When Priorities Collide: keeping our eye on the horizon in an uncertain world

Some settings invite us to see the world differently. At the Pathé Palace, a historic Parisian cinema, the Green Summit 2026 brought together leaders to explore a defining challenge of our time: how to navigate a future in which geopolitical tensions, technological disruption, resource constraints and environmental imperatives increasingly collide.

Cinema offers a fitting lens through which to consider this challenge. Every story unfolds against a changing backdrop; its characters must respond to unexpected turns, reconsider their choices, and find a way forward without knowing exactly how the story will end. Today, businesses and societies face a similar task. The assumptions that once shaped long-term strategies are being challenged, and the ability to adapt has become as important as the ambition to transform.

Yet navigating uncertainty is not simply about reacting to the next twist. It is also about retaining a sense of direction, imagining alternative futures and making choices today that keep better outcomes within reach. Just as art can expand our collective imagination, sustainability can help businesses look beyond immediate pressures to build resilience, strengthen competitiveness, and create long-term value.

This was the central question running through the Green Summit 2026: when priorities collide, how can we adapt our approach without losing sight of where we need to go? Against this backdrop, sustainability is becoming far more than an environmental commitment. It is a strategic capability for resilience, competitiveness and long-term value creation.

The priorities shaping our world today are no longer separate, they are actively colliding. “Security” means something much different today than it did just a decade ago. Far beyond military strength or geopolitical stability, it now also depends on access to energy, water, food, technology and critical materials – the necessities our economies need to keep essential services running. At the same time, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is creating extraordinary, and somewhat daunting, opportunities while simultaneously increasing demand for these resources and introducing new risks. Demographic decline is reshaping economies and public finances, while businesses and governments face mounting pressure to strengthen industrial competitiveness and accelerate the ecological transition.

These challenges are interconnected, often reinforcing one another, and sometimes pulling decision-makers in opposing directions.

Over the past two years, the sustainability agenda has faced a dramatic plot twist, an ESG backlash. We’ve seen some backtracking on commitments, regulatory rollbacks, and diluted ambitions - though with varying intensity across geographies and sectors. But behind the headlines, is this a genuine crisis of trust, or is it simply a new feature of our polarized world? While the tone has sometimes changed, strategic U-turns remain rare.

But the world has changed. For much of the past decade, environmental action has been organized around commitments and global goals. That framing of the transition is being rewritten, not abandoned. Sustainability is no longer a commitment to be made; it is a capability to be embedded in growth, competitiveness, resilience and into this quest for protection. It is no longer a standalone, siloed priority.

This complex reality was the starting point for the 2026 Green Summit. The central questions of the event were both urgent and encompassing: in a more fragmented and volatile world, how can businesses and societies make the choices necessary to remain resilient, competitive, and prepared for the future? How to minimize tradeoffs and maximize synergies between priorities?

The opening discussion between Orith Azoulay, Global Head of Green & Sustainable Finance at Natixis CIB, and Mohamed Kallala, CEO of Natixis, in Charge of Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking, explored what these converging pressures mean for investment and financing.

From a CIB perspective, the challenge is no longer a matter of identifying and managing individual risks. Geopolitical tensions are reshaping supply chains and redrawing trade routes. Artificial intelligence (AI) is creating new opportunities, but at the same time, introducing cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Energy security, defense, industrial transformation, and decarbonization are all competing for investment. And so, the question is increasingly looking at how risks interact, and how their combined effects can create vulnerabilities that are difficult to anticipate in isolation.

For Mohamed Kallala, supporting clients means helping them navigate these interconnected challenges while making deliberate choices about where capital and expertise can have the greatest impact.

The same pool of capital must support digital infrastructure, energy transition, industrial capabilities, defense, healthcare, and other essential investments. Financing decisions therefore require a sophisticated understanding of clients’ needs, sector-specific risks, and strategic dependencies.

