Climate Week NYC 2026 is very advanced in spreading and scaling existing climate solutions, and much less advanced in transforming the relations between businesses, territories, ecosystems and governance. The 47% score reads that tension: it situates the program on a trajectory, rather than measuring Climate Week’s performance. The Capacity Score situates an organization on four levels, from Limit to Regenerate, and reads it through six levers. It is a self-assessment that each person fills in for their own organization; here, it is our expert reading of the official program run by Climate Group, the Opening Ceremony and The Hub Live (September 21–22), as reported in its Highlights. Estimate based on public documents. The FAQ (in French) explains the method; section 3 gives the details.

The event. From September 20 to 27, 2026, Climate Group hosted Climate Week NYC, held every September since 2009 alongside the UN General Assembly and, in its organizer’s words, the largest annual climate event of its kind: business leaders, political changemakers, local decision-makers and civil society gather there, in person, hybrid and online, to drive the transition and speed up progress. The main program ran over two days, the Opening Ceremony on September 21 and The Hub Live on September 21 and 22; around it, well over 1,500 events ran across the city, according to Climate Group’s Highlights. Green Central Banking’s event app, The Capital Map, recorded 1,704 events involving 1,597 organizations. This year’s edition focused on “the energy, the impact, and the action that we drive together”: energy was its largest single subject, alongside health, work, food, communities and capital. For Climate Group, climate, energy and the economy are now bound together, and the stability business relied on, from insurable risk to reliable infrastructure, can no longer be taken for granted.

Read in context, the Reduce level follows from the event itself. Climate Week NYC is institutional and business-oriented, built around finance, energy, infrastructure, innovation and scale; its organizer sets the goal of moving “from commitment to delivery”. Its twelve official themes, from energy and electrification to industry and supply chains, follow the same line, in an American context where competitiveness, grids and investment lead the agenda. And the event is vast, run alongside the UN General Assembly, after a 2025 edition that drew more than 100,000 participants. A strong presence of Reduce is the logic of such a week; the reading shows what it leaves to build. In the United States, restoring ecosystems and communities often runs through philanthropy, beside the business, through foundations and gifts; the next step is to bring it into the business model itself.

Why it matters. Climate Week NYC 2026 took energy as its way into the ecological transition, at a time when the United States has left the Paris Agreement and become Europe’s first supplier of oil and liquefied natural gas, according to Eurostat. Energy now touches every global issue at once: heat, prices, wars, the transformation of industry, and the expertise and cooperation it takes to change whole systems. That changes the conversation. Business is no longer talking in the abstract about a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, the VUCA world of strategy decks. It is talking about keeping businesses running in the face of impacts everyone can feel, as a citizen or as an employee: heat at work, a fuel bill, an insurance premium, a supply chain cut by a war. The week made business resilience a tangible, shared concern for people who all live on the same planet.

Who we are. Nous Sommes Vivants (We Are Alive) is a French collective of consultants that supports companies on their trajectory toward regeneration. Our white paper (in French) frames the response to climate challenges in four steps, limit, reduce, restore and regenerate, each with its own benefit and economic model; the regenerative economic model is triply profitable, on its three impact pillars: environmental, social and economic. The line between reduce and restore is the line between weak and strong sustainability (in French): in weak sustainability, natural, human and economic capital are treated as interchangeable, and a loss on one can be offset by a gain on another; in strong sustainability, they are complementary, and each is restored for itself. We read the week through the territorial triple impact (in French): climate challenges hit the environment, society and the economy at once, and they play out in a given territory.

What we read. We took the official program as a market signal: its 50 sessions and keynotes, as reported in the Highlights (sections 1 and 2). We situated it with the Capacity Score (section 3), and read the partner events without a score: the firms that audit, advise, inform and finance business first (section 4), then sector by sector, for what they say about regeneration (section 5). Since late August, we have read France’s main business gatherings and the programs of its political parties the same way, from Produrable, the CSR trade show, at 48%, to Impact France’s summer university at 60% and the MEDEF’s La REF at 30% (in French); section 6 compares the two readings.

1. Climate Week NYC 2026’s message: clean energy has found its market, and now it has to scale

Clean energy has found its market: it now wins on cost and on investment. Speaker after speaker said the same thing: the security case and the economic case for clean energy now point the same way. Ed Miliband counted $2.3 trillion invested in clean energy worldwide last year, and Fatih Birol, of the International Energy Agency, saw energy security, economics and the transition aligned for the first time in many years. For a household in France, it is around €5 to drive 100 km on electricity against €25 on diesel, Benoît Faraco noted; for a company, AstraZeneca has cut its direct and energy emissions by 88% while doubling its business. Capital is not what is missing, according to the World Bank’s Paschal Donohoe: investment-ready projects are.

Now it has to scale, and the obstacles are practical and political. Most of the solutions already exist, Climate Group’s own summary of the first day noted; the problem is delivering them at the speed and scale needed. What slows them down is not technology, as Trane’s Mauro Atalla put it; the speakers named permits, unstable rules and a shortage of trained installers. Helen Clarkson, Climate Group’s CEO, opened and closed the week on the same line:

2. The Climate Week NYC 2026 program: energy first, then people and capital, and ecosystems in a few sessions

Climate Group built the program, and built it around the economics of the transition: who invests, who deploys and who captures the value. It runs the Opening Ceremony and The Hub Live itself, by invitation and streamed online. The three flagship plenaries moved from the challenge to the choice to “who leads, who wins”, and the breakouts ran in six content streams, each with an aim stated in the official agenda.

