Reflections from WEF 26 in Davos

I didn’t plan to post about #Davos this year.

Like many in sustainability, I’ve become increasingly conflicted about it. But after the conversations I had there, I feel compelled to share some thoughts.

While much of the attention was fixed on US politics and the latest AI developments, I was fortunate to sit in quieter, more candid conversations with sustainability leaders from science, academia, finance, and the C-suite. And what I heard was more encouraging than the headlines suggest.

Here’s the reality: sustainability has already achieved major milestones.

After decades of hard work, it has become central to strategy and business as usual. Regulation, compliance, investor pressure, and risk management have embedded sustainability into how most serious businesses operate. It may not currently always be labelled as such anymore (most often these days it’s called resilience) but the work continues despite not publicly being talked about as much.

Importantly, much of the perceived “sustainability backlash” is an ideological crisis playing out mostly in the West. It is most pronounced in the US and parts of Europe. Asia and the Middle East have not wavered. China, in particular, is positioning itself to be the first major economy to genuinely bend the emissions curve, not out of ideology, but because it understands the business case and the necessity.

Many organisations now have real skin in the game. Supply chains, capital access, insurance, and long-term competitiveness depend on it. This is why sustainability continues to move forward, even when it’s not loudly celebrated at the moment (greenhushing is real!).

I arrived in Davos concerned, questioning where sustainability stood and feeling a little disillusioned. I left energised. Recommitted to doing the daily, often unglamorous work of making business - and with that the world - incrementally more sustainable.

And perhaps that’s what Davos still does best: it reminds you that the work matters, that progress is happening, and that the right fight is worth continuing.

Back to it.

Pictured: Some other sustainability warriors fighting the fight every day: Dermot O'Gorman & Markus Mutz