Environment

As ever more energetic and destructive hurricanes threaten oil production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, render thousands homeless and create billions in property damage, from June to October our minds focus on how erratic weather patterns have become and what might happen when the effects of global warming really set in.

Meanwhile businesses are clearly struggling to integrate the long term risks and opportunities into their current business practices. Although its encouraging that at least some companies have climate change strategies and link these strategies to remuneration, it’s clear that there is still a lot left to be done and the vast majority of the world’s major corporations still haven’t advanced beyond the reticence and lack of clarity of a decade ago.

Still there are some sectors and brands that are beginning to change the shape of their businesses, adjusting to the changing shape of a carbon-constrained world. Toyota’s recently announced fuel-cell hybrid vehicles, which it intends to lease to Japanese Government ministries and power companies in the first instance, puts another feather in the cap of the brand that introduced the world to commercial hybrid vehicles with the Prius.

A number of companies are talking the talk; few seem to be walking the walk in the manner that Toyota is. At the same time, more and more companies are being forced to demonstrate their environmental credentials, including their position on climate change, when tendering for new business.

It’s no overstatement to say that markets have begun to internalise environmental issues and so the question is whether leading companies will simply wait to react to this change or seek out first mover advantages. That decision has to be taken sooner rather than later – and may be the difference between a brand that becomes recognised, admired and rewarded for its leadership and a brand that loses the leadership position it currently has.

Yohan Hill, Yohan.hill@corporate-citizenship.com