sustainabilityprofessionals

Two Courses, One Mission: Building Sustainability Practitioners Who Are Ready to Act

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:44:43 GMT

March 23, 2026

I spend a lot of time thinking about how we teach sustainability. Not just the what , but the how and why . At TripleWin Advisory , a woman-founded, -owned, and -led sustainability consultancy and registered public benefit company, we believe real progress on circularity requires more than good intentions. It requires practitioners who are genuinely equipped to act. That conviction is what led us to develop two courses now available through ISSP: Cultivate and Mitigate .

Both courses have since been adopted by universities and are reaching sustainability students across the country. Knowing what went into building them makes me want to share the story behind each one.

Mitigate: Built From Practice, Not Textbooks

Mitigate was created from hands-on work with partners tackling one of the most pressing issues in sustainability: food waste. Reducing food waste is consistently ranked among the highest-impact solutions to climate change, and yet it remains one of the most underfunded and under-addressed areas in the field. TripleWin Advisory has worked with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment (PCFWC) , a public-private partnership whose frameworks were ultimately adopted at the national level. Those assets, that research, and those hard-won insights form the backbone of Mitigate.

When we talk about food waste reduction strategies in this course, we're drawing on frameworks that have been tested and refined in real supply chains and policy environments. For learners who want to do this work professionally, that grounding matters.

The University of Wisconsin has integrated Mitigate into their undergraduate and graduate sustainability programs, which speaks to what the course offers academically: rigorous, applied content that bridges the classroom and the field.

Cultivate: Sustainability Through a Circular Lens

Cultivate was designed to meet students and sustainability professionals where they are: curious and motivated, but often overwhelmed by the breadth of the sustainability landscape. The course walks through key impact categories, including energy, water, materials, and food systems, but what sets it apart is the circular perspective woven throughout. Rather than treating each category as a separate silo, Cultivate consistently asks: where does this come from, where does it go, and how do we close the loop?

The goal was never to produce a traditional course. We wanted something that would genuinely shift how participants see the systems around them, in their organizations, their communities, and their own professional practice. Sustainability isn't just a checklist. It's a way of thinking, and building that capacity is at the heart of what Cultivate does.

We were thrilled when Indiana University integrated Cultivate into its sustainability curriculum, making it available to students. Knowing this framework is shaping the next generation of practitioners before they ever step into a professional role is exactly the kind of impact we set out to create.

Why This Matters for ISSP Members

ISSP members are people who take sustainability seriously, professionals who want to do this work with rigor and integrity. Both Cultivate and Mitigate were built with that kind of learner in mind. Whether you're early in your sustainability career or a seasoned practitioner looking to deepen expertise in circular systems or food waste strategy, these courses offer something substantive.

I'm proud that ISSP is now home to both. And I'm especially proud that TripleWin, a small women-led consultancy committed to advancing circularity, has been able to contribute to the professional development ecosystem that ISSP represents.

If you're considering either course, I'm happy to answer questions. And if you're an educator or institution looking to integrate sustainability content grounded in real-world application, I'd love to hear from you.

About the Author : Amy Hall serves as the Education Lead at TripleWin Advisory , a corporate sustainability consultancy that empowers businesses to measure and reduce their environmental impact, adopt circular economy practices, and build sustainability literacy across their workforce. In her role, Amy develops and delivers training programs and employee engagement competitions and fosters a culture of sustainability, with a particular focus on food loss and waste reduction. She holds a Master of Science in Sustainable Management from the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor’s degree in graphic design.

Photos: Canva Stock, TripleWin Advisory

From Influence to Impact: Upcoming Webinars & Working Sessions for Sustainability Leaders Ready to Scale Change

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:47:26 GMT

February 20, 2026

As someone who works closely with sustainability practitioners and leaders, I constantly hear the same themes:

“How do I get leadership to say yes?”

“How do small businesses realistically do this?”

“How do we scale change without burning out?”

That’s exactly why I’m so excited about our upcoming webinar and working sessions. These aren’t theoretical discussions. They’re practical, interactive, and designed for those of us doing the hard work of driving sustainability forward — often without formal authority, large budgets, or perfect systems.

Here’s what’s coming up and why I believe these sessions matter right now!

Webinar: The advantages and challenges for small businesses in sustainability

March 5, 12:00pm EST

REGISTER HERE

We often center sustainability discussions on large corporations. ESG frameworks. Reporting mandates. Multi-billion-dollar net-zero commitments but small businesses make up the majority of our economy.

In our upcoming webinar, The Advantages and Challenges for Small Businesses in Sustainability , Colleen Spear brings clarity and practicality to this often overlooked audience.

As the founder of Spearpoint Strategies in New England, Colleen works directly with small businesses across industries — from bottle manufacturing to law to clothing design. She helps organizations embed sustainability into operations and strategy through certification support, fractional management, and strategic planning.

This session will explore:

The barriers small enterprises face in sustainable business spaces
Why most sustainability advice overlooks small business realities
The natural strengths small businesses possess
How to apply sustainability practically within constrained environments

Small businesses often lack the complexity — and bureaucracy — of larger corporations. That agility can be a major advantage. Decision-makers are accessible. Values can be integrated quickly. Cultural shifts can happen faster.

Rather than positioning small businesses as behind, this session reframes them as powerful drivers of innovative, community-centered solutions.

If you work with small enterprises, advise them, or operate one yourself, this webinar will provide actionable insights and language you can apply immediately.

Webinar: Influencing Up: Strategies for Sustainability Leaders

April 28, 5:00pm EST

REGISTER HERE

Our upcoming session with Dr. André Taylor, Strategies for ‘Influencing Up’ as a Sustainability Leaders , focuses on one of the most critical — and underdeveloped — skills in sustainability work: influencing without authority.

Dr. Taylor brings a powerful combination of experience. He began his career as an environmental manager and scientist before earning a mid-career PhD in leadership at Monash University. Today, he serves as Leadership Specialist and Adjunct Associate Professor at the International WaterCentre and works extensively with sustainability and executive leaders.

Why does this matter?

Because sustainability practitioners rarely have direct authority over finance teams, executives, procurement departments, or policymakers. Yet we are expected to influence all of them.

This session will explore:

How to gain buy-in from senior leaders
How to navigate functional silos
How to influence across sectoral boundaries
How to build authority when you don’t have the title

What I appreciate most about this session is that it reframes influence as a skill — not a personality trait. We’ll dive into practical tools and concepts that help sustainability leaders:

Speak the language of decision-makers
Align initiatives with strategic priorities
Understand motivations and incentives
Work effectively across power dynamics

If you’ve ever felt stuck waiting for approval, resources, or executive sponsorship, this webinar is designed for you.

Implementing the AIMS Framework: From Momentum to Scale

Four Interactive Working Sessions:

March 18th (12pm EST) | Amplify

REGISTER HERE

April 22nd (12pm EST) | Influence

REGISTER HERE

May 12th (12pm EST) | Multiply

REGISTER HERE

June 25th (12pm EST) | Scale

REGISTER HERE

For those ready to go deeper, we’re offering a four-part interactive working series led by Dr. Jacqueline Kerr.

Dr. Kerr has been published in Harvard Business Review and is in the top 1% of cited social scientists worldwide. Her work blends behavior change, implementation science, and systems thinking to help sustainability leaders deliver results — even in resource-constrained settings.

These sessions aren’t passive webinars. They’re Miro-based, hands-on working sessions built around real initiatives participants are leading.

Here’s how the journey unfolds:

AMPLIFY — Recognizing Hidden Success

We begin by mapping sustainability wins — even small ones — and identifying their ripple effects.

Participants will:

Surface hidden ROI
Identify informal impact makers
Recognize patterns across companies
Publicly commit to amplifying a success story

Key insight: change is already happening — it’s just often invisible.

INFLUENCE — Removing Barriers Without Authority

We diagnose stalled initiatives using an Action Audit framework.

Together, we map barriers across:

Strategy & Design
People & Engagement
Systems & Structures
Feedback & Adaptation

Participants will leave with:

Clear barrier diagnoses
Peer-tested influence strategies
Commitment to remove one key blocker

The big realization here? Most stalled initiatives are people challenges embedded within unsupportive systems.

MULTIPLY — Creating Action Hubs

We explore what makes groups succeed versus stall and design collaborative “action hubs” around shared problems.

Participants will:

Identify high-impact problems worth solving together
Map who needs to be involved
Develop invitation language
Learn facilitation tactics that build ownership

When groups co-design solutions, momentum becomes self-sustaining.

SCALE — Building Systems That Spread Change

Finally, we design pathways for scaling impact beyond individual teams.

We’ll:

Map where wins can spread
Identify facilitator pipelines
Explore how peer networks enable growth
Commit to developing new leaders

The insight here is transformative: when you train facilitators and activate system levers, change no longer depends on one sustainability champion pushing relentlessly.

Why These Sessions Matter Now

Across sectors, sustainability professionals are navigating political tension, budget constraints, competing priorities, and burnout.

What excites me about this lineup of upcoming webinars and working sessions is that they address the real work:

Influence without authority
Practical sustainability in small enterprises
Behavior change and implementation
Scaling change through systems, not heroics

These experiences are designed not just to inform — but to equip.

Whether you're looking to sharpen your executive influence, support small business transformation, or move from isolated wins to systemic impact, there’s a session built for you.

And perhaps most importantly, these sessions create community. You won’t just learn frameworks — you’ll see patterns across organizations, borrow strategies from peers, and build networks that last beyond a single meeting.

If you’re serious about driving sustainable change in 2026, I invite you to join us.

We’re not just talking about sustainability. We’re building the leadership capacity to deliver it.

About the Author:

Jason Rodman has been a consultant with ISSP since July 2025. As a sustainability newcomer, he brings a strong background in program development and partnership building with NYC agencies to deliver social services to vulnerable populations. His experience in Human Resources has also supported nonprofits in securing the talent and structure they need to thrive. Based in New York, Jason is embracing this new chapter in sustainability, continuously learning from ISSP members and industry leaders while expanding his knowledge and impact in the field.

Photos: Canva Stock, ISSP

Turning Member Feedback into Action: ISSP’s 2026 Strategic Plan

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:41:54 GMT

January 16, 2026

At the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP), strategy is not theoretical. It is practical, action-oriented, and grounded in the real needs of sustainability professionals working in complex and rapidly evolving environments.

The ISSP 2026 Strategic Plan is a one-year, execution-focused roadmap designed to strengthen ISSP’s role as a global professional association for sustainability practitioners. Built directly from member feedback gathered through Town Halls, surveys, and ongoing conversations, the plan focuses on three strategic priorities: financial stability, relevant professional knowledge, and meaningful member engagement.

This article explains what the 2026 Strategic Plan is, why these priorities matter, and how member input directly shaped ISSP’s direction.

What the ISSP 2026 Strategic Plan Is—and Is Not

The 2026 Strategic Plan is not a long-term vision statement or a five-year forecast. It is a focused, one-year plan designed to deliver measurable progress.

The plan is intended to:

Strengthen ISSP’s financial sustainability
Modernize sustainability education and credential resources
Improve the member experience across career stages

Each priority includes defined actions, timelines, and success metrics, ensuring accountability and transparency.

Strategic Priority 1: Financial Stability and Organizational Resilience

Member feedback made it clear that financial stability is foundational. Sustainability professionals are navigating tighter budgets, organizational pressure, and changing leadership expectations. At the same time, members want ISSP to provide consistent, high-quality programming and professional support.

Strategic Priority 1 focuses on strengthening ISSP’s financial foundation through:

Updated pricing structures
Reintroduced paid offerings such as learning cohorts and webinars
Diversified revenue through partnerships and development efforts

Financial stability allows ISSP to invest in staff capacity, technology, and high-quality programming while ensuring long-term organizational resilience.

Strategic Priority 2: Updating the ISSP Body of Knowledge

The sustainability field is evolving quickly. Members emphasized the need for learning resources that reflect current practice, including decarbonization, Scope 3 emissions, sustainability communications, AI and data integration, and embedding sustainability into core business strategy.

Strategic Priority 2 focuses on updating the ISSP Body of Knowledge by:

Revising SEA and SEP study materials
Engaging expert reviewers
Developing a more accessible and practical reference guide

Maintaining current, credible knowledge resources ensures that ISSP credentials remain trusted standards for sustainability professionals worldwide.

Strategic Priority 3: Strengthening Member Engagement and Community

Members consistently highlighted the importance of meaningful engagement. Large, unstructured networking events and passive platforms are not meeting professional needs.

Strategic Priority 3 commits ISSP to:

A predictable monthly cadence of newsletters, webinars, and blog content
Expanded Emerging Professional meet-ups
Topic-focused and regionally accessible networking opportunities
Continued development of career-support tools, including learning cohorts and a job board

These initiatives are designed to support career resilience, peer connection, and professional growth.

Measuring Success and Maintaining Accountability

Each strategic priority includes defined measures of success. Progress will be reviewed quarterly by the Governing Board, and Town Halls will continue to serve as an ongoing feedback mechanism.

The 2026 Strategic Plan is a living framework—designed to be evaluated, refined, and improved as member needs evolve.

Moving Forward Together

The most consistent message from members was commitment—to the sustainability profession, to professional excellence, and to ISSP as a global community.

The ISSP 2026 Strategic Plan reflects that commitment. It is practical, responsive, and grounded in the realities sustainability professionals face today.

We look forward to continuing this work together.

About the Authors:

Elizabeth Dinschel, MA, MBA, is the Executive Director of ISSP

Bangaly Kourouma is the President of the Board of Directors of ISSP

Photos: Adobe Stock

Listening, Learning, and Rebuilding Connection: Reflections from Our First ISSP Town Hall

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:36:39 GMT

Elizabeth Dinschel, MA, MBA, is the Executive Director of ISSP

Earlier this month, we hosted our first global ISSP Town Hall since I stepped into the role of Executive Director. I logged off that call energized, humbled, and deeply grateful for the honesty, generosity, and care that our members brought into the space.

This Town Hall was never meant to be a one-way update. It was designed as a listening session — a chance for ISSP leadership and staff to hear directly from sustainability professionals across regions, sectors, and career stages. And you delivered.

What follows are a few reflections on what I heard, what we learned, and where we’re headed next together.

Why We Called This Town Hall

ISSP has gone through a period of transition — new leadership, new staff, and a renewed focus on modernizing how we serve a truly global membership. Change can be energizing, but it can also create moments of uncertainty and disconnection. We knew we needed to pause, gather our community, and listen with intention.

The Town Hall brought together members from multiple continents, industries, and disciplines. Sustainability practitioners, consultants, engineers, communicators, policy professionals, and career-transitioners all showed up with thoughtful questions and candid feedback.

One thing was immediately clear: this community cares deeply about its work, about each other, and about ISSP’s role in supporting sustainability professionals at a challenging moment for the field.

What We Heard Loud and Clear

While the conversation covered a wide range of topics, several themes surfaced again and again — both in the live discussion and in the survey responses shared before and during the session.

First: sustainability work is getting harder, not easier.
Many of you spoke about shrinking budgets, leadership buy-in challenges, and sustainability slipping down the priority list inside organizations. Scope 3 data, reporting complexity, and the pressure to justify every initiative with a business case were recurring pain points. These challenges are real, and they’re shared across sectors and geographies.

Second: career pressure is very real right now.
We heard from members navigating job searches, underemployment, role eliminations, and career transitions into sustainability. For some, ISSP is not just a professional association — it’s a source of stability, learning, and connection during uncertain times.

Third: networking matters — but how we do it matters more.
Members consistently asked for more meaningful ways to connect with one another. Large, unstructured networking calls don’t always work. You want smaller conversations, clearer purpose, local connections where possible, and spaces that feel collaborative rather than promotional. Several of you also shared candid feedback that our current LinkedIn group isn’t delivering the value you’re looking for.

Fourth: access and visibility need improvement.
From logging continuing professional development (CPD) hours, to finding webinars, to understanding which courses are right for your experience level — too much feels harder to navigate than it should. That’s on us, and it’s fixable.

What This Means for ISSP

I want to be very clear: this feedback is not discouraging — it’s incredibly useful.

What I heard most strongly is that members want ISSP to be more than a credentialing body or a webinar provider. You want a professional home — one that supports learning, career growth, and community in practical, human ways.

That means we need to:

Make networking more intentional and inclusive
Improve how we communicate and surface opportunities
Clarify professional development pathways from beginner to advanced
Better support members navigating today’s job market
Ensure our global membership feels seen and served

None of this requires reinventing ISSP. It requires aligning our offerings more closely with how sustainability professionals actually work — and what you need right now.

What We're Already Working On

Some of the ideas raised during the Town Hall are already moving forward:

Clearer guidance on how to log CPD and maintenance hours , including short explainer resources
Exploring smaller, facilitated networking formats , including breakout conversations and topic-focused sessions
Improving visibility of upcoming events so opportunities don’t get lost in inboxes
Looking at ways to better organize courses by experience level and topic area
Continuing conversations around study cohorts , mentorship, and career-focused programming

We’re also taking a closer look at how members find and connect with one another — geographically and professionally — so networking feels more organic and useful.

And yes, we heard the request for regular Town Halls. This will not be a one-off. While we’re in this period of transition and rebuilding, we plan to host these conversations on a recurring basis.

Moving Forward, Together

One of the most meaningful parts of the Town Hall for me was the generosity of spirit in the room. Members didn’t just point out what wasn’t working — you offered ideas, examples, and encouragement. You spoke not only about your own needs, but about how ISSP can better serve sustainability professionals globally.

That’s the kind of community we’re building.

If you weren’t able to join the Town Hall live, I hope this reflection gives you a sense of the conversation and the direction we’re heading. And if you did attend: thank you. Your voice matters more than you know, and it’s shaping what comes next.

We’re rebuilding connection — not just through programs and platforms, but through listening, transparency, and shared purpose. I’m grateful to be doing that work alongside you.

About the Author:

Elizabeth Dinschel, MA, MBA

Executive Director

ISSP

PHOTOS: Adobe Stock

Can sustainability be saved by tackling loneliness, not just CO₂ emissions?

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 02:20:14 GMT

Raz Godelnik is an Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design — The New School. He is the author of Rethinking Corporate Sustainability in the Era of Climate Crisis . You can follow him on LinkedIn .

Can sustainability be saved by tackling loneliness, not just CO₂ emissions?

Earlier this month, I stopped at Sunshine Coffee in Laramie, Wyoming, on our way to Yellowstone Park. What brought me there was the fact that it’s a zero-waste coffee shop, with no single-use consumer items. In other words, there are no disposable cups — not for customers dining in, and not even for those who want their coffee to go, like I did. Instead, you can either bring your own reusable cup or get your drink in a glass jar for $1, which is refunded on your next order when you return it (or you can simply keep it, as I did).

At first, I was excited about the zero-waste coffee shop concept, wondering what it would take for Starbucks and other coffee chains to adopt it and eliminate the waste that has become an integral part of our coffee (and other drinks) consumption. But as I waited for my coffee, I began to notice something else — something that had little to do with waste and everything to do with people.

