The way the wind blows: communicating sustainability in 2025
The start of the year is a time for introspection and reflection, where new resolutions are made or upheld, plans for the year ahead formulated and new beginnings imagined. The world of corporate sustainability offers a prime example of this need to re-evaluate approaches. In 2025, we operate in an acutely changed operating environment. Between the shock and damage caused by the Los Angeles fires to the backpedalling of many organisations on their social and environmental initiatives following the Trump inauguration, and the election looming here closer to home, we have seen how quickly the general discourse and level of ambition can change.
Because the way the North America’s winds blow impacts us all, we have to assume this will trickle down to Australian corporate sustainability sooner or later and have a tangible impact. It certainly puts the debate of greenhushing vs greenwashing into the spotlight if it wasn’t already. Who is brave enough today to clamour their new initiatives and progress, if not for the very few select companies which have sustainability in the DNA from the start? With anti-ESG voices growing, who isn’t concerned about backlash when announcing results or strategies?
Big money talks, and whilst it was backing anything ESG related for a period of time, it has now well and truly pulled back from its commitments. Look no further than the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock, pulling out of the Climate Coalition this month after a year-long pullback on all things ESG, or the backpedalling of previous stalwarts such was Unilever or even Meta. None of this is unilateral and there are many examples of organisations standing by their change programs, but it establishes a new paradigm for sustainability transformations.
Beyond the realm of politics, one thing hasn’t changed. Every organisation faces critical sustainability questions: what does our business look like 40 years from now? How is it impacted by climate change? How does it operate in a diverse multicultural society? What about its suppliers, its clients?
In this new operating context, the one thing that stands out above all in determining a successful response to these questions is stakeholder engagement. Yes, that item that is part and parcel of any project but that often remains formulaic and fails to truly create two-way engagement. There will be louder voices against a sustainability/ESG program than there were before, and there will be stronger focus on the ROI brought by such programs, especially when the tide seems to be flowing in a different direction
What this means is that at the micro level, stakeholders have to be listened to, engaged, and sometimes informed and convinced. Not in a superficial way but with an understanding of where the collective wisdom is standing on these matters and what concepts, ideas or solutions have experienced positive or negative PR recently. By engaging openly and with radical empathy, bridges can be built and work can be done without the noise that comes from external sources that aren’t relevant to a project or an organisation.
Ultimately it all comes down to addressing issues that the right scale. COP29, the UN’s flagship climate change conference was met with a more than healthy dose of cynicism. Rather than broad strokes and grandiose plans that often don’t make it to the implementation stage, 2025 might be the year for hyper-targeted, hyper-effective progress at the organisational and local level. For Australian organisations, this may mean turning inwards towards the topics that are closest to home from a social and environmental perspective.
Despite the noise at the macro level, sustainability challenges can only be met by change, whether proactively anticipated or eventually looming as an inevitability. Let’s make sure this change is done in an effective, collaborative and inclusive way.
