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Eine Kollage vom Director von phiyond by adelphi beim Weltwirtschaftsforum in Davos 2025

Davos 2025: Review and insights on sustainability

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The World Economic Forum in Davos has become a focal point for debates around sustainability and business, but what truly stands out from this year’s event? phiyond Managing Director Nikolas Bradford reflects on the key moments and lessons from Davos 2025, exploring the tension between short-term business priorities and the urgent need for sustainable change. Trust, community and technology are explored as essential themes, with practical approaches for businesses to align with sustainability goals and turn challenges into opportunities for success. 

There is much criticism to be heard and read, but what can we truly take away from the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual meeting this January in Davos? "Turning challenges into opportunities" was my guiding principle for that week. I shared this in a post I made on the way to Davos, anticipating a potential clash between "sustainability" and "business." Such a clash seems illogical, as both are inherently linked.

Key Topics of the World Economic Forum 

This year’s meeting was themed “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,” focusing on five interconnected pillars:

  1. Rebuilding Trust: Exploring new avenues for international and societal collaboration.
  2. Reimagining Growth: Identifying novel sources of economic expansion in the current global landscape.
  3. Investing in People: Emphasising human capital development and fostering resilient societies.
  4. Safeguarding the Planet: Accelerating actions on energy, climate, and nature through innovative partnerships and technologies.
  5. Industries in the Intelligent Age: Balancing short-term objectives with long-term goals amid industrial transformations.

From this, it is evident that, according to the WEF, business and sustainability are intertwined. In its 2025 risk report, the WEF also clearly states that the top four global risks ranked by severity over the short and long term over a ten-year period, are environmental risks: (1) extreme weather events, (2) biodiversity loss, (3) changes to earth systems, and (4) natural resource shortages.

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World Economic Forum 2025
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Criticisms of the World Economic Forum Meeting

The criticism regarding the WEF’s meeting can be summarised into two main points:

  1. A sense of “Business first, climate second”, as Luisa Neubauer phrased it in her Video from Davos, is in the air. Most leaders, whether at Davos or in other forums, recognise the importance of sustainability for numerous reasons, including protecting the planet and responding to pressure from clients and employees to transform. I can totally follow that perspective. We in the “sustainability bubble” know that the challenges are pressing, and that only sustainable business models are future-poof. Companies that don’t transform will not be on the market anymore in a few years. However, there remains a strong focus on short-term (mostly economic) figures, causing decision-makers to overlook the consequences of insufficient action for their businesses, the planet, and humanity.
  2. "Enough discussion – we need action!" This is a common critique of both the WEF’s annual meeting and the COPs. This point is particularly valid considering that 2024 was the year we missed the 1.5°C target, faced major setbacks in sustainability regulations (e.g., reporting obligations), and saw an increase in "green-hushing." Currently, sustainability is experiencing a "dent."
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We can do better

I can fully relate to both criticisms. While sustainability and the urgent need to change how we live and do business were present at Davos 2025, they did not receive the priority it deserves. At the end of the day, every other topic, including security and peace, is related to it. It is not the number one topic everyone constantly discusses, as it should be. However, I’d like to summarise under six guiding keywords why Davos is a success for sustainability and what needs to happen to advance the topic further, in Davos or elsewhere.

PSYCHOLOGY

The main challenge that I see for sustainability – and I have said so many times in the past – is not a technical or economical one, it is a psychological one.

I was very happy to attend a talk in which Sweta Chakraborty from We Don't Have Time gave the audience the scientific basics for that: Human brains are simply not wired for future risks – but for current ones. So it’s understandable somehow that we don’t evolve our of the “business first, climate second” situations and that we lack action. Another point that Sweta made is that we need trusted communicators (see next point), which also serves as a solution to this “psychology challenge”.

TRUST

According to science (again quoted from Sweta), around 50% of the impact of a message depends not on the content, but on the trust in the communicator. Companies, institutes, think tanks and every person or institution shall therefore rethink its communication and the communicators and establish partnerships with TRUSTED communicators, e.g. sports persons or actors. Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research made it clear again, that “we are putting the stability of the entire earth system at risk”. Not the first time he and other scientists have warned us, right? (“don’t look up”). For that reason, we at phiyond by adelphi see “transparent communication” as the final phase in our clients’ transformation journey.

Robert Metzke, Philips Global Head of Sustainability, shared this wonderful quote in a panel: “Change is moving at the speed of trust!”.

Trust was a topic often seen on headlines, but only few made it their main topic like the House of Trust by yeswetrust. As Stefan Kanalga puts in in his summary: A thriving community of change-makers coming together (…). It inspires and energises us to be in the presence of so many impact-oriented Founders, Investors, Executives, and Changemakers leading with purpose first.