As I looked around, I noticed their stickers. Beneath the logo, it read: Zero waste. Community space . Suddenly it clicked — this coffee shop isn’t just about eliminating waste; it’s about creating a place where people feel connected. As owner and founder of Sunshine Coffee, Megan Johnson, explained in an interview with This is Laramie : “I wanted to bring sustainable values to Wyoming as well as build a business that serves the community.” That got me thinking about how the second part — serving the community — is integral to the first. After all, in a world where loneliness — a key barrier to people’s well-being — is on the rise, shouldn’t creating spaces for connection be just as central to sustainability as going zero waste?

Photo: Sunshine Coffee

Then, while drinking my coffee on the road, I thought about the kind of value sustainability creates for people. In most cases, this value is framed mainly around environmental impacts — in this case, eliminating waste. While many people care about that, it’s rarely enough on its own, as shown by the struggles of many sustainable products and services to scale. On the whole, people don’t see enough value in environmentally driven offerings to justify any downsides they may have — such as a premium price — and fully integrate them into their lifestyles. As a result, most companies lack a strong demand-side incentive to act more boldly on sustainability.

At the same time, as Sunshine Coffee shows, sustainability can create clear and meaningful social value. For its customers, that might mean a sense of connection and belonging to a community — for example, through its Neighborhood Account, which offers food and drinks at no charge to those in need. Anyone can contribute to the fund, supporting community members facing food insecurity. The result is a tangible expression of care that fosters belonging and mutual support. As one reviewer put it: “This is my go-to place for early meetups, community events, and coffee! I love that it’s in a neighborhood and that I bump into so many people I know here. The zero waste is such a huge benefit!”

As such, this kind of space speaks to more than just meeting material needs — it addresses a pain point many people experience: loneliness .

Defined by Feng and Astell-Burt as “a felt deprivation of connection, companionship, and camaraderie,” loneliness affects at least a quarter of adults, “and the consequences can be deeply damaging to mental and physical health.” Addressing it taps into a need that is personal, emotional, and immediate — exactly the kind of value that could strengthen demand for sustainability solutions. Why? Because currently much of the value created by sustainability solutions is detached from people’s priorities and immediate concerns, making them less likely to resonate and easier to attack by ‘ predatory delay ’ actors benefiting from the status quo.

Sustainability must connect with people and deliver tangible benefits. The reality is that its current value proposition is, for the most part, too weak to move people at scale toward low-carbon lifestyles. In a previous article , I argued that companies should focus on the customer case for sustainability , using the jobs-to-be-done framework to identify what matters to their customers and where sustainable solutions can address real problems.

For example, for most people, disposable coffee cups or packaging are minor inconveniences at best. We might recycle when we can and move on without much thought — hence why Starbucks’ model still thrives. The same certainly holds for invisible benefits like reduced carbon emissions: people may care, but not enough for it to outweigh convenience, cost, or habit.

When environmental value feels remote and sustainable options come with trade-offs — from higher prices to more effort (e.g., refillable packaging) — sustainability stays weak. Making it strong requires redesigning solutions to build in benefits people truly value and design out the frictions that hold them back.

This is why addressing loneliness can provide a critical added value for companies to consider when designing sustainable solutions. Connecting these solutions to urgent social needs like loneliness — alongside their environmental benefits — can make sustainability products and services far more relevant and appealing to people’s everyday life. It can even help overcome the hurdles of the trade-offs involved in switching to sustainable alternatives, i.e. I may feel more comfortable paying more for a coffee in a coffee shop, providing me not only with zero-waste experience, but also with a sense of community.

If sustainability is to resonate, it probably needs to touch not just ecological impacts but people’s lives — starting with the pain points they feel most. Addressing loneliness, for example, can provide a critical added value for companies to consider when designing sustainable solutions. Connecting these solutions to urgent social needs like loneliness — alongside their environmental benefits — can make sustainable products and services far more relevant and appealing to people’s everyday life. It can even help overcome the hurdles of trade-offs involved in switching to sustainable alternatives. I may, for instance, feel more comfortable paying more for a coffee if the café offers not only a zero-waste experience, but also a genuine sense of community.

Thus, I couldn’t help but wonder: Could scaling sustainability solutions depend on pairing “zero loneliness” with zero-waste and other environmental goals like net-zero?

You might wonder whether adding yet another goal to an already full plate is the right move for corporate sustainability. Wouldn’t making sustainability even broader work against making it more appealing to the public? Does it really need to be stretched further to succeed — or should we just focus on making it affordable?

Let me start with the last question. It’s not an either/or choice but an and one. The dominance of economic concerns suggests a greater need to make sustainable solutions affordable. This should be a top priority for any company working on sustainable innovation. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t also find ways to add value by addressing loneliness. In fact, for companies struggling with affordability, adding value that matters to people can help justify higher prices — as in my earlier coffee example.

As for the question of adding more to the sustainability plate: it’s not about piling unnecessary weight onto the sustainability agenda, but about adding value people actually care about. For example, with all due respect to companies’ efforts toward the SDGs, most customers are unlikely to see these efforts as relevant to their lives or as reasons to purchase sustainable offerings. This doesn’t mean companies should stop these efforts ( though not necessarily through the SDG framework, which I find ineffective ), but they should strive for greater resonance with customers. Here, helping address loneliness could be a powerful lever. Ultimately, it’s about creating more value for customers — which, in turn, translates into more value captured by companies.

So, what can companies do about loneliness?

First, addressing loneliness is a growing market opportunity , so businesses should view it not only as a sustainability concern but as a strategic business opportunity. That said, some responses seem less appropriate — ranging from AI “virtual companions” to real companions rented by the hour . The kinds of responses worth pursuing are those that genuinely bring people together, countering the deprivation of connection, companionship, and camaraderie. These can operate at many levels, from direct initiatives to more systemic approaches that address what Prof. Xiaoqi Feng calls ”lonelygenic environments” — complex contextual conditions that can cause or worsen loneliness.

So, what specifically can companies do, specifically in the context of their sustainability efforts about loneliness?

The third space — one option is to create or support spaces for socialization. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third spaces” to describe “ informal spots to gather outside of home and work for socializing .” These can include coffee shops (though not Starbucks, which has tried but whose corporate nature and generic vibe as a global chain prevents it from truly serving this role), libraries, gyms, dog parks, playgrounds, and more. In the sustainability realm, repair cafés, community gardens, and farmers markets are good examples. Some may point to virtual groups — like Buy Nothing Facebook groups — but I agree with Oldenburg that third spaces need to be physical , not virtual, to genuinely foster community and human connection.

Companies can determine which type of third space best aligns with their products, services, and customers — and then build on it, either by supporting an existing space or creating a new one that strengthens the perceived sustainability value of their offerings. For example, an outdoor gear brand could support local climbing gyms or hiking meetups, a food company might host community cooking workshops, and a tech firm could sponsor repair cafés or makerspaces (yes, Apple, I’m looking at you). IKEA could offer carpentry lessons in local community centers, while fashion companies might organize clothes swap parties. Companies could also sponsor the equivalent of spaces like The Jar in Boston, which build on the power of art and culture to foster relationships, in other communities.

The key is how companies frame these efforts, as this is not about philanthropy but a strategic extension of their sustainability commitments. Companies that treat it merely as philanthropy will fail to create added value, while those that approach it strategically could unlock new engagement opportunities around sustainability. Their goal should be to make the third space a platform for connection while reinforcing the company’s broader sustainability vision.

Furthermore, companies can extend efforts beyond a specific “third place” into the broader notion of “ third life ,” weaving this notion of social and communal sphere of belonging and connection that people cultivate outside of home and work into their business models. For example, fashion companies that offer peer-to-peer rental options, banks that operate financial literacy centers to teach people how to better manage money and build wealth responsibly, or food companies that create neighborhood cooking clubs focused on healthy, sustainable meals.

You might think it sounds strange — or even far-fetched — that companies, transactional by nature and typically focused on profit-driven relationships, would take such steps or show genuine interest in supporting these kinds of initiatives. And not as philanthropy, but as part of their core strategy. It may also feel off to involve companies in activities rooted in community and civic life. Maybe — but then again, maybe not. Is it really so far-fetched to reimagine sustainability efforts in a way that actually meets people where they are?

For me, this goes to the heart of the current failure of sustainability in business: the narrowing of sustainability into a net-zero journey, no matter how little resonance it creates with customers. We’ve dug ourselves deeper and deeper into a framework aimed at driving change that most people don’t see, understand, or relate to. Addressing loneliness offers a way out — a proposition to shift toward a different type of sustainability, one that might actually work.

16 years ago, in his book Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto , Adam Werbach argued that a green strategy is not a strategy for sustainability. He called for a broader conceptualization — one that goes beyond a green product line. “An environmental goal is not enough to manage a company’s future successfully,” he wrote. Werbach emphasized the need to structure sustainability around a synthesis of environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions. That vision may now seem long forgotten in an era fixated on net-zero targets and the quest for the perfect reporting platform to back them up. But given the shortcomings of this approach, if not its outright failure, maybe it’s time to revisit Werbach’s idea — and consider how fostering a true sense of community could open a new pathway to success.

Link to original post can be found here .

About the Author:

Raz Godelnik

Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management

Parsons School of Design — The New School

PHOTO: Sunshine Coffee in Laramie, Wyoming

Toward Appropriate and Responsible AI: Pathways to Sustainable Adoption and Infrastructure

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 16:43:48 GMT

Nicole Cacal, MSc, is Executive Director of the TRUE Initiative in Hawaii and serves as Vice President on the Governing Board of ISSP. In our October blog, she challenges the prevailing narrative around AI's environmental impact, arguing that strategic deployment can transform AI from an environmental burden into a driver of recursive sustainability. Drawing on her background in strategic design and technology management, she presents emerging pathways for responsible AI adoption that balance societal benefit against environmental risk.

Toward Appropriate and Responsible AI:

Pathways to Sustainable Adoption and Infrastructure

Nicole Cacal · October 27, 2025

Whenever I give an AI presentation or offer advice on AI adoption, whether to business owners, C-level executives, or sustainability professionals, one concern surfaces time and time again, especially here in Hawaii: the environmental tension. People want to explore AI's potential, but they're acutely aware of the energy consumption, the water usage, the carbon footprint. It's become almost a reflex: mention AI, and someone immediately raises the environmental cost.

I get it. The data centers, the training runs, and the resource demands. They're real and they're significant. But here's what I've come to believe: if we shift the narrative from focusing solely on AI's detriment to the environment and instead ask how much good it can create, what role we can play in driving data centers to go greener, and how we can generate recursive sustainability, we unlock better questions. We start thinking forward rather than just defensively.

As sustainability professionals, our job isn't to reject technology wholesale. It's to shape its evolution. And right now, we have an opportunity to influence how AI develops and deploys in ways that align with planetary boundaries and social equity. But to do that, we need to move beyond binary thinking.

Right-Sizing AI: Why Bigger Isn't Always Better

One of the most overlooked levers we have for sustainable AI is also one of the simplest: choosing the right model for the job.

The AI industry has been caught in a "bigger is better" arms race for years now. Every new model release touts more parameters, more capabilities, more everything. And sure, these massive general-purpose models are impressive. But they've created a dangerous assumption: that every task requires maximum firepower.

This is where my strategic design training from Parsons kicks in. Good design isn't about having the biggest toolkit. It's about matching the tool to the task. It's about elegance through constraint. The same principle applies to AI deployment.

The emerging concept of "Small is Sufficient " is gaining traction for good reason. Research shows that selecting smaller, purpose-fit AI models for specific tasks can achieve nearly the same accuracy as their larger counterparts while reducing global energy demand by up to 28% . Twenty-eight percent. That's not marginal; that's transformational.

Think about what your organization actually needs. Are you processing customer service inquiries? Analyzing spreadsheet data? Generating product descriptions? Most of these tasks don't require a frontier model. A fine-tuned, task-specific model will do the job with a fraction of the computational overhead.

The shift we need is cultural as much as technical. We need to move from asking "what's the most powerful AI we can deploy?" to "what's the most appropriate AI for this specific use case?" That question changes everything, from procurement decisions to vendor relationships, internal training, and infrastructure planning.

AI as Infrastructure Manager: The Self-Optimizing Data Center

Here's an irony that doesn't get enough attention: AI might be energy-intensive, but it's also one of our best tools for managing energy systems efficiently.

When we only think of AI as a consumer of data center resources, we miss part of the story. AI can also be the conductor of efficiency, orchestrating complex systems in real-time to minimize waste and maximize renewable integration.

Consider three optimization domains where AI is already making measurable impact:

Cooling systems: Data centers generate enormous heat, and cooling accounts for a massive portion of their energy use. AI can continuously adjust cooling based on workload patterns, outside temperature, humidity, and dozens of other variables, optimizing in ways that static systems simply can't match.

Workload scheduling: Not all computing tasks need to happen immediately. AI can intelligently schedule batch processing, model training, and background tasks for times when renewable energy is abundant or when grid demand is lowest. This isn't just theory. Companies are already doing this.

Renewable energy integration: This one hits close to home in Hawaii, where we're working toward aggressive renewable energy targets but face unique challenges with grid stability and storage. AI-managed facilities can modulate demand in response to solar and wind availability, essentially turning data centers into flexible grid assets rather than inflexible burdens.

When organizations approach their operations as integrated systems rather than collections of independent components, they achieve results that surprise even them. AI-orchestrated data centers represent this systems thinking at its most sophisticated. The technology optimizes itself recursively, reducing the footprint of AI through AI. That's the kind of elegant solution we should be scaling.

Measuring What Matters: Beyond Energy to Net Benefit

But here's the challenge: if we only measure AI's direct energy consumption, we miss the full picture. We need frameworks that capture both the operational cost and the systemic benefit.

This is where life cycle assessment combined with comparative modeling becomes essential. We need to ask: compared to what? And over what timeframe?

The sectoral success stories are compelling when you run the numbers:

Building automation systems powered by AI are consistently achieving energy savings in the range of 20-30% across diverse building types. One documented case study of a commercial office building in the United States showed a 32% reduction in overall energy consumption with a 2.4-year return on investment (a $2.1 million system investment generating $875,000 in annual savings). In Stockholm, the SISAB school building portfolio achieved similar results with a two-year payback period.

In precision agriculture, AI-driven irrigation and fertilizer application systems are cutting water consumption by 20% to as much as 50% and reducing chemical runoff, addressing both resource scarcity and ecosystem health.

Waste management optimization is another powerful example. AI-powered sorting systems in recycling facilities dramatically improve material recovery rates while reducing contamination. The resource efficiency gains far exceed the AI system's energy footprint.

These aren't marginal improvements. When properly deployed, targeted AI applications produce emissions savings and resource efficiencies that dwarf their own operational costs. That being said, given today's fossil fueled data center expansions, we may find that we have much further to go in making the environmental positives outweigh the negatives. But that's no reason to throw in the towel or to assume that these technologies cannot - over time - deliver more environmental benefits than downsides. It requires companies to demand more of their technology providers and deploy their systems sustainably when greener options become available.

But (and this is crucial) these benefits only materialize when we pair the right AI with the right infrastructure and the right deployment strategy. Which brings us to governance.

The Path Forward: Governance, Transparency, and Adaptive Thinking

The sustainability community, including organizations like ISSP, is actively developing shared frameworks for assessing AI's net impact. These emerging approaches include system-level energy auditing, selective task deployment protocols, and strategies for minimizing "dark data" (the vast amounts of stored data that's never used but still requires energy to maintain).

Multi-stakeholder governance initiatives are bringing together technologists, policymakers, environmental scientists, and business leaders to create adaptive standards. This isn't about creating rigid regulations that will be obsolete in two years. It's about establishing principles and processes that evolve with the technology.

Those with a technology management background know that the most successful systems are those designed for adaptation. We need governance structures that can respond to new information, course-correct quickly, and remain grounded in measurable outcomes.

Transparency is non-negotiable. Organizations deploying AI need to measure and report not just their energy consumption but their net impact. What problems are you solving? What resources are you saving? What would the alternative approach have cost? These aren't easy questions, but they're the right ones.

As sustainability professionals, this is our arena. We have the frameworks: life cycle thinking, systems analysis, stakeholder engagement, and metrics development, to name a few. We need to apply these tools to AI with the same rigor we've applied to supply chains, built environments, and industrial processes.

So here's my invitation: What are you seeing in your sector? How is your organization approaching the AI sustainability question? Are you finding innovative ways to ensure deployment is appropriate and responsible?

Because ultimately, appropriate AI isn't about choosing between progress and sustainability. It's about insisting that progress is sustainable. It's about right-sizing models, optimizing infrastructure, measuring net benefit, and building governance systems worthy of the challenge.

The technology itself is neutral. Our choices determine whether AI becomes a driver of sustainability or another extractive burden. Let's choose wisely.

About the Author:

Nicole Cacal, MSc, is

Executive Director, TRUE Initiative in Hawaii

Vice President on the Governing Board of ISSP

PHOTO: Image AI generated by author using Flux Pro by Black Forest Labs.

Start With Community: The First Mile of Sustainable Development

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 15:10:15 GMT

For 35 years, the NGO Tostan has partnered with communities across Africa to define and achieve their own vision of sustainable development based on respect for human rights. In our September ISSP Blog, Tostan CEO Sobel Aziz Ngom shares Tostan's unique approach to enduring community-led development: include all, listen before acting, take time to build trust, and share ownership with humility.

Start With Community: The First Mile of Sustainable Development

September 2025

Sobel Aziz Ngom

CEO, Tostan

When I stepped into the role of CEO at Tostan, I did not come in with the illusion that I already understood its unique approach. On the contrary, both our Board and senior leadership advised me to begin slowly, by listening, learning, and asking questions. This guidance resonated with my own experience: that lasting change only happens when communities feel ownership and define priorities in their own voices.

For me, these first months have been a journey of re-affirmation and discovery. I have seen how Tostan’s approach builds directly on principles I already believed in: participation, dignity, and youth leadership. It has also opened new insights for me about what genuine engagement really looks like. Most of all, I am struck by how the process is not only about involving people in decisions, but about changing the way people relate to one another: listening more deeply, including those often excluded, communicating more peacefully, and governing more fairly.

At Tostan, we believe in the dignity and potential of every community. Change is not imposed; it is nurtured through dialogue, trust, and the mobilization of local knowledge. Our approach is built on a conviction: lasting change cannot be decreed, it must be built together, step by step, in dignity and trust.

That wisdom applies equally to leadership transitions and to sustainable development.

Step by step toward lasting change

Rather than relying on one-off or top-down interventions, our approach supports communities through a progressive journey, moving from trust and dialogue to collective action. It begins by creating an inclusive space where every voice is heard and valued. Within this space, communities identify their strengths, priorities, and core values, laying the foundation for a shared vision of wellbeing.

