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Last week leaders from across business, academia, government and civil society descended on New York City for Climate Week NYC, one of the largest climate-focused gatherings of its kind, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
With thousands of events sprawling across the five boroughs, Climate Week is a seminal moment for companies, consumer brands, foundations and nonprofit organizations to highlight their climate efforts — with this year’s event arguably seen by many as tantamount to November’s COP29 in terms of the private sector’s involvement. Adopting the theme “It’s Time,” this year’s Climate Week challenged participants to take on the crucial decisions and actions we need to adopt today if we want to blunt the current trajectory of our warming planet.
Experts from The Weber Shandwick Collective were on the ground supporting clients at many marquee events throughout Climate Week, in addition to joining together with the Concordia Summit and The Conduit to host timely discussions focused on the current landscape for sustainability executives, communicators and storytellers.
Achieving our “never go back” moment on climate
At Storytelling for Impact, an event co-hosted by Weber Shandwick and The Conduit, leading creatives discussed the role of narrative to achieve progress on climate change. A focal point of the discussion centered on whether we’ll be able to reach a “never go back” cultural tipping point that — similar to Me Too or marriage equality in the U.S. — will accelerate sweeping progress on climate change. The speakers, including Bridgit Antoinette Evans, CEO of the Pop Culture Collaborative, all agreed that we have not reached this moment.
“The terrain of climate storytelling isn’t necessarily reaching and speaking to and reflecting the sheer intersectionality and complexity of what the climate experience is for most of us…and I think that’s going to create an opening that will [drive] more people to feel that values-level shift around the need for climate solutions,” Evans noted.
“There’s a need for more true, personal stories on this issue. Finding these personal stories and finding ways to elevate them and getting a mass of people to listen to them and to care is quite important,” added Sarah Austin Jenness, executive producer of The Moth.
Building greater sustainability fluency to fuel progress
Weber Shandwick convened a roundtable dialogue within the Concordia Summit agenda to dive deeper into how business leaders are growing sustainability fluency across their value chains, the evolving role of Chief Sustainability Officers as cross-functional influencers, and successful models to align C-suite peers, the board and senior managers to the challenges and opportunities within the sustainability landscape.
Participants agreed that upleveling organizational sustainability fluency begins by making the economic case as to why all functions should care about sustainability goals and how they contribute to shared success. Then its about cascading simple, actionable education in a targeted way. A pyramid approach allows companies to reinforce general awareness across the organization but also go deeper with the teams that need more specialized knowledge, are critical for compliance or have the greatest potential to scale impact.
As much of environmental management becomes commonplace, compliance can overtake leadership ambitions. To counter that impulse, roundtable attendees recommended identifying where a compliance exercise can be turned into a catalyst for bigger and bolder opportunities. Making goals public can ensure they are inculcated and less subject to leadership transitions or changing organizational priorities.
Bottom line: It’s clear that advancing sustainability requires both a carrot (incentive) and stick (compliance) approach, along with a recognition that progress is not linear and it’s vital to stay the course for the long term — even when that means adjusting goals and pivoting to better solutions.
Breaking through the noise to drive the climate agenda
Leveraging sustainability fluency as a competitive advantage to tell more consequential climate stories and engage stakeholders in more constructive ways starts by breaking through the noise of the moment. Our teams on the ground tracked key signals from the media covering Climate Week NYC. Here is what is working well with media:
Allison Ranshous, Teressa Wykpisz-Lee, Ariel Bashi, and Kate Olsen contributed to this article.
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