WHAT CONNECTS US ANTOINE DENOIX 1 CEO of AXA Climate “Companies need to model their business on the natural world.” natural and human-made cycles. AXA Climate supports businesses that are proactively embarking on But as they’re not prepared for this learning pathway. While there this paradigm shift, they have are various ways a company can to reinvent their model. In the transform itself, they must all start past, businesses were organised in the same place: at the local level. in a mechanical way, operating We believe that businesses need to like machines where every cog take a systemic approach to climate is precisely calibrated. In the change. The carbon cycle is just one future, they’ll have to behave like strand, interwoven with all the other living systems that continuously natural cycles that are unravelling; respond and adapt to the needs of operators also need to reduce their ecosystem. Instead of being their footprint in terms of water extractive, and isolated from the and nitrogen, and their impact on living world, they’ll have to become biodiversity. regenerative, and intrinsically connected to the living world. Plus there’s another crucial factor Agri-food players like VIVESCIA to bear in mind – it’s not enough to have a key role in this; given cut down on negative impacts, since that they’re so embedded in the we’ve already gone well past six regions where they operate, and of the nine planetary boundaries. so close to the land, they can help Tackling climate change and spearhead this transformation biodiversity loss call for businesses and act as ambassadors for the to contribute positively to all- universal regenerative business. 1. AXA Climate is an entity of AXA group devoted to climate change and environmental adaptation. To serve this mission, it has four different business lines: insurance, 昀椀nance, training and consulting. AXA Climate is also a technical partner in the TRANSITIONS programme, harnessing its expertise in insurance, and the impacts of climate change on agricultural production, to jointly develop a new model of insurance that de-risks the agricultural transition and thereby helps accelerate it. WHAT ARE THE PLANETARY BOUNDARIES? Swedish researcher Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre led a team of international researchers in quantifying the risks that human activities pose to natural balances. Having identified the nine processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system (climate, biodiversity, forests, freshwater use, ocean acidification, the nitrogen and phosphate cycles, chemical pollution, atmospheric aerosol loading, ozone depletion), the scientists mapped out nine boundary processes that define a safe operating space for humanity to live sustainably in a stable ecosystem. 24