How to forge an effective sustainability strategy for 2025, after a year of setbacks

This has been a disappointing year for sustainability advocates.

Voters’ rejection of presidential candidate Kamala Harris, the loss of both houses of the U.S. Congress, an under-performing COP29, a muddled outcome to global plastic waste and biodiversity negotiations and the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the Chevron Deference headlined a series of reversals for sustainability advocacy in 2024.  

There were successes as well: the ongoing implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to underwrite the transition to a more decarbonized economy, and a series of regulatory initiatives aimed at controlling PFAS, methane and hazardous organic air pollutants, for instance. But the aftertaste of 2024 is that of disappointment, not success.

These setbacks require a broad and deep reassessment of current sustainability strategies, in particular advocacy connected to consumers and voters.  

Strong remedies are necessary, and they include:

Focus the narrative, simplify the message

The explosive influence of global megatrends, including climate change, stresses to water supply and agriculture, and expanded geopolitical conflicts, continues to expand the applicability of sustainability thinking. In recent years, sustainability has also come to encompass financial risk management, the governance of major institutions, a dramatic expansion in transparency and public reporting, technological advances, attempts to reduce social inequalities and promotion of diversity and democracy.

This growing complexity has reached the point where even sustainability professionals are challenged to manage the burgeoning databases and related regulations. 

Consumers and voters experience even greater difficulties in sorting through competing product claims and policies to transform energy and transportation systems. Amidst accelerating economic, environmental and social change, they see political conflict rather than personal benefits.

A number of sustainability leaders, focused on the particulars of their own agendas, do not acknowledge that the problem even exists. As a result, opponents of sustainability initiatives have successfully developed a counter-narrative of competing claims about woke institutions, denial of consumer choice and higher costs to working families.

Disrupt the shareholder value ideology

The doctrine of Milton Friedman, who wrote that “the social responsibility of business is to increase profits,” and his disciples has influenced generations of investors and executives who believe that the primary purpose of an enterprise is to maximize shareholder value, narrowly defined as share price, rather than benefit society at large and ensure a firm’s continued existence.  

As a result, publicly traded companies return multiple billions of dollars to shareholders in the form of share buybacks every quarter. That money could be more productively invested in research and development, technological innovation, productivity improvements, strengthened environmental performance and investments in advancing more workers into the middle class.

The criticism of shareholder value as a supreme good has grown as the sheer volume of share buybacks (beyond dividend payments) and related C-suite compensation packages (including bonuses and stock options) expands disparities between the ultra-wealthy and other income tiers within society.  

The sustainability agenda, with its twin focus on opportunities arising from investments in new technologies and more people-focused proposals for reducing disparities in income and pollution, can play an expanded role in offering an alternative view of business purpose. 

Much of this critique has originated within the economics profession and scholars devoted to examining business strategy. In his recent book “Beyond Shareholder Primacy,” Stuart L. Hart, professor in residence at the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute, argues that “there is no consistent connection between investor returns and shareholder-oriented governance structures and business practices.”

Going forward, a principal opportunity of sustainability advocates is to look up from their individual agendas and communicate sustainability’s role in constructing an alternative to a near exclusive focus on shareholder value. Doing so can shape the allocation of capital to address many of the world’s significant needs. Disruption of the shareholder value ideology provides a more focused and powerful sustainability narrative that cascades across the economy.

Builder a bigger advocacy boat

Success in advancing sustainability policies and practices has resulted from the individual efforts of numerous citizens, businesses, non-government organizations, policymakers and academics. Some of these groups have periodically collaborated to advance specific outcomes, such as the enactment of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act and the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement to limit the global average temperature increase to below 2.0 degrees Celsius.  

More often, these efforts are not linked through a common cross-institutional advocacy strategy. As a result, proponents of status quo energy policies and other rent-seeking economic interests frequently out-fundraise and politically outmuscle proponents of more sustainable international agreements and domestic policies. Leadership by the fossil fuel industry and supporting governments of the last three Conference of the Party (COP) climate negotiations in Egypt, Dubai and Baku is evidence of this reality.

What can be done? There is presently great commonality and overlap across the sustainability agendas of numerous corporations, non-government organizations and philanthropies to enable them to forge more focused and better-funded advocacy strategies.  

Leaders of these institutions should formally plan a joint advocacy, fundraising and messaging initiative and strategy around key sustainability priorities, such as climate change, plastic waste, biodiversity protection, environmental justice and shareholder value. They should also establish a non-lobbying think tank to generate ideas to implement specific sustainability proposals and establish a talent base of students and scholars devoted to advancing this outcome.

Rethinking and realigning how best to advance the sustainability agenda requires new, bold and persistent action. A failure to do so inherently weakens the ability to resist the reactionary policies of the incoming Trump administration.