One of the world’s most influential sustainability leaders, Paul Polman is best known for his ten years at the helm of consumer goods giant Unilever, where he oversaw the Sustainable Living Plan, an initiative that successfully aligned business growth with environmental and social goals.

The former Nestlé and Procter & Gamble executive stepped away from the corporate world several years ago, but remains deeply engaged in global sustainability governance, holding influential roles at The Fashion Pact, One Young World, the Food and Land Use Coalition, the Rockefeller Foundation, and TNFD, among others. In 2019, he co-founded IMAGINE, a ‘global leadership community for impact’, and continues to help business leaders tackle climate change and inequality.

His core message – as outlined in the title of a 2022 book he co-authored alongside Andrew Winston – is that businesses need to strive to be ‘net positive’, in other words, giving more than they take in order to drive lasting change.

“Businesses are trying to move forward responsibly, but they don’t fully understand that making things ‘less bad’ results in them being worse,” as he puts it.

Taking ownership

SustainabilityOnline caught up with Polman on the sidelines of the recent Economist Impact Sustainability Week summit in Amsterdam, where he spoke of the need for companies to take ownership of their environmental and social impact, as the continuing polycrisis – from geopolitical instability to societal strain – intensifies.

“We need to better explain what we’re doing, and how we’re putting humans at the centre of it,” he says. “But the other thing that we have to deal with is that negativity, and polarisation, sells. Bad news moves faster and seems to capture more attention than good news does.”

This, in turn, can create the impression that progress has stalled – or even reversed – giving certain actors an opportunity to portray sustainability as a barrier to progress rather than a driver of it.

“You read things like, ‘Energy prices are going up because of the green conversion,’” he says. “Populist politicians have jumped on that and translated it into this idea that sustainability is an elite, Democrat, woke sort of thing. It’s a message that’s easy to ‘get’, and hard to fight. And unfortunately we don’t have enough politicians or leaders speaking up to challenge it.”

The relative silence from certain areas of the business sector compounds the issue, he adds. “Too many in the private sector, who should take on that role, are actually being silent. So, that gap is being filled with the wrong message, and you get a double amplification, in a sense.”

The business case

As he explains, challenging this narrative should come from both the bottom up – from grassroots movements and community action – as well as the top down, with leaders more vocal on the positives of sustainability from a business perspective.

“If you can make money and be sustainable, it’s better than making the same money and being destructive,” he says. “Yet we can show more and more now that sustainability actually gives you better returns, if you run your business properly across all other dimensions. We need to get more of those stories out there.”

Polman cites his recent work on a global energy initiative aimed at expanding access to clean energy while supporting livelihoods, as an example of a long-term solution that is also financially viable.

“We can do it in a greener, more sustainable way, and actually be profitable,” he says. “Because if you don’t make money, it’s not sustainable.”

The bigger picture

Across the board, clean technology costs – whether solar, wind, electric vehicles etc – are falling “exponentially […] and by much more than what people previous anticipated,” he says, a factor that shouldn’t be underestimated, even at a time when certain governments are reining in their use of climate terminology.

“In the US, they are talking about adaptation and resilience building in terms of things like national security, but it’s often fully in line with the sustainability agenda. The Department of Energy can’t use the words ‘climate change’ or ’emissions’ any more. But efficiency and optimisation are at the very core of sustainability.

“Science doesn’t really care who’s in the White House. Even in Republican states like Texas, they wanted to pass a law that every dollar invested in green energy should be compensated by a dollar invested in fossil fuels, to slow the green energy transition. People voted that down because it was seen as uncompetitive.”

In the face of political pushback, those driving the environmental agenda should focus their efforts where market influence and economic drivers can support a faster transition, he argues.

“If you work at local level, or city level, you see that 75% of the US has made very good sustainability commitments,” he says. “And, by the way, the US accounts for 11% of global warming, the rest of the world 89%, and most countries are behind where they need to be with the Paris Agreement. So the problem is not solely with the US.

“What we need to do, if certain countries or parts of the world make our lives a little bit more difficult, is take that energy and apply it in other parts of the world that can move a little bit faster. That’s happening, and we’re seeing them become more competitive, while others are losing their overall competitiveness.

“Is that good? No, because we wish everybody would go up. But at the same time, if you can only do so many things from where you’re sitting, then you might as well focus on the areas where you can have the biggest influence.”

Forward momentum

It’s not the first time that the global community has had to navigate such geopolitical challenges, he argues, nor will it be the last. Yet for businesses, which crave stability, it’s a period that may require some difficult decisions.

“You see CEOs flipping from one side to the other, which isn’t helpful,” says Polman. “Yet we should also not be naive to ignore the fact that transitions are difficult, and when a transition like this gets opposition from the vested order, that resistance becomes more violent as the conversion accelerates. That’s what we’re in right now. It’s normal – first you have denial, then resistance, and then rejection, and potential violence, before you have acceptance.”

As a result, we should not be alarmed to see oil companies, structured to maximise returns from fossil resources, roll back on their energy transition plans. “They just don’t have that core capability,” he says. “So don’t be surprised.”

In a more positive sense, while geopolitical conflict, trade barriers, and emerging technologies such as AI have brought us “back to a little bit more the short term here and now,” he says, it has also had a galvanising effect, with rising costs of inaction pushing businesses and countries toward a faster long-term transition.

“It doesn’t mean we’re not moving – rather, we’re accelerating,” he says.

Learn more about Polman’s IMAGINE community at www.imagine.one.



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