“The private sector is moving towards sustainability. Actually, the majority of CEOs already know that their companies cannot prosper in a world affected by climate change”. The words of Paul Polman, Executive Director of Unilever, warn us that growth is impossible if we don’t combat climate change.

“Exceeding the limits of the planet does not only generate terrible costs, inefficiency, risks and uncertainty for business, but it limits the active growth of the businesses”, he indicated in an interview he offered in the framework of the 2014 Global Landscapes Forum, held in Lima on December 6 and 7.

In September, the former Mexican President Felipe Calderón presented the new “Better Growth, Better Climate” report which precisely deals with this issue: the New Climate Economy report, which refutes the idea that we must choose between combating climate change and achieving growth for the world economy.

In this sense, Polman referred to some initiatives which have already been driven from the private sector:

“There are some initiatives, for example to combat deforestation. The global consumer goods industry, which represents all companies from this industrial sector, joined and declared a moratorium for 2020 on the sale of products which come from illegal deforestation. We are talking about vegetable oil, soy beans, meat, and paper”.