The Government’s 2025 Climate Action Plan is released, complete with the usual choreography of ambition, alignment, and reaffirmation. There are targets. There are warnings. There were declarations that this plan will be “at the centre of social and economic development.” And yet—for many of us working in and around governance, something familiar stirred beneath the
Last week, Bruce and I were driving back from a one-day CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) workshop that we had facilitated for a client. We used the time to reflect on how it went and eat ice-cream on a lovely spring afternoon. Our first credit went to the client. They wanted a workshop on a
Complex or wicked problems like climate change need to be addressed by “search consortia” with broad stakeholder representation. This seems to be the kind of leadership that the Climate Ready Academy is calling for. But I don’t think leaders are in the zone where they might give this serious thought…..yet.
Traditional competitive dynamics around advantage are too embedded in our norms and processes. How would such groupings be convened? Who is inside and who is outside the consortium? How would incentives be aligned? Who would be the sponsor? And there are many more questions….
So what do we do? I think we need to be much more honest, humble, experimental and attuned to reality. From local to global our governance systems need a radical overhaul – to become more real-time, more responsive and more caring of who we really are. It is beyond my humble imagination to picture it but it feels radical. I believe we urgently need to lean into it. Just take the first step and let the work teach us…
Leading in the context of a climate crisis is challenging. First, leaders are trapped (as we all are) within an ideology. Ideology was defined by Louis Althusser as an imaginary relationship to real conditions. Ideologies are housed within structures that facilitate the reproduction of the ideology. When we start looking, ideologies are everywhere! Capitalism and
The Public Sector Climate Action Mandate requires public bodies to reduce their energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030. This poses an unprecedented leadership challenge! Having facilitated climate leadership workshops in several public and private sector board rooms, I have not encountered any objection to the target. There is consensus that climate change is