France On Fire: French B-School Deans Address Climate Emergency

When the head of France’s premier MBA program planned his trip to Japan last month, he couldn’t have known he’d spend much of it worrying about a disaster more than 6,000 miles away. Just days into his trip, INSEAD dean Francisco Veloso received an urgent message alerting him to forest fires burning next to his school.

“It was not the most relaxing weekend,” says Veloso, who was more than 6,000 miles away at the time. “I was trying to follow what was going on and support the local team from eight or nine hours’ difference.”

Located in the densely wooded Fontainebleau, 45 minutes out of Paris, INSEAD’s European campus boasts “modern architecture [that] blends harmoniously with the green and leafy surroundings”. This summer amid France’s second record-breaking heatwave, its point of pride turned into a threat: the forest began to burn.

The smoke visible nearby, the business school evacuated the larger part of its campus, located east of the national road. It was 48 hours before crews had contained the blaze. The fire never touched INSEAD, but it scorched 2,000 hectares – 10% of the forest.

“We all feel very much the damage it has suffered,” says Veloso. “It’s a significant impact on the ecosystem.”

The business school has come closer than most to feeling the devastating effects of this summer’s extreme heat. But it’s not alone; across France, the climate crisis has become impossible to ignore. So how are INSEAD and its peers responding? Are their campuses prepared for a hotter future? And how are they educating their students – the future heads of companies and decision makers at global firms – about climate change and sustainability?

NEAR-TERM RECOVERY

At INSEAD, the fires are still a fresh memory. But things could have been far worse. Ultimately, 95 people had to be relocated from a campus hotel. Teaching and activities were pushed to its smaller west campus nearby.

The institution is now focused on collecting funds and volunteers to support the forest’s immediate recovery and seeking input from its community on other ways it can help. Veloso says the buildings are already “fully fire compliant” but preparing for hotter summers is a focus of upcoming building work.

“We’re now doing a quite substantive…campus reimagining,” he says. “A very important element of preparing for where the climate is.”

INSEAD is implementing more sustainable geothermal heating across its campus. It is also creating points for water collection and recovery – crucial during droughts – and planting vegetation that can withstand a hotter climate.

The school is also working with authorities to “learn from the events of this summer,” Veloso says. “Already there’s some discussions about having a set of meetings [to] try to understand what we all can do in terms of zones of protection.”

SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

Veloso believes most research-intensive business schools are on the same page as regards climate change. The science is “pretty clear about the risks that exist for the world, for livelihoods and businesses,” he notes.

Still, he recognizes there’s a gap between corporations’ walk and talk. “It’s important that we bring that to the business discussion…it’s not a separate discussion.” Sustainability “directly connects” with business decisions and strategy – “that’s why we decided sustainability is going to be part of all our core courses” and central to important projects, he adds. Last year, INSEAD faculty taught more than 30 sustainability case studies and published a similar number of academic papers on the topic. Its MBA and master’s in strategy have key sustainability components. It also has a sustainable leadership program for senior executives.

“So it really percolates through our offering because it also percolates through business,” says Veloso. “And I think a similar approach is present in many of the schools across Europe.”

ROI VERSUS SUSTAINABILITY TENSION

Still, Veloso concedes there’s “of course a tension” between companies’ pursuit of profit and environmental stewardship and social impact. He puts this down to time horizon.

“If you’re looking at the quarterly or at [annual] profits versus three years down the line, you may look at things differently,” he notes. Poor metrics also play a role. “There are many adverse impacts and long-term impacts that we don’t have very good ways of bringing into the business decision-making. But I feel this is changing a little.”

INSEAD’s dean attributes some climate skepticism to divisions. “Unfortunately, it’s been taken hostage of political views. Therefore, you find many businesses not addressing it in the form of visible positioning.” But that doesn’t mean work isn’t happening quietly in the background. He cites corporate strongholds such as insurance, where climate is a very clear factor already, due to longer term outlooks and a focus on infrastructure.

HOW BUSINESS SCHOOLS CAN MOVE THE DIAL

That’s not to say business schools can’t improve. “I think the tension also lies in three areas,” says Veloso.

For one, schools need to bring sustainability to their students and make them central in business education. “It’s easy to put this as a separate set of electives,” he says. “It’s still true many of these [initiatives] are still an aside versus a core area.” They can also do a better job of building a strategic mindset, he believes. “Given the trajectory with the climate, how do you build a business model that’s resilient and leverages some opportunities that come with it?”

Finally, schools can reach out beyond their communities to “create opportunities for more people to understand and engage” with sustainability issues. He lists INSEAD’s efforts as a founding partners of the Business Schools for Climate Leadership alliance. “Programs for business schools tend to be small, so if you do it, just one school may not justify it, but if you do it in collaboration, then all of a sudden, that allows you to do things differently.”

AMERICA’S LOSS IS FRANCE’S GAIN

It helps that France’s top business schools are ahead of the curve.

When Poets&Quants visited EDHEC in mid-June, a heatwave was in full swing – that week, dozens of people across the country would drown while trying to cool down from the heat. It seemed appropriate that climate was front of mind for EDHEC dean Emmanuel Metais.

“It’s different in Europe,” he says. “Our friends in the U.S. don’t have the opportunity to talk about climate change. It’s an opportunity for us.”

When Metais came on the Bloomberg Businessweek podcast in 2024, his institution had just released a plan to invest €40m in its GENERATIONS investment fund for startups targeting environment and society. It was funny timing, he says: “Months later the president of one of the most powerful countries in the world was saying climate change is crap.”

In the aftermath of the second Trump election, EDHEC held a “crisis meeting” to decide its response to the new world order – the U.S. would soon scour climate from its political priorities and pull out of climate initiatives. “It took us no more than five minutes so say, it’s an opportunity,” Metais recalls. “In Europe and France we tend to look at the U.S. as a model [for the] past 50 years, but we decided no, no, no – we’re not going to give up.”

INVESTING IN CLIMATE

EDHEC decided to invest in climate annually. “This is our first priority,” says Metais. “If in 50 to 100 years from now we’re unable to live on earth, the rest will be useless.”

The business school has a climate research center, consolidated in 2025 as the EDHEC Climate Institute, which he notes is recruiting “more and more” climate scientists. “Maybe the EDHEC Business School will become EDHEC Climate School in coming years,” Metais suggests, perhaps not entirely in jest.

But if it sounds like any suit-and-tie types are about to start hugging trees, think again.

“What we want to do is provide finance people with the tools in order to factor in climate change in investment decisions,” says Metais. For instance, the center assigns probabilities for IPCC scenarios, “turning this into financial value for investors”. Big infrastructure – such as airports, stadiums and nuclear plants – are the starting point. “If you own an airport, we’re able to tell you in 10, 20, 40 years, taking into account the impact of climate change … the net present value of your investment.”

EDHEC has also just launched a climate rating agency which will be officially recognized by the EU authorities and which will rate assets and companies on their climate risk exposure. “If you’re a shareholder of Nestle or IBM, you’ll know the risk,” he says.

The climate moves are rooted in the business school’s ‘Generations 2050’ strategic plan. He breaks this down into three priorities for EDHEC: advancing “net positive business”, prioritizing societal impact throughout classes and extracurriculars and accelerating climate finance.

At heart, all these link up with a bigger theme, Metais says. “We need to put business at the service of the common good … of course we’re here to serve companies, but eventually we’re here to serve society at large.”

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