Australian executives have acknowledged climate change as one of the top three issues they are currently facing, revealed a new report.
Deloitte’s 2023 CxO Sustainability Report: Accelerating the Green Transition showed that behind economic outlook and searching for talent, climate change is one of the most prominent issues they are facing, with 68 per cent of executives increasing investment in sustainability over the past year.
Dr Pradeep Philip, Head of Deloitte Access Economics, said Australian business executives are starting to see the shift from voluntary action to mandated change.
“The recent proposed change to the safeguard mechanism and emissions targets for big polluters show the regulatory environment is changing. This trend is likely to continue, marking the end of the age of voluntary action and the beginning of a new period of mandatory transition.”
The report also revealed that employees are a large driving force behind the sustainability change, with 63 per cent of CxO’s citing employees as their reason for their organisation’s actions on sustainability.
“While executives are united on some of the key benefits of climate action such as brand recognition, employee engagement and positively impacting a shared world crisis, only 31 per cent cited investor returns as a key benefit of accelerated climate action.”
Despite the majority of CxOs recognising investor return not to be a key benefit, 79 per cent were optimistic that economic growth can be achieved while also reaching climate change goals.
Deloitte’s report also offered several recommendations to CxOs to help them accelerate the green transition.
These included embedding climate goals into their overall business strategy, encouraging stakeholder action, investing in technology, building trust by taking credible climate actions, and collaborating to drive systems-level change.
Overall, the majority, 80 per cent, of surveyed CxOs were “somewhat or extremely optimistic” that the world will take sufficient steps to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
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