The state of our environment as a call to adventure

The Ministry for the Environment has just released Our environment 2025 Tō tātou taiao. It makes grim reading. Maybe it’s grimmer as for many of us there are no surprises, writes Rachel Brown.

There’s the litany of deforestation, species extinction and pollution we’ve become accustomed to. And there’s climate change, that anxiety-inducing beating bass drum of unsustainability.

But this is also a turning point. A challenge, yes — but one that smart, future-focused businesses are ready to meet.

But to those with a certain kind of mindset, it’s also a source of a certain kind of excitement. Like an endurance athlete eying up the mountain ahead, they see the challenge they have set themselves.

Many of those people are business people. In 2025 we live in a world where many feel let down by politicians. Business has become, in the last few decades, a vital source of innovation, change and trust. That’s a responsibility we can get our teeth into.

Because savvy business people understand what reports like this one mean. This, and the flood of similar info pouring out of every serious scientific body on Earth.

They mean the end of business as usual. And who gets excited about business as usual anyway?

It’s time for business unusual. Business as risky, exploratory and fun. Business that changes ourselves and changes the world.

Because there’s no point knowing about this stuff if we don’t do something about it.

For example, how fun is it to muck in on conservation and restoration efforts in your local area? It’s a great way to connect to the local community, be a good neighbour and galvanise your team around positivity. You can bring your kids, and show them how good it feels to do good work.

But the challenge also means doing all the cumbersome bits you know you should be doing in the background. Doing the admin on waste auditing and minimisation, ethical procurement and pollution control. That’s like the grind of training for any challenge. Like Lewis Pugh, the ice-endurance swimmer who raises worldwide awareness on environmental issue once said: “Finish every session. The real training starts the moment you want to stop.”

And like any would-be athlete, you need the numbers. If you don’t produce a sustainability report, no matter what size your business is, you should. It’s a basic health check for your operation. It doesn’t have to be War and Peace. It needs to be an honest reckoning of your impact on the environment – both positive and negative. It’s about the fact that you care and want to be in on the solutions.

None of us is perfect. Otherwise, the state of our environment would be different. But unless you’re in a massive corporate, you don’t have to get caught up in technical formats. The biggest pitfall, like in any challenging endeavour, is going too far too fast. You’re looking for the sweet spot. It’s demoralising setting targets you know you’re not going to meet. And if you do that, then people won’t take you seriously. But you need to stretch yourself. If you did 3/10 last year, how you can push that up to 4/10? If you did only five percent, what’s the next five?

Keep it real, and use the many free and easy resources out there to help you.

That’s all “sustainability as usual”, which has been around for decades.

That only gets us to the start line. It doesn’t take us to where we want to go.

As the report makes clear – nearly all the numbers are still going in the wrong direction.

We need to dig deeper, smarter and stay adaptive to take more risks.

That means finding the courage to redesign our products and services – our businesses, to meet this challenge head on. It means letting go of what’s comfortable and leaning into what’s possible. Not with fixed plans, but with flexible, evolving approaches that can respond to the complexity around us.

So, how could working in your community become the core of what your business does? How could your sustainability report become a celebration rather than an apology?

We’ll need to work on this together. None of us can walk such a rocky path alone. And sharing the trials and tribulations unleashes the joy too. And, delightfully, no one will walk it the same way as it’s a shared challenge.

Because we need sustainability as flow state. That is what will take it beyond the mundane and the stressful, into a new, lighter, more exciting, more vibrant way of being in the world.

And if we meet this challenge, we’ll feel the world respond.