Expert Contribution: The importance of creating entrepreneurial sustainable ecosystems to face Climate Change

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world how economic sectors and countries around the globe operate. The global economy took more time to recover than originally estimated. To illustrate this, with the global supply chain crisis there was a lack of containers, shipping rates skyrocketed, and production and demand of products seemed not be in sync (Broadman, 2021).

Analyzing the response to COVID-19, it can be concluded that the world is not ready for climate change. The pandemic showed that companies and their systems are not able to react adequately to abrupt changes. According to Peter Giger Zurich Insurance Groups’ Chief Risk Officer, “failure to act on climate change could shrink the global GDP by one-sixth over the next 10 years.” (Migliaccio,2022). Based on this prediction, it is reasonable that the United Nations for Climate Change consider it as the major threat to humanity, on both, long and short terms (UNFCC,2022).

The world remains off track to beat back the climate crisis and this has already important consequences. In last year’s climate summit in Glasgow, goals were made to keep global warming to a rise of 1.8 °C best case scenario and 2.5 °C in the worst-case scenario.

The urgency of this problem cannot be expressed enough, because climate change is already causing permanent damages. For example, water resources that are drying up and unfortunately some animal species have become extinct (Helen Mountford, 2021).

There are four specific ideas that could contribute in the battle against climate change. First, creating new solutions that tackle local needs and problems originated by human inaction. Second, countries around the world need to boost their economies by offering local solutions that contribute to combat climate change. Third, every country in the world needs to start supporting their local SMEs that are oriented to reduce global warming. Last, by offering new products or services that reduce CO2 emissions, or solutions that substitute the use of fossil fuels.

Innovation is another key player in this scenario, as it offers new opportunities, companies can react faster to change, it contributes to job creation, and at the same time understands and reacts to market needs. Innovative ideas applied to technology could be part of the solution for climate change, but they must come from companies with a sustainable business model (SBM), this means, a company that creates economic value, social value, and environmental value.

In order to create companies with a powerful SBM, a strong entrepreneurial sustainable ecosystem is needed. An ecosystem where SMEs can have access to the market, access to financial resources, but more importantly a strong network. An ecosystem where big companies and corporations can find solutions to support and mentor these companies to increase the success rate of SMEs.

An example of this ecosystem is the one created by CLIMATE-KIC, the European knowledge and innovation community. This ecosystem is working to a zero-carbon economy and it combines the programs of ideation (Climathon), incubation (ClimateLaunchpad), and acceleration (ClimAccelator) in over 55 countries worldwide. All the programs are executed per country and take local needs into account, linking local problems with global concerns.

In 2021 México participated for the first time with the incubation program ClimateLaunchpad, incubating 11 companies with solutions that fit the needs of the Mexican market. In 2022 the incubation program will be executed together with the acceleration program, companies that want to scale-up will receive mentoring and access to finance in a regional level. This program is executed between Colombia and México, in order to show that countries can stand together to face climate change.

We would like to invite our readers, and Mexican companies to look for the Climathon Mexico City 2022, ClimateLaunchpad 2022 Mexico competition and ClimAccelerator 2022 Colombia-Mexico and support your favorite SMEs. Follow the Mexican solutions, entrepreneurs, start-ups, and scale-ups and contribute to take actions in a local level to “face climate change one start-up at a time”.

Information provided by GreenID

Holland House would like to thank our HHM Silver Member GreenID for submitting this week´s Expert Contribution.

If you have an expert-written article that you would like to have published on our HHM website, monthly newsletter and social media platforms, feel free to contact us to learn about requirements and guidelines.