What will guide us through the deepening climate and ecological crisis?

“I’m tired (figuratively and literally) of being kept awake at night thinking about the frightening parts, without at least the balance of being kept awake thinking about how to prepare for them!”

This comes from an email we received at the end of last year. It’s from someone expressing their struggle with confronting the deepening climate and ecological crisis. 

We think it sums up how that feels: how feeling underprepared and overwhelmed come together. It’s why we set up the Cohort 2040 project. 

We’re exploring how best to help those who feel this way, responding to a tension felt across the Millennial and Gen Z cohorts. 

Many in these generations have a deep passion for realising the transformations of our societies that the UN says are needed to avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Yet current leaders are failing to drive these transformations. 

Meanwhile, the consequences of the climate and ecological crisis are deepening. 

How can younger generations be expected to preside over transformations of societies and navigate a world made increasingly unstable by the deepening climate and ecological crisis?  

We want to provide a space for emerging leaders to tackle this daunting challenge  and to help them, over the rest of their careers and lives, navigate a rapid, just transition through an uncertain, complex future. 

At the end of last year - when that email arrived - we had just moved into an exciting new phase of our development. After a period of discovery and research, we’ve now started an intensive co-design and testing process for a potential Cohort 2040 pilot programme. 

We’re delighted to have been joined by the Climate Action Unit at University College London, who are leading this process.

We’ve kicked off the year with a deep dive into existing leadership development initiatives - including interviewing some of the sharpest minds in leadership development practice - to identify where Cohort 2040 could fit in as an innovative new model. 

In broad terms, we’re exploring how emerging leaders could be better equipped across five main areas: knowledge, communications, connections, resilience and strategising. 

We’ll soon be moving to a collaborative stage of co-design and testing, bringing in potential users of a Cohort 2040 pilot, as well as those who have led through instances of chaos and complexity from which we can learn valuable lessons. 

If you’d like to be involved in these workshops - which will be both in-person (in the UK) and online (not just limited to the UK) - please get in touch. 

Alongside the co-design of a Cohort 2040 pilot, we are continuing to explore the complex challenges for a rapid, equitable transition thrown up by the climate and ecological deepening crisis, building on the research in our briefing report on the challenge now facing emerging leaders. 

Last year’s highlights included talks at leading universities, debates at Chatham House, and a range of opinion pieces. You can learn more about our research on the outputs page. 

Our most recent report is an exploration of how the growing debate over the possibilities for limiting global heating to 1.5C present threats and opportunities for transformational change. Upcoming research includes what lessons we can learn from how militaires train leaders to face chaos and complexity and how governments can better respond to the risk of abrupt and destructive ‘tipping points’ in the environment. 

We welcome any input.. We’re particularly interested to hear from those who share our concern that the transition to more sustainable, equitable and resilient societies could be derailed by the worsening effects of the climate and ecological crisis - and that more can and should be done to improve our collective ability to drive a faster, more equitable transition through those conditions. 

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