and client expectations in investors’ respective jurisdictions’ as the cause. It comes days after BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, left.

To us, this all signals that grappling with the complexities of the interplay between sustainability and populism is fast becoming an imperative. It’s not something we can or should ignore.

Our view has always been that sustainability works when it delivers business advantage. The case for going further and faster than others on social and environmental issues only holds when it is a creator of long-term value and brand equity. This view hasn’t changed. But the calculus around what this means in practice has.

In the coming weeks, we will be sharing some lines of thought about the potential response, but we hope this can become a collective discussion, and would love to hear your thoughts, views, ideas and concerns about all aspects of the challenge. Please get in touch.

 

By Larissa Persons