Building a sustainable recovery

Ecological transition and resilience:
keys to the post-covid-19 economic recovery

This study is the product of nearly 40 interviews with leaders of major French companies (CEOs, heads of the sustainable development, strategic management, corporate affairs, and operations departments, etc.).

It was carried out by BCG’s Paris office in partnership with the Association Française des Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE). Designed right at the start of lockdown, and thus at the start of the partial economic shut-down, the study aims to analyse the impact of the crisis on corporate operations from an environmental perspective, so as to identify the practices put in place and anticipate the effects of economic recovery plans.

Before the crisis, corporate strategies were undergoing transformation to address environmental challenges. To the need for this transformation is now added a new pressing need to build resilience in the face of Covid-19 and similar events that will follow in its wake.

How do we keep up the environmental momentum and take the long view in a tense and uncertain short-term economic context? How do we stay the course on ecological transition while adding the need for resilience? These are the questions BCG has sought to explore with EpE and major French companies.