Virginie Raisson-Victor, “We need to put the general interest back at the heart of business”.

As part of our third ForHum magazine, we asked Virginie Raisson-Victor, President of the Pays de la Loire Giec and co-founder and spokesperson for the Great Business Challenge for the Planet, to share her views. Virginie Raisson-Victor enthusiastically shares her vision of this necessary movement to transform our business models.

ForHum: From your point of view as President of the Pays de la Loire IPCC, what is the role of companies in the ecological transition?

In my opinion, they play a major role. However, until recently, this awareness was not shared by all their representatives. In July 2020, for example, at a seminar for SME managers, I was struck by the contrast between the ambition of the proposals put forward by the Citizens’ Climate Convention, which were being presented at the same time, and the difficulty these business leaders had in assuming their share of responsibility in the face of climate change. Their objections were clear-cut: “There’s no point in getting involved if the Chinese don’t do anything”, “It’s impossible to make a commitment and remain competitive”, “What’s the point in changing if my suppliers and customers don’t move at the same time”, etc. Some of these managers even saw the issue as a battle reserved for ecologists, or even an ideological problem.

When I saw that the Citizens’ Climate Convention had enabled a very diverse group of people, including climate sceptics, to increase their skills and commitment, I thought it would be interesting to propose the same method to corporate players. Because it became clear that the only way for companies to get to grips with environmental issues was for them themselves to become the bearers of stories of transformation.

This is where the “Grand défi des entreprises pour la Planète” project was born in January 2021, with the aim of accelerating the transition of the economy towards a model of humanistic and regenerative prosperity. After drawing lots for around a hundred companies of different sizes, geographical origins and sectors, their management, employee and shareholder representatives were trained over the course of six sessions by scientists from the IPCC, the OFB, economists and other experts. At the same time, they worked collectively to formulate around a hundred proposals, which were officially presented to the EESC on 9 February.

ForHum: During this year of exchanges, which scenarios were favoured: degrowth, sobriety, technological solutions?

The proposals that emerge from these sessions are not at all ideological. Nor is it a question of saying that we should all live in straw houses. It’s more a question of imagining how, in practical terms, companies can incorporate the planet’s limits into their business models. Because from now on, each and every one of them will have to consider this filter. None of them will be able to avoid it.
This step is all the more crucial for the industrial sector as most of the impact of consumer goods on carbon and biodiversity comes from the production phase.

How are companies tackling this change?

I’m convinced that we need to put the public interest back at the heart of business, as it was before the financialisation of the economy. Insofar as companies use common goods and depend on their preservation for their production, it is essential to return to this vision. This is the whole purpose of the Pacte Act2 and of the status of mission-driven company. There are now over 1,000 such companies in France3. And as a member of mission committees myself, I can verify the transformative effects of this approach, which I can also see are greater for companies that favour collective intelligence and participative implementation. In the same way, companies are finding that employees are increasingly looking for meaning in their working lives, and that commitment to the fight against climate change is increasing employee involvement. This trend has also been illustrated by movements such as the “great resignation “4 and “quiet quitting “5.

How can we get more organisations to rethink their prosperity model?

History shows that major transformations are always driven by a critical minority, who tip the balance. While it is difficult to say today what level this minority is at, it is certainly gaining ground with the success of initiatives such as the Great Business Challenge for the Planet and the Business Climate Convention.
Similarly, awareness of the need for change is growing in several European countries.
In fact, there are already a growing number of texts on the subject: CSRD, duty of care, imported deforestation, plans to index executive remuneration on ecological performance, and so on. It is clear today that companies are sufficiently mature to deploy a new regulatory framework. And while regulation is not everything, it does accelerate change. Take the example of the Pacte law: nothing is compulsory at the moment and it is mainly a question of enabling and encouraging. But the positive experience of the first mission companies is already convincing others.
However, there is still a long way to go, particularly on the financial side. All too easily, investors continue to favour the most profitable investments, starting with fossil fuels, to the detriment of those who are taking action or innovating to decarbonise the economy.
This is clearly short-sighted. The cost of not acting fast enough and decisively enough will be far greater than the cost of adaptation and transformation. Not to mention the duty of vigilance, which will expose more and more companies to legal action by civil society.

ForHum: What role can innovative new players like Hoffmann Cement play?

As Hoffmann clearly understood, there is an urgent need to take into account the very strong constraint of planetary limits, otherwise we run the risk of worsening the global ecological crisis and compromising the future of generations to come. We need to stop trying to hold on to models that we know are obsolete and destructive. Instead, we need to turn constraints into opportunities and build on the co-benefits of change and innovation. Of course, the transition will be complicated, but it is also exciting, promising and stimulating. Because it invites us to position ourselves and to invest in the development of new models and narratives, particularly at regional level. It’s not a question of rewriting the copy, but of taking a blank sheet of paper and imagining what can be done within this framework of constraints. And the most likely outcome is that the first to enter these new fields will be the best served.

This interview is taken from pages 36 and 37 of our magazine ForHum, which is currently available for free consultation on our website.

1 – Citizens’ Climate Convention: an assembly of French citizens chosen by lot, set up in October 2019 by the Economic, Social and Environmental Council at the request of the Prime Minister to “define the structuring measures to achieve, in a spirit of social justice, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 40% by 2030 compared with 1990”.
2 – The Act of 22 May 2019 on the growth and transformation of businesses, known as the Pact Act, is a law designed to help French businesses grow and rethink the place of businesses in society.
3 – Source: OBSERVATOIRE DES SOCIÉTÉS À MISSION – companies listed on 30/01/2023. Geneviève Ferone announced 1,000 a few days ago.
4 – The expression “great resignation” has been used to describe the situation on the American labour market in 2021, where, following Covid-19, the number of workers leaving their jobs voluntarily has risen sharply.
5 – Quiet quitting is a phenomenon that appeared on the American social network TikTok in 2022. It brings together people who decide to do the bare minimum at work and share their techniques on video on the networks. The employees concerned do not actually quit their jobs, but prefer to stay in their posts and do the bare minimum.