The six content streams of The Hub Live, with the aim each one states in the official agenda and its breakout sessions. Three flagship plenaries and the Opening Ceremony frame them.

On stage, the floor goes to the networks with targets, and their targets are reductions. Climate Group works through coalitions of companies and governments with public commitments, on renewable power, electric fleets, steel and concrete, and on states and regions. They fill the energy and industry streams and set the tone of the week: what is promised on stage is a reduction.

Around them, governments, companies and communities come in their own ways. Governments speak at every scale, with one absence: no one from the US administration; America’s public voices came from Congress, the states and the cities. Companies come from two worlds, the industries that make and use energy and materials, from Siemens to SKF, and the brands that depend on farms and forests, from Nestlé to L’Oréal. Farmers come in through companies, and Indigenous Climate Action gives voice to the communities that protect the land. The next voices to bring on stage are forest and watershed managers.

The cards below are not exhaustive: they show the types of speakers and moderators of the Opening Ceremony and The Hub Live, with a few examples of each. In green, public actors and research; in yellow, civil society and companies; in gray, the host and the journalists who moderated the sessions.

Sessions by impact pillar: Reduce for most, Restore where a territory is at stake

Read through the three impact pillars of the territorial triple impact, the program gives the environment more than half of its sessions, and most of them go through energy. Of the 50 sessions and keynotes reported in the Highlights, 26 deal mainly with the environment, from energy, transport and materials to water, forests and food; 10 with the social pillar, people and the human communities they form, through health, work, communities and how climate is talked about; 14 with the economy, from capital and competitiveness to security.

Within each pillar, each session then gets a level, according to what it puts forward. Limit answers with rules. Reduce brings negative impacts down and protects the business, in weak sustainability: natural, human and economic capital are treated as interchangeable, so that a loss on one can be offset by a gain on another. Restore moves to strong sustainability (in French): these capitals are complementary and cannot replace one another, so the business adapts through deep changes that restore the state of nature, people or relations, or change a territory as a whole.

Environment: energy first, and three sessions that restore. Energy takes up most of the pillar and the most visible slots, from the opening keynotes to the final plenary. Most environment sessions, 21 of 26, cut impacts through cleaner energy, efficiency, electric transport, low-carbon materials and less waste: impacts go down, and the business stays the same. Two answer with rules: a treaty to stop new fossil projects, and common standards for data centers. Three go further and restore what activity depends on: water, treated as a shared budget to rebuild with farmers; forests and farmland, with whole regions changing their practices; and the relationship between farmers and the companies that buy from them. Biodiversity has no session of its own: it appears through water, forests, farmland and health, and has yet to become a subject in its own right, for policy as for business.

Social: people and communities protected first, and three sessions that restore relations or a territory. Seven of the ten social sessions sit at Reduce: they protect people from heat and its health costs, protect workers in the transition, the most exposed first, or work on how climate is talked about. The Wellcome Trust put this year’s heatwave losses at £1.5 billion, and Scott Tew, at Trane, said of heat at work: “We’re still using band-aids. This is no longer acute.” Three reach Restore: “Climate and community”, where communities decide what a project gives back; Gary, Indiana, a heavy-industry city becoming a walkable destination; and “Moving the US forward”, which pairs net zero targets with the conditions to reach them with communities.

Economy: competitiveness, and capital invested to protect. All fourteen sessions sit at Reduce. The economic argument comes first: “This is an economic issue, not just an environmental one,” as Sam Kimmins, at Climate Group, put it. Capital is presented as available: the World Bank’s mobilization of private capital has tripled, and it goes to what absorbs shocks: grids, infrastructure, supply. The cost of not adapting is already visible: the US National Guard spends more than twice as many days on natural disasters as a decade ago. The economy meets people through costs and jobs, and the environment through carbon and energy. What would open Restore is counting what ecosystems bring for themselves, not only as risks to assets: designing with nature is becoming a condition of financing, but to protect an asset, which remains weak sustainability; for Restore, nature would have to benefit from the project and have a say in it.

The six sessions at Restore all work on a territory. Water, forests, farmland, a city and the communities that host projects: that is where the environmental, social and economic pillars are counted in the same place.

The fifty sessions and keynotes of the Opening Ceremony and The Hub Live, each situated under its main pillar and at the level of what it puts forward. Our reading of Climate Group’s official Highlights.

The organizer’s choice sets the level. A week built around the race to make the transition talks about cutting impacts and making them pay, which is why forty-two of its fifty sessions sit at Reduce.

How the estimate is built. The Capacity Score is organized around six levers. Every question offers four answers, one per level: Limit, Reduce, Restore, Regenerate. In a self-assessment, a person picks, for their own organization, the answer that is most true. Here, as in our analyses of companies from their public reports, our collective answered the questions from what the official program puts forward. The result is an estimate, not a measure: it situates the program on the trajectory, lever by lever, and points to the lever that holds it back. The Capacity Score FAQ (in French) details the method.

3. Climate Week NYC 2026 on the Capacity Score: 47%, at the top of the Reduce level

At an estimated 47%, Climate Week’s official program sits at Reduce, at the top of the level. On the four-level scale, it has gone past Limit, where a business complies and manages the short term, and has not yet reached Restore, where it restores the nature, people and relations it depends on; it stands at the edge: six sessions already work at Restore, and two still answer with rules, at Limit. In practice, the organizer and the speakers treat sustainability as a matter of growth, competitiveness, and energy and supply-chain security: where to invest, how to stay competitive, how to manage long-term risks. In our terms, that is Reduce: cutting impacts and protecting the business, in a race the transition now makes profitable.

