Nature Rises up the Corporate Agenda as the Sun Sets on New York Climate Week

When you step into New York during Climate Week, the sheer scale and density of conversations can be overwhelming. This year, what struck me most was how often the spotlight shifted to the language we use, the relevance of sustainability to core business strategy, and the rising urgency of nature and biodiversity.

How would the sustainability community respond in the face of stronger adversity than ever? Some reflections:

Nature: The Ultimate Supplier

One of the most encouraging shifts I observed was the rise of nature from footnote to front seat. Only last year, it was barely being mentioned, and now it was dominating conversation.

The World Economic Forum released a report in 2020 which found that over half of the world's GDP was moderately or highly dependent on nature's ecosystem services. I have always disliked that fact - it's intangible and hard to understand in an organisation's own context.

Last week at Bloomberg's offices, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) released their first status report, showing positive private sector momentum exactly two years after the release of their recommendations:

1. 620 organisations (& USD 20 trillion AUM) from over 50 countries have publicly committed to adopted the TNFD.
2. 63% of TNFD survey respondents believe their nature risks and opportunities are more (or as) significant as their climate-related ones.
3. 378k+ downloads of TNFD recommendations and guidance

This shows how organisations are now understanding their own nature-related impacts and dependencies, and the pathways they have to risk and opportunity. Perhaps they are now finally realising that nature is, after all, their number one supplier.

From Morality to Materiality: The Messaging Imperative

One recurring theme was that sustainability can no longer remain the domain of values and virtue. It must be baked into the DNA of the business as an accountability, not a “nice to do.”

• Organisations are increasingly reframing their sustainability communications. The focus is now on resilience - proving how sustainability-related initiatives protects supply chains, reduces risk, and drives profitability.
• The traditional long-form sustainability report is under pressure. The new norm is brevity, clarity, and narrative in “layman's terms”, making it readable by all stakeholders, not just specialists.
• Communications should not only showcase the benefits of transformation, but also the costs of inaction, a counterfactual narrative that helps sharpen urgency.

The role of a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) is increasingly about being fungible - meaning: capable of speaking in risk, legal, financial, market, and operational terms so that sustainability is not siloed but integrated. To do that, active listening is paramount: understanding what each stakeholder cares about, and translating sustainability value into their language. If we fail to do that, we lose influence, and with it, momentum.

Partnerships, Systems, and Shared Responsibility

I heard it again and again: sustainability is a team sport, and partnerships are key. Systems thinking is needed, as no actor can drive transformation alone:

• Partnerships are inherently messy, but the only way. They demand trust, shared language, patience, and constant iteration.
• Effective partnerships require bridging technical, operational, and practical expertise. The scale of challenges, from deforestation to soil health to climate impacts, demands multi-stakeholder collaboration.
• In the food value chain for example, everyone - from the farmer to the distributor to the brand - holds a piece of the puzzle. The more we think of sustainability as a team sport, the more leverage we unlock.

Hope is Everywhere

I posted mid-week about the moving work of Water.org, who have already changed the lives of 81 million people through access to safe water and sanitation and plans to reach 200m people by 2030. Inspirational.

For me, the thing I will remember most about this week was all of the new people I met and all of the new initiatives I learnt about. It's comforting to know that all the varied and challenging areas of the climate crisis have been carved out and are being looked after by people dedicated to making it their mission to solve.