Alumni and current students of SKEMA Business School, we are launching the SKEMA Alumni Transitions Club to accompany and support our school in its ecological transition towards a healthier world, and ensure that every student enters on the job market with the keys to understanding and acting on the ecological challenges we are facing today and to federate and mobilize the alumni around these issues.

The report on the ecological climate emergency, as documented by the recent IPCC reports, is once again alarming. Human activity is recognized as responsible for the warming of the atmosphere, oceans and land, resulting in a massive disruption of our climate system. Indeed, extreme weather events (extreme heat, droughts, fires, heavy precipitation, floods and hurricanes) are becoming more frequent and more intense due to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. We experienced this in 2022, in France with one of the hottest summers ever, marked by a record number of heat waves that aggravated the territory's rainfall deficit, resulting in a historic drought and unprecedented forest fires. What happened this summer foreshadows what could be just an average summer in less than thirty years.

If we continue to conduct “business as usual” without major and immediate reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions, these climate disruptions will become more violent each time. With this in mind, the Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 at COP 21, aims to limit the rise in temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The preservation of our ecosystems and the conservation of a livable planet for all living things are at stake. The extent of this systemic crisis is marked by the harmful imprint we have on our environment and its living beings, catalyzed by the exceeding of six out of nine planetary limits; the collapse of biodiversity, the depletion of resources, the increase of pollution, and the disruption of bio-chemical cycles.

Today, no one should ignore the impacts of our lifestyles, production and consumption on the environment. We must radically rethink our way of behaving in the world. Moreover, we no longer believe in the old world that has set up GDP growth as a reference indicator to evaluate a country's wealth, without taking into account social inequalities, health and other indicators that are indispensable to evaluate the well-being of individuals. As long as this same growth feeds into "the destruction of a natural space full of life to replace it by a commercial platform, even if it is carbon neutral, we will not have begun to think seriously". (Aurelien Barrau, astrophysicist and philosopher).

We are convinced that ecology, in its social and environmental dimensions, must regain its rightful place by being at the heart of the concerns of the political sphere, local elected officials, companies, schools, employees, students: citizens in short. The model of society to which we adhere and aspire is inspired by the principle of sobriety and socio-climatic justice, where the development of individuals is orchestrated in a more responsible manner towards the environment.

More and more students and alumni are mobilizing to ensure that the causes, consequences and multiple collective solutions to the environmental crisis are taught in greater depth and applied in higher education. Indeed, according to the survey published on March 28, 2022 by Harris Interactive, at the request of the collective for an ecological awakening, "the majority of young people aged 18 to 30 years declare that it is important that their (future) company takes into account social issues (86%), ethical (82%) but also environmental (86%). This view is shared by both employed young people and high school and university students”.

As alumni and students of SKEMA, we are convinced that we have the capacity to act and change the way the school operates together.

Our club aims to:

• Help accelerate SKEMA's internal change and strategy in favor of the environmental and social transition, in collaboration with the administration and the teachers, in collaboration with the members of its administration and its teachers.

• Review courses according to the principles of sustainability and sobriety, so that no matter what profession we are going into, each student can develop a strong critical mind that allows them to identify and understand the risks of inaction and to question our current economic system through concrete elements.

• Improve the practices of the seven SKEMA campuses so that they become representative of our ecological awareness, by reducing as much as possible the environmental impact of our places of study and our mobility, whether it is home-school travel or professional travel (internships, academic exchanges, etc.).

• Construct collective narratives and imaginations towards a world that we want to co-construct and a vision that is consistent with the above-mentioned principles, because socio-environmental issues require a profound change in the way our societies operate. This will be done by highlighting certain alumni profiles or companies that are consistent with the challenges of ecological transition.

• Build a relevant network for sharing knowledge related to ecological issues and implementing concrete actions for students and alumni to help them engage through their profession; strengthen the influence of graduates through meetings and interventions of various kinds within SKEMA in order to amplify the influence of our school on the issues of transitions, to generate interest around them and to push the largest number to action.

In 2022, SKEMA counts 50 000 alumni. Mobilizing this community to lead and accelerate the organizational, technical and societal transitions of economic actors will be an essential contribution to the climate revolution.

So, whether you feel alone or powerless in the face of this situation, whether you are looking for information and/or want to take part in this project that concerns us all, or whether you are already active and committed to this challenge, we need your support because, as Valérie Masson Delmotte (French paleoclimatologist and Co-Chair of Group 1 of the IPCC) says, "every tenth of a degree counts, every year counts, every choice counts".