How young professionals can pursue climate justice — together
1. Build manifestos to demand a change in our employer organisation’s purpose towards societal needs. 2. Take action.
In a previous article, I explored how individuals might approach maximising their impact in the pursuit of climate justice. Here, the focus is on how young professionals can do so collectively.
Climate change poses a unique threat to the pursuit of a fairer world because we are close to crossing tipping points which will lead to runaway climate change, which, in turn, will exacerbate existing inequalities.¹ Therefore, the typical approach of using one’s early stage career to lay professional foundations before going on to use accumulated resources such as connections, finance and expertise to create positive impact doesn’t cut it for the climate: it will be too late to prevent the locking in of the worst impacts by the time we’ve ‘upskilled’. To effectively pursue climate justice, we as young professionals must suss out how to maximise our impact both in the short term (which is when it really matters to prevent the worst impacts) as well as over the long-term (which is when the professional foundations we lay now will bear their fruits).
We may be able to drive change by developing a clear blueprint of what ‘sufficient’ climate action looks like for their employer, and by persuading decision-makers at their employer organisation to take the required action. Being willing to challenge our own employer’s raison d’etre, propose an alternative, and learn the skills required to support its transition may allow young professionals to maximise their impact in the short and long term. The challenge we are likely to face is persuading employers to take truly sufficient climate action without compromising their own personal situation: it remains unclear if personal sacrifice can be avoided or not.
Who are young professionals?
Young professionals are typically those in their 20s and early thirties, employed in areas such as consulting, academia, accountancy, business, law etc. In the words of Urban Dictionary…
Social life aside, we are young-ish, no longer in education, and pursue both financial security and career advancement.
Other unifying characteristics include:
- We are aware: while not typically as active as the Gen Zs still in education, we are part of the first generation to have grown up with climate change a normal part of daily international dialogue.
- We have skin in the game: we’ll be in our fifties and sixties by 2050. Over the next several decades, as we move up into positions of power, the impacts of climate change will become more extreme and challenging, and we’ll be the grown ups needing to deal with them.
- We still have a young moral compass (otherwise known as ‘idealism’ or ‘naivety’): young professionals still clearly perceive and reject immoralities in the world around us. We remain driven by how the world could be, rather than how it is, and may be more willing to take risks to pursue such a vision.
- We learn fast, are open-minded and are ambitious: we’re keen to prove ourselves and can be more open to new solutions than older peers.
- We have enough industry expertise to get that it’s complicated: with a couple of years’ work experience, we’re beginning to understand our industry, and the practical challenges of rapid, radical change.
- We have rent to pay: the barrier to striking on Fridays is high: we’ve got employers (and contracts) with expectations and commitments.
In sum, we get the urgency of the emergency, the insufficiency of current action, have some sense of how complex the required transformation will be in the industry in which we work, and want to contribute to solutions which align with the scale of change needed while advancing our personal and professional ambitions.
The strategy…
1. Identify what ‘enough’ looks like for the organisation where you work
We already have a globally developed vision for a fairer and sustainable world. 191 countries are committed both to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to ‘limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius’.²
We understand our environmental boundaries within which this development needs to occur. Earth system scientists have developed nine quantitative planetary boundaries, including measures of genetic diversity, ocean acidification, freshwater use and climate change levels, within which humanity can continue to operate safely.
We know we’re not on track to achieve the SDGs, or stay within our environmental limits. Annual required investments in the SDGs across all sectors have been estimated at $5–7 trillion, and there is an estimated $2.5 trillion annual financing gap, which is most significant for lowest-income countries.³ Only six of the G20 are on track to achieve existing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) agreed at the Paris Agreement in 2015,⁴ these NDCs themselves currently put us on track for at least 3 degrees of warming, and countries representing less than one third of global emissions have registered new or updated NDCs in advance of COP26.⁵ Current modelling suggests that humanity is not on track to achieve the SDGs within planetary boundaries by 2050, let alone by 2030, and that whatever progress towards the social SDGs we do reach will put a heavy price on the environmental ones.⁶ We are falling radically short of reaching globally established commitments, and of keeping the planet within its safe operating space for humanity.
Therefore, why not decide that ‘enough’ for any given organisation is the reorientation of its core purpose around the SDGs, compatible with a 1.5 degree and planetary-boundary safe world?
An organisation could use the two questions below to identify where it is best placed to direct its core purpose:
1. What are the organisation’s key strengths?
2. How can these strengths be used to pursue exponential solutions to societal needs?
Young professionals working at any given organisation could therefore consider its strengths and how these make it best placed to maximally contribute to the SDGs and a 1.5 degree and planetary-boundary safe world.
For example, Newton Europe is a management consultant. It saves organisations money, and has particular knowledge and experience in the food and healthcare sectors, among others. It could reorient its core purpose around any one — or several — issues highlighted in the SDGs, such as food waste reduction, or improving basic healthcare. Identifying core strengths might not always be so obvious: Coca-Cola, for example, does not only make fizzy drinks successfully: its marketing and logistics expertise are at the heart of its commercial success, and make it well placed to influence behaviour change and distribute medicines, rather than to deliver on SDGs related to food or beverage production.⁷
One might argue that it is overly self-righteous to force every single organisation to reorient its purpose to actively contribute to an SDG: we might lose out on ice-cream, art and other joys.
