The Business Guide to Advancing Climate Justice

Our key takeaway: A just future ahead is one that is cooperative and connected, safe and healthy, thriving, accessible, and democratized and decentralised. In a just future, businesses are taking responsibility, accountable to community needs, not seeking credit, sharing profit and ensuring co-benefits, and supporting frontline efforts and stepping aside. These are findings from Forum for the Future and B Lab, based on feedback and input from frontline community leaders and experts. However, we are a long way off from putting climate justice at the heart of our efforts. Companies often lack knowledge on where and how to take action for meaningful impact. They have ambiguous processes for equity-centred community engagement. They lack clear metrics to measure and track progress. And they fear failing or getting it wrong, preventing concrete and urgent action. The way forward entails prioritizing trust-building with frontline communities, adopting a new mindset, offering immediate & sustained support to meet frontline community needs, and considering your spheres of control & influence as a business.

Forum for the Future and B Lab published its report on The Business Guide to Advancing Climate Justice (April 2024):

• Investing in climate justice: The report finds that “[w]hile billions of dollars are invested in climate solutions annually, only a small percentage is allocated to support the communities most vulnerable to its impacts - frontline communities.” The report authors held a number of sessions and interviews with frontline community leaders and experts, and heard about the “hopelessness, fear, anxiety, loss of income, displacement, damage to property, and deteriorating health that people are experiencing, along with a wide range of other injustices that intersect with the climate crisis.” Therefore, a focus on climate justice is needed, one which “prioritizes the needs of frontline communities, aiming to rectify environmental and social disparities by centring equity in climate action and policymaking while holding accountable those who bear the most significant responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation.” A just future ahead is one that is cooperative and connected, safe and healthy, thriving, accessible, and democratized and decentralised. The report further finds that in a just future, businesses are taking responsibility, accountable to community needs, not seeking credit, sharing profit and ensuring co-benefits, and supporting frontline efforts and stepping aside.
  

• The state of progress: The report finds that progress is slow in weaving climate justice into business, for a number of reasons: “there is a lack of knowledge on where and how to take action for meaningful impact, an ambiguous process for equity-centred community engagement, a lack of clear metrics to measure and track progress, and a fear of failing or getting it wrong, preventing concrete and urgent action.” The report also finds that advancing will “require massive shifts in how businesses tend to approach partnerships and respond to community needs.” These include a “[r]eluctance and resistance to acknowledging and addressing past harms that have led to trauma, mistrust of business in communities, and fear of failing” as well as “[t]ransactional approaches to partnership and shallow, low-impact gestures driven by public relations and business growth instead of genuine interest in supporting communities.”
  

• Key insights for companies to consider when advancing climate justice: The report highlights four key insights that companies can consider to effectively advance climate justice. These are: 1) “prioritize trust-building with frontline communities”, which includes “listening to frontline communities and being humble, present, and collaborative over an extended period”; 2) “adopt a new mindset.” This means business leadership “shifting away from short-term gains toward long-term solutions developed in partnership with communities to address the root causes of today’s biggest challenges”; 3) “offer immediate & sustained support to meet frontline community needs”, which includes “look[ing] for ways to reduce barriers for community organizations to access funding, including by shifting to an adaptive and relational model that prioritises multi-year, unrestricted grants”; and 4) “consider your spheres of control & influence.” As a start, “businesses should prioritize areas of action and develop a process by which to assess the environmental impact of existing and future projects.” The report delves into a number of areas for companies to consider building on these.