The ‘great green step back’?

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Are the turning political winds in the US and Europe affecting the nature and climate agenda, and our future? Or just a sign of the old fighting the new?

We have been there before. Changes in governments, leadership and political winds often mean changes in policy orientation, priorities and investments. Until they change again. Social, economic and geopolitical dynamics are inevitably affected, one way or another. This applies today with regards to the sustainability agenda.

With the US once again flipping out of the Paris Agreement on climate and slashing public investments in renewable energy, promising a fossil fuel renaissance, companies and financial institutions are pulling back from public net zero commitments. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi and Bank of America all exited the Net Zero Banking Alliance soon before the start of the new US administration. Even though less dramatic and draconian, things are not that different in Europe where the new EU Parliament and Commission is progressively dismantling the ambition of the Green Deal legislation.

In the middle of all this concerns over the world’s ability to deliver the urgent and existential goals on climate and nature are growing. Every day there are new signs that point in the same direction. The new liberal Canadian PM, Mark Carney, despite his track record on climate, eliminated the consumer carbon price, a signature climate policy of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. 

It is also easy and misleading to label the emerging ultra-right parties around the world as the sole promoters of a new anti-environmental crusade. The Australian Labour Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, personally intervened to veto the nascent Nature Positive Bill when it was on the verge of being approved in parliament, caving in to pressure from the mining lobby in the west of the country. The same happened in the UK House of Commons where leading Labour Party MPs voted to end the discussion on a climate and nature bill, de facto preventing it from becoming law.

However, against this rather consistently bleak background of recent green deregulation, there is palpable dissonance between what we hear from the people, and the policies and narratives adopted by the governments they themselves have recently elected.

According to several 2024 polls, 55% of US citizens believe in human-induced climate change. 94% of people in the EU say that protecting the environment is important to them personally. 78% say that environmental issues affect their daily life and health, and 77% perceive climate change as a very serious problem. 75% of Australians are in favour of strengthening legislation that protects nature.

Before the start of this year’s Davos gathering, the World Economic Forum published its annual Global Risks Report (which leverages insights from the Global Risks Perception Survey, drawing on the views of over 900 leaders across business, government, academia and civil society) which found that environmental concerns continue to make up half of the biggest risks to the world in the next ten years, with extreme weather events and biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse moving into first and second place respectively, followed by critical change to Earth systems and natural resources shortage. 

Of course, biodiversity loss is today’s concern, not just one we should face in a decade's time. But had you asked me only five years ago when biodiversity loss first appeared in the lists of global risks, if only a few years later it could dominate the risk list, I would not have been so confident. Biodiversity loss has a less visible and direct impact than climate change. It requires an informed view to come to appreciate the threat it represents. 

Nonetheless, a growing share of society, business and financial institutions is at last waking up to the materiality of biodiversity loss, as the WEF risks report indicates — despite its impacts being less noticeable. With the adoption in 2022 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (the ‘Paris moment’ for nature), initiatives on nature disclosure like TNFD, biodiversity standards like GRI, principles like PRI and science-based targets like SBTN have emerged, while organisations like Finance for Biodiversity Foundation, UNEP-FI, World Benchmarking Alliance, ISO, CDP, ISSB and others have joined the nature action movement.

Awareness of the relevance of biodiversity has never been higher — and tools for companies to define impacts, dependencies and risks have never been better developed. Just before this year’s Davos meeting, the Nature Positive Initiative published an update on the development of a standardised set of State of Nature Metrics, to ensure there will be a science-based but also practical and comparable way to measure progress towards the Nature Positive global goal of “halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030”.

While the global north seems to be by and large relaxing or even scrapping altogether ambitious sustainability policies, large emerging economies of the global south like China, Brazil and India steam ahead. In contrast to Trump's second withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, China has confirmed its commitment to decarbonisation.

China's rapid expansion of renewable energy indicates that carbon emissions are on course to peak soon and ahead of their 2030 commitment. India’s efforts to promote regenerative, net-zero emissions and net-positive biodiversity agriculture are advancing, with the state of Andhra Pradesh leading the charge with over a million small holder farmers embracing ‘natural farming’. Brazilian Government plans to curb deforestation and restore the Amazon are more ambitious than ever. And back in the north, not everyone is stepping back. Norges Bank has committed to investments in renewable energy assets despite their significant underperformance in 2024.

This will likely continue for the foreseeable future. The reason: it makes sense in the long term, they said. It has also developed new disclosure and reporting standards on climate and biodiversity Norges Bank is integrating climate and biodiversity considerations into its investment strategies with the adoption of new standards aligned with international climate and biodiversity goals. The standards require enhanced disclosure on climate and biodiversity-related risks and impacts from companies in their portfolio, encouraging to adopt biodiversity-friendly practices and report on their progress.

