Narrative is what moves people to act on climate
We Mean Business Coalition
This article is adapted from a piece that originally appeared on BusinessGreen Intelligence.
The We Mean Business Coalition works with a core group of seven business-focused climate non-profits around the world to accelerate the transition to a just, resilient, net zero economy. To date it has encouraged almost 10,000 businesses of all sizes worldwide to take action.
As such, the group is urging thousands of the world’s largest businesses to commit to halving emissions by the end of the decade and delivering a net zero emission economy by 2050, in keeping with the Paris Agreement’s central aim of limiting temperature increases to 1.5°C.
Yet while these targets define the Coalition’s mission, CEO María Mendiluce tells BusinessGreen that the tendency for discussions on climate change to become “very technical” has to be counterbalanced with the compelling narratives that are ultimately the biggest driver of climate action.
“I think narrative is what moves people to act,” she explains. “It’s not all about technical explanation, it’s about the opportunity, the emotion, the sense of purpose, and of being together in solving one of the biggest challenges of humanity.” This focus on narrative informs much of the Coalition’s work, even if it has its foundations in business school vocabulary and corporate decarbonization policies.
The group’s plans to create a generation of “climate leaders” center on a “4 A’s” framework – ambition, action, advocacy, and accountability – which is designed to provide corporates with core values and pillars for sustainable business planning. This in turn informs We Mean Business Coalition’s calls for companies to set people-focused, science-based emissions reduction targets spanning both direct and value chain emissions; review business plans to identify areas ripe for green improvement; assign responsibility within the business for driving climate action; publicly commit to climate targets and causes; and share decarbonization plans and progress to ensure transparency.
But this framework has helped to catalyze the narrative the Coalition wants to project through its initial adoption by some of Europe’s biggest companies. “When you build a movement, once you capture the biggest companies the others follow,” Mendiluce explains. “From 2015 to 2020 was about the Unilevers, the Nestlés – then we started to see car and utility companies committing. Two or three companies can create a ‘north star’.”
Those ‘north stars’ have helped the corporate climate movement to achieve a critical mass. “I think today, the majority of businesses feel a responsibility to do something about the climate,” Mendiluce continues. “Before they thought it was impossible, but now they feel the impacts of climate change and how that is affecting their companies. They see that there are leaders taking ambitious action and feel that they need to do the same…”