How to bridge competitiveness and sustainability in 2025

2025 will be key for keeping the crucial momentum for the sustainability transformation alive.  Environmental policy and sustainable finance must address the competitiveness concerns of companies and generate business opportunities for SMEs and smallholders along value chains. This is why in 2024, we have met with many high-level experts around the globe to discuss how to make sustainable finance work in practice in the EU and through international cooperation. We focused on environmental ambition, sustainable value chains, and greening trade. 

We know that sustainability and competitiveness are two sides of the same coin

From our work with SMEs, larger companies and asset managers we have plenty of examples of how simplification must not mean that we give up on our environmental goals in 2025. 

To make sustainable finance work in Europe, two core issues need to be tackled:

1. the lack of coordination between stakeholders who have already developed successful sustainable finance solutions. Therefore, we propose an EU “Knowledge Hub”; and
2. the need to demonstrate how to tackle the sustainability reporting and due diligence challenges. This entails showing how to turn them into financing opportunities. We propose a sectoral approach.

Read here our full action plan to make Sustainable Finance work for Europe:

But we also need to make international cooperation work for environmental ambition, sustainable value chains and greening trade. Our workshops identified two major challenges to solve:

1. The lack of international coordination. We need a sector-specific approach to align, guide and implement disclosure and due diligence internationally; and
2. Reporting and due diligence challenges need to be turned into business opportunities for all actors involved, upstream, midstream and downstream, in the most climate and nature relevant value chains. We must empower the stakeholders along the value chains.

Read here our full action plan to bridge competitiveness and sustainability through international cooperation:

Our workshops on making EU sustainable finance regulation work for the sustainability transformation

Both action papers are based on the valuable insights and steps identified during the workshop on “Making EU Sustainable Finance Regulation Work for the Transformation in Germany, Europe and around the Globe”. We organised the workshop together with Stiftung Mercator and with the support of the SAFE project, part of the Team Europe Initiative on Deforestation-Free Value Chains, in Berlin on 30 October 2024.

Read more about our work with Stiftung Mercator on how we try to make sustainable finanance work in Germany here.

Read more about our work with the SAFE project on deforestation-free value chains here.

Previous workshops in this series were organised in Brussels in June 2024, during New York Climate Week in September 2024, at Biodiversity-COP16 in Cali and at Climate-COP29 in Baku. They were organised jointly with our partners at CDP, GFI, GRI and IEEP. The next steps and conclusions in this report represent the exchanges during these workshops. However, they do not necessarily represent the views of every participating individual and organisation.

We thank all participants and contributors and now look forward to putting the ideas into action in 2025, together with you.