The six levers make up Climate Week’s estimated overall score, and the profile is uneven. Twenty-nine points separate personal leadership, at 38%, from human dynamics, at 67%. Human dynamics reaches Restore, governance and financing stands at its threshold, at 50%, and the four other levers stay at Reduce. Personal leadership holds the program back; ecosystem intelligence, at 39%, is the lever that opens Restore.

The six Capacity Score levers: human dynamics lead, leadership and data stay with risk

Personal leadership · 38% · Reduce, the slowest lever. The program sets its priorities as risks to limit and profitability to protect. Security, more than climate, now drives energy strategies, as Fatih Birol observed, and success is measured in reductions, such as AstraZeneca cutting its direct and energy emissions by 88% while doubling its business. The next level starts when leaders treat what the business depends on as something to repair, and write it into the business plan itself, as IKEA’s Karen Pflug put it.

Ecosystem intelligence · 39% · Reduce, the lever that opens Restore. Data are collected to prove, reassure and compare: emissions, energy, traceability, standards. They tell a company how exposed it is, not what state the ecosystems it depends on are in. The nature standard being prepared by the International Sustainability Standards Board takes the same view: it asks companies to disclose nature as a business risk (IFRS, May 2026), triggered by their exposure rather than by the state of nature: single materiality, which is weak sustainability (IPE, September 2026). Europe’s CSRD, through double materiality, requires companies to report their impacts without forbidding them to trade one capital for another: it opens the door to strong sustainability, where single materiality closes it. Restore begins when data follow the state of soils, water and biodiversity for themselves and serve decisions, as Kaveh Madani proposes for water.

Localized value chain · 44% · Reduce. Suppliers are chosen for their reliability and their transparency on carbon: more than 80% of AstraZeneca’s suppliers now have science-based targets. Food, the chain closest to soils and farmers, has a single session. The next level is commitment on both sides, which farmers asked for at the Food Forum: buyers who share the cost and the risk of converting their farms. Further on comes a fair split of the value created along the chain.

Product innovation · 44% · Reduce. Innovation starts from cost and competitiveness: more efficient equipment, electrification, lower-carbon materials. The offer stays the same; it uses less energy and emits less. Further on, this lever carries the move from Restore to Regenerate, when innovation starts from what a territory’s ecosystems and communities can become, as the Rockefeller Foundation does by treating food as medicine. The demand exists: according to GlobeScan, 65% of people want to live both more healthily and more sustainably.

Human dynamics · 67% · Restore. This is the most advanced lever. The program makes room for what makes people act: trust, dialogue, and lived experience taken as seriously as expertise. It shows in the sessions that reach Restore: in “Climate and community”, communities decide what a project gives back, and the BlueGreen Alliance brings steelworkers and environmentalists together. Senator Brian Schatz summed up the spirit: “Hope is not a feeling. It’s a decision, a commitment to the future.” The next level, Regenerate, takes that collaboration into the territory, by designing projects with the people who live where they are built.

Governance and financing · 50% · Restore, at the threshold. Trajectories are set as reduction targets, and they are financed as long-term investments rather than as costs: AstraZeneca is investing more than $1 billion in its net zero strategy. Alliances form between camps that used to oppose each other, such as steelworkers and environmentalists in the BlueGreen Alliance, and communities start to have a say. Fully reaching Restore means opening governance to the territory, so that those who host projects can set conditions, as the cities behind the C40 data center pact are starting to do.

From Reduce to Restore: what holds the program back, and what would move it

What holds the program at Reduce. The program talks mostly about energy and the economy, and gives water, forests and food a session each. Its trajectories are percentages of decarbonization. It treats adaptation as protection, from energy security to insurance, and protects people from heat and costs more than it restores their living conditions. Its efficiency gains apply to existing equipment, its data serve reporting before they follow the state of ecosystems, and its capitals are traded off against one another: that is weak sustainability.

To reach Restore, the program would start with ecosystem intelligence. The state of ecosystems, and of the people and relations a business depends on, would become a subject in its own right, tracked, shared and used in decisions, as the lever paragraphs above show. The move also asks leadership to set priorities as dependencies to repair, and the value chain, a supporting lever, to make reciprocal commitments the rule. A few sessions already look further, toward Regenerate, when health, nature and business are thought of together: AstraZeneca describes them as a flywheel, the Rockefeller Foundation treats food as medicine, and Fair Trade USA wants producers to own their data. They come after Restore, once that step is taken.

What this level looks like inside a company, as the program’s own speakers showed it. A company at the top of Reduce knows its emissions and its main risks, sets reduction targets, buys cleaner energy, upgrades its equipment and secures its supply, and it pays: AstraZeneca has cut its direct and energy emissions by 88% while doubling its business. Its data follow carbon, as at SKF, which asks each steel supplier, every quarter, for its plans on renewable power, electrification and scrap content. The next step is to follow the state of the soils, water and biodiversity, and of the people and relations, the business depends on, and to decide on it with suppliers, employees and local communities.

The four levels give any decision-maker a frame for impact investment choices. When climate, energy and supply have all become risky at once, a business can endure the shock and manage the short term, within the rules; protect itself and bounce back; adapt through deep changes that restore the nature, people and relations it depends on; or change purpose and build, with its territory, the capacity to adapt together. Each is a different investment, with a different return and a different lifespan. The diagram below sets the four side by side: for each, the objective, what it yields, how it is accounted for, what it requires, how long it holds, and the leadership posture (in French) that goes with it. It gives depth and clarity to the choice; our analyses of ten companies (in French) apply the same frame. The program, at 47%, sits in the second column, with the third already in view.

