Maria Alejandra Cardona/Contributor/Los Angeles Times
- COP26, the United Nations global conference on the climate crisis, began Sunday.
- Insider hosted a video event with business leaders on how CEOs can address the climate crisis.
- They said CEOs need to start working together, with nonprofits, and with marginalized communities.
As the climate crisis worsens, business leaders will have to get comfortable having more uncomfortable conversations around how they need to improve. Humanity's future is in a precarious state, according to the United Nations' recent 4,000-page report, written by over 200 scientists.
On Sunday at COP26, the UN's 26th conference on the state of the world's environment, policymakers and business leaders began to negotiate key deals that might help the climate crisis. Last week, Insider hosted a virtual panel with three of business leaders making strides in sustainability.
Jennifer Steinmann, the global ESG marketplace leader at Deloitte, said more business leaders needed to start working with one another to imagine cross-industry solutions to reduce emissions. The climate activist Charles Orgbon III agreed and added that CEOs would benefit from engaging with youth activists and nonprofits in their plans to elevate the voices of marginalized communities. Valerie Smith, chief sustainability officer at Citi, encouraged leaders to embrace the movement for accountability and transparency.
"Climate change is going to be some calculus of mitigation, adaptation, and human suffering," Orgbon told Insider. "How we act today is going to tip the balance on which of those we're going to experience more of."
Break down silos and work with more corporate and business partners
More businesses need to begin partnering with one another and with governments, according to Steinmann, which helps companies adopt new environmental, social, and governance goals.
"No single company, industry, or individual can solve this alone," she said. "We need to work together and take immediate action, and it's important for businesses and governance to work together."
The appetite for collaboration is apparent, she said, CEOs just need to start. She cited how 63% of executives believe now is the time to act on the climate crisis, according to a 2021 Deloitte survey of 750 CEOs.
"We compartmentalize as organizations; that's a natural thing to do, but we need to get much better at putting things together," she said. "There's a need to work together across multiple organizations and collaborate across industries in a way that's not happened before."
Listen to marginalized communities, young people, and nonprofits
CEOs need to have more conversations with those most affected by the climate crisis, according to Orgbon, the founder of the youth climate group Greening Forward. He reinforced the notion of equity and justice that many leaders are having today with regard to diversity and inclusion and applied it to the climate-justice movement.
Research shows that the climate crisis will affect historically marginalized communities disproportionately. For example, Black and Hispanic Americans are much more likely than white people to have the water they drink and air they breathe polluted. Black Americans also face significantly higher rates of lead poisoning and asthma.
"I think what's really important is that we start to bring people into the conversation who don't know what COP26 is," Orgbon said. "I think our challenge is really getting out the word and the message to people who are not traditionally engaged in these conversations."
Orgbon added that CEOs and business leaders should embrace working with nonprofits. These organizations, he said, help corporations realize when they're having a negative effect on or ignoring a certain community and can identify solutions.
They provide "access to information, awareness, and transparency," Orgbon said.
Embrace the call for more transparency
"There's incredible demand, including from youth, to have companies be really transparent about what progress they're making, even where it's harder than expected," Smith said.
In September 2020, executives from major accounting firms such as Deloitte unveiled a new reporting framework for ESGs. A reporting framework helps companies assess their compliance using a set of metrics and report it in the same way they would with financial performance. And many companies publish annual ESG reports. But even Smith suggested companies could be doing more.
"Climate-change disclosure shouldn't be about choosing your own adventure," she said. "We do need a common template for disclosing our progress, our metrics, as well as our ambitions."