Why excluding wealth won’t deliver the transitions we need

30 June 2026 - In this blog, Lindsay Hooper explains why CISL works with families and wealth holders, and the role of education in shaping how power, capital and influence are used in the transition to more sustainable economies.

Whether we like it or not, wealthy families control three things that are scarce in the shift to more sustainable economies: governing influence over enterprises with long time horizons, political access, and patient capital. Whether that capacity is directed towards the transitions societies need depends partly on whether the people holding it have thought seriously about the imperative for change, and what those transitions require. It is precisely to inform this thinking that CISL delivers its Multigenerational Leadership for Sustainability Programme.

Concerns about inequality raised in response to work with wealth-owners are well-founded. The gap between the wealthiest and the rest is wide, widening, and access to opportunity for those at the bottom is being eroded. It is also clear that some ultra-wealthy elites are clearly influencing politics and the rules of the game to suit themselves, eroding trust in institutions. Acknowledging those issues does not, however, lead straightforwardly to the conclusion that wealthy families should be excluded from education about global challenges and on effective approaches to positive systemic change. Calling for an end to extreme concentrations of wealth and power will not bring it about overnight, nor will it deliver greater access to opportunity for others. There are multiple actions that need to be pursued to enable fair opportunities for all families to strive towards a prosperous future. Education of those who currently have wealth and power has a key role to play. 

On enterprise governance: family businesses are the backbone of most economies, and some of the most consequential decisions about employment, land use, supply chains and long-term investment are made in the governance structures of family-owned enterprises. Privately owned firms often have greater freedom than listed businesses to make decisions that protect the natural systems and communities on which they depend, through committing to sourcing sustainably, investing in the resilience of supply chains, and holding long-term commercial bets while a new industrial model proves itself. Some of the businesses that have made the most sustained long-term commitments to sustainability are privately owned, Mars and IKEA among them. Many family businesses are currently exempt from the disclosure requirements on environmental and social performance that listed businesses face, so whether family enterprises actually make commitments to work in harmony with society and nature depends on whether the people governing them have thought seriously about what they are governing and why.

On political influence: family networks have always shaped how views on regulation, taxation and public investment are formed and transmitted, through relationships with ministers, through positions on industry bodies, through the companies and trade associations they fund. There should, of course, be much more transparency and accountability about political influence. But recent economic history shows that when wealthy elites consistently back certain ideas, they can shape government policy for decades. The market-driven economic model that dominated for much of the last fifty years began with a small group of thinkers in 1947, supported over time by wealthy donors who helped turn ideas into influence. While we should work to ensure political power is democratised and accountable, it is also important to try and shape that proven capacity to influence to ensure it is exercised to accelerate the policy changes that societies need: robust frameworks to deliver climate stability, protect and restore nature, and ensure collective investment in shared institutions. Families who understand the structural argument for market redesign and are prepared to make that case inside the rooms where policy is actually shaped are a material asset to the transition.

On capital: the economic transitions required in energy, food, land use and industrial production are multi-decadal undertakings with front-loaded costs and uncertain near-term returns. Public budgets are constrained. Listed businesses are structurally pressured to optimise for quarterly performance, making it difficult to commit capital on the timelines transition requires. Institutional investors need de-risked, proven models before they move at scale. Family capital does not carry those constraints. It can hold for ten or twenty years, absorb early-stage risk, and back first-of-a-kind pilots with the potential to transform whole sectors. Clare Woodcraft, a Fellow at CJBS and previously head of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at Cambridge, has spent two decades working on the catalytic potential of private wealth and philanthropy – bearing early stage risks that unlock the larger flows of institutional and commercial capital that follow.

Philanthropy also reaches problems and unlocks opportunities that neither markets nor governments are structured to address. Much of Cambridge's bursary provision, significant discovery-led science before it has commercial prospects, and much of the research infrastructure underpinning modern medicine were funded by benefactors. Indeed, many effective sustainability initiatives have benefited from major donor funding. Of course, there are compelling arguments in favour of more effective taxation regimes, so that the delivery of social goods is not dependent on the beneficence of a small group of elites. But taxation and active philanthropy have always coexisted, and suppression of the latter won’t automatically lead to reform of the former.

The families attending our programme this month are proactively choosing to engage, to invest their time in exploring how they can lean in to building stronger societies, not how to protect themselves from disruption. Participants receive no public visibility or reputational benefit from their involvement, which removes the incentives typically associated with greenwashing claims.

We know from experience that they will arrive with substantive questions: how to shape and deliver against a purpose that reflects the needs of future generations right across societies, how to deploy capital and influence towards the transitions that matter, how to steward the family’s strengths in ways that expand rather than restrict opportunity for others? The likely outcomes: deployment of frameworks that connect governance decisions, investment choices and political positions to what a transition to more sustainable economies actually requires, and a peer network that creates ongoing accountability for acting on them.

Structural inequality will be addressed through democratic processes, tax reform and changes to how markets are designed. Those structural solutions require people inside the system who understand the case for redesigning it and are prepared to use their influence accordingly, and education is one mechanism for building that understanding. One of the more astute observations in recent debates about activism is that campaigners tend to go for the targets most likely to listen and respond, because those are the visible ones. The result is challenge directed at people already working on the problem, while the actors funding and influencing opposition to pro-social action remain largely undisturbed.

Registrations of interest for the 2027 programme are welcomed