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Editorial Editor and Director of Marketing and Communications David Woods-Hale d.woods@ associationofmbas.com @davidpaulwoods Content Editor Tim Banerjee Dhoul t.dhoul@ associationofmbas.com Art Editor Laura Tallon Insight and Communications Executive Ellen Buchan e.buchan@ associationofmbas.com
A hot topic that's getting hotter
I'm going to give the game away by launching into this edition and quoting the conclusion of our cover story: to say that climate change is a ‘hot’ topic would be an understatement . I'm sure the point above won't come as a surprise to many but, as little as five years ago, the very existence of this issue was still being debated. In more recent years, a global movement to secure the future of our planet has pushed climate change firmly into the public arena; and now the damage caused by human activity is undeniable. AMBITION most recently featured the climate crisis on our cover in late 2019, when I reported in my editor's
of our human impact on the environment. Will the good habits we have been forced to put in place be easy to maintain in the longer term, as we move forward into the ‘new normal’? And, with the world in need of leaders that are willing to make sea changes in the way they run business, are Business Schools doing enough to produce knowledgeable graduates who care actively about the environment? What is the position Business Schools need to adopt in the midst of an environmental crisis? In the spring of last year, as the world moved into lockdown, AMBA & BGA conducted a survey across its global network of Business School leaders, to evaluate their opinions
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letter that the International Energy Agency had stated – quite simply – that the world’s existing climate policies wouldn't be enough to end the upward march of record energy emissions rising beyond 2040 without a ‘grand coalition’ of governments and investors. The
of how well Business Schools were responding to the climate crisis, how their programmes are shaping the minds of sustainable leaders, and how they foresee business being able to cope with the crisis. We share the findings of this piece of
'More has to be done and time is running out'
global energy watchdog also warned that the growth of renewables would not be sufficient to put a ceiling on the energy sector’s emissions before 2040. The headline: governments are not doing enough; it’s up to business and society to take action – and fast. And then along came Covid-19… The climate protesters of 2019 could not have foreseen the fundamental shifts that 2020 would bring. Reports of the waters in the Italian city of Venice becoming so clear it was possible to see fish, and evidence of road and air emissions plummeting and pollution clearing, began to creep though the Covid- 19-dominated news agenda, as lockdown served to expose the extent
research on page 12, and while they're far from damning in terms of the progress being made by Schools and their students, there is a strong, shared opinion among participants that more has to be done and that time is running out to devise and implement practical solutions to the crisis the planet is facing. This hot topic is literally – as well as figuratively – getting hotter and there is no more time to debate the issues, delegate responsibilities, or question our personal and professional roles in addressing the climate crisis. Sustainability and climate change has to take its place at the core and forefront of business education strategy in
order to address an issue shared by all of us. David Woods-Hale, Editor, AMBITION
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