Guest reflections on 2025 and predictions on 2026

Guest reflections by Mike Barry,:Co-Founder Planeatry Alliance, Strategic Advisor, speaker, commentator on Sustainable Business

Lots of good reflections on 2025 and predictions on what's to come in 2026, but here's my favourite must-read from the incomparable John Elkington.

His deep reflections on the big transformative changes we need in politics, markets and business are underpinned by a very rare, very rich 50+ year global career in sustainability and an equally rare humility that allows him to re-visit and evolve his thinking, always in partnership with others, as great ideas come into harsh and unforgiving contact with the 'real world'.

So, what stands out in his latest missive:

✅ 'Backlash' unpacked - 'Trump 2.0 may be the stress test that proved that the sustainability agenda is scientifically robust enough to withstand denial; economically inevitable enough to survive deregulation; and politically durable enough to regenerate after backlash. A backlash that may be interpreted as the final convulsions of a failing system.

✅ Look forwards not backwards - AI’s rapid progress is also amplifying unintended effects—risks that could grow far greater if current trajectories continue unchecked. This, in turn, raises a deeper question. Like the French with their ill-fated Maginot Line, has the sustainability field been intent on fighting the last war - focused on legacy sectors such as autos, chemicals, and fossil fuels - while underestimating the longer-term impact of the breakthrough sectors now reshaping the market landscape?

✅ Science is crucial - It helps us define the problem space with precision, uncovering causal mechanisms, feedback loops, thresholds, and tipping points that our intuition alone cannot grasp. It expands sustainability from ethics to engineering to deliver real world solutions. Finally science enables speed and scale by compressing timelines from decades to years—or even months.

✅ Short term RoI or long term systemic transformation? - businesses need to deliver both in an integrated way. Today's focus on ESG (a 'window' into the status quo) delivers neither.

✅ Signal amongst the noise - Beneath the 'noisy surface' deep economic and social 'tectonic plates' are shifting as a sixth wave of economic transformation creates new national/corporate winners and losers (see diagram)

✅ National security = sustainability - Iceland has designated the potential collapse of the Atlantic Ocean current system as a national security threat, spurring planning for worst-case scenarios.

So much more richness to read through in the full article (see comments for link). Thank you John and a very happy (and regenerative!) New Year to one and all.