However, a bare minimum any organisation should reach is social and environmental (or ‘extra-financial’) ‘break-even’. Future-Fit Foundation has converted systems science such as the planetary boundaries into social and environmental ‘Break-Even’ goals. By reaching these goals, any given organisation is no longer contributing social or environmental damage.⁸
However, if all organisations aim solely for extra-financial break-even, the SDGs will still not be achieved.
Young professionals should push their organisation to reorient its purpose around solving a challenge highlighted by the SDGs. Such purpose should be based on the organisation’s core strengths, and therefore where it can most effectively create change. Failing this, reaching extra-financial break-even must be the bare minimum.
In sum
Step 1: identify the core strengths of your organisation.
Step 2: look up the SDGs and the underlying 169 targets: based on your organisation’s core strengths, assess where it is best placed to contribute progress by putting an identified societal need at the heart of its purpose.
Step 3: develop a manifesto which explains why a change in organisational purpose is necessary, and how the core strengths of the organisation make it well placed to focus on the issue you have selected.
2. Making it happen
That was the easy part. With a suggested blueprint of exactly what ‘enough’ could look like for your organisation, the hard part will be persuading key decision-makers to make such change. Below are some initial thoughts on how we might get started…
An open letter to the board, based on your manifesto, could be a powerful first move. Some organisations have developed Youth Advisory Councils to represent youth related issues, so this could be a route to explore.⁹ However, it is crucial is to remain focused on outcomes: as per the words of youth activist Luisa Naubauer,
“I fear a future where in 2030 and 2040 we have the nicest sustainability reports everywhere, we have the greenest policies, the big bold headlines and the youth table at every institution thinkable — and rising emissions.”¹⁰
If your board fails to take an open letter and subsequent engagement seriously, perhaps the question becomes: could collective civil disobedience from young people against their own employer organisations, combined with a manifesto for organisational change and a proven willingness to work on solutions to enact that change persuade those higher up?
Young professionals could design and execute a powerful, collective employee strike or walkout. This might involve persuading managers, and even soon-to-be graduates or would-be applicants to join too. Imagine Google employee walk-outs meet Extinction Rebellion’s protest outside Blackrock: protesters are employees, have a specific set of demands, and are ready to work on solutions.
Could such action be taken without sacrifice?
Most organisations are not democratic, making the employee / employer relationship different to that of democratic government / citizen. A citizen has the legal right to public protest. An employee has a legal right to industrial action, but this typically breaches one’s employment contract, meaning that at best, the employee foregoes some pay, and may risk dismissal.¹¹ Unionization remains behind when it comes to supporting employees to carry out industrial action on behalf of society as a whole, rather than in their own interests.
Is there a way, therefore, for young professionals to drive change at the scale needed to meet global agreements while protecting our own interests?
Yes — if we can convince our employers to respect and support our challenge to the status quo, despite the power imbalance…though this would be a major departure from the history of civil disobedience.
Step 4: get as many young professionals in your organisation on board with the manifesto you’ve designed, so that you can sign it anonymously from the percentage of the young professional (e.g. under 30) employee base who support it.
Step 5: send it!
If you have other ideas or are interested in becoming part of a community of young professionals driving effective action within their organisations, please reach out — I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me at annamurphy41534@gmail.com.
Board manifesto example
“Dear Board,
As you are well informed, the climate emergency poses a civilisational threat to humanity and undermines the pursuit of justice as it disproportionately affects the most vulnerable, domestically and internationally. As young professionals who will reach our 50s and 60s in the next few decades, we fear the impacts it will have within our own lifetimes, and those of our children. Furthermore, there is no business on a dead planet: strong, early action on climate change far outweighs the costs of not acting. While ‘sustainability’ initiatives, targets and reports abound, what really matters is the outcome: that global emissions fall on a timeline compatible with 1.5 degrees, the biosphere is preserved, and social justice is advanced.
As your youngest employees, we unsurprisingly agree with the standpoint of young climate activists on the inadequacy of the current pace of change. We have skin in the game — we’ll still be here trying sort out the problems your generation created decades after you’ve passed away. We’re also pursuing financial security, and have contracts with you to adhere to: participating in civil disobedience may put both of these at risk. Mentors tell us to go and ‘upskill’ or ‘get training’ before working out how to ‘give back to society’. But the world is so close to crossing irreversible tipping points which will lead to runaway climate change that spending years laying professional foundations before ‘giving back’ won’t work: business planning, experimentation, learning and action needs to happen in the next few years.
How, therefore, do we effectively pursue climate justice, in the short term as the science demands, while also building the professional and personal lives we dream of?
Well, the world has an agreed blueprint for the planet and for the world’s most vulnerable too: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Paris Agreement provides a framework through which the planet can be kept to 1.5 degrees warming. Earth system scientists have developed quantitative planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to operate safely. There is a clear global destination to pursue. Organisations such as Future-Fit Foundation have translated this vision and science into actionable guidance for organisations to reach a ‘break-even’ threshold whereby it is no longer contributing any negative social or environmental impact. This is a good start, but even with organisations reaching this minimum threshold at scale, the SDGs would not be achieved by 2030. More ambitious action is needed.
