By Jane Fraser-Jones
The COVID-19 lockdown brought a brutal clarity to New Zealand’s economy and laid bare the importance of our primary sector. News stories throughout the lockdown showed selfless workers isolating together to ensure supermarkets were open, drivers making heroically long round-trips to ensure milk was delivered on time, and a resilient primary sector that kept producing.
With this election marking another milestone in our COVID-19 recovery, the question will now be how businesses across the country can replicate this resilience, and how the primary sector will adapt to and lead the country’s COVID-19 recovery.
By Nicola Swan
Almost 75% of respondents thought consumer demand for sustainable business practices was already affecting the way their business operates, or most likely will in the future.
Increasing disclosure requirements in the next two to three years will increase pressure from consumers, but also from investors, lenders and insurers, to address climate risk for the future prospects of the business – so much so that business focus on climate risk may well move ahead of government policy.
Key drivers pushing sustainability issues front and centre are customer expectations, reputation, and future-proofing. These align with litigation risk: businesses that fail to take action will suffer on social media and also in the courts.