Pia Heidenmark Cook on staying the course in a sustainability downturn: ‘You are not alone’

Pia Heidenmark Cook has been leading sustainability within companies since the early 2000s, and in that time this topic has clawed its way up the list of corporate priorities – but not without dropping down a few times.

“It's been up and down, and I guess right now we're in a down,” the former IKEA Chief Sustainability Officer and co-author of Embedding Sustainability - How to drive organisational transformation, observes. 

It’s the start of 2025, and climate change denier Donald Trump has just been inaugurated – immediately withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Oil and gas firms are openly backtracking on their green ambitions to aggressively pursue new fossil fuel opportunities. Virtually all Wall Street financial institutions have abandoned the climate alliances they joined with much pomp and circumstance just a few years ago. And even in Europe, legislators may be looking to water down sustainability regulations seen as a beacon of ambition around the globe.

So yes, it does feel like a downturn for sustainability ambition and action. But Heidenmark Cook has seen this before, and she knows the tide will turn soon enough – as long as sustainability practitioners can stay the course.