InTent in Davos during the 2024 World Economic Forum annual meeting: making nature part of the business imperative.

Why did InTent come to Davos during the 2024 WEF annual meeting?

This January, InTent celebrated its 5th anniversary. The organisation came to life in 2019 in Davos during the World Economic Forum annual meeting, as a platform to accelerate sustainable solutions by building bridges between siloed actors. André and Rosalie Hoffmann co-created InTent with the ambition to help channel the creative power of business towards halting and reversing the climate and nature crisis. They strongly believe that the business of business can and should be humanity, and if driven by other incentives than short-term profit maximisation, businesses can become an immense driver of change for the planet and humanity.

The World Economic Forum annual meeting is a leading platform for public-private partnerships. Business representatives, international organisations, government representatives, NGOs, and academia come together to break the silos in which they usually operate and to align on global economic trends and objectives, making this annual meeting in Davos an important moment for InTent to catalyse partnerships for action.

This year, nature was one of the four key themes of the World Economic Forum annual meeting. With a growing focus on artificial intelligence and multiple geopolitical emergencies, InTent’s objective was to safeguard nature’s position at the front and centre of the global conversation, as the system on which all lives and economic activities depend. As disruptive as new technologies appear and as urgent as armed conflict resolutions are needed, focusing solely on the short-term resolution of existing crises only exacerbates the current context of polycrisis. In these highly polarised times, setting trends for a cohesive and sustainable relationship with nature remains key for a liveable present and future.

To do so, InTent co-hosted—with 28 international partners—a programme of nearly 30 panel sessions and workshops around four pillars: nature-positive strategies, sustainable business models, responsible finance, and the future of business education. The programme gathered more than 120 speakers from all continents, confronting points of view and sharing best practices, while it attracted over 6000 attendees in Davos and online.

_{Watch the conclusion words of André Hoffmann - co-founder of InTent.}

How was the context of the 2024 SDG Tent different from previous years?

When InTent gathered its first partners in Davos five years ago, only a handful of private actors were committed to integrating natural, social and human capitals to their business strategy. Five years later, the awareness of businesses’ impacts and dependencies on these three capitals has grown and more actors from a wide range of sectors have joined the conversation. For example, since last year’s release of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) recommendations, 230 companies and financial institutions have committed to using the framework and publishing their nature-related disclosures. Simply put, businesses’ awareness of their impact and dependencies on nature is spreading. With it, a shift of perspective seems to be at work: nature is increasingly approached by economic actors not as a mere resource or commodity but as the source of all life on Earth. This paradigm shift accordingly moved conversations towards systemic approaches and strategies of change rather than singled-out solutions.

^{What is TNFD? Watch InTent’s short video on the topic.}

On the other hand, an exacerbated context of polycrisis is spreading globally. According to the ACLED (The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project) 168 countries saw at least one incident of conflict in 2023. That same year has been the warmest one since global records began in 1850 by a wide margin of 1.18 °C above 20th-century average, making the 1,5°C target (beyond which irreversible climate damage could be contained) increasingly elusive. Six of nine of the planetary boundaries have been overtaken. As the awareness of such polycrisis spread, an exacerbated sense of urgency polarises opinions making collaborative approaches more needed than ever. That is precisely what InTent aimed at providing in Davos this year: an alternative place where conversations can take place, confronting opinions, solutions and practices with an open mind.

Now, how can such observations and learnings be implemented into action ?

Awareness is the first step: as companies and financial institutions become more knowledgeable of their impact and dependencies on nature, they must develop and implement strategies for actively participating in a net-zero, nature-positive and equitable future. To do so, a coalition of organisations have created The Nature Strategy Handbook: a practical guide to support all businesses in the development of their own nature strategy, resulting in nature-positive outcomes. 

Secondly, the InTent community is preparing for the next milestone of the year: COP 16 in Colombia. As collaborative approaches for systemic change become more needed than ever, we would like to encourage any company and financial institution to submit their nature strategy on the It’s Now For Nature platform, so that we can arrive to the Conference of the Parties in Colombia as an aligned coalition of actors and demand clear policies that can accelerate nature strategies at scale and at speed. United behind credible nature strategies, we can set the path for nature-positive business approaches across all sectors.  

It’s #NowForNature.