Our Mission
Ambition Loop is driven by a profound sense of responsibility towards the planet and its inhabitants. Our mission is to lead and inspire coordinated, transformative action on a small number of major challenges across climate change, biodiversity, plastics pollution, food systems, and water. We are dedicated to promoting a sustainable and resilient future for all. We understand that no one is in charge of systems transformation but we believe that diverse groups of change agents converging on shared bold goals and pathways have the power to innovate and inspire each other to achieve remarkable results.
Beliefs
Boldness drives innovation
In order to provoke new thinking and innovation at the scale required, we need to set transformative goals. These must be uncomfortable, even stretching credibility. Just as when JFK committed to landing on the moon and was ridiculed because many of the required technologies were not available, our bold goals should trigger ridicule, laughter, confusion. But by holding fast to them we believe that the very best of humanity will emerge - our ability to innovate beyond our dreams!
Generosity of spirit builds a basis of trust needed for change
Each of our breakthrough goals is enormous, daunting, way more than can be tackled by any one organisation or sector. We believe the only way to move forward amongst mission-driven organisations is to consistently act with generosity - taking time to understand the world view and capabilities of partners, and encouraging the growth and improvement of existing initiatives.
Radical Collaboration
Radical Collaboration is essential for transformative change. Multiple stakeholders must align on breakthrough goals and implementation pathways to bring about the scale of change we must deliver. This means collaborating up and down supply chains, across different regions of the world, between public and private sectors. In particular it means ensuring the right balance of voices in all initiatives, which is why we will have a bias towards actors from the global south where the challenges are greatest across all our campaigns.
Thematic Areas
Food and Agriculture
Mandated by the COP28 Presidency and UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP28, Razan Al Mubarak, Ambition Loop engages with diverse Non-State Actors - including farmers groups, Indigenous Peoples, civil society, youth, businesses, philanthropy and cities - to support delivery of transformative change in global food systems.
Climate finance
Having commissioned the 'Finance for Climate Action' report from Nick Stern, Vera Songwe and Amar Bhattacharya at COP27, Ambition Loop has launched the Climate Capital Mobilsation Accelerator to drive a massive increase of capital flows to climate solutions in EMDEs, targeting $2.4tr per year by 2030. We focus particularly in building much stronger investment pipelines across nature, industry, energy and resilience, as well as addressing unfair rules of the global finance system and tackling the excessive cost of capital in EMDEs.
Plastics
Mandated by Samoa (Presidency of Aosis), Ambition Loop is coordinating several tracks of non-state actor action as a necessary complement of a bold Global Plastics Treaty in 2025 designed with delivery momentum growing in permanent support of the negotiations.
Water and desertification
The least well known of the Rio Treaties, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, is designed to tackle our most immediate short term challenge - the loss of productive land and available fresh water. Working with the multilateral system and broad groups of non-state actors, we are helping define the breakthrough goals and pathways towards COP16 in Riyadh in December 2024.
Industrial Breakthroughs
Having launched the 2030 Breakthroughs in the run up to COP26, we continue to work closely with a broad ecosystem of partners [UN Climate Change High Level Champions and the Breakthrough Agenda in particular] to drive exponential adoption of clean tech solutions across energy, transport and industry to put the world on track for net zero in the 2040s.
About us
Ambition Loop is a Chilean based non-for-profit dedicated to advancing systemic change for all lives to thrive, and that can only happen if we achieve the SDGs for humans and all living systems.
We believe in the power of bold collective goals, and in the need for generosity among partners to foster radical collaboration - there is more than enough work for all of us! We work on a small number of broad systemic topics such as plastics, food systems, climate finance and industrial transformation. Central to our vision is the steadfast commitment to the role of government, the importance of multilateral collaboration and the need to mobilise all actors to drive systems change, particularly the private sector, civil society, and sub-national governments.
History
The power of the ambition loop was recognised by countries negotiating the Paris Agreement in 2015 when they created the role of UN Climate Champion to drive ambition and action among non-state actors to support and inspire faster action among national governments. The partners of the We Mean Business coalition picked this up and made it central to their approach to systems change. As UN Climate Change High Level Champions we embedded this idea in the work of our teams and partners which led to the launch of the Breakthrough Agenda at COP26, the Sharm el Sheikh Adaptation agenda at COP27 and the Foods Systems Transformation program at COP28.
Founders
Nigel Topping, CMG
UN Climate Change High-Level Champion, COP26 PresidencyAppointed by the UK Prime Minister in January 2020. Nigel works alongside the Chilean High-Level Climate Action Champion, Gonzalo Muñoz. The role of the high-level champions is to strengthen collaboration and drive action from businesses, investors, organisations, cities, and regions on climate change, and coordinate this work with governments and parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Nigel was most recently CEO of We Mean Business, a coalition of businesses working to accelerate the transition to a zero carbon economy. Prior to that he was Executive Director of the Carbon Disclosure Project, following an 18 year career in the private sector, having worked across the world in emerging markets and manufacturing. Nigel was awarded the honor of CMG in Queen Elizabeth’s final honors list in 2022
Gonzalo Muñoz Abogabir, CMG
UN Climate Change High-Level Champion, COP25 PresidencyAppointed by the Chilean Presidency in 2019. From that position, he co-led with Nigel Topping the Race To Zero, Race To Resilience and GFANZ campaigns. Previously, he co-founded and led TriCiclos, one of the most recognised Latin American companies in circular economy and recycling. Gonzalo also co-founded Sistema B (Bcorps in Latin America), Manuia and Polkura Winery. During 2023 he served as the chair of the Food strategy for non state actors for COP28. He also sits on the board of the Global Foodbanking Network, CDP Latin America, TED future forum, Chapter Zero Chile, among others. Gonzalo is a member of the Club of Rome and has been recipient of the Chilean national awards on environment, innovation and social entrepreneurship; and was awarded the honor of CMG in Queen Elizabeth’s final honors list in 2022.
Senior Advisor
Patricia Espinosa
Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)Patricia was executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2016-2022); with an outstanding career as a member of the Mexican Foreign Service: secretary of Foreign Affairs between 2006 and 2012; ambassador to Austria and Germany; as well as ambassador emeritus of Mexico since 2012, and COP16 President among other diplomatic missions of high responsibility. Patricia has received numerous awards, as well as Decorations from the governments of Argentina, Austria, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, the Netherlands, Paraguay and Peru.
Associate partners
Mahmoud Mohieldin
Jacinda Njike
Adam Kahane
Cate Lamb
Manuel Pulgar Vidal
Kim Stanley Robinson
Bogolo Kenewendo
Partner organizations
