Community Insights: London Climate Action Week 2026

Rosanna Crawford, TCA Accelerator Outreach & Engagement Coordinator

For those of you who didn’t experience it firsthand, you likely heard that London Climate Action Week (LCAW) took place amidst a heat wave that shattered temperature records across Europe. Unfortunately the mercury has remained high here in London, where I’ve been reflecting on the conversations I took part in during Climate Week and where we go from here.

My Climate Week started on Thursday 18 June at the Capitals Coalition two-day event “Growth Beyond Finance: Unlocking Value.” While I’m less familiar with conversations around sustainable finance, what struck me most during the first day is how the challenges experts in this field described are largely the same as those I hear from stakeholders working to advance reforms in other sectors.

Conversations revolved around the fact that this community has made the most progress on measuring and addressing nature and climate impacts, while social and health impacts remain marginal. How do we motivate companies to take action, when many key actors (investors, regulators, politicians) aren’t ready to change? Discussions also addressed one issue that is familiar to anyone in the TCA community: fragmentation of methods and approaches. 

On this last point, I took heart from the words of a speaker working in EU policy – that fragmentation isn’t necessarily an issue to be solved, but evidence to decision-makers that many actors are making an effort to address a certain problem. The challenge is how to navigate and synthesize these diverse sources of information. 

Day 2 of the gathering really stood out. The Capitals Coalition team organized a brilliant workshop exercise that put us in the shoes of different departments within a company (e.g. sourcing, communications, the board), and gave us three scenarios to choose between, ranging from business-as-usual to ambitious climate action. We were given financial data, environmental data, and monetized environmental data at different stages of the exercise, and it’s safe to say I will no longer think that just being shown more information alone leads to better decisions. 

At my table (communications), we had lively debates over which scenario to choose and why. My eyes were really opened to the way different stakeholders have to handle decisions, and how overwhelmed you quickly become when faced with balancing financial returns and environmental impacts. Thank you to the Capitals Coalition for a stimulating two days! 

Cut to Tuesday 23 June, it’s very hot, and I’m cycling through rush hour traffic to attend the Economist’s Future of Food event. The morning begins with the announcement of Economist Enterprise’s Resilient Food Systems Index, sponsored by Cargill. It’s still on my to do list to compare this index with the International Institute of Environment and Development’s Food Security Index published earlier this year.

The first panel confirms a theme that others have observed running through LCAW – regenerative agriculture is the star of the show. While it’s exciting to have alternative farming systems championed so loudly, regenerative’s lack of consistent definitions and scope left me with many questions about the claims being made. This was on my mind when the PepsiCo representative on the panel spoke about supporting their 300,000 farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture, without addressing the health and societal impacts of their products. It was left to Nic Renison (Renison’s Farm) to raise this point during the subsequent panel on soil health, organised by MacDoch and Grace Communications Foundation.

These conversations made me think about the power of True Cost Accounting as a transparency and accountability tool – a way of assessing claims against health, social, environmental and economic metrics. FAIRR Initiative’s recent report lays bare the credibility gap in companies’ regenerative aims and claims, while a group of environmental and food systems organizations have released a joint statement on “regenerative greenwashing.” TCA can communicate the value of genuinely transformative farming practices, and cut through the “bagginess” of current buzzwords (read Jack Thompson’s article on baggy buzzwords here). 

On Thursday, I attended the 3rd Annual Food Tank Chief Sustainability Officer Summit, thankfully held in Google’s air conditioned offices. The message that stood out to me at this event was Helmy Abouleish’s (SEKEM) assertion that, “policymakers need to be courageous.” This was in response to a question about the costs of organic food being a barrier to uptake. Helmy reminded the audience that organic or biodynamic food is cheaper – it’s just the true cost of food produced by industrial farming is hidden. Policymakers need to incentivize alternative farming approaches, like organic or agroecology, by reimbursing farmers for the benefits they are providing. 

Luckily, the day before, I had attended the event “Beyond Fertiliser Dependency: Global South Pathways for Food Security and Climate Resilience,” organised by Ambition Loop, ClimateWorks Foundation, and the Climate and Society Institute. This event showcased the ambitious work going on in Brazil to find alternatives to synthetic fertilizer. Since passing their Bioinputs Law in 2024, the Brazilian government has supported the development and adoption of bioinputs (products, processes or technologies of plant, animal or microbial origin) to speed the transition to sustainable agriculture. Dr Mariangela Hungria’s (2025 World Food Prize Laureate) presentation was a particular highlight. Read more about her work.

Another event that stayed with me after LCAW was “The Funeral for the Food System,” organized by tmrw. Held at St James Garlickhythe church (so named because of its location by the Thames river landing place where garlic was sold in medieval times), we sang and mourned for the death of the food system. Adele Jones, TCA Accelerator Steering Committee Chair, gave one of the eulogies, telling us that there is no such thing as a perfect system – something every farmer knows. There will always risk. But now, as we heard throughout the eulogies and readings, there can be space for another story to emerge. It can be hard to be hopeful, but I left LCAW reminded of the fact that many courageous people are working for a better food system, and for a better future – and there’s nothing better than leaving my laptop at home and getting to see them in person!