Building on this vision, democratic principles and human rights are explored in ways that resonate with local realities, strengthening the community’s ability to organize and make informed decisions. Step by step, communities move toward planning and implementing concrete actions, mobilizing their own resources while engaging local authorities for support. Along the way, new skills are developed — in literacy, management, health, and advocacy — to sustain progress and help translate the community's shared vision into reality.

Each phase reinforces the next, deepening trust, knowledge, and collective capacity, until communities are fully equipped to drive lasting change for their own wellbeing.

From voices to livelihoods: the women of Somone Lagoon

One story captures this transformation for me. In Somone, Senegal, women from the lagoon area came together to discuss what mattered most for their community. At first only a few spoke. Over time, with dialogue in their own language and through participatory methods, more women raised their voices, sharing concerns, proposing ideas, and debating solutions. By the end, they not only agreed on practical steps, but also shifted how they interacted: listening actively, respecting differences, and ensuring no voice was left aside.

What emerged was more than a plan for the lagoon; it was a new practice of governance grounded in fairness and inclusion. And it was not only social. By organizing collectively, the women strengthened their economic group, improved how they managed resources, and increased the income generated from their activities around the lagoon. This story is a reminder that when relationships change, so do livelihoods. Social inclusion becomes the foundation for economic empowerment.

Prepared ground, lasting growth

It is often tempting to judge progress by what is visible: a new structure built, a service installed, or an activity launched. But the real difference lies beneath the surface, in the preparation that makes lasting results possible.

Think of planting a tree. In dry, unprepared soil, even a strong seed struggles to take root. It may sprout quickly but soon withers when conditions become harsh. In well-prepared and nourished soil, the very same seed grows deep roots, withstands storms, and bears fruit for generations.

Communities work in much the same way. When there is no shared vision, no clear rules, and no sense of ownership, progress often stalls at the first obstacle. But when people take time to build trust, establish transparent practices, and develop the skills they need, their initiatives take root and thrive.

As I learn about Tostan from the inside, I see the same truth. Preparation through dialogue, clarity, and capacity is what allows both communities and organizations to carry their ambitions forward with confidence.

Why starting from strengths changes outcomes

Across sectors, communities point to four recurring benefits of this approach:

Resilience. With a shared vision and clear roles, people adapt quickly when supply or budget conditions shift.
Lower lifetime costs. Early investments in facilitation and governance save money later.
Fairness by design. Co-created rules reflect lived realities — girls fetching water, elders with mobility challenges, young entrepreneurs seeking opportunity.
Trust as infrastructure. Trust accelerates coordination and makes accountability real.

These are lessons for leadership too: trust, fairness, and resilience are as essential inside organizations as they are in village water committees.

Avoiding shortcuts (and their costs)

Under pressure, it is tempting to cut corners: brief consultations, over-engineered technology, committees without real mandates, or community sessions held in languages people rarely use. These approaches may deliver short-term outputs, but communities often remind us that the hidden cost is confidence.

The same temptation exists in leadership transitions: to announce, to prove oneself, to act before listening. But each shortcut risks raising the cost of trust later.

Spaces for sharing and mutual learning

Practitioners often ask how such community capabilities are built and sustained. At the Tostan Training Center in Senegal, these questions are explored not through formal lectures but through spaces of sharing and mutual learning.

In these settings, facilitators and community members sit side by side with practitioners, opening dialogues in local languages and revisiting real experiences from villages that have gone through Tostan's Community Empowerment Program. Instead of theory, people see how conversations unfold, how inclusive decisions are made, and how trust is gradually built.

The value lies in what participants carry back: not a prescription, but a set of practices they have witnessed, tested, and adapted to their own contexts. This kind of exchange helps those working with communities to strengthen their partnerships, avoid common pitfalls, and ground their initiatives in methods that last.

For me, it is also a reminder that leadership — whether in a village or an organization — grows through shared reflection, humility, and practice, rather than through quick fixes.

Closing the loop

Sustainability is not only technical or financial. It is civic and relational. It depends on who decides, who acts, and who continues to nurture progress once the external team has left.

Like a tree that grows strong only in prepared soil, communities that invest in trust, inclusion, and clear responsibilities create the conditions for lasting change. Progress does not stop at the first difficulty; it deepens and spreads.

The same lesson applies inside organizations. What lasts is not only a set of strategies or plans, but the culture we cultivate: listening before acting, building capacity, and sharing ownership with humility.

That is why, both in my role as CEO and in our community work, I return to the same conviction: start with listening, prepare the ground carefully, and let trust grow over time.

In Tostan partner communities, this is how water pumps keep running, how health improves, how livelihoods expand, and how governance endures. In Tostan as an organization, it is how culture is preserved, innovation emerges, and transitions succeed.

Start with community. Lead with humility. Prepare the ground well. That is how you ensure sustainability.

About the Author:

Sobel Aziz Ngom

CEO, Tostan

PHOTO: Community Dancing | Cambeidare, Guinea Bissau, 2025 | Tostan

Ari Tjahjanto - SEA Case Study

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 14:32:15 GMT

About Ari Tjahjanto : Building Strong Systems Through People, Policy, Technology, and Experience.

A seasoned business leader with over 25 years in ISP and Telco, Ari Tjahjanto has held leadership roles across customer service, corporate strategy, sustainability, human capital, and network quality at leading companies including XL Axiata and other major telecommunications providers. Guided by his PPTX framework (People, Policy/Process, Technology, and Experience), Ari focuses on strengthening organizational foundations, improving employee and customer journeys, and embedding service design into every stage. His leadership philosophy is simple yet powerful: make your team successful, and success will follow.

Do the Math: Why Financial Modeling Is Essential for Sustainability

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 16:27:28 GMT

Todd Cort, MS, PE, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at Yale School of Management and Yale School of the Environment and serves as Faculty Co-director of both the Yale Center for Business and the Environment and the Yale Initiative on Sustainable Finance. In our July blog, he sheds light on the fundamental importance of financial modeling for sustainability to be a core part of business strategy.

Do the Math: Why Financial Modeling Is Essential for Sustainability

As global markets begin to internalize the financial impacts of climate change and other environmental and social risks, I’ve seen expectations rise sharply for companies to provide financially robust disclosures. Standards and regulations are evolving, and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has made it clear that sustainability disclosures must be useful to investors by linking environmental and social risks to enterprise value over the short, medium, and long term. Similarly, the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) requires us to identify and mitigate adverse environmental and human rights impacts across our company’s value chain—including integrating these risks into our corporate strategy and financial planning. These frameworks don’t just ask us to be aware; they demand that we develop a quantitative understanding of how environmental and social risks affect our financial outlook. Simply put: we can no longer talk about sustainability in broad, qualitative terms. We have to do the math.

And yet, despite these evolving expectations, I see little movement in risk disclosures and still see almost all in the corporate world treating sustainability as a reporting task, not a financial modeling challenge. The one possible exception being the calculation of appropriate shadow prices for carbon emissions for oil and gas asset planning by companies like Occidental Petroleum and ConocoPhillips. Although even these can be difficult to reconcile with global energy scenarios. The ISSB and CSDDD reference enterprise value, financial planning, and risk mitigation, but I notice that many corporate responses stop at narrative statements—talking about reputational risk, regulatory uncertainty, or stakeholder pressure. While those qualitative insights provide context, they fall short of supporting sound financial decision-making. As a board member, CFO, or investor, I must move beyond vague statements like "climate change may impact our operations" and instead ask: by how much, under what assumptions, and with what financial consequences? Without this level of rigor, we can’t prioritize investments, adjust capital allocation, or weigh transition risks against emerging opportunities.

The data challenge

I understand the lack of financial modeling and the prevalence of qualitative risk assessment and mitigation narratives issued by corporations today. The data that underlies and explains environmental and social risks feels like it is not up to the challenge of quantitative financial modeling and making statements of financial risk based on shaky data is a good recipe for inviting litigation. Even for the most well documented risks such as climate adaptation, the data can leave enormous gaps in our ability to forecast financial impact. How frequent and of what duration are the expected climate events? Where in my supply chain am I likely to see the greatest disruption? What components or operations will prove to be most vulnerable and most critical in the face of disruption? How will critical stakeholders such as regulators react and respond in the face of severe events? How strained will our backstops such as insurance coverage become in the face of widespread events? These and other questions are important to calculating severity and likelihood of financial risks, but the available data may leave us with enormous sensitivities and error bars in our analysis. However, I have found in practice that the data challenge is frequently not as daunting as it appears. Many variables turn out to be less important to the model, thereby making the data challenge less relevant. In other cases, we are able to find new data sets that provide meaningful insights to critical variables. Even in those cases where the data are lacking and the question is critical, I find that knowing the range and likelihood of outcomes is more useful than an unsubstantiated narrative.

Net present value

Looking forward, companies must integrate sustainability risk and opportunity into financial modeling tools typically used in capital budgeting and investment analysis to make better strategic decisions. That means projecting the net present value (NPV) of sustainability-related projects, whether it's decarbonizing operations or installing renewable energy systems. NPV is a fundamental tool for companies to assess whether these projects will create or erode value over time, especially when compared to the cost of inaction—such as paying for carbon emissions or recovering from extreme weather damage. A key part of this is choosing the right discount rate—one that reflects our risk-adjusted cost of capital and the long-term calculations of climate investments. If I choose a rate that’s too high, I risk undervaluing the future benefits of resilience; too low, and I might overstate the returns.

Embedding sustainability into financial models

Practitioners must also recognize that environmental and social risks directly influence key financial metrics like free cash flow, leverage ratios, and cost of capital. For instance, rising water stress and deforestation policies can drive up input costs and squeeze margins in some circumstances and for some companies. Exposure to carbon pricing can increase earnings volatility, which affects beta and ultimately raises the cost of equity. Lenders and insurers are beginning to price environmental risk into debt and premiums, which means corporate cost of capital is increasingly tied to how well companies manage sustainability. If we want to integrate sustainability into our enterprise valuation and ensure that our initiatives are financially sound—not just aspirational—we have to model these dynamics accurately. Equally importantly, we must be cognizant of which financial metrics are most critical to financial health and whether these are the most sensitive factors to sustainability risks. For example, earlier ventures typically live and die by free cash flow whereas larger companies may be much more sensitive to leveraged ratios. Matching the sustainability risk and opportunity to the appropriate line item can be the difference between critical and meaningless insights.

At the end of the day, I see financial modeling as the essential bridge connecting sustainability goals, enterprise valuation, and fiduciary duties. By quantifying the financial implications of our net-zero targets, carbon transition risks, nature-positive investments, labor disruptions, and resource constraints, we can move beyond abstract narratives and deliver forecasts that truly guide action. This shift allows wise capital allocation, sets credible decarbonization paths, and communicates sustainability risks and opportunities in ways that matter to investors. For sustainability to be a core part of business strategy—not just a footnote in a report—we must embed it in our financial models. In today’s world of tightening regulation and growing risk, doing the math isn’t optional. It’s essential.

About the Author:

Todd Cort, MS, PE, PhD
Senior Lecturer, Yale School of Management and Yale School of the Environment
Faculty Co-director, Yale Center for Business and the Environment

Faculty Co-director, Yale Initiative on Sustainable Finance

PHOTO: George Dagerotip | Wind Turbines on Jeju Island, South Korea, 2024 | Unsplash

Rhonda Maxwell - SEA Case Study

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 13:59:08 GMT

About Rhonda: Rhonda Maxwell is a Global Sustainability Consultant specializing in Market Strategy & Stakeholder Engagement, where she drives the alignment of corporate sustainability initiatives with business objectives and stakeholder expectations. With extensive expertise in communication, project management, and compliance, Rhonda connects sustainability performance with brand reputation and customer engagement. A dedicated sustainability professional, Rhonda holds the SEA credential from ISSP and continues to advance sustainability practices through strategic stakeholder collaboration and business intelligence.

Who Gets to Tell the Story of ESG?

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 13:31:07 GMT

London Business School Professor Ioannis Ioannou, PhD examines the vulnerable narrative infrastructure surrounding ESG. By collaboratively engaging those most affected by ESG transitions—indigenous peoples, workers, young people, small businesses, and communities, particularly in the Global South—we can foster the trust, legitimacy, and collective commitment for meaningful progress.

Who Gets to Tell the Story of ESG?

For more than a decade, ESG rapidly evolved from a specialized investor consideration into an elaborate global infrastructure of standards, metrics, taxonomies, and disclosure frameworks. Investor attention soared, corporate sustainability teams grew exponentially, and ESG vocabulary— climate risk, fiduciary duty, and double materiality—became firmly embedded in corporate boardrooms and regulatory discussions globally.

Yet, despite ESG’s impressive institutional and technical advancements, the narrative meant to support it remained remarkably fragile. While ESG developed sophisticated standards, disclosures, and metrics, it never invested in the narrative infrastructure to explain its purpose, build public understanding, or secure legitimacy beyond institutional circles. Without the broader stakeholder engagement and effective storytelling that would connect ESG to people’s lived realities, it became vulnerable. Critics didn’t need to challenge carbon accounting or materiality frameworks; instead, they recast ESG as a job killer, an elite agenda, or an unwelcome intrusion into everyday life.

The backlash caught many ESG professionals off guard, though the warning signs were visible. ESG’s rapid adoption by investors and regulatory bodies created an illusion of momentum, but this obscured a deeper structural gap. ESG rarely connected meaningfully with those directly affected by ESG-driven transitions—workers facing disruption, small business owners adapting to shifting expectations, and communities, particularly in vulnerable regions, confronting real and immediate climate risks. For these groups, ESG often seemed abstract, distant, and disconnected from their daily concerns.

Narrative infrastructure might sound like an unusual concept, but it's foundational to widespread support. It connects people and institutions, conveys meaning, and determines whether ESG is seen as genuine leadership or merely corporate branding. Robust narrative infrastructure ensures resilience under political pressure; without it, initiatives can rapidly lose whatever public approval they may have had.

Constructing narrative infrastructure requires explicitly recognizing storytelling— and who contributes to that storytelling—as integral to ESG strategy, not simply a communications exercise. Effective narratives generate trust precisely because they emerge from transparent dialogue, clear accountability, and inclusive stakeholder engagement. By contrast, greenwashing uses storytelling deceptively, aiming to conceal poor performance, and deflect scrutiny. Strong narrative infrastructure, unlike greenwashing, strengthens credibility and legitimacy by openly connecting ESG commitments to shared realities, tangible actions, and measurable outcomes. It is a fundamental strategic asset for ESG success.

Importantly, narrative infrastructure also concerns who gets to tell these stories. Over the last decade, the central narrators of the ESG story have largely been institutional actors: executives, investors, sustainability professionals, academics, and regulators. Their contributions have been invaluable, driven by expertise, rigor, and genuine commitment. Yet these narrators also represent a relatively narrow perspective, shaped by institutional backgrounds and professional incentives.

Many important voices have remained largely excluded from shaping ESG narratives: indigenous people whose lives are often fundamentally changed by corporate activities, workers whose livelihoods are directly impacted by ESG transitions, young people deeply invested in future outcomes, small businesses continuously adapting to new ESG-related requirements, and especially communities—particularly in the Global South —directly facing the worst of climate disruptions. While these stakeholders' experiences occasionally appear within ESG reporting, they seldom influenced strategy or shape decisions in a substantial way.

This exclusion poses significant, practical risks. Stakeholders naturally resist initiatives perceived as imposed from above or disconnected from their lived realities—not necessarily because they oppose ESG’s goals, but because they feel unheard and invisible within such ESG narratives. The resistance appears as political backlash, active public scepticism, or disengagement, all severely undermining ESG’s legitimacy, effectiveness, and public support.

Addressing this critical weakness requires deliberately building ESG’s narrative infrastructure through inclusive, collaborative, and ongoing engagement. Practically, companies should move beyond occasional or reactive consultations toward sustained processes where stakeholders actively shape strategies. This can involve establishing community advisory boards with real decision-making power, participatory scenario planning that integrates diverse local perspectives, and internal cross-functional councils that ensure workers, communities, and youth voices directly influence ESG outcomes. Such sustained, authentic collaboration bridges the gap between institutional intentions and genuine public legitimacy.

Within companies, narrative stewardship should not be limited to corporate communications or sustainability departments alone. Effective ESG storytelling depends on regular, structured collaboration across multiple functions—including strategy, human resources, procurement, product development, and finance—to ensure ESG commitments align authentically with core business decisions and reflect real-world stakeholder experiences. Companies can institutionalize this collaboration by creating dedicated cross-functional ESG committees tasked with integrating diverse internal perspectives, monitoring stakeholder feedback, and ensuring ESG initiatives clearly connect to tangible social outcomes.

At an institutional level, building ESG narrative infrastructure involves establishing platforms that broaden participation in ESG discourse. It requires supporting initiatives that improve public understanding of ESG standards and practices, funding research that evaluates public perceptions of ESG alongside traditional financial metrics and ensuring ESG disclosures transparently reflect diverse stakeholder concerns. ESG narrative legitimacy grows stronger when diverse perspectives genuinely shape how ESG commitments are determined and communicated, implemented, and monitored—not merely as token inclusions, but as integral, strategic components of ESG itself.

Regulators have an essential role in shaping ESG narrative infrastructure. Current ESG disclosure standards typically prioritize technical accuracy and financial materiality, mostly targeting investor needs. Broadening these frameworks to explicitly incorporate public legitimacy could significantly enhance ESG’s impact. For example, regulators could introduce clear criteria assessing whether companies effectively communicate their ESG strategies to diverse stakeholders and evaluate how these communications influence brand value and reputational risk—approaches already emerging in Europe’s Green Claims Directive and the CSRD/ESRS focus on double materiality. Additionally, policy evaluations could systematically measure whether ESG initiatives are genuinely perceived as fair, inclusive, and beneficial by the communities they affect. Public support and trust require deliberate and continuous effort; they cannot be assumed or taken for granted.

Fortunately, inspiring examples of effective ESG narrative infrastructure already exist. Companies like Patagonia have openly integrated supplier and worker voices into their ESG narratives, transparently highlighting labour practices and sourcing standards, significantly enhancing their credibility. Unilever’s inclusive “living wage” campaigns have similarly leveraged stories from frontline workers to connect ESG metrics with tangible social outcomes, strengthening stakeholder trust. Industry-specific initiatives, such as the Bangladesh Accord in apparel, demonstrate how authentically incorporating diverse stakeholder experiences—including employees, unions, and community representatives—into ESG reporting can reinforce accountability and legitimacy. These examples highlight how inclusive storytelling, grounded in genuine stakeholder participation, can transform ESG commitments from abstract promises into credible actions with real-world impact.

ESG professionals now face an exciting strategic opportunity: intentionally building a narrative infrastructure that's genuinely inclusive, collaborative, and resilient. Yes, involving diverse stakeholders means navigating complexity, dialogue, and occasionally tough compromises. It also means embracing participatory processes that might feel messier or less predictable. But it's exactly this diversity of voices and collective authorship that generates persuasive, robust narratives—ones that not only resonate widely but can confidently withstand shifts in politics, culture, and public sentiment.

