Time To Scale It All Up
María Mendiluce, CEO, We Mean Business Coalition
Last month I was at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, where we discussed positive and negative tipping points, climate risks and opportunities, and how to get the money flowing to accelerate climate action.
An important report released at the forum, The Breakthrough Effect, identifies three positive tipping points – for electric vehicles, green ammonia and plant-based diets – that will cut emissions in key sectors and accelerate changes elsewhere in the economy. It details the actions business, governments and investors should prioritize now to capitalize on these ‘super-leverage points’.
In another session, Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research explained the 16 tipping points that could push our planet into crisis. Four of these, including the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, are perilously close.
Increasing numbers of companies know they need to act. Despite barriers, our report Corporate Minds of Climate, in collaboration with Conservation International, shows that 92% of organizations surveyed identified long-term decarbonization as a priority for their business.
With the challenge as clear as ever, now is the time to scale everything up. This will require “money, money, money“, as US special presidential envoy John Kerry put it – more specifically, a total of $3 trillion per year to help reach net zero and tackle nature loss.
Philanthropy has an important role to play – and We Mean Business Coalition is proud to be a founding partner of the Giving to Amplify Earth Action (GAEA) initiative announced at Davos. GAEA will leverage philanthropy to get the money flowing from both public and private sectors.
We must also be agile and collaborative in how we use money to achieve maximum impact, to spot the gaps, scale initiatives quickly, and bring organizations together to achieve even greater things – without reinventing the wheel. This is the role that the We Mean Business Coalition proudly plays within our ecosystem.
Last year we agreed the We Mean Business Coalition Strategy: ‘All in for 2030’, which provides a blueprint for delivering the vision of a decarbonized economy at speed and scale. As we develop solutions and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of halving global emissions this decade, one of our most effective interventions is leveraging philanthropic funding to invest in portfolios of projects and initiatives that have the potential to deliver transformative change. I am pleased to share details of the projects that will support our efforts this year, through our latest grants round.
Our flagship initiatives, the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and SME Climate Hub, have already led to over 10,000 companies making ambitious climate commitments. Last week RE100, a past grantee that we supported to grow across geographies, announced that its 390+ members sourced half of their electricity from renewables in 2021.
I look forward to our continued work with our founding and long-term implementation partners, and the new partners we welcome to our network. Together we will seize the opportunities, confront the risks, and ensure more initiatives and projects reach the scale and impact needed to halve global emissions by 2030.