Six Climate Week sessions that restore what business depends on

Restore is where a business adapts through deep changes, in strong sustainability. Natural, human and economic capital cannot replace one another, so it restores the nature, people and relations it depends on, or changes a territory as a whole, so that it holds in a climate that has already changed. What it yields, in the diagram, is losses avoided and resources more abundant and better shared: repaired ecosystems, suppliers and teams who stay, margins regained. What it requires is accepting margins, redundancy and diversity rather than optimizing everything, and building ties with its territory. Its accounting counts what it costs to bring natural and human capital back to their earlier state. It holds as long as repair keeps pace with degradation, and the leader it calls for is an architect, who adapts the model rather than only protecting it. Six sessions of the official program work at this level, each on one piece of it.

The Food Forum restores the relationship between farmers and buyers. Converting a farm takes three years without a premium, so farmers need capital, secured demand and buyers who commit with them; the gain is restored soils, secure incomes and a supply that holds. What holds it back is a value chain where such commitments remain the exception.

“Climate and community” opens the decision to communities. They hold many of the solutions and decide what a project gives back, which builds the trust a project needs to hold. It asks leaders to hand over authority, where governance is still at the threshold.

The super pollutant sprint changes practices across whole regions. Mato Grosso keeps its forest standing while soy production rises, and Jalisco already sees the benefits in health. The hard part is the long work with producers, starting with cattle traceability, in value chains still built on reliability more than on the state of the land.

Water bankruptcy treats water as a shared budget to rebuild. The gain is water that stays usable, and an opportunity CDP puts at $1 trillion. It asks companies to track the state of water and share the risk with the farmers who use most of it, where data still follow risk.

Gary changes a city as a whole. A heavy-industry city becomes a walkable place people choose, with better buses and a busy beachfront. The argument, its mayor said, still has to come back to return on investment.

“Moving the US forward” sets net zero targets together with the conditions to reach them with communities. It restores the relationship with the communities that host new projects: they come in before a project is decided, with something to negotiate with, and their interests shape it; projects then stall less on distrust.

Others come close and stay at Reduce, because they protect rather than restore, in weak sustainability. The Opening Ceremony conversation on capital designs with nature, like biomimicry, to protect assets against flooding and heat; for Restore, nature would have to benefit from the project and have a say in it. The sessions on heat at work and on jobs protect workers, the most exposed first; restoring would mean improving the living and working conditions they go home to.

Outside the official program, signs of Restore appear. Blue Alliance’s reef-positive enterprises reinvest their profits in managing the marine protected areas they live from, with communities who share the value. Tokyo Tatemono, a property developer, runs a pilot with the town of Yugawara to grow seaweed from local resources, alongside its core business. Rightsholders, WECAN and the Climate Justice Hub work on who decides on a territory and who receives the value created there. Section 5 gives the detail.

What they share: restoring is done with others. All these examples work at the scale of a value chain or a territory, and the six sessions that reach Restore make someone else a partner: farmers and buyers at the Food Forum, communities in “Climate and community”, farmers and regional governments in the super pollutant sprint, water users along the supply chain, a city and its residents in Gary, the communities that host new projects in “Moving the US forward”. At Reduce, a business protects itself; at Restore, it restores with those it depends on.

Regenerate goes further, by changing purpose. The business model then increases the capacities of the living world, so that the territory and the people who live there prosper with the business. A few sessions of the official program point to it; the partner events, in section 5, show where its signs appear, and section 7 sets out what we propose.

More than 1,500 events surrounded the official program. Partners organize most of them independently, as Climate Group’s FAQ states. Climate Group manages the official calendar, organized around twelve themes, from food and agriculture to nature, land and oceans.

The week had its campuses and houses: The Nest Climate Campus, devoted to the resilience economy; Regen House, for regenerative food systems; Food Tank’s week at The Greene Space; PlanetHAUS; and the Future Food Institute’s Convivium. Media forums and UN summits ran in parallel.

Part II reads them in two steps: the firms that audit, advise, inform and finance business, then the sectors.

4. Finance, audit and advisory at Climate Week NYC: the same frame as the official program, and the move from reports to offers

Audit, advisory, information and finance firms read the week as the official program does

Bloomberg, the financial information and media group, read the transition through risk and capital, as the box below details. KPMG, one of the Big Four audit and advisory firms, measures, prices risk, offsets and treats communities as “a social license to operate”. EY and PwC, two other Big Four firms, the environmental consultancy ERM and the WBCSD, a council of business leaders, speak of performance and competitive advantage. That points to Reduce, in weak sustainability: nature and communities enter as risks to assets.

Players from the same worlds also spoke in the official program read in sections 1 to 3: BloombergNEF for research, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank for development finance, Global Infrastructure Partners (BlackRock) and Sustainable Development Capital for investment, and two nonprofits, CDP for environmental disclosure and Ceres for investor engagement. The partner events read here carry the same frame further.

Nature in finance: a risk and an asset

Conservation International and Procter & Gamble worked on how landscape degradation makes supply chains more vulnerable.

Investors in natural capital bought and restored estates, and sold their value largely as carbon credits that other companies use against their own emissions: the restored nature serves to offset, which is weak sustainability. At a panel on climate-related losses, Francis Bouchard, of the insurance broker Marsh, gave the example of a city that plants trees against extreme heat: fewer people fall ill, and the benefit stays invisible to the insurer.

