Joe Brooks
Senior Programme Manager
Investors are increasingly looking beyond individual companies to address the systemic barriers slowing sector-wide transition on climate and nature. This Insight sets out how engagement across value chains and with policymakers can help unlock progress and deliver real-world outcomes.
This piece was co-authored with Michael Button, Senior Policy Specialist for Real Economy, IIGCC.
As the transition accelerates, it is becoming clear that many of the key obstacles to progress – policy misalignment, infrastructure gaps, and fragmented incentives – cannot be addressed through company engagement alone.
Investors are therefore expanding their approach. This shift towards systems stewardship reflects the next phase of the transition, where progress depends on addressing cross-cutting barriers. It requires new tools, clearer frameworks and deeper sector-specific insight to identify the most material barriers and how they can be unblocked.
At the IIGCC Summit 2026, kicking off London Climate Action Week, we will explore this further through a members-only workshop on ‘Breaking down barriers to sector decarbonisation’. Recommended for stewardship teams, the session will bring participants together to share experiences, explore practical approaches and engage with IIGCC’s tools, frameworks and sector insights.
From company action to system change
Progress on sector transition remains uneven and insufficient, with many industries still off track — underlining the growing need for more urgent investor action.
Many of the most significant barriers sit outside individual companies. Policy and regulatory gaps, value chain dependencies and technology constraints continue to slow progress, pointing to a systemic challenge rather than a purely company-level issue.
As a result, investors are increasingly recognising that traditional stewardship focused on single companies needs to be complemented by a broader, systems-level approach. At the same time, company-level engagement remains critical, forming the foundation on which system-wide action can build.
Scaling stewardship in complex systems
Extending stewardship across complex systems presents practical challenges. Engaging effectively across policymakers, regulators, suppliers and other market actors is significantly more difficult than traditional company-level engagement, requiring new approaches and greater collaboration.
Investors also face gaps in data and decision-useful information, particularly when operating across sectors and geographies, including emerging markets. This makes it harder to prioritise and act consistently.
Demonstrating impact is another challenge. Systems-level engagement often involves complex issues with multiple actors, where outcomes are harder to achieve and may take longer to materialise. Even when progress is made, it can be difficult to clearly attribute results to a specific engagement, given the number of contributing factors and the indirect pathways through which change occurs.
Enabling systems stewardship in practice
IIGCC is supporting investors to move from ambition to implementation by providing clearer, practical routes to act on systemic barriers.
At the 2026 Summit, IIGCC is launching a dedicated webpage which acts as a central place for members to explore live engagement opportunities and resources. This includes expanded engagement tools, as well as systems stewardship opportunities such as co-signing joint investor letters to policymakers and joining SPRINT sub-groups to tackle specific barriers to sector transition.
SPRINT sub-groups bring together smaller groups of investors to deliver targeted, time-bound engagement on specific sector or cross-sector challenges.
More broadly, IIGCC’s work provides practical examples of systems-level engagement in action. This includes policy-focused engagement such as work on the EU Methane Regulation, and value chain initiatives like the steel purchaser framework – demonstrating how investors can help unblock barriers across different parts of the system.
How the IIGCC Summit 2026 workshop can support investors
This workshop will give participants a practical view of what systems stewardship looks like in action. Through case studies across sectors — including autos, steel and oil & gas — attendees will explore how investors can engage at different points of influence to address systemic barriers.
The session will also examine the key challenges investors face in adopting systems-level approaches, and how IIGCC can support members in overcoming them.
Designed as an action-oriented discussion, the workshop will provide a space for participants to share experiences, test ideas and help shape IIGCC’s future work, supporting investors translate ambition into tangible, system-level impact.
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