Rather than forcing choices between competing priorities, the focus must shift to how investments should be sequenced and where they can reinforce one another (vice-versa responses and solutions). You cannot, for instance, build digital infrastructure without simultaneously securing the energy, water, and cybersecurity systems on which it relies.

Ultimately, capital allocation is becoming as much a test of strategic resilience as it is financial return. While banks and investors cannot eliminate uncertainty, they can help businesses understand their exposure, make informed choices, and build the capabilities needed to operate through successive periods of disruption.

If the world is becoming more volatile, how should governments and businesses plan for the long term? Speaking with Alain Durré, Chief EMEA Economist at Natixis CIB, Clément Beaune, France’s High Commissioner for Strategy and Planning, argued that instability is not a reason to abandon long-term thinking. On the contrary, it makes planning all the more important.

Drawing on France’s tradition of post-war planning, he argued that the point is not to predict every development correctly, but to agree on a few important priorities and create a framework within which present decisions can be made.

Today, organizations have access to unprecedented quantities of data, increasingly sophisticated forecasting tools, and ever more powerful AI. Yet the fundamental human challenge remains the same: agreeing on collective priorities and maintaining them long enough to deliver meaningful change.

Demographic change is the perfect example. We know exactly what an aging population means for pensions, healthcare, and public finances, yet responding to these implications requires difficult choices about how resources should be allocated between competing needs. The same applies to the ecological transition, industrial competitiveness, and security.

For businesses, predictable frameworks are particularly important when decisions involve major infrastructure, innovation, or long investment cycles. Uncertainty cannot be eliminated, but stable strategic direction and coordination between public and private investment can help organizations commit with greater confidence.

The objective is not rigid planning, but a clear direction that allows for adaptation.

The short- and long-term shouldn’t compete - a distinction that becomes especially important during periods of crisis. And yet during a crisis, this is exactly what happens. Rising energy prices, geopolitical tensions, inflation and changing regulatory conditions inevitably demand urgent attention, but when short-term pressures repeatedly displace longer-term priorities, organizations risk becoming trapped in reactive decision-making, leaving them less prepared for the next disruption.

Instead, we need to ask: How can our immediate solutions also build future strength? An energy crisis, for example, may require short-term support for businesses and consumers. But it also presents a powerful opportunity to accelerate energy efficiency, electrification, and diversification, reducing exposure to future price shocks.

The principle is simple: short-term volatility doesn’t erase the long-term reality. The ecological transition is taking place alongside other structural transformations. Just because the path has become more difficult does not mean that we can ignore climate change, resource scarcity, or dependence on vulnerable supply chains. Nor does long-term thinking mean following a plan blindly. Strategies need to evolve as new information emerges, and conditions change. The challenge is to preserve direction while adapting the means of achieving it.

This is where urgency matters. Infrastructure takes years to build; technologies take time to deploy and supply chains cannot be transformed overnight. Waiting for uncertainty to disappear may simply mean accepting greater costs and fewer options later.

In her discussion with Alain Gallois, Global Head of Advisory and Coverage, and Head of Europe for Natixis CIB, Emmanuelle Menning, Deputy CEO in Charge of Finance for Veolia,  introduced the concept of environmental security: the ability to ensure access to essential resources even when supply becomes constrained, volatile or disrupted.

Water, energy, and waste services are fundamental to our economies and communities. When an essential resource becomes scarce or unpredictable, what started as an environmental issue can quickly become a question of competitiveness, sovereignty, and security.

Water is one of the most urgent examples. Growing water stress is already affecting communities, agriculture, and industry alike. Building resilience does not necessarily mean finding more sources of supply. It can also mean creating more usable resources from what already exists: reducing leakage, reusing wastewater and making desalination more affordable, showing how technology and better resource management can improve security of supply.

This philosophy directly echoes Clément Beaune’s point on the need to bridge the short- and long-term. Just as we must shape immediate crisis responses to serve our long-term strategies, we must also shift from reactive crisis management toward active resilience. Essential infrastructure cannot be built in a matter of weeks; water-treatment plants, recycling facilities, and energy networks require significant investment, planning and coordination. Environmental security must be built before a crisis arrives.