WWF’s Panda House put figures on that frame. With the Paulson Institute and The Nature Conservancy, it launched Financing Nature 2026, which puts the global biodiversity finance gap at $1.3 trillion a year; with the Science Based Targets Network and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, it unveiled the Basin Threshold Tool, so that companies can assess water security in the most climate-threatened river basins.

CSR advisory is turning from reports to offers

We documented the same movement in France in how CSR consulting is being reinvented (in French): firms that grew on reporting are scaling back, because companies no longer fund ecology as an obligation and now look for what it brings. Reporting documents a company; what creates value is transforming what it sells, offer by offer, with its value chain.

A study commissioned by the European Commission and delivered in September 2026 reaches the same point from the other side: reporting frameworks such as the CSRD and the taxonomy improve transparency without creating a price signal, and the companies it surveyed describe commitments that raise their costs by 10 to 30% without customers willing to pay more.

Finance commits capital over the long term

One title in KPMG’s program points to the next step, through the way money is committed: “Resilience capital: From risk management to value creation” builds resilience investment into capital allocation. What the money protects is still resilience, which points to Reduce; committing capital over years is what the move to Restore will need.

Family offices and impact investors met at the Transformative Wealth gathering on adaptation, local economies and community development.

Impact funds today make their case on derisking or on intended impact; the next argument links regenerative practices to financial performance, the regenerative alpha. Impact investing, estimated at about 190 billion euros in Europe, represents about 2.5% of eligible assets: the room for growth is wide.

Who pays for regeneration: the economics of mutuality

Our analysis of regenerative finance (in French) sets it out: co-invest, share the gains fairly, and pay for practices when they are carried out.

The Lauriers de la Régénération distinguish funds dedicated to regeneration, among them Milpa, ETIC, Fève with Fermes en Vie, Lita, Crédit Coopératif, MACIF SWEN TERRA, ADIE and RESTORE.

5. Climate Week NYC partner events, sector by sector: regeneration named everywhere, practiced in food

Read sector by sector, the partner events show how each market names regeneration, and where its signs appear. We read their published programs and organizers’ write-ups, and point to signs that can be read from the outside: farming practices, commercial practices, alliances and certifications.

Situating an organization takes a full Capacity Score analysis: where we have published one, we refer to it, and the method note at the end of the article explains why the events themselves are read without a score.

Regenerative food and agriculture: from soil carbon to farm-to-fork value chains that make territories prosper

Regeneration had whole houses and days. Regen House, run by HowGood, EIT Food and the Institute of Regeneration, devoted four days to regenerative food systems: financing the farmers’ transition, buying regenerative, farmers’ ownership of their data, territories, and Indigenous knowledge. Food Tank held a summit with the organic sector, and the NYC Food Policy Center listed sessions on farmers in the room, nature back into farmland, what food is grown for, financing the transition and local markets.

One pillar, the environment, counted in carbon · signs of Reduce

Retailers and brands measure regenerative agriculture in carbon. At Regen House, PepsiCo, Walmart, Ahold Delhaize and Nestlé presented how they track it, from satellites and soil to Scope 3. Here “regenerative” names farming practices that cut emissions and make farms more resilient, and the soil counts as carbon in a balance. As the Rodale Institute puts it, a regenerative system starts from an organic base.

At WWF’s Panda House, climate and nature became one agenda. Moderated by WWF’s Timothy Juliani, Nicolas Clerget of Heineken, Brian Kramer of McDonald’s and Ashley Kuhn of Procter & Gamble described how their companies act, from investments in regenerative agriculture to landscape-level sourcing, to build resilience against water scarcity, biodiversity loss and climate volatility across their supply chains. WWF framed the business case with the World Economic Forum’s estimate of $10.1 trillion in opportunity from nature-positive action. Resilience protects the supply chain: it sits at Reduce, and points toward restoring the landscapes these companies source from.

The environment, then farmers’ income, through partnerships · first signs of Restore

Food companies pool their efforts. Danone and Mars Snacking held a session on how partnerships and investment between companies can scale regenerative agriculture, strengthen farm resilience and create lasting value for farmers; Bayer, ADM and the World Bank spoke of scaling it and sharing the risk on farms.

The social pillar, farmers’ income and say, restored with buyers · signs of Restore

Farmers asked who carries the cost. At Regen House, five farmers sat with five procurement leaders, and “Investing in Indigenous Agriculture” started from a gap: on Native land, non-Native farmers earn twenty times more than Native farmers. Food Tank’s summit asked for data that describe the farm as an ecosystem, beyond its carbon, and Stonyfield set the condition for the value chain: if the cost falls on the farm, the transition will not succeed.

Patagonia opened the Food Forum on the same question. In the official program, Paul Lightfoot, general manager of Patagonia Provisions, opened the Food Forum with Lundberg Family Farms. Their first point: keep to a few simple certifications that consumers recognize.

Then the harder problem: the three years of conversion, which farmers carry without a premium while borrowing at the start of each year. They need capital, secured demand and the assurance that doing it right will be rewarded. Patagonia Provisions also joined the session on wilding at Patagonia SoHo, read below.

The environment restored across farmland and territories · signs of Restore

Restoration was discussed at the scale of landscapes and territories. At Patagonia SoHo, Mad Agriculture, Patagonia Provisions and Whole Foods Market discussed wilding, weaving native habitat back into farmland from its least productive margins. Local agroecological markets, public food markets and seed sovereignty, from WhyHunger to Free the Seed, worked on who decides and who keeps the value on a territory. Tokyo Tatemono, a property developer, runs a seaweed pilot with the town of Yugawara alongside its core business.

