Navigating the sustainability landscape over the next year calls for an increased alignment of sustainability and economic value. Leveraging insights from BNP Paribas Markets 360 and BNP Paribas Exane research teams, the Bank releases its ‘ACTS for 2025’ white paper, which provides an economic lens to the key sustainability issues driving decision-making across markets and economies, covering the four strategic themes shaping investor and corporate sustainability-focused actions in 2025. These include:
1. Adaptation
Climate adaptation has become a strategic imperative for economic resilience and presents potential long-term value for all regions across various sectors. We delve into the pressures facing the global food system, analysing how innovations in sustainable agriculture tackle food security. Water is another prevalent issue for investors seeking to address negative jaw effects of less water and increasing demand, due to its crucial importance for many sectors across economies and its relevance for communities. Adaptation pressures facing the global economy are an opportunity for creating more resilient built environments, including greater infrastructure investment to manage physical climate risks.
2. Conservation
Conserving resources through energy efficiency, circular business models, and increasing investment into natural ecosystem services supports cost savings, value creation, and business model innovation. Energy efficiency is an essential enabler for reducing carbon emissions and accelerating the low carbon transition, while circular business models minimise waste and emissions by reusing and recycling materials. They also have become a necessity for goods producers committed to net zero. Investment in natural ecosystem services, including the protection and restoration of biodiversity, could improve agricultural productivity, drive resilience investment, and create ecosystem services benefits to stabilise the most vulnerable populations and manage migration challenges.
3. Transition
Scaling low-carbon economy-wide transition is vital for implementing the Paris Agreement, with investment in renewables, electrification of transport, cleaner industries, and sustainable supply chains becoming ever more relevant for companies and investors. These transition themes tackle energy security, spur greener growth, and create jobs at a local level across sectors. In the fixed income space, the momentum for sustainable capital markets remains strong for financing low carbon solutions, given the growth in green and sustainable bond market issuance in recent years.
4. Societal resilience
Ensuring equitable and resilient societies will become an economic resilience driver. This focuses on progressing prosperity and inclusivity in a fast-changing global labour force, understanding the climate health nexus and ageing population demographics, promoting gender equality, and balancing social aspects of responsible artificial intelligence (AI) deployment. Blended finance directs greater finance flows to developing countries, stabilising local communities to ensure they feel safe and resilient. This could be crucial in achieving an equitable and inclusive transition, while avoiding civil unrest and subsequent societal consequences. Meanwhile the responsible deployment of AI remains important in the year ahead, given the developments of regulations and technology evolution in recent months.
