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Interview – The Dutch businessman on a mission to unite companies over climate change
(Reuters News, 22 Jan 2020) "If you can bring about 25% of the industry together across the value chain, you can create tipping points, and that accelerates things," says Paul Polman.
While global leaders take to the stage at Davos in the Swiss Alps, one of the world's most prominent businessmen is busy behind the scenes - trying to bring together the heads of major companies to tackle climate change and inequality.
Paul Polman became known as a leading voice on sustainable capitalism while running consumer goods giant Unilever for 10 years and is a regular at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting for the global elite in the upmarket ski resort.
Since retiring from Unilever a year ago, Polman has set his sights on using his sway among business chiefs, governments, finance and civil society to get them to work together on climate change and making economies fairer for everyone.
"If you can bring about 25% of the industry together across the value chain, you can create tipping points, and that accelerates things," Dutch businessman Polman, 63, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview at a Davos hotel.
His new sustainability consultancy, Imagine, set up last year, scored a major victory by organising a fashion industry pact to announce at the G7 summit in France in August.
The pact involves 62 major fashion companies striving to use sustainable cotton, cut out single-use plastics, and align their business with the Paris climate pact to address global warming.
Reuters News, 22 Jan 2020: Interview – The Dutch businessman on a mission to unite companies over climate change