Two pillars, environment and community, in a cooperative · signs of Restore

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin presented the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance alongside Yerba Madre. The alliance raises chickens under native trees that restore their forest habitat, and its farmers work as a cooperative: they share a processing plant and sell under the Tree-Range brand, so that value stays in the community. Tree-Range Chicken is certified organic. Organic farming and agroforestry carry the environment, and the cooperative keeps value in the community.

A territory where the pillars begin to join · first signs of Regenerate

Pollica shows a territory where Regenerate becomes possible. This municipality in Cilento was presented by the Future Food Institute at “Food for Health, Food for Earth”: a community practices and passes on the Mediterranean diet, and an integrated policy connects water, the sea and its biodiversity, food, education, research and residents’ participation; the FAO named the community of Pollica a “Food Hero” during the session.

Its food practices and the alliance it builds between residents, producers and research strengthen together the health of those who eat, the state of ecosystems and the cohesion of the territory, from the cooperative’s olive oil to Menaica anchovies, a Slow Food Presidium created to ensure greater profitability for the fishers.

Wine and spirits, from regenerative viticulture named to certified vineyards · up to signs of Regenerate

Regenerative viticulture was named at Food Tank’s summit for brands. On September 21, Food Tank’s Mission-Driven Brands Sustainability Summit, held with Bonterra Organic Estates among its partners, gave the floor to “How Regenerative Vineyards Are Shaping the Future of Wine” and “Regenerative Agriculture Grain to Glass at Star Hill”, with Stephen Cronk, co-founder of the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation and of Maison Mirabeau, Rob Samuels of Maker’s Mark, and Erewhon’s wine director, Elaina Leibee. As in food, practices called regenerative point to Reduce until they rest on an organic base.

Bonterra brought the most advanced practice of the week in wine. Its sustainability manager, Beatrix Scolari, called for moving from extractive to regenerative models of production. Farmed organically since 1987, its estate vineyards in Mendocino County have been Regenerative Organic Certified since 2021, which makes it the largest certified winery in the United States: organic as the base, with soil health, animal welfare and fairness for workers held together.

The three pillars together, with local prosperity · signs of Regenerate

Yerba Madre shows signs of Regenerate on the three pillars at once. Formerly Guayakí, it grows its yerba mate in the shade of restored agroforestry systems of the Atlantic Forest. On the environment, 17,000 hectares are under conservation or restoration. On the social pillar, it buys from some 255 Indigenous and family farming communities at a premium of at least 25%, so that they earn a living wage. On the economy, it leads its category in North America. On the territory, the forest and the communities that live from it gain together. Its Regenerative Organic Certified Gold status attests the farming practices.

Scaling up certified regenerative agriculture, without diluting the word

One Billion Acres was launched during the week. The impact campaign of the documentary Groundswell pledges one billion acres in certified regenerative agriculture by 2030. Its acres count only once a certifier has verified them, such as Regenerative Organic Certified, Demeter or Land to Market, and brands from Nespresso to Yerba Madre have joined it. A pledge sets a direction; its level will read as the verified acres add up.

Regenerative fashion and textiles: from carbon targets to the farm that grows the fiber

One pillar, the environment, counted in carbon and energy · signs of Reduce

Brands made emissions commitments with their suppliers. The Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition, founded by The Climate Pledge, Amazon, Stella McCartney and Canopy with more than 60 signatories, works toward net-zero carbon by 2040, and Levi Strauss & Co. and Marks & Spencer launched a collaborative on renewable energy with their suppliers.

The environment, through new materials · first signs of Restore

Regeneration entered through materials. At the Fashion Institute of Technology, Eco Age convened the next-generation materials transition with Spinnova, DIRT Charity, Good Earth Cotton and Material ConneXion, and Columbia hosted the Gotham Foundry Symposium on regenerative materials. The forum’s central message, as the trade publication New Cloth Market reported it: transforming fashion takes more than material innovation.

The farm and the territory come in · first signs of Restore

Growers and a territory brought the fiber back to its source. Good Earth Cotton, a cotton grower, took regenerative textiles back to the soil the fiber grows in, and Parsons screened “SHIRINGA: Fashion Regenerating Amazonia”.

Soil health and labor equity together, at Climate Week 2025 · first signs of Regenerate

A year earlier, regenerative organic textiles had a forum of their own. At Climate Week 2025, Why Regenerative’s Regenerative Textiles Forum brought together Christopher Gergen, CEO of the Regenerative Organic Alliance, Carmen Garma, director of circular design at Eileen Fisher, Sarah Kelley of Fibers Fund, Vikrant Giri of Gallant International and Cara Piazza of Botanical Colors. They worked on scaling regenerative cotton, transparency, the link between soil health and labor equity, and design for circularity.

Regenerative beauty and luxury: from claims and suppliers to the farm where ingredients grow

Claims and certification · signs of Reduce

Beauty media read the week through what brands can claim. BeautyMatter organized its guide to the week around sourcing risk, claims, certification and packaging, as the EU directive on green claims applied from September 27.

The environment, through innovation in packaging and ingredients · signs of Reduce

L’Oréal brought its accelerator to the official program. It opened the second cohort of L’AcceleratOR, its €100 million program run with Cambridge’s CISL: 13 companies from eight countries working on packaging and materials, ingredients and processes.

Suppliers protected, farmers heard · first signs of Restore

LVMH used the week to make an announcement. Under its LIFE 360 program, it announced a partnership with Bpifrance and ADEME to co-fund climate adaptation diagnostics for its small French suppliers, so that they can identify their vulnerabilities and build continuity plans. It also held its first Luxury & Agriculture Meetings with 25 farmers.

