Inaction, Risk, Reality: This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines
What Caught My Eye: Readings and reflections on regenerative finance, farming, and the forces reshaping sustainability.
This week’s selections converge on a single, increasingly unavoidable conclusion: delay is no longer neutral. Across climate risk, ESG finance, food systems, and biodiversity, the costs of inaction are already material, measurable, and in many cases vastly larger than the costs of acting now. What emerges is a growing recognition that resilience, regeneration, and accountability must move from rhetoric into the core logic of markets, regulation, and corporate strategy.
We start with new estimates showing that climate-related financial risks already run into the trillions, and that adaptation would be far cheaper than continued exposure. Several pieces interrogate the credibility gap in ESG, from persistent greenwashing in Europe’s fund market to academic evidence that ESG investing has often functioned more as reputation management than real-world change. Others look forward, examining how circular mineral systems, regenerative business models, and “polluter pays” approaches in food could realign incentives toward resilience. The roundup closes with warnings about global governance retreat and overlooked infrastructure that quietly underpin collective action.
Read on below for highlights:
Cost of Inaction – Climate risks already exceed $6 trillion for major firms, while far cheaper adaptation could significantly cut exposure.
ESG Market Gaps – Weak and fragmented EU supervision continues to enable greenwashing, with ESG claims the most common source of misleading fund marketing.
Circular Minerals – Recycling critical minerals could cut emissions by up to 80% and reduce geopolitical dependence, but policy and infrastructure lag behind.
ESG Impact-Washing – Research finds ESG investing driven more by fund flows and reputation than real impact or improved corporate behavior.
Regenerative Reset – John Elkington argues ESG’s weak foundations have led to an “ESG winter,” requiring a shift toward resilience and regeneration.
Food Pays Back – Applying polluter-pays to Big Food would internalize environmental costs and move accountability upstream.
Global Retreat – US exits from climate and biodiversity bodies threaten global coordination at a critical moment.
Plant Data Gap – Fragmented botanic data systems limit conservation impact; treating plant collections as shared infrastructure could unlock climate resilience.
Cost of Inaction
Climate-related financial risks already exceed $6 trillion across roughly 4,000 large companies, driven by flooding, drought, extreme weather, and rising insurance costs that directly threaten assets, supply chains, and profitability. Investing about $1.4 trillion in adaptation and resilience measures could significantly reduce exposure, making near-term action far cheaper than long-term climate inaction.
Read more: Climate change could cost businesses big time (Yale Climate Connections)
ESG Market Gaps
Fragmented national marketing rules and weak supervisory practices continue to undermine the EU’s single market for investment funds, allowing greenwashing to persist despite a shared regulatory framework. An ESMA report finds ESG claims are the most common source of misleading communications, especially affecting retail investors, due to ex-post supervision, selective disclosure, and exaggerated sustainability messaging unsupported by fund strategies.
Read more: The single market for investment funds remains fragmented, and greenwashing persists, the ESMA report shows (Informat.ro)
Circular Minerals
A circular economy could become a second major supply source for critical minerals, reducing reliance on geographically concentrated mining while strengthening energy security, emissions reduction, and resilience in clean energy supply chains. Recycling batteries, solar panels, and industrial by-products can cut emissions by up to 80% compared with primary mining and align industrial competitiveness with post-COP30 climate commitments, but scaling this model requires coordinated policy, infrastructure investment, and regulatory standards.
Read more: How a circular economy could strengthen the clean energy supply chain of the future (World Economic Forum)
ESG Impact-Washing
New academic research argues the ESG investment boom has been driven less by genuine impact-seeking and more by reputation management, trend-following, and fund-flow incentives among institutional investors. The study finds widespread herding behavior regardless of companies’ actual ESG performance, with little evidence that ESG inflows improved corporate behavior, lowered capital costs, or delivered superior returns—suggesting ESG often functions as a marketing label rather than a mechanism for change.
Read more: Was the ESG Investment Boom “Impact-Washing?” (Institutional Investor)
Regenerative Reset
Amid an “ESG winter,” John Elkington argues that geopolitical turbulence in 2025 has forced sustainability leaders to move beyond ESG branding toward resilience and regeneration embedded in core business strategy. He contends that ESG grew too quickly on weak foundations, enabling greenwashing and opportunism, and that the future role of CSOs lies in addressing systemic risks, supply chain fragility, and regeneration as the basis of true resilience, rather than storytelling or disclosure alone.
Read more: John Elkington: ‘Donald Trump has given a gift to the sustainability profession’ (edie)
Food Pays Back
Applying the “polluter pays” principle to industrial agriculture would force major food corporations to internalize the environmental costs of emissions, deforestation, water use, and biodiversity loss, shifting responsibility away from consumers. The piece argues that without binding accountability, combined with regenerative practices, alternative proteins, and targeted public investment, the global food system will continue to drive climate breakdown despite mounting innovation and funding pledges.
Read more: The Next Frontier Of Climate Accountability: Making Big Food Pay Its Ecological Bill (Eurasia Review)
Global Retreat
The US decision to withdraw from major international climate and biodiversity bodies undermines global cooperation at a critical moment, weakening scientific coordination, multilateral governance, and collective accountability for planetary crises. Exiting institutions that underpin climate action and biodiversity protection risks slowing progress, eroding trust, and leaving gaps in global efforts to stabilize ecosystems and regenerate nature.
Read more: What the US withdrawal from international bodies means for climate change and biodiversity (Le Monde) [paywall]
Plant Data Gap
Researchers warn that fragmented and incompatible data systems across the world’s botanic gardens are preventing vast plant knowledge from being fully mobilized to address biodiversity loss and climate change. A new study argues that treating living plant collections as shared global infrastructure, through an integrated, equitable data ecosystem, would significantly strengthen conservation, restoration, and climate resilience efforts, especially in biodiversity-rich regions.
Read more: World’s vast plant knowledge not being fully exploited to tackle biodiversity and climate challenges, warn researchers (University of Cambridge)
The regenerative business practices and sustainability innovations highlighted in this week’s Regenerative Insights directly tackle the critical issues of corporate responsibility explored in my recent book explored in my recent book, The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Cost.