COMMUNITY

As a returner to Davos I can say that community is key for making the Forum a success for you. Places provide the exchange as a wider community with like-minded people and experts and provide a home base. Where you learn about the latest chatter and where you get invitations to or hear about that super interesting panel the next day. For me, this was the House of Futur/io Institute. Many thanks to Harald Neidhardt and the team Luciana Bacchi Prestes for the wonderful organization.

Other great places to revisit were e.g. the Climate Hub Davos by GreenUp Switzerland and the SDG tent with packed agendas, panels and exhibitions across all ESG topics.

It was there I could meet and learn about so many inspirational people and their success stories.

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Beim Weltwirtschaftsforum sitzen wichtige Entscheidungsträger*innen in einem Kreis, um die derzeitige Lage in der Welt zu diskutieren
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SUCCESS STORIES and DE-BUBBLE

Building up on the points above, all the sessions made it so clear again that we urgently need to do 2 things:

  1. Tell positive stories and
  2. get out of the “sustainability bubble” to bring more and more people and corporations on to the “right side of history”. UN Secretary António Guterres made such a remark during his address at Davos on January 22nd. In his speech, he criticized financial institutions and industries for retreating from their climate commitments, emphasizing that such actions are shortsighted and position these entities on the "wrong side of history" and science.

I can only share a few examples here of how inspiring people tell stories that convince – especially people outside of our bubble:

  • DHL ’s Nikola Hagleitner shared valuable insights how DHL tackles scope 3 emissions, including More to be found out in her post.
  • BREITLING's Chief Sustainability Office Aurelia Figueroa gave one of the most inspiring and credible CSO speeches I have ever witnessed: Reporting on sustainability actions is “a soul searching activity every year”. She gave insights on the voluntary introduction of a carbon price and what this allows to finance. How her teams puts the question “What helps the community?” in the centre of their actions. All that while being humble at the same time: “Still some answers are not available”
  • Daniela V. Fernandez shared how her Sustainable Ocean Alliance activates young people, develops and implements innovative solutions, and mobilizes the global movement to restore the health of the ocean in our lifetime.
  • Elina Teboul gave valuable and thought-provoking statements how everything that we currently do is retroactive. It shouldn’t take a crisis before we act – and we need to align human rights with nature’s laws in an “earth-law and eco-centric approach”. One example that we can already see implemented is Sri Lanka giving elephants human rights.
  • Markus Gilles gave a powerful speech on how Planet Wild funds monthly rewilding missions that bring back endangered species, clean up our oceans, and rewild entire forests.
  • Carolin Güthenke represented German Biochar e.V. and gave insights into investing in Biochar Carbon Removal projects.
  • I learned from Thomas Demmel about Bton.io's mission to achieve large-scale decarbonization of concrete, lowering costs and making sustainability more accessible.

TECHNOLOGY

Of course AI made headlines in Davos. Technology can and will help us to make this world a better place, to become better colleagues, leaders, sportspeople.

But – we need to see it as an enabler for a greater cause. Technology will not take away or reduce our responsibility to act and to implement change. What is all the data good for and what are all the insights good for, if we don’t follow up on it and change? Change our business models if we learn they are harmful to people and the planet, implement new materials into our portfolios or use the time that was made free through automation and digitization for creative, value adding tasks?

DENT vs. TREND

The “mega trend” sustainability will remain exactly that, we are just in a dent-phase due to current changes in countries’ leaderships and the above mentioned “business first” attitudes. Why: Majorities want their countries to strengthen climate commitments. Globally, 80% called for their country to strengthen its commitments to address climate change. People want to move away from fossil fuels quickly. Globally, 72% of people want their country to transition quickly from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. Within 85% of countries (62 countries), a majority supported a quick transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy

Accordingly, sustainable and planet positive business models and technologies will be the economically successful ones, while the others will be phased out.

What we need to do is to put long term economic success over short term thinking. This way we can integrate all ecological (most pressingly conservation, regeneration, carbon-positivity) and social aspects into all corporations’ DNA and action plan.

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Conclusion: We can do better – let’s do it!

Criticism of the WEF alone won’t help our cause, we need to use it as a platform to engage, connect and co-create solutions. My take-aways are:

  1. It’s not “business or sustainability” but sustainable business (at phiyond we call it future-proof business). Nature and people positive business models are those that have a future.
  2. Understand the psychological reasons for insufficient action – and change your action and communication plan accordingly
  3. Long term thinking is what is needed to secure the future of any corporation on this planet – and thus the future of mankind.
  4. Positive and engaging storytelling – in addition to clearly stating the risks we face. This way we can turn challenges into opportunities.