Restoring nature named as an intention · first signs of Restore

Restoration was on the agenda of beauty brands. On September 23, Chanel’s chief sustainability officer, Kate Wylie, hosted “Nature: The Root of Resilience and Long Term Value” with Crystal Davis of the World Resources Institute, on pathways that restore nature and create long-term value, and at Regen House the beauty brand Sol de Janeiro joined Nestlé, Mars, Hershey, Arva and NatureMetrics on soil health, biodiversity and farmer livelihoods.

Regenerative forestry and wood: from who decides over forests to forests managed for a century

The social pillar, who decides over forests · first signs of Restore

In forestry, the sessions turned to who holds authority. Organizations of rightsholders asked for community-led conservation, secure tenure, direct funding and decision-making power, and the forest sessions turned to direct access to finance for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The State of Forest Carbon 2026 report found that nearly 80% of tropical forest carbon loss comes from the degradation of forests that stay standing. “For Indigenous Peoples, forests are home and relatives,” said Minnie Degawan, of the FSC Indigenous Foundation (Wood & Panel).

The New Economy Coalition, WECAN and the Climate Justice Hub worked on the same question, who decides and who receives the value.

Regenerative tourism: from reefs that pay for their own protection to stays that make a territory prosper

One pillar, the environment, under pressure from tourism · signs of Reduce

Reefs set the condition for tourism. At Blue Alliance’s roundtable on marine protected areas, Pierre Bardoux-Chesneau, of the Global Fund for Coral Reefs, set the frame: key coral reef ecosystems “might show resilience to climate change, but not to overfishing, unsustainable tourism or land-based pollution”. Tourism enters first as a pressure to reduce.

Environment and communities together on reefs · signs of Restore

Blue Alliance gives communities a stake in healthy reefs. Its reef-positive enterprises, from community-based aquaculture to ecotourism, reinvest their profits in managing the marine protected areas they live from: “If the community isn’t behind it, it isn’t going to work,” said the Trafigura Foundation’s Dario Soto Abril.

Building and construction: from low-carbon buildings to regenerative design

One pillar, the environment, counted in carbon and resilience · signs of Reduce

Real estate spoke of carbon and resilience. The Sustainable Real Estate Forum hosted the launch of Blend Better Cement, presented as the fastest way to cut cement emissions this decade, and discussed certified, low-carbon buildings as the ones that command rent premiums. New York toured the Battery Coastal Resilience Project.

Data that serve decisions, the lever that opens Restore · first signs of Restore

Real estate investors named the step: moving from “who reports best to who decides best”, which is where data start serving decisions.

Environment and health together, in regenerative design · first signs of Restore

Architects put regenerative design on the agenda. The American Institute of Architects hosted “Resilient and Regenerative Design”, on design that serves resilience, ecosystem restoration, disaster risk reduction and public health at once, and Goals House, SAP and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation held a session on regenerative intelligence and circular business.

6. Climate Week NYC and France’s fall gatherings: level with Produrable, at the top of the Reduce level

Climate Week’s official program holds its own, on a par with France’s CSR trade show. Carried by states, cities, companies and civil society while the federal government has stepped back, it sits at the top of the Reduce level.

We read France’s fall business gatherings the same way this year: Produrable, the CSR trade show, at 48%, Impact France’s summer university at 60%, the MEDEF’s La REF at 30%. Climate Week NYC, at 47%, sits at the same level as Produrable, at the top of Reduce, on the same trajectory: Limit, Reduce, Restore, Regenerate. The four gatherings differ in nature, from an international NGO’s program to a trade show, a movement of impact entrepreneurs and an employers’ summer university: the comparison reads where each one stands, not one country against another.

Business gatherings of fall 2026 situated with the same Capacity Score, on their published programs: Produrable, Impact France’s Universités d’Été de l’Économie de Demain and the MEDEF’s La REF, read in September 2026. Climate Week NYC highlighted; the color of each bar shows the level.

Same trajectory, different levers. Ecosystem intelligence stays below the Restore threshold at both Climate Week NYC and Produrable: on both sides of the Atlantic, the data serve risk and reporting before they follow the state of ecosystems.

Three gaps are wide enough to read. Climate Week NYC goes further than Produrable on human dynamics, at 67% against 50%, and less far on the localized value chain, at 44% against 61%, where Produrable’s program puts more weight on supply chains. Impact France stands apart on personal leadership, at 67% against 38%.

Why the comparison matters: ratings, like the program, read energy before ecosystems. In France, asset managers argue that the major US agencies rate French companies more harshly on environmental, social and governance criteria. As Le Monde reported on October 2, former heads of research at Morningstar and S&P Global attribute the gap mainly to sector.

The heavyweights of the Paris stock exchange work in defense, tourism, construction and luxury, which these ratings treat as more exposed than the tech giants that dominate US indices, whose energy-hungry activity is offset in the ratings by massive investment in green energy. Within the same sector, the gap reverses, according to Sustainalytics.

In our reading, the ratings, like Climate Week’s official program, read energy and emissions first. Companies whose activity rests on soils, water, landscapes and living materials, in luxury, tourism or construction, are read through their exposure; reading the state of the ecosystems they depend on is the next step.

The dependence on ecosystems runs both ways. The European Central Bank found that around 72% of euro area companies are highly dependent on at least one ecosystem service, and that they receive nearly 75% of bank loans to companies. And the tech sector the ratings reward depends on water: the World Economic Forum notes that a 100 MW data center can require up to 2.5 billion liters a year, and that the world’s data centers already consume more than 400 billion liters annually.