Nor are green policies alien to conservative governments. Denmark’s right wing Agriculture Minister, Jacob Jensen, has developed the world’s first Action Plan for Plant-based Foods’. His preface to the report starts with a statement that leaves no room for doubt: “plant-based foods are the future”. This is a welcome and visionary policy that may seem atypical to say the least for a country with the world’s highest meat production per capita—for its 6 million people, Denmark currently has in the region of 30 million pigs and half a million cows.

This rather complex picture of a fractured, inconsistent approach to sustainability across the international community and a confused society on one hand, is paralleled by an undeniably growing public awareness and concern and also the astronomical surge in costs to the economy as well as individuals and communities inflicted by increasingly extreme weather events that can no longer be labelled as natural disasters, but are undeniably linked to human-induced climate change.

A paradox that also raises a number of questions. The first one in everyone’s mind is: will US and EU rollback of domestic and trade environmental policies, combined with the struggle of many other countries to reduce energy and carbon intensity, affect the much-needed decarbonisation and green transition? Equally, could Trump’s "drill, baby, drill" vision be de facto nullified by Wall Street investors, large pension and wealth funds, global insurance companies and the economic reality of unstoppable global expansion of renewable energy? 

In the light of the recent ‘Great Green Step Back’ the environmental movement also needs to reflect on what went wrong. Why is such a large share of the population not confident enough to embrace the transition? Why do so many people still fall prey to misleading, populist, easy denialism and falsely reassuring solutions driven by vested interests? Why is it so seductive to accept the suggestion that it’s at the end of the day better to stick with the business-as-usual fossil fuel based, nature-negative economy?

After all, the extraordinary development and progress humanity has enjoyed during the last century (unequally distributed of course, but the losers are often conveniently forgotten by the winners) is the result of the current development model. Why change it? And so, even science, clearer than ever in pointing out the approaching planetary tipping points that are leading to extreme destabilisation of the climate and collapse of ecosystems, is often conveniently dismissed, denied.

Today, many of the sustainability narratives and the assumptions on which they are based are not as relevant and more importantly have become tired, politically correct and insufficient to inspire trust and confidence in change. While moral and philosophical arguments, ambition and urgency maintain a strong resonance with many, for many they appear too abstract and ideological, disconnected from the reality of their lives and the issues they face daily.

Everyone likes nature. But only a minority would prioritise nature loss when it comes to vote in an election, buy food or consumer goods or invest their savings. The question we must address is how to make a carbon-neutral, nature positive future personal, reassuring, even exciting — rather than destabilising. How can we make the environment truly bipartisan and prioritised by and for people, particularly those who feel more insecure about embracing the transition? 

We need a different narrative and strategy to make sustainability personal, exciting, inspiring and leading to a better future in concrete terms, for the wellbeing and prosperity of individuals, resilience and profitability of business, stability and security of societies. 

At the end of the day, if society doesn’t want to embrace change, change will struggle to materialise. Ultimately governments, even those in autocratic countries, will have to listen to their people and realise change must happen — and fast. In fact, as the climate and nature crises deepen, change will inevitably happen either by our own choice or imposed upon us by the sheer power of the planet’s ecological laws.

We are at an inflection moment, where humanity is facing its deepest and most unprecedented great choice: continue on the same nature-negative path, accelerate towards catastrophic planetary tipping points and put our progress and existence at risk, or change course towards a net-zero, nature positive, safer and more equitable future.

We humans are, evolutionarily speaking, a risk- and change-adverse species, like most individuals of most species on Earth. It is a safe approach to secure our survival as individuals and that of our offspring and species, the fundamental primary goal of every living form. We have seen opposition to change many times before, driven by vested interests in maintaining the status quo, as well as instinctive genuine concern for the future.

Transitions are naturally perceived as filled with uncertainties: better the devil you know, as the saying goes. However, we also know that positive socio economic tipping points can happen when a sufficient share of the population builds confidence in change, and acquires and expresses the necessary resolve to move forward, acting together in ever greater numbers. The Stone Age didn’t end because the world ran out of stones. It has happened many times in our development journey that we as humans have welcomed and embraced new, viable, inspiring alternative norms, behaviours and technologies.

Awareness of the climate and biodiversity crises is much higher and spread across a much larger share of society globally than ever before. We are, without a doubt, the most environmentally aware generation in human history. Climate change and nature loss has never been higher in the political, corporate and societal agenda. This is the foundation for a nature positive turning point.

I recently came across a quote from Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, written in 1926 while under arrest by the fascist regime: “The old world is dying. The new one is struggling to emerge. And in this time of light and shade, monsters are born.” Gramsci’s monsters were the Nazism and Fascism movements emerging across an Europe devastated by a deep socio economic crisis just ahead of the Second World War. Today’s monsters are the vested interests and their political executors who obstruct the transition to a better, safer and more just future for all.

The job of the private sector and society is to accelerate the end of the “old” — the current nature-negative model — and accelerate the transition to a “new” nature-positive future, by demonstrating to society that it is the only possible future, and more importantly a better one for all. Because a people-positive future with a prosperous and equitable economy and a safe and fulfilled society cannot exist without a nature-positive one.

Onwards!

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.