Climate in the Post-Pandemic Resilience Era

As we started the year 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit globally, compelling countries and companies to take unprecedented measures to prevent its spread, and then to rescue and recover economies. Prior to the crisis, climate change action was gaining momentum, appearing more on decision makers’ agendas (the Green Deal accounts for 25% of the multiannual financial framework budget in Europe), yet was not stopping the alarming rise of global carbon emissions which reached historical levels in 2019. The pandemic showed the extreme effect of human activities on carbon emissions and how a change in human behavior could affect these emissions. We estimated a drop of 58% in European daily carbon emissions during the lockdown.

Mentalities have now changed drastically. The pandemic quickly turned the world upside down in ways no one thought imaginable. What better time to rethink our world? We believe that a successful recovery must be sustainable because transitioning to a low carbon future is a requirement to ensure medium and long term global resilience. The post crisis environment will accelerate the transition toward a better world where countries and companies act towards low carbon economies. Consulting firms will be part of the equation as transformation facilitators and Sia Partners will be at the forefront.

Sia Partners did not wait for the impact crisis to transform its structure and activities towards purpose-driven activities and position itself to drastically disrupt the market by reorienting global offerings to bring positive social, ethical, and environmental impacts for Customers and Third Part Partners. In 2019, Sia Partners was generating 15% of revenues directly or indirectly from the positive impact driven consulting activities related to climate change.

Investing in green development, promoting a respectful agriculture, ensuring biodiversity preservation, leveraging technologies to reduce our impact on the environment, adopting favorable public policies, and reducing our exposure and vulnerability to climate change are complementary levers to move towards a low carbon society. In this first edition, we explore why and how climate is and will be an integral part of the post pandemic economy through six major focus themes. 

Jean Trzcinski and Charlotte De Lorgeril, Global Leads for the Climate Analysis Center.