Beyond strengthening ESG's narrative infrastructure, it's important for ESG professionals to step back and consider sustainability more broadly. By explicitly linking ESG narratives to overarching sustainability objectives—such as respecting planetary boundaries and enabling a just transition—professionals can better illustrate how financial markets, corporate strategies, and policy frameworks actively support broader ecological and social well-being. Making these broader connections explicit can deepen trust, enhance engagement, and ensure the interconnected ESG-sustainability story resonates meaningfully with all those whose futures depend on it.

We stand at a turning point, facing a critical opportunity to strengthen ESG’s narrative foundations. While ESG’s narrative fragility has been clearly exposed, this moment also offers an inspiring chance to intentionally build a more inclusive, credible, and resilient narrative infrastructure. The future of sustainability depends not only on rigorous metrics or detailed disclosures, but ultimately on whether those whose lives are impacted recognize themselves clearly in its story. By authentically amplifying diverse voices, explicitly connecting ESG initiatives to broader sustainability goals, and developing narratives rooted in real-world experiences, we can foster the trust, legitimacy, and collective commitment necessary for meaningful and lasting progress.

About the Author:

Ioannis Ioannou, PhD
Professor, London Business School

PHOTO: Marco Chilese | London | Unsplash

Edwin P. Nerva - SEP Case Story

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 20:07:32 GMT

Edwin Nerva is the AVP for Sustainability at Nickel Asia Corporation, where he leads the company’s sustainability strategy, stakeholder engagement, and community development efforts. With over 15 years of experience across the corporate, nonprofit, and international development sectors, His work focuses on integrating sustainable practices into core business operations while advancing inclusive growth and environmental resilience across rural and mining communities in the Philippines.

Interested in earning your SEA credential? Download our free sample of the SEA Study Guide or sign up for the next SEA Study Cohort .

The New York Climate Clock

Thu, 15 May 2025 09:44:01 GMT

Antoinette de Crombrugghe , MA Degree Candidate at the Columbia Climate School, reflects on New York City's Climate Clock and how cultural symbols might shape the ways we pay attention to — and act on — climate.

THE NEW YORK CLIMATE CLOCK

I belong to a generation raised in the shadow of the climate crisis. But it wasn’t something we were taught in school. It wasn’t part of our curriculum, our standardized tests, our childhood vocabulary. We came across it slowly, in fragments, through social media, activism, panic headlines, and documentaries. We educated ourselves. We connected the dots. And still, many of us are figuring out how to carry this knowledge and how to live with it without being crushed by it.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article for Weave News about the Climate Clock at New York City's Union Square. I had passed by the clock many times, always noticing the massive red digits blinking above the Square, but never quite stopping to let it all in. It was only when I considered writing about it that I gave myself permission to pause. To stand beneath it, look up, and let the weight of what it represents settle into my chest. When researching my article, the numbers read four years and 138 days. Now, as I sit down to write this reflection, we are already down to four years and 78.

The Climate Clock arrived in Union Square in 2020. Based on calculations by the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin, the clock indicates the time remaining before the planet reaches 1.5 °C of global warming, given current emissions trends. In 2021, a second set of numbers was added to the clock to indicate the increasing percentage of the world’s energy that comes from renewables.

To prepare my article, I visited Union Square regularly over the course of several days. I observed how people were responding to the clock and spoke with over thirty people who happened to be walking through the Square. My goal was to understand how this public installation was being received by these passersby. I was curious about climate anxiety, and I wondered whether a ticking clock could shake a passerby out of their routine and into climate consciousness.

On a bright Saturday in late February, I was back at my usual Union Square watching spot. The air was still sharp with winter, the sky clear and cold. The Greenmarket was unfolding in quiet, familiar rhythms. Union Square is an urban space that feels different depending on the season. But that day, there was a stillness to it. Vendors lined the pathways between sparse naked trees, nature reaching skyward as if trying to catch its breath amid the city’s steady hum. People stopped to admire sunflowers or rummage through old teapots. There was something tender about placing extraordinary importance on the seemingly unimportant.

And then there was the clock. A colossal chronometer, eighty feet wide, standing proud atop One Union Square South and overlooking the square as its stark digital display counted down in red, pixelated numbers. Most people didn’t look up.

A CLOCK FEW NOTICE AND FEWER UNDERSTAND

The clock is a warning of irreversible climate breakdown, yet so many just walked past. I saw a few people pause. Some asked questions. But the vast majority didn’t even notice. And those who did? Most had no idea what it was. Over and over again, this lack of engagement or understanding was what struck me most.

"Four years, 138 days left!" a young girl read out loud to her friends. "Until the world explodes, or what?" a boy retorted with a laugh. I made my way to their little cluster, their eyes fixed upward on the bold red digits. "Do you know what this clock stands for?" I asked. Four pairs of eyes turn toward me with curiosity. A New York University graduate student answered hesitantly, "Something to do with the climate crisis, I heard. But I’m not sure what exactly."

Of all the people I spoke with, only a small handful made the connection to climate change. Others offered guesses — national debt, conspiracy theories, doomsday predictions, maybe something to do with politics. A college student I met stood out. She observed longer than most, and when I explained what the clock meant, I saw something shift in her face. A moment of recognition. And with it, a quiet fear.

A CALL TO ACTION, AN ANXIOUS WARNING, SYMBOLISM: WHERE DOES THE CLOCK STAND?

I felt a mix of messages when I looked at the clock. As did the Union Square pedestrians I spoke with over several days. Knowledge of the climate crisis, when it arrives, doesn’t always bring clarity. Sometimes it brings paralysis. Some of the people I spoke with felt overwhelmed. Others laughed it off. A few dismissed it entirely. I kept wondering, can awareness alone spark change? Or does it need to be accompanied by something else such as trust, support, imagination?

I spoke with artist, writer, and curator Katie Peyton Hofstadter, the "art-fixer" behind the NYC Climate Clock . She told me she wasn’t sure how much the clock changed individual behavior, but she believed deeply in its symbolism. In a city where over 90% of the public monuments honor colonial conquests and military white men, a countdown to climate collapse will not change history but can shape the symbols that define our present. The Clock integrates climate consciousness into the cultural landscape, ensuring that the urgency of the climate crisis is a visible reminder within our daily life.

That conversation stayed with me. I had come to the story wanting to assess the clock's effect, to measure something. But maybe that is not the right lens. The Climate Clock isn’t a tool for persuasion or policy but a marker of cultural interruption.

Maybe some forms of climate work don’t live in direct outcomes, but in subtle reorientations. Maybe symbolism, when sustained and deliberate, moves more slowly but in deeper, systemic ways.

As I left Union Square one afternoon, I stopped to notice the everyday life unfolding around it. The Clock kept ticking above it all. I wondered how many others would look up.

About the Author:

Antoinette de Crombrugghe

MA Degree Candidate

Columbia Climate School

Photo: Antoinette de Crombrugghe | The Climate Clock | New York City

Luis Alvarez - SEP Case Story

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:30:02 GMT

About Luis: Architect, MSc in Architectural Project Management from the University of Edinburgh, Specialist in Clean and Sustainable Construction Management from the Universidad del Atlántico, Specialist in Land Markets and Policies in Latin America from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and Specialist in Project Management from the Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, in Colombia. Certified as PMP and Accredited as LEED AP BD+C, LEED AP Homes and SEP. He has worked in important construction companies, accrediting experience in the development of large real estate projects. Consultant of recognized projects such as the first LEED Gold/LEED Zero Cruise Terminal for Royal Caribbean in Galveston, the expansion of JFK Airport, many landmark projects in South Florida, and the first LEED for Homes Certified house in Latin America, in Rionegro, Colombia. His specialty is project management in all its stages and management of construction companies, in addition to the management of architectural and technical designs. Administration and management of budgets and contracts. Undergraduate and graduate university professor with emphasis in the area of Sustainable Construction and Project Management

Interested in earning your SEA credential? Download our free sample of the SEA Study Guide or sign up for the next SEA Study Cohort .

Elizabeth Cockle - SEA Case Story

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:32:32 GMT

About Elizabeth: A natural storyteller, committed to creating a more sustainable future, Elizabeth has built her career on the ability to blend strategic marketing with sustainability, ESG and hot topic issues. She is known for crafting content that resonates with diverse audiences and driving initiatives that amplify brand visibility and engagement. Over her career she has built a reputation for her strategic, results-driven approach from increasing brand awareness through creative marketing campaigns, drafting reports and speeches on complex issues, and advising on cross-functional communication projects from start to finish.

Interested in earning your SEA credential? Download our free sample of the SEA Study Guide or sign up for the next SEA Study Cohort .

A Tourist in Antarctica: Witnessing its Wonders and Warnings for a Changing World

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 09:00:00 GMT

After recent travels in Antarctica, UNEP-FI Energy Efficiency Lead Ana Bachurova, M.Sc., MBA shares learnings and insights into our current environmental realities and how practitioners in sustainable development can advance positive impacts.

Recent travels to our Earth's “Frozen Continent" offered me a new, profound source of reflection. Despite over 20 years’ of studying and working on international environmental topics, being “at the end of the world” made me realize how little we know about our planet and yet how much we have an impact on it.

Last month, I spent 11 days on one of the most extraordinary journeys of my life – Antarctica: Discovery and Learning Voyage with Oceanwide Expeditions (member of IAATO – The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators). My trip was inspired by my mom’s adventurous spirit and fuelled by my own curiosity. The result: an experience that left me in awe.

Our expedition area was to the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula, with the southernmost position next to Vernadsky Station at 65°14.45’S / 064°15.2’W. We got to explore and experience the region through daily Zodiac boat cruises and shore landings. The expedition's “Rule #1" was to respect rigorous biosecurity measures to protect the pristine Antarctic environment and maintain its ecological integrity. Clothing, boots, and gear underwent meticulous inspections to remove any potential contaminants. On the ground, we could not sit, kneel, nor touch anything. “Rule #2" was to stay away from and give way to wildlife, of which were often inquisitive and seemingly confused penguins. Only once, in a carefully chosen spot without wildlife, did we get a break from these restrictions and were able to embrace our childlike joy of Antarctica — who knew adults could be so keen on snowball fighting, snowman building, and even testing their grit with a dip into the icy 1°C waters.

The stunning landscapes, the undisturbed wildlife sounds, and the sheer vastness of Antarctica are simply humbling. Though beyond the adventure and the beauty we experienced, this journey deepened my understanding of our planet’s fragile ecosystems. If I must choose one word to summarize the critical lesson I came away with, it is interconnectedness . The warming oceans, the accelerating ice melting, the presence of microplastics in one of the most remote places on Earth — these changes are not caused by local activity on the icy continent of our South Pole. We can all agree on that.

The fragile Antarctic ecosystem

Antarctica’s ecosystem operates in a delicate balance, which is increasingly disrupted by the forces beyond its borders. Take as an example the natural mixing pattern of the warmer sub-Antarctic waters with the colder Southern Ocean, creating a dynamic nutrient-rich environment that supports an abundance of marine life — from krill to fish to large marine mammals.

As global temperatures rise due to climate change, the warmer ocean temperatures push the boundaries of the sub-Antarctic waters southward. At the same time, there is more of the warmer (i.e., lighter) waters sitting on top of colder (i.e., denser) waters, disrupting the ocean’s natural stratification, which reduces the upwelling of nutrient-rich waters from the deep ocean. At the same time, warmer waters accelerate the rate of melting of ice sheets and glaciers, introducing fresh water into the Southern Ocean and further altering water density and circulation patterns.

Most of us do not see these irreversibly changing processes. By altering the natural mixing patterns, the ocean's nutrient flow is disrupted, posing risk to the entire marine ecosystem. This can have far-reaching consequences not only for biodiversity, but for many economies (especially those dependent on fisheries, tourism) and for global climate regulation.

Behind the curtain of the Thwaites Glacier

During our expedition, we learned about the Thwaites Glacier — also nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier due to its rapid melting and the implications for global sea levels. In climate conversations related to glaciers, we usually think of a slowly melting piece of ice. But Thwaites is more than just a melting block of ice. The glacier plays a critical role in holding back a much larger system. It practically acts like a cork, keeping masses of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet behind it and preventing the Sheet from flowing into the ocean. As the Thwaites Glacier continues to melt and weaken, it risks unleashing a chain reaction, allowing massive amounts of inland ice to surge into the ocean, thus contributing to raising global sea levels. Scientists do not have a concrete timeline for this, but evidence shows that the Thwaites Glacier ice-ocean system is undergoing the largest changes of any ice-ocean system in Antarctica.

What makes this phenomenon elusive to grasp — or seemingly non-existent — is that much of this process is happening out of sight, beneath the ice and below the surface of the water. The hidden forces at work — warmer currents, structural fractures, and shifts in ice dynamics — are reshaping Antarctica in ways that can be challenging to measure, yet enormously consequential.

Pollution knows no borders

Antarctica is often seen as one of the Earth's last pristine wildernesses, yet even this seemingly untouched continent has not been spared from the reach of human pollution. Scientists have already confirmed the presence of microplastics there, both in surface waters and in deep-sea sediments, as well as in the Antarctic snow , and in the regurgitated food of penguins and seabirds. While some of this pollution can be traced back to local sources such as research stations and tourist vessels, most of it originates from elsewhere: industrial processes, consumer behaviors, and inadequate waste management practices happening far away and unconfined by geography.

A call for systemic solutions

Every action connects to a larger web of consequences, unlimited by geographical boundaries. In the context of intricate interconnectedness and the environmental emergencies we face, my message to those of us in this field of sustainability is to push for systemic solutions.

Think critically and look beyond your immediate “job description.” Sustainability is not a siloed discipline. Whether you work in corporate sustainability, policymaking, or conservation, take a step back and examine how your work fits into the bigger picture. Patagonia is a well-known example of embedding sustainability into a successful business model from day 1 , but other brands can be acknowledged for evolving and re-thinking their practices. Adidas has progressively strengthened its environmental efforts across every stage of the supply chain. Levi’s introduced an innovative material made from worn-out jeans. (Don’t judge me on the selection of examples – it only reflects my personal preference of brands).

Engage with finance and policy: We need to bridge the gaps between environmental science and economic decision-making. Sustainable finance is not just a buzzword. Let’s move beyond compliance and actively engage in shaping investment decisions that prioritize long-term planetary he alth. The good news is that climate finance has demonstrated remarkable resilience and growth in the last five years, practically doubling even amid global crises — be it pandemic, economic, or conflict-driven — and reaching USD 1.46tn in 2022 . This momentum reflects the recognition of sustainable investments as both a financial and strategic imperative.

Embrace collaboration: The greatest environmental challenges cannot be solved in isolation. Consult and engage with colleagues across industries, disciplines, and regions to come up with holistic strategies. You can take inspiration from the collaborative multistakeholder processes underpinning the development of green urban plans across the world – Singapore , Warsaw , Bogota , to name a few.

As “sustainability professionals” (I know, it is a broad definition), our field of work is not a zero-sum game. On the contrary, we are the ones who can help create processes, products, and communities that benefit both people and the planet, minimizing adverse impacts. We have the tools; I hope we also have the will. And the influence.

About the Author:

Ana Bachurova, M.Sc., MBA
Energy Efficiency Lead, UNEP-FI

PHOTO: Ana Bachurova | Pléneau Island, 65°06.6’S / 064°04.0’W

Joseph K. Muiruri - SEA Case Story

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 14:00:12 GMT

About Joseph: Dr. Joseph K. Muiruri obtained his Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering (MSE) from the National University of Singapore (NUS). He has a master’s degree in Environmental Planning & Management from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Previously, Joseph worked as a research scientist for 10 years and as the Head of the Textiles division for 2 years at the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI). Currently, he is a Senior Scientist I at the Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE ² ) A*STAR. Sustainable biopolymers for packaging, natural fibre composites for high-end applications, circular economy, and sustainability metrics are among his research interests.View his member profile in the directory .

Interested in earning your SEA credential? Download our free sample of the SEA Study Guide or sign up for the next SEA Study Cohort .

Climate Risks in US Real Estate: A Looming Economic Downturn Despite Political Denial

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 10:00:00 GMT

Arnaud Brohé, PhD , the founder & CEO of Agendi, signals the increasing risks of climate change in the US real estate market. If left unaddressed, these risks carry significant economic and social consequences, endangering the wellbeing of families and communities across the country.

I’ve spent years analyzing the intersection of climate change and its impacts on various sectors across markets. One thing is clear: the risks to the US real estate market from climate change are real, material, and already undermining the economic foundation many Americans depend on. Despite political denial, the US housing market, particularly in areas vulnerable to climate disasters, is facing crisis. Home insurance, crucial for securing mortgages, is becoming unaffordable, setting the stage for a broader economic disruption.

Climate change and the home insurance crisis

In 2021, the Biden administration tasked the US Treasury Department to assess the climate risks to home insurance. Their findings were stark: climate change is making home insurance more expensive and harder to obtain.

This is a critical issue that we’ve been highlighting for years with our financial and real estate clients . Without insurance, banks won’t issue mortgages. As insurers pull back from those geographic areas most at risk, home values in disaster-prone regions will likely plummet, threatening a potential economic downturn.

Political back-and-forth only complicates the situation. Just days after the US Treasury Department’s report was issued, President Donald Trump revoked the executive order that would have required annual assessments of climate risks in the real estate sector. Back-and-forth actions between administrations are frustrating, to say the least. These policies — ranging from flood risk regulations to federal divestment in high-risk zones — are critical for long-term planning and mitigation.

Rising insurance costs and the domino effect

One immediate effect of climate change is the sharp increase in real estate insurance premiums. Since 2019, US premiums have risen 31%, with much higher increases in vulnerable areas. In Miami, insurance rates could quadruple, while Sacramento could see a doubling. These rates now outpace inflation, and owning US property is no longer the stable investment it once was.

Insurers in the US have long underpriced climate risks, especially in coastal and fire-prone zones, allowing people to live in increasingly unsafe areas. As insurers adjust rates to reflect those risks, the economic consequences are becoming clear.

The socioeconomic implications of a changing housing market: climate migration

Real estate represents nearly $50 trillion of wealth in the US — almost double the country’s GDP. Climate risks are already causing ripple effects. As insurance premiums rise and insurers pull out of high-risk areas, property values could decline, forcing families out and triggering significant economic damage.

According to First Street’s research , over 55 million Americans may migrate within the next 30 years due to climate risks. As people flee high-risk areas like parts of Florida, California and Texas, safer regions may see rising property values while disaster-prone areas experience declines, creating an even greater divide between climate “haves” and “have-nots.”

Without addressing climate risks, we are on the verge of an economic downturn and increasing wealth disparity. Homeownership, once the cornerstone of the American economy, is at risk. If home values drop due to rising insurance costs and climate disasters, the wealth of millions will be wiped out, leading to financial instability.

