Media holds a solution to the sustainability emergency. It must use it now

The media industry must treat the climate and sustainability emergency… like an emergency. Media can be the source of pressure that simultaneously pushes politics, the public, and all business sectors to change at the speed and systems level we need. Financial services holds a similar influence, which we cover here. But while banks and capital markets firms can trigger a global systemic “replumbing,” that power lies with only a handful of the most senior leaders at the largest globally influential firms and institutions.

In the media industry, however, decision makers at all levels of seniority in all sizes of organizations have a bigger opportunity and greater responsibility—and more freedom to take both. The potential impact goes far beyond media’s own internal sustainability to global customer engagement and systemic influence. The opportunity is to be part of a critical mass of policies, people, and businesses that move first and positively define the coming decades.

Media can impact all spheres of sustainability, but people and global systems must be the priority

All organizations should be clear on their sustainability influence over the three spheres (internal sustainability, customer engagement, systems influence) in Exhibit 1. By getting their own houses in order, organizations address their internal sustainability. By engaging customers, they can affect behaviors. But organizations, alone and in collaboration, can also change systems: how industries operate, how governments see public demand, and what societies deem success.

Most media firms have a relatively small “internal” sustainability footprint compared with industries like oil and gas or fashion and consumer goods

Internal sustainability examples for media firms might include physical offices (heating and lighting), travel (commuting and corporate), and IT and technology (electricity powering devices and servers). Some, like one cartoon-mouse-based company, may have the odd theme park and a reasonable footprint from its productions. Content consumption and many other value-chain elements also contribute.

Exhibit 1: Media may be the last hope of achieving anything remotely resembling a solution to the climate and sustainability emergency. Its systems influence is the key

Source: HFS Research, 2023

Myriad challenges impact an organization’s internal sustainability efforts, such as visibility into supply chains and finding benchmarking data. But for the media sector, improving internal sustainability is a more straightforward task. The far bigger opportunity, responsibility, and challenge for media employees, teams, and organizations involves the two larger spheres of sustainability influence:

• How media engages its customers: in the media’s case, customers (paying and not-paying) cover most people worldwide through channels that include news and entertainment.
• How media influences systems-level change—by the narratives the sector drives and the pressure it exerts on policymaking, people, and companies.

Media’s influence has advanced sustainability. But not enough

Seaspiracy, a Netflix documentary, highlighted the unsustainable nature of the fishing industry and how supposed “sustainability” labels are impossible to validate or enforce.

Blue Planet II, a BBC and David Attenborough effort, started a new focus on ocean plastic by graphically showing its life-threatening effects on sea life. (Although some companies used banning plastic straws, an important but small part of their overall impact, to greenwash themselves.)

The movie Don’t Look Up painted a terrifying picture of the politicization of an approaching world-ending meteorite (a very deliberate metaphor for the climate and sustainability emergency). It featured the science-bashing, denialism, and attempted commercialization we often see around climate and sustainability.

There are also news companies dedicating either their whole selves or significant energy to highlighting the emergency. Mongabay and The Guardian are two of many.

The examples and impacts listed here need to multiply and scale—not only through one-off or serial shows but across news (print, digital, and video), entertainment, and all forms of communication.

Media is perhaps the only industry that can put systems-changing pressure on governments, the public, and all industries

Think back to when COVID was the dominant media agenda. Things changed. Not as quickly as they needed to, but they changed—and big. Bigger than what many commentators thought acceptable for the public.

Think of the coverage of George Floyd’s murder and the ongoing influence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Think of the #MeToo movement, which revolutionized attitudes toward sexual assault across the entertainment business and society.

These examples are horrific. The horizon will bring many more at a scale most can’t imagine. The global context is already devastating across the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) spectrum. But as well as communicating the horror correctly, there is also a role for media in communicating the positive vision of a sustainable future. Cleaner air, wellbeing associated with nature and more stable lives, and peace and equality, would all be more than worthwhile for the media to integrate into their efforts. (More to come soon on balancing the horror and hope of sustainability.)

The Bottom Line: Media must use its influence, which extends worldwide and far beyond its industry walls, to lead the rapid systems change required to address the sustainability emergency.

The first step for the media sector is to portray the climate and sustainability emergency in a manner befitting an emergency, dedicating media time, energy, and mindful discussion and language to sustainability. Individuals, teams, and whole organizations can create the spark required to ignite the systems-level changes that politics, the public, and business must make.

Enough smart people exist to innovate and implement to address sustainability over the coming years and decades. More immediately, we need the media to put these three actions in motion now:

• Influence regulation by creating political narratives that align with the global sustainability emergency.
• Shift consumer behavior by embedding sustainability appropriately across all contact points.
• Mold business models through collaboration with industry sectors and the pressure policy and people can assert.