Tribune. The growing confrontation between business leaders and stakeholders in society committed to the essential change in our economic model is frozen on two relatively incompatible lines. Companies consider that they are doing enough, if not a lot, and that being neither rewarded nor protected in terms of competitiveness, they demand that they be allowed to “internalize” environmental progress according to their own capacity to make it. advantage recognized by the markets.
For its part, militant civil society, very well embodied in the discourse of the Impact France movement and NGOs historically carrying a requirement to renounce all polluting or non-useful activities, asks them to go much faster and further. and to be part of major international commitments. This discussion on the pace and extent of the change is decisive for the new generations, but deserves to get out of the mantra.
Scientific models, those of the IPCC [Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat], of the intergovernmental scientific and political platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services [IPBES], on the evolution of household incomes opposed to those of multinationals, offer a first framework on which the actors should agree, such as the 2030 roadmap around the sustainable development objectives, which has been integrated by the States but not by companies. This is the collective stake of the “responsible economy” that should be built in the multilateral framework, no longer at the convenience of each State, but through agreements that frame industrial strategies instead of chasing after.
Breaking free from the old model
Three categories of players: regulators, entrepreneurs and their training system are in this context responsible for carrying out this “systemic change” which concerns sectors as major as the automobile, agriculture and railways. . Because it is as much a social and societal revolution as an ecological one, which we know will not be able to succeed with the old methods. Even if it is accepted that the public authorities should substitute contract management for the mere stacking of laws and that economic leaders should put the vision of their collective utility above their performance mandate, this will not go quickly enough. to break free from the old model if we continue to teach it as the starting point.
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