Opportunities amidst risks

However, amidst these challenges, there are opportunities. By focusing on climate resilience, the building sector can create value through sustainable construction practices, adaptation measures, and energy-efficient retrofits. Builders and investors who act proactively to mitigate climate risks can benefit from rising demand for safer, energy-efficient homes. Local regulatory policy such as New York City's Local Law 97 is a step in the right direction: driving energy efficiency and resilience, which ultimately provide financial opportunities for those adapting early.

Climate change is fundamentally altering the real estate market across the United States. Rising insurance premiums, declining home values, and shifting migration patterns are already impacting the American population. Political denial doesn’t change the facts — the economic consequences are unfolding now. To adapt and mitigate the fallout, action is necessary at the policy level and within the real estate and financial sectors.

About the Author:

Arnaud Brohé, PhD
Founder & CEO, Agendi

PHOTO: Josh Olalde | Houston, TX | Unsplash

Michael F. Horowitz - SEA Case Story

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 10:00:00 GMT

About Michael: Experienced designer, writer, educator, field technician, outreach professional, and business owner with a demonstrated 35-year commitment working and advocating for renewables and energy efficiency and sustainable design. Skilled in Entrepreneurship, Architectural and Mechanical Drafting and Design, Solar and Biomass Technology Integration, Energy-Related Financial and Feasibility Analysis, Verbal and Written Communication, Curriculum Development, Public Speaking, Design Thinking, and Environmental and Sustainability Issues and Awareness. Strong business development professional with a Master of Leadership, Public Policy, and Social Issues focused in Sustainability Management and Environmental Policy from The Union Institute and University. View his member profile in the directory .

Interested in earning your SEA credential? Download our free sample of the SEA Study Guide or sign up for the next SEA Study Cohort .

Navigating the Climate Action Journey: Lessons from Building a Movement

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 09:00:00 GMT

A passion to create positive impact is often what inspires young and emerging changemakers in sustainability. Yet what are the best ways to create, build, and lead meaningful initiatives that can make a difference? Kamila Camilo , Executive Director of Instituto Oyá and Founder & Executive Director of Creators Academy Brasil, shares her insights into the climate leadership journey.

When I embarked on my climate action journey, entrepreneurship wasn’t on my radar. Growing up in the outskirts of Sao Paulo till I was 26, I was passionate and desperate for action because the crisis in front of me was literally making people lose their lives. It wasn’t until several years later that I realized I could be part of and actually drive systemic change that could help slow down our climate crisis: build initiatives and co-create something meaningful. My path was neither straightforward nor easy, but it has been deeply fulfilling.

In 2017 I had the privilege for the first time to travel to the Brazilian Amazon rainforest region in Pará State as a volunteer of the Barco Hacker Project , an initiative aiming to share emergent technologies with riverside communities. The experience was deep and transformative for me. I can tell you, from that moment, everything changed — I felt whole, a completeness that I had never before experienced. In the Guamá River, I was reborn. After arriving and visiting a few communities in the region, I went to the river — even without knowing how to swim — and played in the water with some local girls. When I got out of the water, I felt like I was home. I felt that I had found my place, and so my mission. That moment affirmed my purpose, igniting my desire to connect people with the natural world. It also pushed me to create platforms like the Creators Academy , which now includes over 120 content creators who’ve produced more than 600 videos highlighting climate issues in the Amazon region and, most importantly, showcasing solutions and the people who give their lives daily for the protection of their territories. An example is Roberto, a man who previously worked cutting trees illegally in the Amazon rainforest and today is a community leader in the ecotourism industry. Roberto's work has improved economic and ecosystem health throughout the Rio Negro Sustainable Development Reserve and has been recounted across national media. In 2023, he was invited to share his story with industry leaders at the United Nations Global Compact Meeting in New York.

I'd like to share a few lessons that I've learned through my journey. Below are three key elements that have made all the difference for me.

Intergenerational collaboration and diversity

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is the importance of surrounding yourself with a strong and diverse team. My team is multi-generational, blending youthful energy with seasoned expertise. It is also a female-led organization. This mix allows us to balance creativity, open communication, and collaboration with a results-driven approach. Make sure that your team represents the elements of your vision. To be able to do this I've worked with mentors, which has been a game-changer for me. Mentors are people who have walked in your shoes and can anticipate your challenges. And by paying attention, you can learn from their mistakes. Mentors can also be a great source of inspiration. Early in my career, a teacher-turned-mentor believed in my potential, encouraging me to pursue my vision. That belief was transformative. Having someone in your corner who has walked a similar path can provide invaluable guidance, especially when the road gets tough.

The power of community

In 2019 I became a member of the Global Shapers Community , a group created by the World Economic Forum (WEF) that brings together young innovators, social entrepreneurs, and changemakers from around the world. I didn't speak English at the time, I had never traveled abroad, and all I knew about the WEF was that they have a fancy meeting every year. It would have been impossible for me to believe that three years after that day, I would be in that same fancy meeting and collaborating with global leaders.

I am a member of a diversity of communities, both local and across the world. To be honest, being a part of many highly diverse communities has been equally a blessing and a curse for me. While it has given me so much —meaning, guidance, horizon, opportunities — it is also a mirror where I can see my flaws and where I sometimes compare my journey with others without considering the backgrounds that brought us to this moment. From church groups to dance classes, I’ve intentionally sought out diverse environments to learn and grow. Each group offers unique perspectives, and being a bridge between these worlds has enriched my outlook. It has also inspired the programs that I and my team are developing and growing. For example, our work in the Creators Academy is rooted in inclusivity, engaging creators from different socioeconomic backgrounds. This diversity amplifies our collective impact, demonstrating that collaboration transcends boundaries.

Friendship and joy in the movement

Another insight I’ve gained is the immense value of friendship and joy. Relationships are the bedrock of resilience. A dear friend once told me, “True friends are the ones you can call when something amazing happens.” Celebrating successes together is just as important as supporting each other through challenges. Connecting with the good in all of us and supporting the success of each other has been a guiding principle for me. At the World Economic Forum, a seasoned participant once offered me advice that sticks with me to this day: “See people for who they are, not their badges.” Genuine connections are invaluable, and fostering them often leads to unexpected opportunities.

As I prepare to attend Davos for the second time, now as a Youth Ambassador for the Arctic Basecamp , I’m reminded of the interconnectedness of our ecosystems and communities. The Arctic and the Amazon might seem worlds apart, but their futures are deeply intertwined. Through collaboration, mentorship, and authentic relationships, I’ve learned that small steps can lead to big changes. For young people looking to make a difference, my advice is simple: build strong networks, seek mentors, and never underestimate the power of diverse perspectives.

Till we meet again, with love and gratitude.

About the Author:

Kamila Camilo
Executive Director, Instituto Oyá
Founder & Executive Director, Creators Academy Brasil

PHOTO: Helena Albaa | CreatorsAcademy | Tumbira, Amazonas, Brazil

After the Sustainability Recession: It’s time to expand our focus from responsible business to regenerative markets

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 09:00:00 GMT

John Elkington , Founder of Volans and an ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree, is widely recognized as one of the founders of the global sustainability movement. In this piece, he signals that if sustainability is to deliver, our understanding of what it is likely to involve must also expand. No longer simply about transforming businesses, sustainability must be about transforming markets. His most recent book — Tickling Sharks : How We Sold Business on Sustainability — was published in June 2024 by Fast Company Press.

I began mapping the ups and downs in the sustainability agenda thirty years ago. There have been a series of upwaves since, with ever-taller peaks truncated by sustainability recessions — though the intervals between the peaks are shrinking.

This time around, the ESG agenda was hit soonest and hardest, but the wider sustainability agenda will be under pressure through the second Trump administration. Weirdly, though, I feel more optimistic than I have for years — because experience suggests that the critical work is done in downwave, recessionary periods.

So, while sustainability champions — including thousands of newly-minted chief sustainability officers (CSOs) — spotlight the need to move beyond incrementalism to systemic solutions, it is not clear that they yet know what this will involve.

One implication is that truly effective solutions will be structural. This means restructuring not just individual businesses but also reconfiguring the markets they serve.

Take the Ford Motor Company. It split itself into two operating units — one (“Ford Blue”) focuses on the company’s legacy business anchored around the internal combustion engine, while the second (“Ford Model E”) is configured to become a nimbler player in the electric vehicle market. Model E may be struggling , but the increasing urgency of such solutions to fundamentally structural challenges will be increasingly obvious.

Nor is Ford alone. Solvay, a Belgian multinational chemical company, is another pioneer that has gone structural. While its core business has doubled down on established product lines like soda ash, peroxides, and specialty chemicals, Solvay has spun out a new venture, Syensqo , to focus on a range of “breakthrough” opportunities in such areas as renewable materials and green hydrogen.

The interesting thing here is that the new venture already boasts revenues well ahead of the legacy business. At this stage, such examples reflect corporate restructurings in response to emerging market trends. Yet they also raise the question of how soon tomorrow’s business success stories will be based on conscious market restructurings, driven as much by policymakers (as in the case of the EU’s Green Deal and the US Inflation Reduction Act) as by incumbent corporates and insurgent entrepreneurs.

Markets Wobble As Politicization Grows

The more exposed a company is to financial markets, the less independence of thought it is often allowed when it comes to sustainability-directed transformations. Where people might once have blamed the gods for their mishaps, today’s business leaders blame market realities (specifically macroeconomic, political, and financial factors) for their failures to deliver on publicly announced commitments in the sustainability space.

Think of Shell CEO Wael Sawan, with his announcement of a lower ambition for his energy company’s climate targets; of Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kalenius throttling back on his company’s target of 100 percent electric vehicles by 2030; and of Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher declaring that the FMCG giant’s long-vaunted sustainability goals had failed to deliver sufficient shareholder value — and dialling back on the speed and scale of change in some areas.

The market travails of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who found himself embroiled in a furious anti-ESG storm, will feature in many future business school case studies. Standing back, it is evident that, even if Fink and BlackRock were correct in their analysis of the longer-term market trajectories, they misjudged the political consequences of the recent boom in market interest in ESG.

Progress always triggers counter-measures from those economically or ideologically trapped in the old paradigm. So, as the transition builds, expect growing tensions — alongside climbing casualty rates, both for leaders and businesses. Once again, whether or not they care to embrace it, there is a critical role for governments in ensuring that most of the actual and potential victims of such transformations are compensated, or reskilled and re-employed.

Sustainability is our biggest market failure

If sustainability is to deliver, our understanding of what it is likely to involve must also expand. It is no longer simply about transforming businesses, critical though that may be. Increasingly, too, it must be about transforming markets — to the point where necessary outcomes are secured by new market default settings.

Talk to many CSOs meanwhile, though, and while they are increasingly happy to talk about business models, they may be significantly less comfortable when it comes to discussing wider economic models. For that, it can be more productive to turn to the smaller number of Chief Economists in business. They include some of the most interesting — and provocative — thinkers in today’s private sector.

As Dow Chief Economist Rafael Cayuela told me, “sustainability is our biggest market failure — but solving these challenges is our biggest-ever market opportunity. We are seeing a phase change in key markets, where sustainability shifts from being considered simply as a cost, an additional set of constraints, to an increasingly powerful set of market drivers.”

At best, tariffs are short-term remedy

Anyone wanting a better sense of how all this might play out should consider taking a learning journey to China in 2025 — a country that is clearly committed to dominating the commanding heights of tomorrow’s economy.

China’s pro-green-growth mindset may not be driven by sustainability priorities, at least as we understand them, but their undeniable success means that the EU is now having to slap massive tariffs on imported Chinese cars.

Tariffs , of course, will be in the limelight throughout 2025. But there really is a limit to how long you can use such instruments to hold back the future. Expect to see more market initiatives aggregating sustainability-oriented demand at scale. Consider the Climate Group’s RE100 initiative, with over 400 corporate members committed to consuming 100 percent renewable electricity. Collectively they consume more power than France — and are closing the gap with Germany.

Finally, while it’s understandable why Jeff Bezos might want to keep his Washington Post empire above the electoral fray, it’s time for business leaders to align their wider market ecosystems with their declared commitments.

One angle Volans is pursuing involves encouraging companies to review their memberships of industry federations — to test the alignment of the federations’ relevant lobbying activities against a given company’s commitments. Our recent study with InfluenceMap for Unilever is a case in point. We found that around a quarter of the federations and associations with which Unilever is currently affiliated are lobbying in contrary directions. The logical question then is what such companies should do next: stay in and fight — or publicly resign, explaining why they have done so?

In headlines, the current sustainability recession is likely to drive our agenda in more market-oriented directions, dictating increasingly structural responses from corporations, and — as a result — a continuing politicization of issues that by the 2040s will nonetheless be taken for granted.

About the Author:

John Elkington, Founder of Volans and an ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree and author of the newly released

Tickling Sharks : How We Sold Business on Sustainability.

PHOTO: China takes on the world: BYD cars on display in Munich, Germany | Matti Blume | BYD booth, IAA Summit 2023 | Munich, Germany

Good Business: Three Case Studies in Corporate Power Wielding on Climate Change

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 09:00:00 GMT

Auden Schendler , Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen One, argues that market forces and corporate voluntary efforts alone are decidedly failing to address climate change. Drawing from his newly released book, Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul, he shares key actions for scaling impact, whatever size your organization might be.

The corporate sustainability movement arguably began when multinational corporations like Toyota, 3M, and DuPont started thinking about manufacturing differently in the late sixties. Most of their solutions saved money and energy while reducing pollution. 3M developed water-, not solvent-based processes , both saving on cost and ensuring regulatory compliance. DuPont developed solutions to the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon problem that the company itself had created. And Toyota pioneered the idea of lean management , where process efficiency enabled energy and materials savings. This was exciting stuff — author Paul Hawken incorporated some of these approaches into his 1993 ecological-business manifesto, The Ecology of Commerce. That book got into the hands of Interface CEO Ray Anderson , and the modern corporate sustainability movement was born.

The Corporate Sustainability Thesis

In short, this movement posited that business could be a meaningful part of solving global environmental problems — at a profit — for some of the same reasons that 3M, Toyota, and DuPont were so successful. There actually were business drivers behind those solutions! Given that it was cheaper to save energy than to make it, couldn’t business also lead the way on climate solutions and even model the how-to for governments and policymakers? The benefit was that these fixes would all happen on the free market, without regulation.

Thirty-plus years down the line, it’s pretty clear that thesis has failed. Not only do global carbon emissions continue to climb, but resulting natural disasters continue to wreak havoc on economies, supply chains, and human lives. Looking back, the approach, even at Toyota and DuPont was entirely voluntary and therefore not systemic, seems complicit with the fossil fuel industry’s desires. After all, if that industry had wanted to design an approach to environmentalism that would distract these wealthy, powerful, global, and nimble organizations while making it seem like they cared, corporate sustainability would be it — earnest tokenism, but no disruption.

Given this situation, it’s worth asking what meaningful actions business can actually take to address the climate problem at scale. Below are three case studies from my own experience in the United States — yet which apply internationally — to help business leaders think through their own opportunities to scale regenerative impact.

Holy Cross Energy: Changing Utility Leadership to Cut Carbon Footprint

Early in my career I deployed all the energy savings techniques I could think of at the business at which I work, which runs ski resorts, hotels, and restaurants. We had implemented lighting and boiler retrofits, green building construction techniques, equipment controls, and high-efficiency pumping systems and motors. But our carbon footprint didn’t budge. After some analysis, we realized we couldn’t move the needle because our electricity came from coal, and the percentage of coal used by our utility was going up. We would never be able to overcome that carbon burden with efficiency alone: we needed to change supply. The story of how we became community organizers over many years to change the board of our local utility is described in a chapter of my new book, Terrible Beauty. In a nutshell, it required literal door-knocking, phone banking to find potential board candidates, arm-twisting, and then elaborate, highly strategic electronic campaigning. It was not easy, but over a decade (starting in the late 2000s) we tipped the balance of the board from coal boosters to clean energy advocates. That utility’s energy supply went from 6% to 80% renewables, with a goal of 100% by 2030. Our carbon footprint, and that of our whole region, plummeted accordingly. Ironically, rival businesses that declined invitations to participate in our community organizing also benefitted, making progress on their own carbon goals thanks to this work.

Kimberly-Clark: Exerting Public Pressure on Business Partners

Our second win was similarly complicated. In 2007 we were invited to join Greenpeace’s boycott of the large, multinational forest products company Kimberly-Clark, which was logging endangered forests to manufacture Kleenex, a facial tissue. Surely they could improve forestry practices, use post-consumer waste, and therefore meaningfully move the needle on climate which is, in substantial part, about how we manage forests. Our small company mattered little on the balance sheet — we spent $30k annually on the product — but our brand (perhaps the most famous ski destination in the world) meant a lot. As a result, weeks after joining the boycott, the CEO of Kimberley-Clark asked to talk to our own CEO. Think about that: the ratio of our revenues at the time was on the order of 200 to 1. And yet they cared about damage to their own image through our brand power. We engaged in a healthy and civil dialogue. 700 other companies also joined the boycott. And three years later, Kimberly-Clark significantly changed how it practiced forestry. Military historians have a term for this: asymmetric warfare. Businesses can use the power of their brand to drive disproportionate change.

Using Advertising as a Tool for Activism

As we pursued this “power wielding” approach to driving meaningful action on climate change, we turned to our marketing program. It made sense: we reach millions of individuals through our advertising. We knew that most ski resort advertisements are boring and undifferentiated: they feature skiers on a blue-sky day. But if every ad is the same, how do you get a viewer’s attention? We decided to try something new: combine climate activism with marketing. In 2017 we developed a campaign called “Give a Flake,” which featured postage-paid postcards to U.S. Senators who are swing votes on climate policy. The day the campaign launched — with thousands of postcards appearing in a half dozen different magazines — the office of one Senator called us, irate . “What are you doing attacking us?” they asked. Our CEO took the call: “You’re not doing enough on climate. We’re asking you to do more.” In the United States, elected officials had never experienced consequences for denying climate science or failing to take meaningful action after saying they cared. This was one of the first instances of a consequence: public, political pain.

While our own campaign didn’t change policy in its time, it was part of an evolution in the American zeitgeist. When the country's most significant climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, came in front of the U.S. Senate in 2022, swing senators declining to support the bill came under enormous public pressure, including from the ski and resort industry, and consequently voted for it.

Meaningful Corporate Climate Action is Good Business

The hard truth is that the corporate sustainability movement is a failed experiment. Most multinational corporations profess to care about the essential sustainability challenge — climate change — but their actions are token, intermittent, not to scale, and their net-zero targets are managed through unregulated and questionable carbon offsets. Net Zero Tracker reports that over one thousand companies from the Forbes 2000 list have made such pledges. The simplistic concept of carbon neutrality captured the public's imagination because the climate issue is complex: it sounds like a winning solution. Yet most research on offsets show that "the large majority are not real or are over-credited or both," as Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, said in 2023.

