COP 26 - 100 Days to Rally for Meaningful Action towards a More Just and Civil Society

Devastating floods in Europe and China, fires and heatwaves across Russia and North America, famine in Madagascar - all signs that the speed of global warming has outpaced the experts' atmospheric modelling.?With many scientific known unknowns as yet unresolved, the daily news sirens that we have lost the climate change battle.?(To cite one recent example, see the Economist briefing of 24 July 2021 "Three degrees of global warming is quite plausible and truly disastrous".)?

On 23 July 2021, the G20 Ministers for energy and the environment, representing 80% of global emissions, failed to agree in a common communiqué on how to limit climate heating to the 1.5°C target set by the Paris accord.?There is still no roadmap to avert disaster.?

If climate change were not enough, our world is riven by tectonic geopolitical shifts, ideological schisms, misinformation, as well as cyber-criminality and an airborne virus, invisible and adaptive systemic threats.?Deepening inequality has bred fear, anger and displacement.?Mounting populism is eroding hard-won rights and freedoms, undermining the rule of law in many parts of the world with astonishing alacrity. The scale of these challenges leaves no room for cynicism and inaction.?

In a 2019 essay, "What if we stopped pretending", Jonathan Franzen neatly coins a plea for comprehensive action:?"In times of increasing chaos, people seek protection in tribalism and armed force, rather than in the rule of law, and our best defense against this type of dystopia is to maintain functioning democracies, functioning legal systems, functioning communities.?In this respect, any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action…?To survive rising temperatures, every system, whether of the natural world or of the human world, will need to be as strong and healthy as we can make it."

Wise words: what we as individuals and organisations do today to strengthen the health of our systems offers hope and some modicum of protection in a precarious future.?These ideas are not new.?The 2015 17 UN Global Compact Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were to be the shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and planet across these systems.?But they are not yet established as achievable in any meaningful long-term sense. Progress has gone into reverse on climate change, biodiversity loss, waste production and inequality. There is a lingering sense that we don't truly believe that we are capable of the radical reboot required to underpin a sustainable future for generations to come. But giving up is not an option.

On 9 August 2021, the world's leading climate change scientists will publish a report that will inform and (hopefully) galvanise discussions leading up to the 26th UN climate change conference of the parties ("COP26") in Glasgow in November.?COP26 is a unique opportunity for recalibration in the long-term interests of the planet and in the short-term interest of societal stability.?And yet an all-out war on climate change is unlikely to be the outcome: the sacrifices required are too harsh for politicians to contemplate imposing on their electorates despite the tragedies unfolding around us.?

Trade and commerce will not thrive in an increasingly volatile environment and so, in the run up to COP26, it is in the interests of business to demand that politicians be bold. There is an ecosystem of experts, philanthropists, corporate leaders and NGOs doing what they can to mend a broken system and to shape the contours of a better one. But more concerted action is urgently needed.?Our response to today's challenges is inefficient and insufficient.?Governments, corporations and a great many other stakeholders must find better ways to come together: to craft and cushion bold strategic bets, to develop more effective frameworks and mechanisms capable of making a difference at scale, to collaborate in ways we haven't yet imagined.?

At a minimum, this implies the promotion of more dynamic public-private partnerships, a refresh of the competition rules on state subsidies and horizontal collaboration, an overhaul of outdated education systems that leave too many behind, and much else besides.?

Let's start by demanding that our politicians deliver an ambitious and concrete agenda in Glasgow.?Let's use these 100 days to mobilise.