The Private Sector should prioritize their climate action strategy for energy transition, climate adaptation for resilience, and their long-term business strategy and create implementation road-map with a return on investment for top actions. Strategy, implementation plan, funding, impact measurement and communication. Business should ID where they fit into global drivers such as Ambition Loop to create win-win solutions. https://www.ambitionloop.earth/
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Q1: 1. What priorities or actions should businesses focus on in 2025 to maximize their social and environmental impact?
My thoughts:
In 2025, African businesses reliant on environmental resources must prioritize sustainability and community-centered practices to maximize their social and environmental impact. The adoption of regenerative practices is crucial, particularly in sectors like agriculture, forestry, and fishing. For example, timber companies in Ghana could implement agroforestry systems that integrate fast-growing trees with cash crops, helping to restore degraded lands while supporting farmersâ livelihoods. Similarly, fishing cooperatives around Lake Victoria can invest in fish farming to reduce pressure on wild fish stocks, ensuring ecological balance and long-term economic benefits.
Collaboration with local communities should also be a top priority. Businesses must engage communities in resource management and share the benefits derived from natural resources. Projects like the Lake Naivasha flower farms in Kenya, which involve local communities in water conservation efforts, demonstrate the importance of shared responsibility in protecting ecosystems. Additionally, integrating indigenous knowledge into operations can enhance sustainability, as seen in Tanzanian beekeeping initiatives that use traditional methods to conserve forests while producing honey. By aligning with such practices, businesses can build trust and foster long-lasting partnerships with the people who depend on these resources.
Technology and innovation will play a key role in enhancing environmental stewardship. Businesses should leverage tools like data analytics, IoT, and AI to monitor their environmental impact and optimize resource use. For instance, agritech platforms like Twiga Foods in Kenya reduce food waste and support smallholder farmers through efficient supply chains. At the same time, businesses should align with global frameworks like the African Unionâs Agenda 2063 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure operations meet international sustainability benchmarks. By combining innovation with community collaboration and regenerative practices, businesses can drive both profitability and social impact, while safeguarding Africaâs rich environmental heritage for future generations.
Skill Training for youth in Food processing can be the game changer for a growing economy like India where we need to increase farmers income and also meet food n nutrition security for our masses . ( www.ficsi.in )
Love this Selen! We are working to support businesses to facilitate exactly these kinds of inclusive business model changes. We talk a lot about taking an âinclusion lensâ to consider the different vulnerabilities experienced by different groups and how/where businesses can impact on these. Great to learn about the refugee lens.
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If you could offer one piece of guidance to a corporate social impact leader stepping into 2025, what would it be?
- Donât let the current wave of anti-ESG/DEI/sustainability backlash blow you off course. The form may change, but the fundamental conviction is the same: we can, and have a responsibility to, build a world that works for all of us. The political pendulum, predictably and throughout history, swings back and forth between extremes: do not be deterred by the noise. Operate in a way that you can feel proud of now, and in the future.
- Step into 2025 with clarity and focus. Donât overcomplicateâlook at where your company can genuinely make a difference and double down on that. Pay attention to what employees and communities are saying; their insights will guide impactful actions. Build partnerships with organizations that share your vision, and donât shy away from measuring and learning as you go. The world is moving fast, so stay adaptable and authenticâprogress will always matter more than perfection.
- Donât view skills based volunteering as purely philanthropy: done right, itâs one of the most powerful tools to both develop and retain your workforce/employees. Itâs a triple-win.
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Q1 Make your business a place where employees thrive. Make your supply chain a network of businesses and workers who thrive together. Make your community a place where all its residents thrive.
Engaging stakeholders and consumers is ever becoming increasingly important in helping to build trust. 77% of consumers say they would stop buying products from a company guilty of âgreenwashingâ. Through mechanisms like Fairtradeâs robust standards and working with over 2million farmers and workers across the world, Fairtrade are extremely well placed to support companies in building transparency to their impact communication by using stories of real people and projects through traceable supply chains.
Great comment, Susannah! I have answered the first question with a related message to businesses, i.e. to adopt a ârefugee lensâ in their core operations. We have more resources here: The Refugee Lens - Refugee Investment Network
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Q1: Businesses should focus on paying a living wage across their operations. Itâs important that businesses work together to develop best practice and strategies to implement a Living Wage successfully. Businesses need to actively engage their employees in setting a Living Wage and what it looks like in terms of gender equality, preventing poverty, reducing inequalities & decent work. We are working on developing a standard for Living Wages to drive alignment across living wage methodologies and frameworks WageMap - Supporting the achievement of living wages for workers through standardizing living wage data
What priorities or actions should businesses focus on in 2025 to maximize their social and environmental impact? Collaboration and transparency of North Star, no one organisation needs to have all of the answers, a piece of the pie or final impact can be attributed to each collaborator for a successful end game. Leveraging what each organisation brings to the table collectively. Choosing partners wisely, and nurturing those relationships to ensure a joined up approach rather than a wide and shallow approach, going in trusted and deeply.
- What are the most significant challenges the social impact community will likely face in 2025, and how could we approach them?