And in many cases, corporate pledges to net-zero are overtly duplicitous — making bold decarbonization announcements while simultaneously selling technology to expedite fossil fuel extraction as Microsoft has done ; or, like Salesforce, affirming climate policy leadership while paying dues , along with peers like Microsoft, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable — which work directly to counter those goals.

This is all ultimately bad business: climate is in fact a threat to operations; and duplicity crushes reputation and credibility. Whistleblowers and NGOs that recognize this are cropping up. They are the tip of the iceberg, and business should see them as opportunities, not threats. Why? Because corporations are made up of, and serve, human beings, each a universe unto themselves, with hopes and aspirations, lives filled with epic love and loss, and the desire to live a “right” life.

These individuals' goals are consistent with a fundamental definition of business: “the practice of making one’s living by engaging in commerce.” And one does not “make a living” by destroying spirit and home.

About the Author:

Auden Schendler, Senior Vice President, Sustainability, at Aspen One and author of the newly released

Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul.

PHOTO: Dan Bayer | Aspen One Utility Scale Solar Array | Carbondale, CO, USA

Case Study: Interview with TAFE NSW, ISSP Organizational Member

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 19:35:24 GMT

Recently, we interviewed Belinda Bean, MSc Sustainable Development, about how she teaches the next generation of sustainability practitioners.

Belinda is a faculty member at TAFE NSW , one of Australia's leading vocational education and training providers. She teaches students who are studying to earn their Higher Education Diploma of Sustainable Practice or Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainable Practice .

Their Diploma of Sustainable Practice (DoSP) won the prestigious Green Gown Award Australasia in the Next Generation Learning & Skills category.

Through your experience as an impact strategist, what sets the Diploma of Sustainable Practice at TAFE NSW apart from other similar programs?

The DoSP stands out for its hands-on, project-based approach, where students apply sustainability skills from day one, making real-world impacts through workplace or community projects. The course integrates key trends like mandatory disclosure and GenAI, ensuring students stay at the forefront of sustainability while receiving mentoring from industry experts.

How does the DoSP prepare students for the Sustainability Excellence Associate credential exam?

The DoSP aligns with ISSP standards and covers essential topics like sustainability strategy, performance analysis, and project implementation. Through real-world projects and a balance of theory and application, students gain the comprehensive knowledge needed to confidently sit for the SEA credential exam.

Why do you enjoy teaching sustainability at TAFE NSW?

I enjoy teaching sustainability at TAFE NSW because the impact is immediate — students apply their learning in real-world contexts, driving meaningful change. The collaborative environment and passionate students make teaching rewarding, knowing we’re all contributing to meaningful change.

What are some examples of how students or alumni have put their sustainability skills into action?

Students lead impactful projects whilst studying, like one that diverted 96 tonnes of car bumper bars from landfill and another that helped a paper mill reduce 646 tonnes of waste annually (and saving over $64,000). These projects showcase the practical skills our graduates bring to drive sustainability in various industries.

Student Spotlights

Two recent graduates from the Diploma of Sustainable Practice (DoSP) program were awarded TAFE NSW Student of the Year in 2020 and 2024. Given the number of courses delivered across all of TAFE NSW, this is significant. Sustainability students are making a name for themselves!

TAFE NSW helps Berowra charity queen build a more sustainable future

Rebecca Healy's long-held passion for sustainability prompted her unlikely career pivot in 2021 to launch a plastic recycling charity, Boxhead Plastics. The charity’s extraordinary success grew from recycling 1.2 tonnes of plastic waste in 2021 to recycling 96,000 tonnes less than three years later.

Housing leader credits TAFE NSW with helping her attract $380k in grant funding

Waddi Housing and Advancement Corporation coordinator Tamileigh Chirgwin said completing the Diploma of Sustainable Practice at TAFE NSW helped the Waddi Housing board to attract almost $400,000 worth of grant funding and transform how she approaches her role.

Does your higher education institution provide a sustainability program?

Consider our organizational membership , which includes courses, credentialing, and networking for students.

Sophia S. Mwema - SEA Case Story

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 20:57:19 GMT

About Sophia: She is a passionate sustainability communications professional with specialized expertise in renewable energy and carbon markets. With international experience spanning Canada, Tanzania, Poland, and Germany, she enjoys partnering with diverse teams and cultures, collaborating across silos to translate sustainability goals into actionable, tangible results. Her experience in operational improvement projects and results-driven sustainability programs (e.g., B-Corp) demonstrates her ability to deliver measurable outcomes and impact. She offers insights on how organizations can enhance sustainability performance and stakeholder engagement.

Sophia holds an MSc in Innovation Management, Entrepreneurship & Sustainability from the Technical University of Berlin and an MA in International Business Consulting from HWR Berlin. She is equipped to integrate sustainability into business model design for long-term value creation.

Interested in earning your SEA credential? Download our free sample of the SEA Study Guide or sign up for the next SEA Study Cohort .

Ponzi Schemes Are Destructive, Particularly the Biggest One: Global Overshoot

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 09:30:00 GMT

Mathis Wackernagel, PhD , Co-founder of the Global Footprint Network and an ISSP Hall of Fame Honoree, offers a cogent account of the largest pyramid scheme ever: global overshoot of our planet’s regenerative capacity by at least 70%. Recognizing overshoot as the persistent context of our current economies is not an act of self-sacrificing heroism, but one of healthy self-preservation.

Overshoot occurs when more is taken from ecosystems than the ecosystems can renew – thereby depleting the stocks. Consequently, current overuse compromises future use. With persistent global overshoot becoming our new context, recognizing this context helps us make decisions that serve us. Ignoring it increases our fragility.

It is hard to imagine a more obvious case of a self-destructive pyramid scheme than ecological overshoot . Humanity’s resource overuse is clearly robbing the future to pay for the present. It requires constant depletion of our underlying natural wealth to maintain the current income. Ultimately, if not rectified, this ends in ecologically bankrupting humanity.

Given the damage they cause, financial pyramid schemes, or Ponzi schemes as they are called in the US, are illegal in most countries. Yet oddly, ecological ones are still encouraged, tolerated, or ignored. Their potential damage, though, is no less.

The stakes are high, yet the concept of overshoot is relatively simple to grasp. Surprisingly though, it gets little attention: for every 10,000 articles on climate change, there is only one on ecological overshoot, even though climate change is just a symptom of overshoot. This is unfortunate, because by recognizing the challenge from this larger issue that encompasses all competing demands on the biosphere — including climate change —paradoxically, it becomes more solvable. This scaled-up overshoot perspective helps us to see our ecological challenges in a new light: it becomes clearer that we are facing a resource security question that aligns incentives rather than just being caught in a hard-to-attack free-rider problem .

What do I mean by free-rider problem? Our single focus on climate, and particularly carbon emissions, gives people the impression that individual incentives (the cost of curbing my CO ₂ ) are at odds with societal incentives (the societal benefits of reduced CO ₂ emissions) — and many people are not willing to compromise their own advantage for the benefit of a distant humanity. But when recognizing that climate change, and all its associate ecological challenges, are ultimately a threat to our own resource security, it becomes more obvious that my company, city, or country’s ability to reduce its excessive resource dependence, including on fossil fuels, strengthens my company, city, or country directly. This resource security challenge is a different dynamic from free-riding. It makes clear that the ecological pyramid scheme we are addicted to will ultimately hurt us directly if we do not get out in time.

Pyramid schemes hurt society. But they hurt the participants even more directly. They are a scam in which Peter is robbed to pay Paul. Unfairly, these pyramid schemes are often attributed to Charles Ponzi , at least in the US. This reflects possibly another gender bias in our depiction of history. Fraudster Sarah Howe of Boston predated Ponzi’s racket by at least 40 years, back in the late 1870s and 80s.

With all the Ponzi schemes of the past, no one has so far been greater at implementing them than Bernie Madoff , whose version involved $65 billion of client money. His strategy, like that of his predecessors, consisted of relying on a steady flow of new client investments, which he used to provide “returns” to earlier investors.

Madoff took from the future to pay for the present. After the 2008 financial crisis made it more difficult to recruit ever more investors, this difficulty became the last straw to break that pyramid scheme’s back. Once he was caught, the jurisdictional system took Madoff’s future to pay for his past. In 2021, he died in jail, and much of the debt he generated persists.

Yet collectively, Madoff has been massively outdone : our current economies are running the largest pyramid scheme ever. We are depleting the Earth’s future biological resources to run present activities. Currently, humanity consumes the planet's biological resources more quickly than Earth can replenish them . Human demand now exceeds our planet’s regenerative capacity by at least 70%. Yet ecologists recommend not to use more than half the planet’s biocapacity to have a resilient biosphere with a healthy amount of biodiversity left. That equals over three times less than what is currently taken.

Whether financial or ecological, debt balloons eventually burst. Humanity's ecological debt shows up as excessive carbon in the atmosphere, collapsing fish stocks, shrinking forests, eroding soils, and groundwater drying up. You can find more on ecological pyramid schemes in my chapter in Strategies for Sustainability of the Earth System .

Pyramid schemes are bound to come to an end; the question is whether by design or disaster. I, for one, much prefer deliberate design over dumped-on disasters. But choosing design requires honest accounting and resolve, as Peter Victor lays out in his highly readable book, Escape from Overshoot: Economics for a Planet in Peril .

Of course, this ecological global pyramid scheme is not actively set up and run by a modern-day scoundrel. Instead, it results from the collective impact of millions of daily decisions by governments, businesses, consumers, citizens, and thought leaders, all acting on outdated assumptions about economic and social dynamics and their relationship to our planet’s ability to support us all.

What does this mean for sustainability professionals? Choosing more realistic assumptions that recognize our context of overshoot can therefore help us find ways to reduce each of our individual risk exposure to this pyramid scheme. It even enables us to pick and shape investments in projects that have a far higher likelihood of staying valuable, or even gaining in value. Because, by and large, assets that stay functional are valuable. Therefore, it is a question of identifying assets that can also function in a world of persistent overshoot, one that will experience more climate change and resource constraints. Potentially the most valuable assets are those that diminish overshoot as they scale.

I will not bore you here, but for those interested, such characteristics are measurable , particularly how much an asset can shift global overshoot. Examples of products that, as they multiply, can reduce global overshoot abound: wind turbines that displace coal power, effective insulation that reduces energy needs of houses, e-bikes that are swapped for cars, photovoltaic panels that replace conventional electricity and roofs, recycled materials that get used instead of virgin input, etc. We have called this the power of possibility . And if you need more examples, just ask www.perplexity.ai : “As the future will be ever more defined by climate change and resource constraints, what kind of assets will become more valuable in that future?” It will generate plenty of answers to choose from.

It would be unreasonable to expect that such a short blog could offer comprehensive guidelines on how to solve overshoot . But I will feel satisfied if I am able to provide you with two insights: a) yes, overshoot is a Ponzi scheme , and b) recognizing overshoot as our context is not an act of self-sacrificing heroism, but one of healthy self-preservation .

About the Author:

Mathis Wackernagel, PhD
Co-founder, Global Footprint Network
ISSP Hall of Fame Honoree

PHOTO: Nastya Dulhiier | Unsplash

Why Attend Greenbuild 2024?

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 20:10:10 GMT

Greenbuild hosts the largest annual event for green building professionals worldwide where attendees learn and source solutions to improve resilience, sustainability, and quality of life in our buildings, cities, and communities. The Greenbuild 2024 event will take place November 12-15, 2024, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA. Join us as we imagine how to create more than just LEED-certified structures.

Together, we’ll learn how to build:

Greener communities
Better workplaces
Social equity
New sustainable solutions
And so much more!

20 Things You’ll Get from Attending Greenbuild 2024

New Thinking, New Ideas, New Case Studies, New Experiences, New Change-Makers!

Insights into the future of sustainable development, not just brick-and-mortar, everything from transportation systems to health-related solutions to community-wide programming.
A first look at unique game-changing products and services, business and consumer solutions, technologies, and breakthrough ideas.
Connections with thousands of decision-makers, mentors, and peers.
Hundreds of thought-leaders who educate and inspire.
Stories about entire neighborhoods embracing sustainability.
Opportunities for self-development and upskilling, plus CEU credits!
Pathways to new career possibilities.
Diversity, inclusion and social equity among all participants.
Interactive social events and curated experiences to foster meaningful relationships.
Empowerment to influence sustainability initiatives in your own organization.
Behind-the-scenes view of how communities in Philadelphia are building better.
Technologies to measure the impact of your actions.
Avenues to secure capital for your sustainability projects.
Students and emerging professionals; access to talent across all generations.
Cross-functional expertise, from architects and mega construction companies to government and business leaders.
Continuous digital content before and after the event.
Visionary yet practical approaches to take back to your business; group discounts and spaces for team meetings.
Perspectives on how the movement has grown and what’s coming next.
Memorable experiences that you won’t find at other live gatherings.
Collaborative problem-solving that will lead to a brighter future.

Are you ready to experience the transformation of the movement and join us at Greenbuild this year? Check out the pass options and feel free to use the promo code ISSPEXPO for a free attendee expo pass.

Rouba Nassar - SEA Case Story

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:05:21 GMT

Interested in earning your SEA credential? Download our free sample of the SEA Study Guide or sign up for the next SEA Study Cohort .

Partnerships Can Move the Needle on Sustainability

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:00:00 GMT

Desta Raines , Governing Board Secretary at ISSP and Board Member at Pact Collective, reveals how strong, enduring multisector partnerships in sustainability need to be carefully crafted and mutually beneficial. And sometimes they need to start slowly to be able to eventually move fast and at scale.

When I started my new job in the fall of 2020, one of the first assignments I was given was to figure out how to launch a consumer-facing empties take-back program across all our stores in North America. The program would allow consumers to dispose of their beauty product packaging at dedicated in-store stations to help divert it from landfills. It was a CEO priority that needed to happen. For me, the question was how? I met with the CEO and got his thoughts. His response: consumer surveys, pilot, get into the field to see what customers and store employees thought and wanted. Sounded great! But I needed a solid game plan to get this done.

I started mapping out the logistics, talking to people inside and outside of the company, trying to understand the organization culture, our market positioning, how things worked. I tried to wrap my head around the best way to approach this idea. I knew it was critically important to produce a failsafe plan. After all, this would be a highly visible program and one where I would need robust inside support to execute. As I often say when describing our company's sustainability initiatives — and it's an apt metaphor — I am the conductor, and the rest of the organization is the orchestra. There cannot be a concert unless we all play our instruments.

Attuning to start

As I started pulling together my plans and mapping my strategy, something still was not feeling right to me. I was thinking about the challenge and considering that while we could develop an initiative to ensure at least a certain degree of impact, what would be the most meaningful thing we could do?

As I was pondering, we were approached by the co-founder of Pact Collective , which proposed an idea that I was seeking deep down. Essentially: become the first prestige beauty retailer to join Pact Collective and lead the way in eliminating packaging waste from the beauty and wellness industries. I was elated with this possibility. It felt like winning the lottery. Though I knew I still needed to dig deeper — engage the organization and, most importantly, make sure the CEO was onboard.

Once I confirmed that our leadership and our talent were enthusiastic toward this potential collaboration, I had to make sure Pact Collective was a partner we could rely upon fully. I knew that once we started down the path, we would not have the option to turn back.

Finding the right harmony

When a corporation is seeking nonprofit partners to execute sustainability programs, it is important to have a clear vision of what you want to create and to ensure mission alignment across the partnering organizations. Roles and expectations need to be clearly defined, which involves considerable discussion. Over the course of my career, I have seen successful corporate - NGO partnerships and many that have failed. Reasons for failure can range from insufficient capacity at the NGO to support at-scale deployment, to inadequate prioritization and budget within the corporation's strategic planning. From the standpoint of the NGO specifically, they need long-term partners to scale impact — and not to be used as shields against corporate reputational risk.

How the concert progressed

In the case of Pact Collective, we had many conversations, knowing that an eventual partnership with them would exponentially multiply their drop-off bin locations. We did a lot of scenario planning before we even circled back to our CEO. With time, I was confident that we had worked out the mechanics of a mutually beneficial relationship that had the potential to be industry changing. Our CEO agreed.

Focusing on a sector-wide issue, such as packaging waste in the beauty and wellness industries — and engaging consumers to be able to scale our initiative — made a lot of sense for us. The idea of being part of a group of companies, including brands we retailed, and working together to solve a common issue made it even more appealing. We hoped that by putting this stake in the ground we could serve as a catalyst for positive change across our industry.

Personally, I loved that Pact Collective focused on consumer action to bring back clean, empty packaging that otherwise would not be accepted by community recycling programs. Scaling this initiative involved effective communication across our consumer audiences, educating them on how to do it and why it mattered. And it involved providing bins across all our retail locations and training our employees to facilitate both consumer engagement and the recycling process.

The music continues

The success of our partnership with Pact Collective has created momentum for other sustainability initiatives at our company. Not only did our empties take-back initiative generate executive-level visibility, but it also drew attention across the whole organization. Working across multiple teams on an ongoing basis has built lasting relationships — relationships that have furthered subsequent sustainability initiatives. I see now that our empties take-back program has served as the trunk of a tree from which sustainability branches can more easily sprout and grow.

Reflecting on this approach, I realize that it just takes one successful sustainability win to start the show. While the music may not play as fast as you want it to, it can build tempo over time. As sustainability practitioners, we can feel a sense of urgency — the climate is changing fast, people! — yet often lack the time, resources, support, motivation, or momentum to move quickly. Realizing that we can move slowly to move fast is one of the best lessons I have learned.

Today the Pact Collective program has stood the test of time, and the partnership continues to thrive. More companies and brands have joined, and I have had the honor to serve on its Board of Directors. Creating a strong and lasting partnership builds the case for more and illustrates that these relationships work well when carefully crafted and mutually beneficial.

About the Author:

Desta Raines

Governing Board Secretary, ISSP

Board Member, Pact Collective

PHOTO: Pact Collective

Misha Franklin - SEA Case Story

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 13:46:08 GMT

Interested in earning your SEA credential? Download our free sample of the SEA Study Guide or sign up for the next SEA Study Cohort .

Sustainability Reporting: Meeting the Needs of the Market

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 09:00:00 GMT

Richard Barker, PhD , of the International Sustainability Standards Board and Professor, University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, recounts the rise in sustainability reporting. In a world where planning for a low carbon, sustainable future creates greater enterprise value than persisting with business as usual, businesses need to effectively communicate their sustainability story.

Sustainability reporting is on the rise. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued its climate disclosure rule. California has introduced legislation to require public and private companies that do business in the state to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and their climate-related financial risks. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has issued its first global standards, IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, which have been endorsed by IOSCO, and which consolidate foundations laid by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) and others.

These developments have their roots in economics. Sustainability reporting is on the rise because the business case is becoming more widely understood. Change is being driven by markets.

