A Compass for Just and Regenerative Business

Download the report: A Compass for Just and Regenerative Business

Download: A Guide to the Critical Shifts Needed

The Challenge

The impact and influence of businesses on the world around us is immense and as our major challenges - from climate change and crashing biodiversity to deeply entrenched structural inequality - intensify, there is an urgent need for the private sector to step up.

Humanity stands at a crossroads and business leadership will be critical in determining whether we will or won’t be successful in creating a world in which more than nine billion people can thrive within planetary boundaries.

Calls to evolve long-established, conventional ‘sustainability’ strategies are getting louder and the next wave of sustainability will be centred around delivering a ‘just and regenerative’ future.

And yet:

too often, ambition for change falls well short of what’s needed
the business case for transformational change has been ambiguous
there has been no clear guidance on: what it really means to be both ‘just’ and ‘regenerative’; the shifts needed to get there; and how you can galvanize your teams to make it happen.

Until now.

A just and regenerative mindset will be the key to unlocking new ways of working and living. It sets out a new guiding star for businesses: an economy that sustains the wellbeing of all and the capacity of our natural world to replenish itself, while enabling long-term, broad-based prosperity.

An opportunity for business to reset

For decades, Forum has worked in partnership with businesses to support them in not only ‘doing less harm’, but in taking net positive approaches that give back more to society and the environment than they take out. We’re at the forefront of the latest sustainability thinking, what it means in practice as businesses seek to transform the way they operate, and how they can put theory into practice.

Sustainability doesn’t stand still and today’s leaders could be tomorrow’s laggards. So what does the alternative to today’s business as usual look like and how can we get there?

In partnership with the CEO-led World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), we’ve set out new thinking with the potential to genuinely reset your business’ ambition.

Published in November 2021, the Compass for Just and Regenerative Business report:

outlines the business imperative to shape a just and regenerative future
sets out a working definition of what it means to be ‘just’ and ‘regenerative’
introduces a new ‘Business Transformation Compass’ tool to help businesses navigate the critical shifts needed, and grounds this thinking with practical guidance that explores real world application to business strategy and key functions such as Marketing, Procurement, Corporate Affairs and Human Resources.

Above: Forum’s Business Transformation Compass is designed to help businesses assess and understand their current mindset and what would be needed to adopt a just and regenerative one.

In addition to synthesising current leading thinking around just and regenerative practice and launching the Business Transformation Compass as a practical tool to aid adopting this new approach, we also have more detailed guidance around the critical shifts needed across key sustainable development issues and business functions. This detailed guidance aims to bridge the gap between inspiring visions or theoretical frameworks and the tangible, practical implications for specific business functions or a company’s approach to key sustainable development issues. We see this as version 1.0 of detailed guidance, and are actively seeking to iterate it with partners and subject matter experts.

Explore the critical shifts needed

Who’s involved and what’s next?

The Compass for Just and Regenerative Business report is intended as a helpful provocation to make authentic engagement from businesses with this emergent area less daunting.

It was produced by Forum for the Future in partnership with WBCSD for people working within businesses on the transformation needed to address the critical global challenges of our time, including mounting inequality, the climate emergency and nature in crisis. It was developed with input from the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) and many leading businesses including Unilever, Nestlé, Ingka Group (IKEA), Kimberly-Clark, Seventh Generation, SIG and Capgemini - as well as sustainability leaders such as Bill Reed, Marjorie Kelly and Bill Sharpe.

Produced in partnership with:

With input from:

Download the report: A Compass for Just and Regenerative Business

Download: A Guide to the Critical Shifts Needed

Get in touch

Grappling with a sustainability challenge?

Want to feedback on the Business Transformation Compass and/or the detailed guidance underpinning it?

Contact Forum’s Associate Director - Transformational Strategies, James Payne, to explore how your organisation can become more future-fit in the way it operates.

Latest

Love, futures and philanthropy: Why giving in a polycrisis needs to start from the heart

How do love, futures and philanthropy intersect, and why is this intersection so critical in tackling complex challenges in a polycrisis? Hannah Pathak, Forum’s International Managing Director, explores more in this blog.
Why organisations must prioritise climate and health in 2024 – and how some already are

Following World Health Day this past Sunday, Hannah Pathak, Forum’s International Managing Director and co-director of the Climate and Health Coalition, shares findings from a recent network roundtable about how organisations are focusing on climate and health in 2024, and why taking action now is more urgent than ever.
Pathways to transforming unethical recruitment practices

If a strong foundation of trust among diverse stakeholders is established in a complex system, how can this be built on to create lasting, effective change? In the last of a three-part blog series, we explore possible pathways to an effective changemaking system in responsible recruitment, and opportunities for value chain actors to act in transformative ways.
The women of Madre Tierra are fighting for farmworker justice. Here’s how.