France at Climate Week: the technologies of the transition. The French presence organized around the week by Business France was a cleantech mission: three days in New York for France 2030 laureates, to connect French innovators in the energy and environmental transition with North American companies, investors, cities and public agencies.

France’s value chains that start from the soil, such as the products distinguished by the Lauriers de la Régénération, could form the next French delegation: at Regen House and Food Tank, buyers and financiers were looking for them.

7. After Climate Week NYC 2026: start from the state of ecosystems

What is at stake is continuity. The week made business resilience a shared concern. Resilience holds as long as the ecosystems and the people it rests on hold: around 72% of euro area companies depend heavily on at least one ecosystem service, as section 6 recalls. Delivering the transition site by site protects an asset; restoration starts when a company works with its suppliers, farmers and the people of a territory on the state of what its activity depends on.

Regeneration, as our white paper on what regeneration means for a business (in French) defines it, gives living beings, humans included, the resources to reach their full potential in their environment: the territory and its inhabitants prosper with the business, and the business with them.

The test of the week is Monday morning. What changes, in the months that follow, in capital allocation, in a purchasing rule, in a budget.

To companies: three steps to start from the state of ecosystems

1. Find the lever holding you back. The Capacity Score, a self-assessment you fill in for your organization as you experience it, situates it on the four levels. Each organization has its own slowest lever; for the companies in our Barometer 2026, it is governance and financing. For those at the top of Reduce, ecosystem intelligence is the lever that opens the way to Restore.

2. Follow one product. Track the state of the soils, water and biodiversity, and of the people and relations, that a single product depends on, along its value chain.

3. Turn it into decisions. Decide what to give up, make the economic call when the data contradict the margin, change governance or what is sold. The Regenerative Business Model works it through with your stakeholders in five workshops, from the current value chain to a switchover within five years, measured in triple accounting; the Regenerative Circles bring a whole value chain together, competitors included, when the blockage lies beyond a single company.

To procurement teams: co-invest along the supply chain

The Food Forum named what farmers need during a three-year transition: capital, secured demand and the assurance that doing it right will be rewarded. The economics of mutuality (in French) answers it: commitments that last, pre-financing of the transition, shared processing tools and gains shared fairly. The products distinguished by the Lauriers de la Régénération (in French) show that contributing is triply profitable, on its three impact pillars: environmental, social and economic.

To Climate Group: open the official program to those who live from ecosystems

Food, nature and the sectors that depend on soils, water and living materials had one to three sessions out of fifty. Food already has its stream and nature shares one with health; biodiversity appeared only through other subjects, water and forests had one session each. A stream on the state of ecosystems, bringing farmers, forest and watershed managers and the women leaders who convened many partner events into the official program, with decision-making power as rightsholders asked, would bring the state of ecosystems into the decisions the week aims to accelerate. Regen House showed the way, with a farmers’ meet-up every morning.

Method note. The Capacity Score situates an organization’s capacity to sustain its CSR, innovation and business trajectories, on four levels, Limit, Reduce, Restore and Regenerate, and six levers: personal leadership, ecosystem intelligence, localized value chain, product innovation, human dynamics, and governance and financing. Each question offers four answers, one per level.

It is usually a self-assessment, which each person fills in for their own organization, as they experience it. Here the collective applies it as an expert reading to an event, because a program shows where a market stands: who gets the floor, on which subjects, with which promises. The method is detailed in our Capacity Score FAQ (in French).

What the estimate covers. What Climate Group’s official program puts forward to business: stated intentions, as the market chooses to show them. The practice of the speakers’ organizations calls for an analysis of its own.

What is read. 50 sessions and keynotes of the main program reported in Climate Group’s official Highlights pages, consulted on October 5, 2026, together with the official agenda of The Hub Live: 26 on September 21 (the Opening Ceremony and the first day of The Hub Live) and 24 on September 22 (the second day of The Hub Live). One of them, “Climate as growth”, is reported with its speakers only. Left aside: the session videos, the Executive Series, the Climate Leaders’ Reception and the closed roundtables.

How the estimate is built. The Capacity Score questions are answered from the 50 sessions as a whole.

Why the main program alone is scored. It is the part of the week Climate Group produces itself, and so the part that speaks for the organizer. The well over 1,500 partner events are organized independently, over a field too wide to read as a whole, and Part II reads two sets of them: the firms that audit, advise, inform and finance business, chosen for their weight, then the sector events, chosen because they speak of regeneration, so that a score built on the latter would come out higher by construction. Part II reads them from their published programs and organizers’ write-ups, through the signs they show.

Sources. Climate Group: Highlights: Climate Week NYC 2026, daily pages of September 21, 22 and 27, 2026, and the official agenda of The Hub Live. Partner events: Food Tank, replay of the summit, write-up and program and speakers · Regen House, 2026 program · NYC Food Policy Center, food events guide · Amazon, Climate Pledge Fashion Coalition announcement · FIT event page · New Cloth Market · Food Tank, Mission-Driven Brands Sustainability Summit · Bonterra Organic Estates, certifications · UNCAGED, Gotham Foundry and Parsons events · Why Regenerative, Regenerative Textiles Forum (Climate Week 2025) · Vegan Fashion Repository, September 2026 · CISL, Chanel and Goals House listings · PlanetHAUS · The Architect’s Newspaper, AIA event. Other sources are linked in the text. Nous Sommes Vivants (We Are Alive): Capacity Score questionnaire and FAQ, white paper (March 2026), readings of Produrable 2026, La REF 2026 and the Universités d’Été de l’Économie de Demain 2026.