A simple illustration makes the point. Think about the history of the auto industry, what comes to mind? Maybe Henry Ford, who started the production lines that still define the industry. Or maybe Alfred Sloan’s General Motors, and the mass customization that has characterized the industry ever since. Ford and GM have in common the internal combustion engine, the driving force that powered the 20th century and that continues into the 21st. The engine in tractors, haulage trucks, bankers’ saloon cars, and CEOs’ SUVs. The demand for ExxonMobil and Chevron. This is economic activity as we know it. Business as usual. Business as it’s always been done. Enter VinFast, which started making cars six years ago, electric cars. In Vietnam. In August last year, it launched an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, initially achieving a market capitalization of $87bn, higher than the combined value of Ford and GM. By the standards of the traditional global elite in the auto industry – not just Ford and GM, but also Toyota and VW — VinFast is a startup, but then so too was Tesla in the not-too-distant past. It came from nowhere. It cruised past indomitable incumbents. It became by far the most valuable automaker in the world.

Whether VinFast or Tesla is the more remarkable story, I don’t know. What is unmistakable, however, is that both are stories of disruption. Investors have chased both stocks because they see a future that is different from the past. An 1849, a railroad boom, a dot.com rush. The world is being weaned off oil and gas. Investors are looking to find the money-makers in an electric, renewable economy. There is no climate change denial in the valuations of VinFast or Tesla. The opposite, maybe (and the evidence of a bubble in Vinfast’s opening valuation is clear). But denial, clearly not. Investors buying the stock are buying into an electric future. Their thesis is that the energy sources that built our economies are not those that will sustain it. Economic value will be created in different ways. Profits will be sustained with different business models. New and existing markets will be served in different ways.

There’s the twist. This is not sustainability as an end in itself. It is not glossy stories of corporate social responsibility. It is instead sustainability as a place to do business. Investors are looking to different market conditions that lie ahead, a place where sustainability creates value. Sustainability of profit. Business resilience. Capacity for growth. Flexibility and vision to escape business as usual, to look ahead and see a world that is changing. A business proposition that is worth maybe $87bn.

The point is this. If global warming remains unchecked, and if such things as extreme weather events and global supply chain disruptions further as the new norm, the economy will suffer. And if the economy suffers, conditions will not be favorable for economic activity and neither, therefore, for investors. The corporate reporting implication is obvious. Investors want to know how your business sees the future, how you are planning to meet it, and what value you expect to be able to create. Current financial reporting alone cannot offer this; in a disruptive world, investors cannot evaluate your prospects based upon existing conditions or past performance.

This is how to think about sustainability reporting. How will you make money in a sustainable economy of the future? What’s the business case? What’s your plan? Why should investors buy your stock?

Note what this is not. It’s not compliance. It’s not a PR exercise, promoting green anecdotes as a smoke screen on business as usual. Fundamentally, it’s not even anything new. It’s timeless principles of economic thinking, value creation, and corporate reporting, applied in a setting where the future will look different from the past, and where planning for a low carbon, sustainable future creates greater enterprise value than persisting with business as usual. It’s reporting to investors who value makers of electric cars more highly than those making the cars of yesterday.

That train has left the station. Pretty much all major US corporations are doing sustainability reporting in some form. For example, there are currently 1,297 public companies in the United States using SASB’s industry-based reporting standards. These include (to sample from those at the start of the alphabet): Abbvie, Accenture, Adobe, Allstate, Alphabet, Amazon, American Airlines, Apple, AT&T and Avis Budget. In doing so, you are in good company.

This reporting covers all sectors because all have a sustainability story that needs to be told. Leading manufacturers and constructors are investing in energy efficiency and circular business models. Fund managers and banks are de-risking investment and loan portfolios by setting demanding targets on emissions. Aviation is focused on sustainable fuel, the oil and gas industry on energy security during a period of transition to a low carbon future. And so, the list goes on. This reporting is driven in part by investor demand but also because doing business responsibly gives you a license to operate, and transparent reporting validates that license.

So, how should you be thinking about sustainability reporting? How can it be most valuable to your investors, and therefore also to your business? I address these questions in a recent article in MIT Sloan Management Review, Get Ready for More Transparent Sustainability Reporting . That article offers an 8-part guide, as follows:

Don’t stop what you’re already doing — Your company might (for example) disclose its carbon emissions or plans to transition to renewable energy. Build on this, there is no need to start over.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good — Investors want to understand what your sustainability-related risks and opportunities are and how you are managing them. They don’t need perfect information; disclose what you can.
Align with financial reporting — Investors want to know how sustainability issues, such as carbon emissions or waste management, affect your financial prospects, whether revenue from new opportunities or capital expenditure to ensure business resilience. The more that disclosure connects to current and prospective financial statements, the better.
Focus on climate — Climate is the dominant sustainability issue. If you are not already on top of climate-related reporting, you will need to be. And if you do climate reporting well, you will have the structures and systems needed for other components of sustainability reporting.
Tighten systems and controls throughout your value chain — Higher quality sustainability reporting is a source of competitive advantage because investors are more willing to invest at a lower cost of capital, if they trust your data.
Align with the ISSB global baseline — Sustainability reporting calls for data throughout global value chains. The ISSB’s global baseline aligns with stock market requirements to disclose material information to investors while also being an efficient foundation for other emerging requirements, such as in California and Europe.
Contribute to the development of industry norms — Investors understand that sustainability issues vary by industry. The ISSB is therefore committed to its industry-based SASB standards. Companies can innovate in developing best-practice reporting in their sectors, helping shape future standards.
Ensure an authentic connection with value creation — If sustainability reporting feels like a costly exercise in compliance, you are missing an opportunity. Your focus should be on aligning disclosure to investors with information that is valuable to you in leading the business. You will have investors’ full support only if you communicate effectively to them how you plan to create value in a changing world.

Above all, think about the economics. Sustainability reporting is on the rise because the business case is sinking in. Focus on meeting the information needs of the market.

This article expresses the personal views of the author, not the official positions of the ISSB.

About the Author:

Richard Barker, PhD
International Sustainability Standards Board
Professor, University of Oxford's Saïd Business School

PHOTO: TJBauman, LLC

Sub-Saharan African Sustainability – New Awareness and Generational Shifts

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 17:35:47 GMT

Bangaly Kourouma , Information Systems Division Manager at Austin Energy and ISSP Governing Board Treasurer, shares the strategic opportunity of sustainability, scaled large to enable equitable economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. This goal is critical to both local populations and to balancing global interests.

Countries with mineral-rich soil are often among the least industrialized and poorest in the world, experiencing significant political and social instability. They also exhibit the highest population growth rates and enduring quasi-domination from developed nations that normalize exploitation as a model for success and stability. In this essay, I will discuss the non-negotiable aspirations, needs, and expectations of young Africans who are tired of promises and demand nothing less than a fair shot at the contemporary human experience.

Wealth and Stability for All?

Every modern human population seeks access to our basic amenities of contemporary life: clean water, electricity, infrastructure, modern education, economic stability, and environmental health. Sustainability attracts the attention of many around the globe, and particularly those in developing economies, with its promise to include all of humanity — irrespective of identity, economic means, or social status.

We share this planet with diverse species, flora and fauna, making Earth uniquely suited for human life. Sub-Saharan Africa harbors some of the most globally coveted natural capital, including mineral resources and raw commodities. With 42% of the world’s gold, 80%–90% of its chromium and platinum group metals, and 60% of its arable land in addition to vast timber resources, Africa — our second largest continent, covering about one-fifth of the Earth's total land surface — is by any measure indispensable to human sustainability. Despite this intrinsic wealth, local inhabitants — rightful custodians of their lands — often remain unaware of their environmental resources: the types, quantities, qualities, and potential utility of their natural capital. Meanwhile, foreign corporations and governments leverage this knowledge for their financial gain.

Leaping from Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) to New York (USA) – A Stark Difference

I am a native of Cote d’Ivoire, a former French colony that gained independence in 1960. My K-12 education provided little to no information of our immense mineral wealth and what it could accomplish. Instead, classroom emphasis was placed on studying industries producing finished products, all of which were beyond our economic capacity to replicate. I left Sub-Saharan Africa at 19 years old. During a decade of continued resource exploitation despite local challenges, my peers back home continued to confront ever-present social unrest, police brutality, inadequate and inconsistent education, and most unfortunately, a lack of opportunities after they achieved their educational targets. Conversely, I was fortunate to obtain advanced degrees in the U.S. and, pursuing my interests, began to make an impact in the professional world. For my elementary and high school peers, there seemed to be no opportunities available to an entire generation of Ivorians — stalled due to the conditions I just described.

Somehow in this complex socio-economic environment, foreign companies — aided by their countries’ military — were able to shield their raw commodity production and perpetuated inequality through unfair pricing structures and exploitation. Raw products, sold globally at highly profitable and locally prohibitive rates, were often returning to Africa to be sold with mark-ups that have been and continue to be unaffordable to most locals. Without adequate knowledge transfer, professional training, and economic resources, local populations remain dependent on foreign control — and vulnerable to fear-based contract negotiation tactics that resemble longstanding imperialist exploitations.

A Stubborn Imperial Past

These widespread post-colonial conditions across sub-Saharan Africa have not been without major consequences. Onslaught after onslaught to establish foreign-controlled political and economic systems have destabilized nations and their citizens in ways that are persistent to this day. Obliged to focus on basic survival needs, citizen voices are muted and local civic action thwarted. Education, training, health, evolving economic practices all take a backseat to subsistence living.

The result is that we face a dearth of employment offering a living wage. With some of the lowest income levels in the world — and its incumbent hunger — young people seek to emigrate to industrialized nations. Some young people view the possibility of more viable economic conditions to be worth risking their lives, confronting long treks through wilderness and the threats of thirst, hunger, armed smugglers, human trafficking, and unsound ocean-crossing vessels — all in the hope of a better future in one of the industrial nations.

The pernicious loss in this reality is the missed opportunity to further knowledge transfer and engender skill development in their native lands, necessary to any foundation of sustained industrialization for sub-Saharan Africa. This tragedy continues to set the course for explosive unrest among populations entrenched in poverty and dominated by foreign interests that control nearly all local resources for their own profit and interests. The situation parallels Britannica's definition of imperialism : “state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas. Because it always involves the use of power, whether military or economic or some subtler form, imperialism has often been considered morally reprehensible…”.

Knowledge can truly lead to sustainability

Sub-Saharan Africa's exponential population growth further necessitates sustainability planning and initiatives that would ensure diverse engagement, economic growth, and equitable wealth distribution across these societies. The continent's younger generations seek equitable distribution of wealth, enabled by sustainability practices. Yet, developing local policy and governance to advance these initiatives holds its own set of challenges. Technological advancements and contemporary knowledge and social systems challenge traditional narratives, necessitating concrete benefits for local leaders. An equitable sustainability conversation begins with equitable access to information and recognition of key stakeholders' impact and contribution. Equitable exploitation of these resources is not achievable without an ecosystem by and for natives that can drive endogenous innovations and the entrepreneurial engine. Controlled competition where natives are given tax advantages and aided until successful is a requirement. Enabling robust, independent governing institutions that lead their efforts with targeted regulations, investments, and local labor training that serve local interests. This requires Stable governmental and political systems underpin this possibility and mitigate the risks of destabilizing mass social unrest.

Additionally, current geopolitical unrest outside Africa is closely observed as expansion of military conflicts represent a major risk to Sub-Saharan Africa. It is a global region that still lacks weapons of mass dissuasion such as nuclear arsenals, advanced endogenous military technologies, the ability to impose economic sanctions, etc.

The continent’s millennial and younger generations are now studying several models for prosperity, success, and stability. In discussion with my peers and other locals, the consistent theme is a desire is to achieve long-lasting peace and stability, equitable distribution of wealth, and competitive ingenuity and innovation. Yet, that possibility rests now on their shoulders. As such, sustainability offers them a set of tools and practices especially suited to this next wave of sub-Saharan leaders. Diaspora members, like myself, offer experience and guidance to accelerate these outcomes, contributing to capacity building for sustainable development while balancing outcomes for humanity's benefit.

About the Author:

Bangaly Kourouma
Information Systems Division Manager at Austin Energy
ISSP Governing Board Treasurer

PHOTO: Bangaly Kourouma | Parc Urbain Dominique Ouattara | Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire

Mackenzie Mindel - SEA Case Story

Wed, 29 May 2024 14:20:20 GMT

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SEA Case Study: Interview with 3R Sustainability

Thu, 23 May 2024 20:05:31 GMT

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Recently, we interviewed Gina MacIlwraith, MBA, SEP about the importance of continuous sustainability education and the value of the Sustainability Excellence credentials in the competitive consulting industry.

Gina is the Associate Director of Sustainability Assurance at 3R Sustainability , which is a women-owned business providing consulting services rooted in science, supported by data, and driven by innovation, education, and continual improvement. 3R delivers full-service sustainability solutions to their clients to achieve material business goals. Previously, Gina served as the General Manager of ISSP for almost four years, and she earned both her SEA and SEP credentials . Now she promotes study cohorts among her team at 3R, which has resulted in over 30 colleagues completing the SEA exam and over 75 colleagues completing the cohort training.

You can learn more about this work by downloading the free 2024 case study on Attaining and Leveraging SEA Credentials.

Why does 3R require the Sustainability Excellence credentials for your team?

The reason we require the credentials is because it’s the best way to ensure our team members all have a consistent foundational understanding of ESG principles. Also, in consulting specifically, it is key to have a credential for third-party verification. You can earn other specific credentials, but this is the only one that demonstrates the foundations of a sustainability professional. So it gives us a step up as a consulting company to say that our entire team has a common understanding of the globally accepted fundamentals of sustainability. This is important right now, in particular as sustainability is both growing and becoming more and more controversial at times. Our staff understands the history and frameworks of sustainability – the why and where it came from, so we do more than just fill in the boxes in a report.

Tell us more about the process for getting your team and interns credentialed. What does this look like for your team as far as resources and time?

We’ve now done our study cohort six times. After last spring’s cohort with full-time employees, one team member commented that along with learning the fundamentals of our profession, employees were really able to bond and create interpersonal connections when studying together. It gives us a common language.

For example, we bonded over John Elkington , and we were joking about getting John Elkington tattoos. Then, it seemed everybody had a John Elkington question on their [SEA] exam . We've got this group of employees who are hybrid or remote, and so we do sometimes have a hard time finding commonalities, but these cohorts give us something that's very work-related, but also very employee-engaging.

And the truth is, when we do these cohorts, we very rarely study for it. The time is focused on interesting discussions about sustainability, what's going on in the world currently, and how this knowledge applies. So really, the SEA handbook is more than a study guide. It gives you an incredible framework for having conversations around sustainability.

How do you fit the investment in credentialing into your overall business strategy?

Every employee at 3R gets 10 hours each month of continuing education professional development. This is at the core of our business because sustainability is changing so fast. We all need our 10 hours to keep up with everything.

It’s also a commitment that Jana and I have made because it helps us better advise our clients. It just makes us better. Honestly, my tagline or my joking value proposition on business development calls is that I read the newsletters so you don’t have to. I sit through all those webinars, so you don’t have to. That’s how we help our clients, and the SEA is another piece of that.

Do you have a specific example or a story that demonstrates how a staff member utilized the knowledge from their SEA or SEP to improve a client project?

When it comes to the SEP credential , we do it every day. That's our process. There's just two of us that have enough experience to qualify for the SEP, but the truth is that the SEP process is what we do with every one of our clients. We do materiality, we do stakeholder engagement, we create sustainability plans, and we do change management.

For those starting out in the sustainability field, do you have any advice for them?

Sustainability is an umbrella term; it’s rich in history. Understanding the full scope that can be included in the term is critical to success. The SEA credential gives practitioners the context to know how the field has evolved, along with the topics and issues that our profession can be tasked with as evidence of change.

A Game Changer for Tackling the Living Wage Gap — Globally

Thu, 16 May 2024 09:00:00 GMT

Fiona Dragstra , General Director of the WageIndicator Foundation, shares how the NGO is providing updated, publicly accessible living wage estimates across 166 countries. Working with trade unions, employers, companies, and other living-wage stakeholders around the world, WageIndicator is helping to close the living wage gap globally.

Though the concept of a “living wage” dates back to 1919 when the preamble of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) Constitution called for “the provision of an adequate living wage,” it has taken almost a century for this movement to gather true momentum. The ILO’s adoption of principles on estimating living wages in March 2024, gives new wings to those who have long advocated for progress on this issue.

The rising cost-of-living across the world has deepened wealth inequality globally. According to the Business Council to Tackle Inequality, the top 10% of earners take home over half of total global pay, while the bottom 50% earn just 8.5% of that pie. In many economies that contribute massively to global supply chains, large numbers of workers live in poverty: 58% in Mozambique, 37% in India, 33% in Mexico, and in Europe one-in-ten is at risk. The payment of fair compensation can spark virtuous cycles that benefit workers, businesses and, subsequently, society at large, giving rise to stable, resilient, reliable, and better performing value chains and sustainable business practices.

Growing recognition that statutory minimum wages often fail to cover peoples’ basic needs has bolstered increasing support for the living wage movement. According to WageIndicator’s April 2024 data, in only 26 countries the lowest applicable statutory minimum wage was equal to or exceeded our living wage estimates.

Scaling living wage estimates globally

At WageIndicator Foundation we have worked on living wages for over a decade. This was a logical step after creating globally comparable databases on Minimum Wages , Wages and Salaries, Labour Laws , and Collective Agreements , all aimed at enabling global labour market transparency through publicly available data resources. Our first living wage release in 2014 provided contextualised living wage data for 80 countries; our latest release in April 2024 provides regional level data for 2700+ regions across 166 countries.

We calculate living wages by estimating the costs of goods and services needed by workers and their families for a decent standard of living, contextualised for regional socio-economic realities. We devise estimates for a variety of family types and update our data on a quarterly basis through face-to-face and online data collection by some 300 data collectors across the world. We welcome the principles as set out by the ILO Governing Body, noting the importance of strengthening social dialogue and collective bargaining in operationalising the living wage, as well as promoting incremental progression from minimum wages to living wages.

Living wages as a linking pin in the SDGs

The living wage movement has not been solely driven by advocacy from NGOs and trade unions, nor by goodwill gestures from companies. Instead, it has emerged at the forefront of global agendas around sustainable business. Crucially, paying a living wage can be a linking pin for several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Though they most directly link to SDG 8 (Decent work and Economic growth), SDG 1 (No poverty), and SDG 10 (Reduced inequalities), they are also contributory to SDG 2 (Zero hunger), SDG 3 (Good health and well-being), SDG 4 (Quality education), SDG 5 (Gender equality), and SDG 16 (Peace, justice, and strong institutions).