We understand that there is a duty to shareholders. We understand that there may be perceived ‘impossible’ cultural, institutional, technological, financial and political challenges. But please bear Covid-19 in mind: did it not shift the boundaries of the ‘impossible’, the ‘acceptable’ and the ‘necessary’ because of its ‘crisis’ label? The impacts we have seen from Covid-19, while immediate, do not reflect even the aperitif of those we will see from the climate emergency. Leaders must therefore have the foresight to challenge the perceived boundary of acceptability, in order to preserve their children’s and their young employees’ futures. Leaders must not ‘Build back better’ by ‘doing their best’. They must lead their organisations to do what it takes to solve the problems we, as global citizens, are committed to solving.
Based on societal needs and the collective global vision and our research into the [organisation’s name]’s key strengths and therefore opportunities for effective interventions, we recommend:
- [Organisation’s name] reorient its purpose to [Insert].
- Reach and maintain social and environmental ‘break-even’ by 2030, as defined by Future-Fit Foundation.
[Here, insert how the core strengths of the organisation make it well placed to focus on the issue you have selected.]
As your younger employees, we are uniquely placed to support you in this transition. We are ambitious. We learn fast and seek new skills. We want this organisation to survive and thrive — on a fair and thriving planet — so that we can carve our own futures here, knowing that we are effectively contributing to what the world needs.
We recognise that public protest can be an effective tool for change. We also believe it is best for [Organisation’s name] to address this challenge together. We share these recommendations with you — the board — initially, in the hope and belief that we can co-create and launch a meaningful transformation of our business to respond to global challenges, thus setting our company up to be a proactive leader in the eyes of our markets and shareholders, rather than achieve the same end in a more public way that leads people to conclude that the response is a defensive one. We are excited to help you in this process — and to use our substantial personal networks to champion and applaud the results of this effort.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
X% of your under-30 employee base.”
Sources
¹ Carbon Brief (2020) ‘Explainer: Nine ‘tipping points’ that could be triggered by climate change’ (available online https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-nine-tipping-points-that-could-be-triggered-by-climate-change).
Department of Economic & Social Affairs (2017) ‘Climate Change and Social Inequality’, (available online https://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2017/wp152_2017.pdf).
² United Nations Climate Change ‘Paris Agreement — Status of Ratification’ (https://unfccc.int/process/the-paris-agreement/status-of-ratification).
³ United Nations Press Release (2019) ‘Citing $2.5 Trillion Annual Financing Gap during SDG Business Forum Event, Deputy Secretary-General Says poverty Falling Too Slowly’ (available online https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/dsgsm1340.doc.htm).
Brookings (2019) ‘How much does the world spend on the Sustainable Development Goals?’ (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2019/07/29/how-much-does-the-world-spend-on-the-sustainable-development-goals/).
International Finance Corporation (2019) ‘Closing the SDG Financing Gap — Trends and Data’ (https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/842b73cc-12b0-4fe2-b058-d3ee75f74d06/EMCompass-Note-73-Closing-SDGs-Fund-Gap.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID=mSHKl4S).
⁴ den Elzen et al. (2019) ‘Are the G20 economies making enough progress to meet their NDC targets? (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151830750X).
⁵ World Resources Institute, ‘National Climate Action under the Paris Agreement’ (https://www.wri.org/ndcs).
United Nations Climate Change (2021) ‘“Climate Commitments Not On Track to Meet Paris Agreement Goals” as NDC Synthesis Report is Published’ (https://unfccc.int/news/climate-commitments-not-on-track-to-meet-paris-agreement-goals-as-ndc-synthesis-report-is-published).
⁶ Randers, J., et al. (2019) ‘Achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals within 9 Planetary boundaries’ Cambridge University Press (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/achieving-the-17-sustainable-development-goals-within-9-planetary-boundaries/5934F82F471B751168A0B2AE59AD0319).
⁷ Maly, T. (2013) ‘Clever Packaging: Essential Rides Coke’s Distribution Into Remote Villages’ Wired (https://www.wired.com/2013/03/colalife-piggybacks-on-coke/).
⁸ Future-Fit Business Benchmark (2019) ‘Methodology Guide’ ( https://futurefitbusiness.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FFBB-Methodology-Guide-R2.1.4.pdf).
⁹ GenerationOn (2012) ‘Game Changers: Establishing a Youth Advisory Council’ (https://static.globalinnovationexchange.org/s3fs-public/asset/document/game_changers_yac_toolkit.pdf?QHrlUeKPp_vpvSObQ8NKwhcg0_t_huJm).
¹⁰ Connect4Climate (2020) ‘#Youth4ClimateLive Series: Driving Ambition’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McNpZ83w2oc).
¹¹ GOV.UK ‘Taking part in industrial action and strikes’ (https://www.gov.uk/industrial-action-strikes/your-employment-rights-during-industrial-action).