One of the more practical insights from the discussion was how to think about planning when disruption is almost inevitable. A strategic plan established at the beginning of any given year will inevitably encounter unexpected developments.

The question is not whether the plan will be disrupted, but how the organization will respond. Resources may need to be reallocated, investments accelerated or delayed, and new opportunities seized. The strategy provides the compass; it sets the direction, but adaptability determines how the organization navigates.

Veolia’s transformation of parts of its energy business away from coal offers a concrete example. The shift required investment and operational change, but it also created an opportunity to diversify energy inputs and reduce dependence on a single resource. By drawing on its expertise in waste management, the company could use biomass and waste-derived materials as part of a more diversified energy mix.

This proactive approach of environmental security also fundamentally changes how businesses look at investment. Traditionally, water, energy, and raw materials have been viewed as costs to be optimized, but today they are key conditions of competitiveness and sovereignty.

The distinction is becoming increasingly important in sectors driving technological growth. AI, for example, depends on data centers and semiconductor manufacturing, both of which require substantial energy, water, and infrastructure. Environmental constraints can therefore become constraints on technological development itself.

For companies developing these facilities, resource efficiency can create value beyond direct financial savings. Reducing water consumption, reusing resources, and securing reliable energy supplies can help projects obtain permits, respond to community concerns, and maintain access to the resources they need. Environmental performance can consequently become an enabler of investment rather than simply a compliance requirement.

Financial returns remain essential, but businesses also need to consider the strategic and environmental resilience that investments create. Which dependencies will they reduce? What vulnerabilities will they remove? And how will they help the business remain competitive as conditions change?

Technology, investment, and infrastructure are vital, but they cannot carry the transition on their own. The journey also relies on human acceptance. And while most citizens are not opposed to environmental change, resistance can emerge when people do not understand what is being proposed, or when they feel that they are being asked to bear unfair costs or cannot see a tangible benefit. Building public trust requires evidence, transparency, and solutions that people can understand and experience.

To bridge this gap, we have to make information accessible. Sharing clear evidence and explaining risks openly is what transforms abstract global crises into meaningful, relatable local actions. The same principle applies to the broader transition. If businesses and governments want communities to actively support shifts in infrastructure, energy systems, and resource use, they cannot simply announce them. They need to show why these changes matter, listen to concerns, and clearly demonstrate how the benefits will be felt on the ground.

The plenary concluded with a lively Oxford-Union-style debate on the motion “The House believes that it is time to scrap the 1.5°C target”.

Francois Gemenne, IPCC co-author and Co-director of the Climate and Defense Observatory at IRIS, and Michael Liebreich, CEO of Liebreich Associates, argued to drop the target, while Jakob Thoma, CEO of Theia Finance Labs, and Sean Kidney, CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, argued that the goal should be maintained.  The debate exposed a deep, genuine tension between ambition, preserving credibility and the practical realities of accelerating the transition.

The argument for scrapping the target contended that maintaining an objective  that was no longer achievable risked undermining the very transition it was intended to accelerate.

Michael Liebreich argued that the energy transition operates within interconnected systems, including energy, finance, infrastructure and politics, each of which imposes practical limits on the speed of change. He maintained that the 1.5°C target diverted attention towards increasingly difficult end-stage emissions reductions and speculative carbon removal, rather than the immediate, affordable and scalable opportunities available to cut emissions. Scrapping this target was presented as the only way to actually accelerate the transition, by shifting the focus towards measures that could deliver emissions reductions more quickly and economically. 

Liebreich further argued that an unachievable target created policy uncertainty, as investors and businesses anticipated that governments would eventually have to revise their commitments. This uncertainty, he suggested, increased the cost of capital and suppressed investment, ultimately slowing the deployment of the technologies and infrastructure needed to decarbonise the economy.

