Sustainable Views

The Sustainable Views editorial team summarises what happened this year and the trends we see for 2025.

Patricia Espinosa, former UNFCCC executive secretary and now chief executive of onepoint5 consultants, and Eliot Whittington, chief systems change officer at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, dissect COP29, what it means for businesses and why private sector voices should be in the room.

At COP28 last year, world leaders agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Rui Teixeira, executive board member and CFO of EDP, and Climate Group CEO Helen Clarkson discuss whether any progress has been made since then and what needs to happen at COP29. 

While companies have got used to reporting on their emissions, understanding their impacts on nature and the risks of biodiversity loss to their products and processes is rather new. Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, and Roberto Marques, former CEO of cosmetics company Natura and board member of Sysco Corporation and the We Mean Business Coalition, discuss nature and business ahead of COP16 in Colombia. 

There was barely a woman to be seen in the official photograph of the world's climate leaders at COP28. This is a problem when half of the world's population is female. We spoke to former Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna and Aron Cramer, CEO and president of sustainability consultancy BSR, about how they believe more women can be brought into the climate space and how this can change the dynamics around climate action.

The need for the global economy to transition to net zero is now a reasonably settled debate, but there remain many questions about how to finance it. Sustainable Views spoke to two sustainability finance leaders about how to get funds flowing and overcome the so-called “valley of death” for scaling clean tech.

Indirect emissions account for, on average, around three-quarters of a company’s emissions. Walmart chief sustainability officer Kathleen McLaughlin and Systemiq managing partner Jeremy Oppenheim discuss how companies can ensure real-world reductions in supply chain emissions and whether carbon credits can be part of the solution. 

Partner content by ING.The last podcast in this series examines how one company is working to change the face of bottle recycling in Romania.  

Partner content by ING.This podcast looks at how to make the textile industry, and specifically jeans, more eco-friendly. We break down the problem of recycling blended material and how one of the world’s biggest jeans manufacturers is starting a new circular economy approach to textile production in Europe.