About GEO for Business
Welcome to the first edition of the GEO for Business briefs. The United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP] and its global partners are proud to offer this series of stimulating briefs about the environmental challenges and business opportunities that demand transformational change at a global scale. New installments of GEO for Business will appear every few months to provide guidance on a range of issues relevant to the future of business in a changing world. Future briefs will explain:
— how to adapt to deep decarbonization,* — how to transform global food systems, — how to build environmentally sustainable and resilient infrastructure,
— how business can help build circular economies, and
— the role finance needs to take in a transforming world.
UNEP is also proud to have convened a broad group of expert authors with business-relevant voices to communicate these extremely timely and important messages. These authors are supported by a broad coalition of business and environmental organizations† [1]
on the GEO for Business journey.
For nearly 50 years, UNEP has been working to improve the environment for current and future generations. As part of this work, UNEP periodically asks the expert community to assess the current state of the environment, how effective the policy response has been and what the future holds if humanity stays on the current path or if it shifts to one that is more environmentally sustainable. The sixth and most recent edition of The Global Environment Outlook, subtitled Healthy Planet, Healthy People, presents a very daunting picture but also many reasons for hope.
Global Environmental Outlooks assess broad trends and propose sustainable pathways. They do not generally anticipate or examine potential global shocks, like COVID-19. That is because while major global shocks occur and have certainly happened in the past, the broad trends of increasing resource extraction, environmental degradation and pollution have always tended to persist.
However, the scale and depth of COVID-19’s impacts are unprecedented, and that allows us all to take stock and rethink how nature and humanity interact. Will the world continue to try to dominate nature, or will it work hand-in-hand to build a planet that sustains humanity? In crafting this first GEO for Business brief, it was important to look at these two possible futures to explain how humanity might choose one path over the other and the role business could play in achieving the more positive future.
These business briefs are meant to inform a broad business audience, including companies in the supply chains of major multinationals, multinationals themselves as well as small to medium-sized enterprises. The scale of the environmental challenge the world faces means that everyone must contribute to the transformational change discussed in this brief. Smart businesses will learn how to take advantage of this transformation, while the others, as Mark Carney says, will be left behind.
“Companies that ignore climate change and don’t adapt will go bankrupt without question.”
Mark Carney
UN special envoy for climate action and finance, 31 July 2019
6
* †
https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/31311/GEO_Bus_flyer.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y GEO-6 calls for a tripling of the decarbonization (CO2 Adapt to Survive: Business transformation in a time of uncertainty
/GDP) rate in order to reach a 2 º C world
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