François Gemenne, political scientist, researcher, professor at HEC Paris

In his inaugural lecture at the start of the 2024 Master in Management programme, the specialist in the geopolitics of the environment and migration, explained how each person will be a player in the transition.  

“Today, I would like to try to explain how you, as a business school student and future economic leader, have the chance to change the course of things and that at some point each decision you make, each initiative you undertake, each choice, each action that you take over the course of your education and later in your professional life will be enormously important. I think that today the most important challenge is to show why and how it makes sense for us to take action.

To convince everyone of the scientific soundness of decarbonation, for example, people and companies will have to find value in it. The more they see that it’s worthwhile, the more committed they will become. The transition is always presented as a list of constraints that no one wants to submit to. It’s still hard to see the transition as a project. We know the direction that we don’t want to go in. But we have a lot of trouble seeing where we want to go. To move past the constraints to the project, we need to concretely display the advantages of decarbonation. We need to visualise what low-carbon transportation, food, lodging and education will look like. And that obviously is up to you to invent and implement.

And I truly believe that one of the biggest strengths of business schools in the transition will be the chance to concretely display decarbonation and show why the transition can be a project and not just a constraint. That’s how I believe we will succeed”.