Hello and welcome to episode 3 of my newsletter to see the big picture and build the future we want.

I’m so happy to see you here!

I am writing to you from Carthagena, Spain, where I just watched a €73.8 billion strategy fail to build an industry. I will explain the cooperation mistake behind it, and how to avoid it in your own team.

Here's what's inside episode 3 of Wide Angle:

I. Three signals you shouldn't miss this week

II. A practical framework for cooperating across teams, institutions, and borders and what to do with it on Monday morning

III. A curated job board for sustainability and climate roles

Most commentary right now focuses on isolated moves: a policy announcement here, a market signal there, a regulatory tweak somewhere else.

But underneath these events, something more structural is emerging: climate and energy transitions are no longer being negotiated as targets : they are being built as systems with embedded rules, constraints, and infrastructure requirements.

In other words, the shift is from ambition to architecture.

Over the past few weeks, multiple EU policy tracks have converged on the same direction: electrification is no longer treated as an optional pathway, but as the organising logic of the energy transition.

The European Commission is preparing the Electrification Action Plan, explicitly designed to accelerate the shift of transport, industry, and buildings away from fossil fuels and toward electricity, supported by grid expansion and market reforms that make electrified systems structurally more competitive

→ EU Electrification Action Plan

At the same time, implementation discussions across EU institutions have reinforced the idea that electrification is central to reducing import dependence, improving competitiveness, and stabilising energy costs, especially as electricity’s share of final energy consumption remains far below its potential.

Parallel industry and stakeholder positions are pushing the same direction: electrification is increasingly framed not as a technological option, but as the default pathway for industrial competitiveness and energy security.

→ Joint industry position paper

And critically, this is being linked to system redesign: grid reform, market design changes, and investment frameworks that explicitly aim to make electricity the central energy carrier across sectors.

The signal is not any single policy. It is the convergence of multiple policy layers toward one outcome: a transition where access to clean electricity becomes the core constraint shaping industrial and transport development.

If you are interested in energy, join the early readers’ list for my upcoming book on energy

→ Join Early Readers’s Community

2. Singapore just made decarbonisation a default, not a request.

Singapore introduced a requirement that all new harbour craft in its port waters be fully electric, run on biofuel, or be net-zero-fuel-compatible starting in 2030, and paired it with a blue carbon monitoring partnership with WWF across Asia. The interesting part isn't the ambition. It's the mechanism: instead of asking operators to volunteer for a transition, the rule makes the new default the only option going forward. That's a governance lesson as much as a climate one : voluntary commitments and hard requirements produce very different compliance curves.

3. The ocean's biggest cooperation gap finally has a name and a fix in progress.

At this month's UN Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue in Bonn, the UN Special Envoy for the Ocean named the real obstacle plainly: fragmented funding, not lack of ambition. Negotiators are now working specifically on coherence between three previously separate tracks : climate, biodiversity, and the new high seas treaty, ahead of COP31 in November. Naming a coordination failure precisely, in public, by the people responsible for fixing it, is usually the step right before it gets fixed.

Erasmus University Rotterdam’s Sustainability Transition Leadership course helps you build practical leadership skills for complex sustainability challenges.

It focuses on systems thinking, stakeholder engagement, justice in transitions, and managing complex problems where no single actor has control.

Useful if you work at the intersection of climate, policy, or finance and need to lead across actors, not just manage projects.

→ Enroll here

I'm writing this from Cartagena, where I just spoke on a panel about why blue economy strategies, i.e government plans to grow ocean industries like ports, marine energy, and aquaculture, struggle to scale into lasting industries. Researching it taught me something that applies far beyond ports and ocean policy: it applies to whatever you're trying to get done this week with people who don't report to you.

The pattern behind every stalled regional strategy I looked at wasn't lack of willingness. It was role confusion. Everyone shows up to the launch meeting. Three months later, nobody can say who's actually responsible for what happens next.

Here's what good cooperation looks like instead, and how to use it Monday morning.

1. Name one owner per outcome, not per task.

Take the Port of Barcelona's ocean innovation hub, where the port, the city, and the local startup network work side by side. It didn't succeed because all three pitched in on everything. It worked because each had exactly one job: the port gave physical space to test new technology, the city gave political backing, the startup network brought the deal flow and one organisation was accountable for the whole thing running day to day.

If you're coordinating a project this week, ask: for each outcome, can I name the one person who owns it? If the answer is "we all sort of do," that's the gap to close first, not with another meeting, but with one direct conversation assigning the name.

2. Don't build a new channel : find the one that already exists.

Ocean policy in the Mediterranean has a structural problem: half the coastline belongs to the EU, half doesn't, and most funding tools can only legally reach one side of that line. Rather than invent something new, an existing body, created specifically so EU and non-EU countries can cooperate as equals, stepped in and split the job three ways: it handles the politics, a development bank handles the money, and each country keeps ownership of its own priorities.

Before you spin up a new process, a new spreadsheet, a new committee, ask whether something already exists that was built for this exact handoff. Most organisations have more of these than anyone remembers.

3. Protect the coalition past the launch.

One Spanish region brought together 600 people (officials, businesses, universities) to launch its regional development strategy, full of energy and goodwill. A few years later, that engagement had quietly evaporated, because nobody owned keeping the group together once the launch photos were taken.

