On June 18, VivaTech brought together executives, startups, NGOs, and climate tech innovators from its Viva+ community for the 2026 Sustainability Executive Summit. Our new Signal Brief, Tech for Sustainability, distills that conversation into a short read for leaders who have to turn sustainability ambitions into decisions.
The day was organized around two questions. The first was how transparency, accountability, and responsible design can close the gap between technology and society. The second was how we might stop treating technology and nature as rivals and start treating them as allies. Four sessions took up those questions in turn:
• Using AI and predictive modeling to anticipate climate risk
• The 1% for the Planet model of verified giving
• Technology's effect on our social fabric
• UNICEF Young Ambassadors, who described how these choices play out on the ground
Several findings stand out. Climate risk is already an operating reality: Capgemini's Cyril Garcia noted that seventy percent of companies report disruption across their value chains. Data and pilots are plentiful, but few organizations have transition plans backed by allocated capital. As UNICEF's Dr. Nadi Albino put it, young people are not rejecting AI. They are asking for it to be more transparent and accountable, and for a role in shaping it. And the most useful AI for sustainability is often the smallest: specialized models built for a specific task use far less energy and water than large general-purpose ones.
Trust came up in every session. Salesforce's Tim Christophersen argued that AI has to be built at the speed of trust. The brief takes that idea further. It argues that tech's social license now depends on two things. One is honesty about its costs, from data center consumption to the effect of algorithms on the psyche. The other is bringing the tech and sustainability communities into the same debate.
The brief is structured around two lists. The first covers what we must help depart well, including reflexive tech optimism and the habit of treating pilots and pledges as the finish line. The second covers what we must help arrive well, including verified impact, hybrid solutions built on local knowledge, and an adaptation economy whose returns are already visible.
