Progress over perfection – it’s time to act on climate change

Last month I enjoyed recording an episode of our?Building Sustainable Futures podcast ?with?renowned mathematician, broadcaster and author, Professor?Hannah Fry. And what a discussion! We covered the business imperative for sustainability, the tipping point when doing the right thing for people and planet is the most profitable thing, and how technological advances - particularly in AI - are driving progress and delivering measurable impact today.?

To prepare, I thought back to the COP26 summit?in Glasgow last year when many UK businesses made firm commitments to building a greener future faster. Then in May I attended the?Forum for Global Challenges 2022 business summit ?hosted by the University of Birmingham. Together with other leaders from industry, SMEs and academia we discussed the importance of an intersectional approach to sustainability – an approach which addresses inequality within our society and our workplaces, as well as transparency and honesty. For me, collaboration is the new Moore’s law of sustainability, and during the summit I made the case for continued, focused, action-oriented collaboration. I believe it’s the only way we’ll solve for climate change at the pace we need to.

The window of opportunity is closing fast, something Professor Fry picked up on during the podcast. It’s brilliant that so many of us are finding ways to address our own - and our families’ – carbon emissions, whether that’s through recycling, buying fewer consumer goods, eating less meat, walking and cycling more, taking fewer long-haul flights . . . But we can’t get to where we need to be without businesses ramping up the pace and finding solutions that will scale. Leaders must act decisively within the next five years, otherwise the damage we’re doing is likely to be irreversible. However, rather than frame this as a doomsday scenario, I believe we’re entering an era of both responsibility?and?possibility. Doing the right thing for people and the planet is the best way for businesses to thrive today and for the long-term, but only when your climate change action is authentic – and strategic. That means ensuring you’re basing your plans on robust data and actionable insight.?

With data being so crucial, it’s not surprising that the organisations who made strategic investments in Cloud technologies are already gaining the most. But data alone can’t unlock value, you need sophisticated AI tools and statistical techniques that can garner the insight it holds to solve for sustainability. And you must bring your people with you too. After all, technology can only be transformative if it’s combined with human ingenuity! Professor Fry touched on some of the projects where Responsible AI is being used today. There are teams of researchers around the world who are working on projects to tackle extreme weather events, bring an end to food and water shortages, harness energy safely from nuclear fusion, and more. Perhaps my favourite example from Professor Fry is the?Alpha Fold work from DeepMind , where AI that understands proteins and how they fold is being used to create enzymes that eat plastic. Imagine the world without plastic waste! Soon we won’t have to imagine . . .

But let’s get back to what needs to happen next. I’m going to continue banging the drum for universal standards. Governments must act quickly, providing regulation and a common standardised approach so that a company’s sustainability and inequality commitments are reported in the same way their company’s P&L is – a way that everyone understands.??And any sustainability strategy must be fully inclusive. Yes, scientists are critical – after all, many sustainability challenges are science problems at their core. But we know from our own experience at Accenture that diversity sparks creativity and innovation. It’s only by bringing together multi-disciplinary teams made up of people with diverse skillsets and different approaches to problem-solving that we’ll get the best outcomes. Collectively we can do this, we just need to get on with it!