One of my heroes in business is Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the outdoor clothing company Patagonia. He has three straight talking recommendations for anyone wishing to develop an environmental policy, and we will follow his wise words:
- Get yourself a credible narrative
- Don’t sugarcoat your message. Be bold. If you believe it, say it.
- Be true to your message in what you do, not just what you say.
For me, the most credible narrative is being written by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Their work, encapsulated in the Sustainable Development Goals (shown in the Figure right), is delivering the best chance we have to collectively learn about climate change and develop the tools and methods to combat it. It is the strategy from which everything else will flow. As a very small company, in a very globalised and fragmented industry, we need to learn from and collaborate with our peers in order to succeed in this endeavour.