On 20 September 2026 in New York, during Climate Week, The Independent published its third Climate 100 List. Among those recognised are Vicki Moffatt, head of Chapter Zero, and Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya. Their names stand side by side not by chance: one works with the boards of directors of the FTSE 100, the other with the farmers of India who save seeds.
Over three years, Moffatt has grown Chapter Zero's membership to almost 4000 people, reaching 80 % of FTSE 100 companies. She does not call for radical statements, but instead embeds concrete tools into the board agenda: transition plans, climate risk assessment, linking remuneration to emissions targets. Her path — from consulting at Kantar and taking part in founding the Ellen MacArthur Foundation — shows that for her the climate agenda long ago became part of corporate strategy, rather than a separate ESG line item.
Shiva began with protests against laws that handed ownership of seeds to corporations. She has created more than 150 seed banks and the organisation Navdanya, defending farmers' right to save, exchange and replant seeds. Her approach is ecology, feminism and food sovereignty as a single whole. For her, climate justice is impossible without control over what is sown and who owns it.
The inclusion of both in a single 2026 list reveals an important shift: the climate agenda is no longer divided into "business" and "activism". Moffatt shows how institutional players can embed climate into their DNA without losing commercial logic. Shiva proves that without protecting local practices and community rights, any corporate targets will remain declarations. Their simultaneous recognition speaks to the fact that real change requires both pressure from below and restructuring from above.
When Moffatt speaks of a "new world order" for boards of directors, and Shiva of the "invisible work of women" in collecting water and saving seeds, they describe different scales of the same problem: who controls resources and who bears responsibility for them. In 2026, when extreme heat has already become the norm, this question ceases to be theoretical.
Their presence on the Climate 100 List shows that a sustainable future is built not along one road, but at the intersection of many — and the more such intersections there are, the less chance the climate agenda will remain mere words.