If you're kicking off a cross-team initiative, decide now who checks in with the group in month three, when the energy has already faded and nobody's volunteering.

None of this requires more people in the room. It requires fewer people doing the same job by accident, and someone explicitly responsible for the parts that don't have an obvious owner.

That is the wide angle. That is the view leaders need now.

If Wide Angle adds value to your week, forward it to one colleague or friend in sustainability, climate, strategy, or leadership. Every new reader helps grow this community of big-picture thinkers.

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I keep a limited number of engagements per year, by design.

Signature Keynote : a 90-minute talk built around "How to Turn Chaos into Opportunity," for organisations that need their leadership to think differently about resilience before the next disruption arrives. Watch my Tedx here

Signature Workshop : a half-day working session for teams that need to leave with an actual plan, not just a framework: who owns what, which channel to use, how the coalition survives past launch.

Bespoke Programme (custom) : for organisations going deeper, over multiple modules.

Available in English and French. International.

or write to me [email protected]

Why this matters:

we are moving into a world where climate, geopolitics, energy, and natural resources are no longer separate topics. They are one system. My work is to help people read that system more clearly and make better decisions inside it.

The sustainability job market is no longer expanding broadly. It is reorganising around a smaller number of high-pressure nodes: regulation, infrastructure, finance, and industrial transition.

Good luck ! This is a market where depth now matters more than breadth, and positioning matters as much as experience.

💼 Senior Programme Lead, Climate Finance (GEF & GCF) — IUCN
Gland, Switzerland. Climate finance programming across global conservation portfolios.

💼 Senior Technical Officer, Biodiversity and Climate — IUCN
Gland, Switzerland / Washington DC. Biodiversity–climate policy interface.

💼 Analyste en Finance Durable — MAIF
Niort, France. Climate risk, biodiversity finance, sustainable investment analysis.

💼 Global Project Manager, Early Warnings for All — UNDP
International. Climate risk systems and early warning infrastructure.

💼 Policy Programmes Lead — The British Academy
United Kingdom. Research policy, science-policy interface, programme leadership.

💼 Manager, Development Information & Strategy — Environmental Defense Fund
Remote (US). Development systems, fundraising intelligence, organisational strategy.

💼 Senior Manager, Texas Clean Affordable Power — Environmental Defense Fund
US. Power system transition, affordability, clean energy deployment.

💼 Standards & Certification Specialist — Tony’s Chocolonely
Amsterdam. Traceability, certification systems, responsible sourcing.

💼 Sustainability Reporting & Compliance Specialist — Tony’s Chocolonely
ESG reporting and supply chain compliance systems.

💼 EPR Coordinator — Circular Action Alliance
Remote (US). Extended Producer Responsibility implementation.

💼 Eco-Modulation Analyst — Circular Action Alliance
Packaging policy systems and circular economy design.

💼 Packaging Sustainability Innovation Manager — Colgate-Palmolive
US. Packaging systems redesign and materials innovation.

💼 Global Head of Sustainable Products, Packaging & Circularity — Anthesis Group
UK / Global. Value chain transformation and circular systems strategy.

💼 Sustainable Materials & Circular Economy Engineer — BSR
US. Industrial transition and corporate sustainability systems.

💼 Sustainability Specialist, Circular Economy — NetApp
Global. Technology-sector sustainability and circular systems design.

💼 Carbon Removal Policy Roles — Carbon180
US. Carbon removal policy and industrial decarbonisation.

💼 Clean Energy Systems Roles — RMI
Global. Electrification, energy systems, industrial transition.

💼 Energy Transition Policy — Clean Air Task Force
Global. Heavy industry decarbonisation, methane, energy systems.

💼 Climate Philanthropy & Strategy — ClimateWorks Foundation
Global. Climate finance and systems transformation.

💼 Climate Infrastructure Finance — Crux
US. Clean energy tax credits and infrastructure finance.

💼 Clean Energy Investment — Reunion Infrastructure
US. Energy transition capital and project development.

💼 Grant Manager (Climate Finance) — Climate Finance Solutions
Remote / Global. Climate finance grant management across mitigation and adaptation portfolios. Focus on structuring and administering climate-related funding flows.

💼 Climate Policy & Finance — Environmental Defense Fund
Global. Climate economics, methane, biodiversity, sustainable finance.

💼 Sustainable Finance & Investor Engagement — Ceres
US. Investor climate action and corporate transition.

💼 Nature & Biodiversity Strategy — The Nature Conservancy
Global. Conservation finance and ecosystem protection.

💼 Corporate Climate Action — We Mean Business Coalition
Global. Net-zero implementation and corporate transition.

💼 Food System Transformation — The Good Food Institute
Global. Alternative proteins, food system innovation and policy.

💼 Food Waste & Circular Systems — Spoiler Alert
US. Food supply chain optimisation and circular economy.

(Reply if you're hiring for a role : I'll feature it next week.)

If you are only looking for remote jobs in sustainability, subscribe to Sofia's newsletter here: https://remote-jobs-in-sustainability.beehiiv.com/

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See you next week!

Alix

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