Another big trend to look at is how well businesses are navigating the rapid changes in the economy so that weâre building a better future for everyone. Evidence suggests that AI and the green revolution are going to widen the gaps between men and womenâgaps that ALREADY cost the global economy $172 trillion. If we focused on closing those gaps, weâd be building more value for everyone. Thatâs true for men and womenâboth are better off with higher equality in markets. Evidence shows that men eat more in societies with more equalityânot just women. AI can be a hugely useful tool, but only if we work to address the biases and blindspots in the current system. Otherwise, AI risks accelerating the problems that are already built into the system. https://www.care.org/resources/the-cost-of-inequality/
Progress is slow. The most recent evidence suggests that the gap between men and womenâs unpaid care work (how much burden women bear for things like caring for children or being responsible for housework) will narrow a little bit in 2025. Men will do 10 seconds more housework a day. In fact, between now and 2100, the data shows that men are likely to do 13 more minutes of unpaid careânowhere near the 2.5 hours that women do today. Those burdens are holding everyone backâcosting time, productivity, and money out of the global economy. https://www.care.org/resources/the-cost-of-inequality/
Q2 In a world of a rising billionaire class and a growing âwinner-take-allâ mentality, businesses need to refocus on being a force for good in their communities and in the world.
Last week I attended the funeral of a friend, Jack Lorence, who had run small businesses all his life. At the funeral, one of the speakers talked about how my friend regularly hired people from the local homeless shelter, giving them second and third chances. The speaker, was himself one of those people, hired by my friend after getting sober from an addiction. And he had worked the past 30 years with Jack. The funeral reminded my of the great social impact of businesses that look out for the marginalized.
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Q3 Start with the people who work with you. What challenges and priorities do you share? How can you work together to solve them?
Then look at the community where you are located. Find out more about the assets, challenges and priorities of your community. How can you activate the agency of families and individuals to work together to solve common challenges? How can your business or social enterprise address some of these challenges/
Then look to other communities facing similar challenges. How can you work together with them, sharing what you have learned and learning from what they have done?
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Maybe we do not put enough emphasis on the abilities needed by each of us to engage creatively with diversity and change. A list of to dos will change very few if we do not have the abilities to FEEL and understand the value of diversity, change and swarmship.
Businesses should leverage synergies with partners (clarify partners for synergies), leverage foundation support and map their supply chains to ensure they can become more resilience in a climate impacted world. There are in 2025 climate action funds coming online (Just Transition Fund, Existence Fund, FAST-Infra, TURF) - find where you fit and how you can leverage for impact. Work with other companies to scale and share risk.
Totally agree about the importance of partnerships, Alexandra - I was typing out similar advice, but you expressed it better, so Iâll just endorse your point!
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A1 â Part 1: While leadership constantly highlight the importance for social and environmental data, integrating it into decision-making, and the critical need for learning strategies to scale impact, my measurement colleagues and I find that among businesses but especially among small and medium enterprises, there are multiple barriers. Of the many challenges, the most critical are resource constraints, capability challenges, and staff capacity issues for monitoring, evaluation and learning. Additionally, collecting data from communities and stakeholders is getting harder as companies do not build the trust necessary for engaging in meaningful conversations and getting high-quality data. One potential solution can be the mainstreaming of measurement within day-to-day operations at companies rather than having a dedicated team who sits in a silo and collects data that is not used to its full potential. What does this mainstreaming and integration look like â how do we operationalize this? That is something that companies can experiment with in 2025 and those with answers will emerge as thought leaders in this space.
For example: Using social impact data as an active input into decision-making requires mindshift and resource changes through senior, middle and junior management and staff â as data is collected in the field by the junior-most level of a company but decisions are made by the top brass. This mindshift change is critical to ensure accurate data is collected and then used while those who own the data â the communities â are compensated and included in the final decisions. Resources include stakeholder and employee time, money, power shifts and data. There are change management processes necessary to enable the organization to move in the same direction.
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- If you could offer one piece of guidance to a corporate social impact leader stepping into 2025, what would it be?
Learn to listen to people at all levels. Most of the data in the world right now is coming from business leaders, from people in specificâusually wealthyâcountries, and from people who are very active online. That leaves out billions of people who have solutions to problems who simply donât show up in the way weâre making decisions right now. The solutions looks a lot differentâand more effectiveâwhen people who are on the frontlines of the problem have a seat at the table designing the solution. Hereâs one example: CARE was able to work with women and financial institutions to design loan products that unlocked $154 million in loans for a donor investment of a little over $5 million. Thatâs because getting women involved in designing solutions meant the solutions worked. They paid off not just for the women, but also for the banks that offered the loans. https://www.care.org/media-and-press/mastercard-and-care-partner-to-launch-strive-women/
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At the Predistribution Initiative (PDI), we think that companies and investors need to align financial return expectations with real-world positive outcomes, and distribute more wealth and influence to workers and communities. We think a key issue is achieving predistribution, that is paying workers for the risk that they take and the value that they provide. We support paying workers a living wage, workers on Boards, and employee ownership.
At PDI we work on evaluating the entire âcapital markets value chainâ. We think that how investors structure their investments and how they allocate assets can have unintended consequences for both the market and the real economy, undermining positive impacts at the portfolio company level and corporate governance efforts. How can companies support investors to co-create alternatives to financial benchmarking practices that consider externalities? How can we support investors to rethink their own internal investment governance, asset allocation strategies, and stakeholder engagement?
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Caroline from Trees for the Future. I agree that sticking/expanding current commitment to social and environmental responsibility, proving that sustainable practices benefit business, communities and consumers. We need businesses to step up and fill the gap where governments are flailing and show how impact makes a difference across the board.