Hormis, Elvira and Claudia are three of over two million farmworkers working to grow and harvest crops for the over 331 million people who live in the US. For Farmworker Awareness Week, Christina Daniels-Freeman, Programs Advisor at Forum for the Future, sat down with these three fierce advocates to learn about their stories, groundbreaking potential of the upcoming Farm Bill, and the role we all must play in fighting for farmworker justice.

Reconfiguring value chains: Seven essential shifts for resilient, fair and thriving value chains

Forum’s Principal Programme Manager, Hannah Cunneen, outlines the seven shifts that could transform how businesses and their value chains operate.
Integrating social and environmental sustainability

Our planetary systems are in crisis. For lasting change, we need to start addressing planetary challenges with integrated solutions. Forum for the Future partnered with Mars and IDH to commission research that explores how companies can integrate both social and environmental agendas.
Rethinking Value Chains: Enabling Systemic Circularity in Fashion

Under pressure to tackle the huge ecological and social footprint, the textile and apparel industry is introducing various circular innovations to reduce resources, waste and overall impact on the environment. While significant resources are being spent on researching and implementing technological solutions, far less is invested in truly understanding the enabling conditions that enable innovations to scale and achieve their full potential.
Shaping the Future of Responsible Recruitment

Shaping the Future of Responsible Recruitment is a 12-month programme led by Forum for the Future that aims to contribute to a systemic eradication of unethical recruitment practices.
Reimagining Consumption

Forum’s Reimagining Consumption programme is bringing together wide-ranging stakeholders to transform consumption and to develop action plans with game-changing potential.
Engendering systemic action on sustainable cotton: outcomes from Cotton 2040

Following on from our Cotton 2040 blog series, here, programme facilitators Neil Walker from Forum for the Future and Nicola Thornley from Anthesis reflect on what we’ve achieved in the initiative in building uptake of sustainable cotton with 11 brands and retailers, and identify opportunities for growth.
Reflections on World Cotton Day: lessons learned from building uptake of sustainable cotton

Cotton is one of the world’s leading commodities and its production can be associated with significant social, environmental and economic impacts. On World Cotton Day, five years since the inception of the Cotton 2040 initiative, programme facilitators Neil Walker from Forum for the Future and Nicola Thornley from Anthesis reflect on what we have achieved and learned through the initiative in building uptake of sustainable cotton with 11 brands and retailers.
The High Level Panel on BECCS Done Well: Conditions for Success

Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, has been invited by Will Gardiner, the CEO of Drax Group, to convene a High Level Panel of independent experts to conduct an inquiry into Bioenergy, Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS).
American Climate Futures

A national initiative to ensure the needs and voices of those most impacted by climate change in the US are at the forefront of goal-setting, planning, and solutions development — while also challenging, and accelerating the process of addressing, the systemic inequalities that got us here in the first place.
Future-fit Value Chains

A futures and innovation process to drive development of resilient, regenerative and just agricultural value chains in an increasingly disrupted world.

The Five Capitals - a framework for sustainability

The Five Capitals Model provides a basis for understanding sustainability in terms of the economic concept of wealth creation or ‘capital’. Any organisation will use five types of capital to deliver its products or services. A sustainable organisation will maintain and where possible enhance these stocks of capital assets, rather than deplete or degrade them.
Jobs

We are a growing organisation and we are regularly on the look out for new recruits to join our teams around the world.
For a just and regenerative future

Forum for the Future is a leading international sustainability organisation running out of offices in the UK, US, India and Singapore.
Growing our Future US

Working together to accelerate the transition to a just and regenerative agriculture system in the United States.
Sustainability and system change

Climate change, malnutrition, inequality, poverty, ecological degradation. The global challenges we face are so urgent and tricky that we need a solution to match their scale and complexity. This is where system change comes in. We use systems thinking to understand the web of interrelations that create complex problems, anticipate unintended consequences, and identify how and where to take action to meet the SDG goals.
What is Net Positive?

We reinvent strategies for a 1.5°C world. Our Net Positive approach helps business put back more into society and environment than it takes out. Unilever’s pioneering commitment to eliminate fossil fuels from its operations and directly support the generation of more renewable energy than they consume was driven behind the scenes by Forum.
Transport or Mobility: What’s the difference and why does it matter?

Recently, the word transportation is being replaced with mobility. Why is this happening? What’s the difference between them? And why should we care about this change?
Become a system change agent

Learn more about upcoming system change programmes and express your interest.
6 ways Unilever has achieved success through sustainability - and how your business can too

A year ago this week, Unilever launched its Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), one of the most ambitious strategies that a global company has ever embarked on. Pioneering a bold new business model, the company pledged to double in size at the same time as halving its environmental footprint.
Transforming the Purpose of Business

More and more businesses like are setting ambitious targets for positive impact on their operations, value chains and wider operating context. For more than 25 years we have partnered with businesses to navigate this complexity and design impactful solutions that deliver the deeper change that’s needed. Why not get in touch to find out more?

The Challenge

An opportunity for business to reset

Who’s involved and what’s next?

Get in touch

Related links