As one of the UK’s most prominent Environment & Sustainability speakers, Nigel Topping brings a wealth of insight shaped by decades of global climate leadership.
Based in the UK and globally recognised for his role as the UN High-Level Climate Action Champion for COP26, he’s been instrumental in aligning industries, governments and civil society towards a net-zero future.
In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Nigel offers a candid assessment of the race to tackle climate change—exploring the mindset needed to lead with urgency, the pitfalls of outdated business framing, and the policy decisions that will define our collective future.
Q: In your view, what defines a true climate champion, especially in a world where incremental progress is no longer enough?
Nigel Topping: Well, I think somebody who commits to going further than they’re really comfortable. You know, I’m kind of getting really tired of people making safe bets, because we’re facing an existential crisis.
You know, and we have to go really fast—that’s why we call it a race.
So a champion is somebody who commits to act now and gets out of their comfort zone.
I’d like them to get to the edge of where they come from—then they take one more step.
Q: What do you see as the greatest psychological or systemic barrier preventing faster action on climate change?
Nigel Topping: Our belief in ourselves—our ability to imagine that we can do things differently, radically differently.
You know, we find it very difficult to imagine that the future could be very different from the past. I think it’s a failure of imagination that has us either decide that it’s too late—we’ve failed—or it’s impossible to transform as fast as we need to.
I have huge faith in the innovative capability of humans when we decide to do extraordinary things, so it’s a failure of imagination.
Q: How should businesses reframe their approach to sustainability—not as a moral obligation, but as a strategic imperative for long-term success?
Nigel Topping: Well, I reject the idea that this is about being environmentally friendly. I think that’s a very sort of 1990s framing.
This is not about being environmentally friendly front and centre—this is about survival and thriving as a business.
This is an inevitable change.
If you don’t embrace it, you’re just going to lose, because you’ll suddenly find that all your competitors are running away from you so fast that you can’t catch up.
Yes, the consequence at the end will be that we’re not destroying the environment that we rely on—so the consequence would be environmental friendliness.
But if you’re thinking that this is whether or not to do something environmentally friendly, you’ve already lost because you’re framing it wrong.
Q: Given the scale of the climate emergency, what specific role must political leaders play—and how can effective policymaking accelerate transformative change?
Nigel Topping: Well, I mean politics is huge because ultimately, politicians set the rules of the game.
You know, although the private sector can innovate—and mayors can innovate—and they can all lead, the overall pace of change would be dictated by policymakers.
So it’s huge, their role.
What they can do is, I think, a couple of things:
One, bring constituencies with them—so bring voters and businesses with them—because policy will not go faster than markets and voters.
So keep making the case that this is in our long-term interest—that it will be creating jobs, it will be improving health.
I mean, there’s so many reasons why we have to do that.
And then set the clear long-term policies.
That’s something that makes it, again, in terms of this adaptation process—if it’s very clear what we’re going to do over 10, 15, 20 years—then it makes it much easier for us all to manage that adaptation and that innovation over time.
You know, with very clear short-term policies, but I always say end dates like that—you know, the date the UK plans to burn its last lump of coal in the mid-2020s—very helpful.
The date that we’ll sell the last internal combustion engine: now set for 2035—very helpful to set those end dates, because then people can organise their lives around them.
This exclusive interview with Nigel Topping was conducted by Jack Hayes of The Champions Speakers Agency.