This argument was reinforced by François Gemenne, who approached the question from the perspective of public trust and the mobilization of political and social support. He warned that the 1.5°C threshold was likely to be crossed within a few years, raising the risk that repeated emphasis on a missed objective could lead people to conclude that climate action had failed altogether.

For Gemenne, the issue was not simply whether the target remained scientifically desirable, but whether it continued to provide an effective basis for action. He argued that objectives extending towards the middle or end of the century could create a false sense that there was still time to act, whereas the urgency of the transition demanded immediate action and new metrics capable of directing attention towards tangible progress.

Liebreich added an important financial dimension: when policymakers and investors anticipate that politically prominent targets will ultimately be abandoned or substantially revised, uncertainty over future policy can increase the cost of capital and suppress investment. From this perspective, the case for changing the target was presented not as an argument for weakening climate action, but as a means of removing barriers to faster implementation.

The opposition’s response went beyond defending the symbolic value of the target, challenging the assumption that feasibility should determine whether a global ambition is retained.

Jakob Thoma argued that the 1.5°C objective was never celebrated solely because it was readily achievable; rather, its significance lay in establishing a shared international commitment to limiting climate harm. He warned against treating the target as disposable simply because current projections made its achievement increasingly improbable. Drawing a distinction between the likelihood of meeting an objective and the value of preserving it, he argued that crossing the threshold would not mean that climate action should cease or that the ambition should lose its guiding role. 

He also raised the prospect that future technological developments could create opportunities to reduce warming that cannot yet be fully anticipated. Crucially, he challenged the proposition’s framing of the debate as a choice between realism and wishful thinking, arguing instead that abandoning an agreed global norm could undermine the conditions needed to protect human prosperity.

Sean Kidney further emphasized the target’s role in sustaining a planetary perspective on climate action. He acknowledged that the 1.5°C ambition was imperfect and that its application to individual countries, companies and investment strategies required reconsideration. However, he argued that its international reach was precisely what made it valuable: it provided a common reference point that transcended national interests and helped frame climate change as a shared responsibility for the planet. In his view, the appropriate response was to revise the tactics and intermediate objectives used to deliver the ambition, rather than discard the ambition itself. 

His intervention highlighted the risk that replacing a widely recognized global goal could undermine a political achievement that had taken decades to establish. The opposition therefore presented the target not as a guarantee of success, but as a continuing reference point for collective action, technological innovation and accountability, even if the original threshold could no longer be met within the anticipated timeframe.

But the broader question extends beyond a single temperature target: how can ambition remain powerful while ensuring that objectives are credible enough to mobilize investment and action?

The debate reflected a dilemma running throughout the plenary: maintaining direction while adapting the means of achieving it. Targets and strategies may need to evolve as circumstances change, but adaptation need not mean abandoning the underlying objectives.

The plenary offered a way of thinking about the challenges facing businesses and societies, rather than a single answer to them. The world is characterized by deeply colliding priorities. Security, competitiveness, technology, climate, resources, and social expectations are increasingly interconnected. Capital is finite, uncertainty is persistent, and difficult choices are unavoidable.

We cannot wait for the world to become more predictable. Nor can we abandon long-term objectives every time short-term conditions change. Instead, organizations need a reliable compass: a set of strategic priorities that can withstand volatility, combined with the flexibility to adapt when circumstances demand it.

They also need to act with urgency. Infrastructure takes years to build, resources take time to secure, and investments made today shape the resilience available tomorrow.

Sustainability is therefore evolving from a question of environmental commitments, compliance or reputation, into a capability to anticipate disruption, secure essential resources, make informed investment choices and remain competitive in a changing world.

Our defining challenge is to combine urgency with direction: to respond to immediate pressures without losing sight of the structural changes shaping the future.

In a world where priorities are deeply colliding, sustainability can provide a compass, not by making difficult choices disappear, but by helping businesses and societies navigate them with greater resilience, clarity and purpose.