The significance of a living wage in advancing these goals underscores its integral role in enabling sustainable development and social progress. The UN Global Compact’s Faster Forward initiative highlights living wages as one of the five key ‘areas of action’ for corporate responsibility. Guiding businesses in aligning their strategies and operations with the universal principles of a living wage, gender equality, climate action, water security, and sustainable finance, the Faster Forward initiative supports integrating living wage policies throughout an organization's workforce as well as its supply chain.

This is similarly emphasized by sustainability reporting requirements imposed by recent and upcoming legislation such as the European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). These regulations compel companies to disclose their social impact and ensure due diligence for human and environmental right violations across their supply chains, including efforts to ensure fair and adequate wages. By fostering transparency and accountability, such measures contribute to the broader aim of promoting corporate responsibility and ethical business practices.

How are companies and investors responding to these developments?

Companies, for their part, are increasingly committed to paying a living wage. And they are increasingly communicating that commitment publicly. PwC and WageIndicator’s Global Living Wage Survey 2023 found that 67% of businesses considered living wages a priority for their organisation and that 54% expected to make relevant commitments within the next five years.

Companies such as Fairphone have emerged as leaders in this movement, making ambitious and public commitments to the cause. Unilever , as well, made its first Framework for Fair Compensation in 2014, pledging to pay all its employees a living wage. And they expanded this ambition across their entire supply chain, aiming to require all their suppliers to pay their workers a living wage by 2030.

Ball Horticulture, a family company that works with over 8,000 individuals across over 30 regions globally, is another powerful example of putting these data in positive change. Unsure if their compensation policies met decent living standards, they approached WageIndicator in 2021. Ball Horticulture now uses WageIndicator’s Living Wage database to drive living wage commitments across their entire supply chain. After surveying 30 locations and identifying wage gaps in nine geographic areas, they have already implemented living wage policies in two regions and have devised action plans to accomplish the same for the rest. Using WageIndicator's living wage estimates, they negotiated with supply chain managers reluctant to pay more than minimum wage, showcasing the measurable negative impacts of inadequate compensation. While they're still addressing second-order effects like wage structure revisions and cost impacts, they are optimistic that improved wages will reduce attrition, cutting hiring and training costs. They believe retaining experienced workers will ultimately benefit consumers with better products and higher quality services.

Living wages are also gaining prominence in the investment landscape, as r ecently highlighted by the Swedish Buffer Fund, AP2. Their analysis indicates that while addressing social issues might seem challenging, the concept of living wages provides a clear and quantifiable metric, making it easier to track and enable effective policies and progress. Incorporating living wages into their investing approach allows them to engage with companies on human rights and supply chain issues, regardless of their geographical location. For them, paying a living wage is crucial for evaluating true company performance and ensuring fair competition across markets. As it should be for all.

Publicly available living wage estimates

The challenges associated with living wage commitments and implementation should not be underestimated. Many companies that started working on living wage implementation in their supply chains encountered the difficulty of having access to publicly available, consistently updated and regional living wage estimates at scale.

At WageIndicator, we made a first step to address this issue and therefore as of 1 May 2024, we have published our living wage estimates for over 2700 regions across 166 countries. We make these data publicly accessible to all, in the hope that the availability of updated estimates can empower wage negotiations and collective bargaining globally — facilitating the implementation of living wages everywhere.

In addition to making these living wage estimates publicly accessible, we continue our work together with trade unions, employers, companies, and other stakeholders in the living wage movement to demystify living wages. Of course, we would not be WageIndicator if our aim was not to continue to expand and maintain our living wage database — to ensure that these data remain publicly available, enabling equal access to this vital information for all.

About the Author:

Fiona Dragstra,

General Director, WageIndicator Foundation

PHOTO: Garments Factory, Bangkok | 1000 Words, Shutterstock | WageIndicator

Jiyan Pattharwala - SEA Case Story

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 19:55:06 GMT

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Ar. Jiyan Pattharwala

Founder & CEO

Building Zero Consultants

Ar. Jiyan Pattharwala is the Founder & CEO of Building Zero Consultants, a g reen building and sustainability consultancy firm based in Surat, India. He graduated in architecture (Bachelor of Architecture) from Veer Narmad South Gujarat University and did his post-graduation in High-performance Buildings (Master of Engineering Leadership) from the University of British Columbia. His expertise is high-performance, climate-responsive building design and carbon neutrality/net zero planning for businesses.

He has worked on more than 20 green building projects in India, 16 of which are platinum certified and include India's Greenest Office, India's Greenest Home, and India's First Green Industrial City. He is an accredited professional of the US Green Building Council, Indian Green Building Council, International WELL Building Institute, IFC World Bank Edge Program and GRIHA Council.

He believes it is imperative to design and implement climate adaptation and mitigation strategies to curb the detrimental impacts of climate change. He believes in the power of integrated design and intends to work collaboratively with professionals in the built environment realm to bring positive change.

Sustain-a-Livity – JSEZA’s Strategy for Responsible Business

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 08:00:00 GMT

Jamaica is navigating increasingly extreme climate impacts — and their multiplier effect on economic and social health. Janis Williams , Senior Director-Legal, at Jamaica Special Economic Zone Authority (JSEZA) shares how JSEZA is ensuring the country's sustainable development: job growth in harmony with social and environmental wellness.

The urgent need for sustainable development is spurring nations to seek innovative strategies that will foster economic growth while minimizing impact on our global climate. For Jamaica, this is a top priority as we navigate increasingly extreme climate impacts — and their multiplier effect on economic and social health.

In the context of a top performing stock exchange and strong tourism and real estate industries, we are positioning the country as an ideal place to do business while innovating for sustainable development. And as the nation with the seventh largest natural harbor, we have made great strides in preserving our natural infrastructure even while we face natural disasters and increasing temperatures.

After the 2015 adoption by the Jamaican government of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), their integration into Jamaican public policy and the business environment is advancing opportunities to invest in responsible business development.

Sustain-a-Livity

The Jamaica Special Economic Zone Authority (JSEZA) has translated the SDGs into a strategic goal of ‘sustain-a-livity’ to inspire and drive responsible business. Sustain-a-livity is a concept that promotes and encourages sustainable development across Jamaica’s Special Economic Zone (SEZ) regime.

Threaded throughout our SEZ framework, our sustain-a-livity agenda is helping to create a facilitative environment for investment, trade, and economic development. The concept speaks to the balance of achieving sustainable development: job growth and innovation in harmony with the stewardship of social and environmental wellness.

Jamaica’s SEZ Authority was established in 2016 through the Special Economic Zones Act and is responsible for the promotion and regulation of special economic zones in Jamaica. SEZs are specific geographic areas earmarked for development and business activity and its stakeholder organizations receive incentives in exchange for investment, development, and the provision of employment. As a government company, the JSEZA therefore facilitates trade and investment in keeping with certain requirements laid out by law. To do this successfully, JSEZA has adopted a multifaceted approach encompassing policy development, capacity building, and monitoring mechanisms. Applicants to the JSEZA must account for the impact their business will have on the economy, society, and the environment — and demonstrate that the net impact is in the best interest of Jamaica in order to benefit from those incentives.

The cornerstone of our sustainability strategy is a robust regulatory framework. We work together with other government ministries, departments, and agencies to establish guidelines and monitor various aspects of environmental management, including water conservation, air quality, and land use. These regulations ensure that SEZ Developers adhere to strict environmental standards, maximizing resource efficiency while minimizing their ecological footprint.

Business Acceleration Centre

JSEZA offers support to its stakeholder businesses through its Business Acceleration Centre (BAC), which acts as a ‘one-stop shop’. The BAC provides capacity building, training initiatives, and communication campaigns that help to educate stakeholders and provide them with the knowledge and tools to implement or expand their sustainable practices. By empowering stakeholders with the necessary resources and support, JSEZA helps to catalyze the adoption of sustainable processes within the SEZ regime.

Regulating Sustainability Impacts

As a regulator, the JSEZA maintains a vigilant oversight mechanism to monitor and enforce compliance, including those with sustainability requirements. The Authority assesses ongoing operations against established benchmarks and identifies areas for improvement through audits and inspections — as well as through collaboration with stakeholders eager to improve their offerings and comply with standards. This proactive approach facilitates the continuous improvement and optimization of sustainability practices and ensures adherence to regulatory standards.

JSEZA is particularly proud of its Self-Reporting and Monitoring Instrument (SRMI). The SRMI is a tool used to measure and monitor performance and adherence to standards by its stakeholder businesses. Importantly, the tool requires stakeholders to share the responsibility of compliance and focuses the priorities of investors to align with national policy such that both the private and public sector can make strides towards national sustainable development and economic goals. This data is then analyzed by JSEZA and used to determine areas for improvement or advocacy.

Recognizing Excellence

Beyond regulatory compliance, the JSEZA understands the importance of rewarding and recognizing excellent performance. Top performers are recipients of our annual Sustain-a-Livity Awards, which showcase businesses that have demonstrated outstanding commitment to social wellness and environmental stewardship. This and other incentive programs reward sustainable behavior and showcase leading practices that can be emulated across the regime.

The Authority goes further by pursuing global best practices and knowledge sharing networks to remain abreast of emerging trends, regulation, and innovation in sustainable development, allowing for a refinement of its approach over time. This allows us to leverage our partnerships with local and international organizations and sustainability experts to increase our capacity to share with our stakeholders.

A Global Model

Looking ahead, the JSEZA remains committed to advancing sustainability across its regime and throughout the entire SEZ ecosystem. We understand the importance of balancing economic growth with environmental protection and positive social impact, particularly as our global community meets escalating environmental, economic, and social challenges. JSEZA is intent on creating a model for responsible business that serves as a beacon for SEZs globally by promoting a comprehensive approach to sustainability — including all environmental, social, and economic dimensions. We believe that by embracing sustainability as a guiding principle, we can achieve sustain-a-livity as a model for sustainable investment, healthier communities, and happier people.

About the Author:

Janis Williams, Senior Director-Legal

Jamaica Special Economic Zone Authority (JSEZA)

Photo: JSEZA Solar Energy Project

Senem Tanju - SEA Case Story

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 17:35:00 GMT

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Senem Tanju

Managing Partner

Sachi Sustainability Consultancy Company

From Senem: I provide specialized leadership and guidance, helping organizations integrate sustainability into their entire process. With over 19 years of experience in the manufacturing industry, I have developed and led global sustainability approaches focused on ESG planning, reporting, and auditing, as well as HSE and quality management systems. I am a GRI certified sustainability professional and a legally approved safety expert trainer with NEBOSH and A class certifications. Recently, I earned the Sustainability Excellence (SEA) credential.

I am passionate about creating sustainability roadmaps that empower organizations to design their tomorrow for today and for the future. I have extensive experience in performing and providing HSE risk assessments, working on HSE projects, and establishing HSEQA management systems and documentation. I have also enriched my skills and knowledge by obtaining environmental consultant certification from the Ministry of Environment and ISO 14001, ISO 9001, OHSAS 18001, and ISO 45001 auditor qualifications. I enjoy working in diverse cultures, interacting with different teams and levels, and adapting to change. My goal is to ensure a transformation that will reach future generations by transferring sustainability culture to stakeholders.

The Role of AI in Advancing Social Equity and Protecting Human Rights

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT

Nicole Cacal, Founder and CEO of Forbes Ignite and ISSP Governing Board Secretary, shares insights into how we might shape the evolving landscape of AI and emerging technologies to be able to serve humanity's highest ideals, ensuring no one is left behind.

The struggle for social equity and human rights is a fierce fight against the commodification of our existence. Across continents and communities, disparities in wealth, access to resources, and systemic injustices persist, shaping the lived experiences of countless individuals. These challenges, deeply entrenched in society, demand innovative solutions and a reimagining of the tools at our disposal.

The allure of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a tool for change is undeniable. Yet, it's crucial to confront the limitations and potential pitfalls of relying solely on technology for solutions. In a recent conversation I had with Jenny Davis, author of How Artifacts Afford , she described how the enthusiasm for AI's transformative potential often brushes up against the realities of two concepts: techno-solutionism, the idea that technologies can solve social problems, and universalism, the idea that technologies will have the same effects on all people. Both concepts are flawed. By acknowledging these traps, we can leverage technology understanding that its impact is not the same across varying populations and take steps to correct those inconsistencies.

AI, for all its sophistication, cannot be a panacea for societal woes. Its effects are unevenly distributed, often exacerbating the very inequalities it aims to solve. Marginalized communities, in particular, face the brunt of AI's unintended consequences, from biased algorithms to invasive surveillance. Recognizing this, the call for a human-centered approach in AI development is crucial. This approach demands that we not only champion the use of AI in addressing social equity and human rights, but also rigorously question whom it benefits and at what cost.

The Promise and Perils of AI in Addressing Social Equity

AI's capacity to analyze large datasets has revolutionized personalized learning, making education accessible to students in the most remote corners of the globe. Similarly, AI-driven diagnostics and telemedicine have broken down barriers to healthcare, offering hope to underserved populations. However, although we’re tempted to view AI as a silver bullet for a lot of societal ills, we have to remember this perspective is both naive and dangerous. Complex social issues, entrenched in layers of historical inequities and systemic biases, demand solutions that are nuanced and multifaceted.

AI perils are evident in the technology's tendency to perpetuate existing biases. Facial recognition technology has been criticized for racial and gender biases, leading to misidentification and discrimination . One famous case that underscores the profound implications of these biases is that of computer scientist Joy Buolamwini, during her time as a graduate student at MIT. In a startling revelation, Buolamwini discovered that the facial recognition software she was developing failed to detect her dark skin, and it only responded when she donned a white mask.

This encounter marked Buolamwini's introduction to what she would later term the “coded gaze.” Her groundbreaking research unveiled a systemic issue: many facial recognition datasets were shockingly unrepresentative of diverse populations. What she refers to as "pale male" datasets, these collections overwhelmingly skewed towards lighter-skinned and male individuals, rendering them inherently biased. Consequently, such datasets, touted as industry standards, paved the way for higher rates of misidentification among underrepresented groups.

Tragically, these biases translate into real-world consequences. Individuals like Porcha Woodruff , Robert Williams , Nijeer Parks , and Randall Reed have all fallen victim to false arrests stemming from facial recognition misidentifications. Their experiences underscore the urgent need for reform in AI development and deployment. Facial recognition technology's biased algorithms represent not only a technological flaw, but also a profound human rights issue, as they perpetuate systemic discrimination and infringe upon individuals' rights to privacy, freedom, and dignity.

The Path to Inclusive AI Development

Sustainability professionals address systemic issues that impact human lives across society. Advocating for a human-centered approach to AI requires a commitment to prioritizing the needs and rights of the most vulnerable. This involves a deliberate effort to involve diverse voices in AI development, from conception through to deployment, ensuring that technologies are not only equitable, but also beneficial for all. Strategies for achieving this include participatory design processes , where affected communities have a say in how technologies are shaped and implemented, and transparency in algorithmic decision-making, allowing for accountability and revisions when biases are detected.

My experiences in collaborating on inclusive AI initiatives have illuminated the value of bringing diverse stakeholders to the table. These collaborations have shown that when we work together with a diversity of lived experiences, the potential for equitable tech solutions expands dramatically. Lessons from these initiatives point to the importance of empathy, openness, and a willingness to learn from one another in the pursuit of technology that serves humanity.

The path forward calls for a collaborative effort among AI developers, policymakers, and community activists. Together, we can forge a future where technology is developed not in silos, but in consultation with those it seeks to serve. This future envisions AI as a tool that respects and enhances human rights, champions social equity, and is grounded in ethical principles. By embracing a human-centered approach to AI, we commit to a process that values diversity, equity, and inclusion at every stage of development. Through collaboration, dialogue, and a dedication to ethical principles, we can harness AI's potential to create a more equitable and just world for all.

Concluding Thoughts

In navigating the complexities of AI's role in advancing social equity and human rights, a nuanced perspective is essential — one that balances optimism about AI's potential with a critical awareness of its limitations. As sustainability professionals and technologists, we bear a continuous responsibility to not only advocate for, but also implement AI solutions that genuinely contribute to a more just and equitable world. This journey, fraught with challenges and opportunities, demands our collective effort and unwavering commitment to ethical principles and inclusivity. Reflecting on the path ahead, I am reminded that the journey to social good through AI is not a solo endeavor, but a shared effort. It is a testament to the power of collaboration in shaping a future where technology serves humanity's highest ideals, ensuring that no one is left behind.

About the Author:

Nicole Cacal
Founder and CEO of Forbes Ignite
ISSP Governing Board Secretary

Image: Generated by Stable Diffusion

Sofia Blommenhag - SEA Case Story

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 04:47:56 GMT

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How to Make Materiality More Inclusive – Without Losing Focus

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 17:42:24 GMT

Alison Taylor, Clinical Professor, NYU Stern School of Business and author of the newly released Higher Ground: How Business Can do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World , shares the key steps for ensuring a strategic focus while leading an inclusive materiality assessment across stakeholders.

Materiality assessments have traditionally been approached like any other top-down organizational change initiative. They focus on senior leaders and influential external stakeholders, but do not tend to consult the wider workforce. And, because there is a tendency to treat sustainability initiatives as reputational risk management, many corporations end up with a laundry list of sustainability “stuff” that fails to differentiate between risk, innovation opportunity, and impact.

Today, there are two important imperatives. The first imperative is to consider the rise of employee voice and activism. If you do not consult your workers on priorities, you risk setting off conflict and opening yourself up to demands on dozens of issues. Even more importantly, young employees are more likely to feel passionately about sustainability, and to be informed about risks, priorities, and emerging trends than senior leaders.

The second is to be more strategic and focused about what problems you will take on and where you have leverage. This is tricky, not least because if you open up the process to more voices, you will inevitably invite an even broader range of ideas as to what should be a priority.

Here’s how to approach this being more inclusive, without becoming overwhelmed and losing direction.

Consult your workforce on prioritization

When you gather internal stakeholder insights, don’t restrict yourself to the C Suite. You’ll collect the most comprehensive insights if you combine an internal survey with detailed internal and external interviews. Inside the company, it’s important to talk to leaders in all key functions. However, anticipate that leaders of specific divisions and functions will make selections that reflect their own obsessions and agendas. Defensive politicking is common.

It’s therefore smart to gather the views of the full workforce, and to also give consideration to how you impact gig and contract workers. While conducting focus groups with staff in a range of regions and functions is ideal, a survey can be a good alternative. Relatively junior employees might focus more on pet concerns, but are also likely to care less about status, loyalty, and reputation. In fact, when feedback from the workforce differs significantly from the leadership team’s views, you will have unearthed a good indicator of latent frustration or misalignment.

These conversations will teach you much about internal sources of pressure, enthusiasm, pain, and tension. You will better understand what employees expect and value. You may identify people who can lead initiatives and make decisions. In short, you’ll be positioned to get something done once the assessment is complete.

Prioritize Ruthlessly

Once you comprehend the landscape of relevant issues and gather stakeholder opinions, you must prioritize ruthlessly. You will have identified a broad range of relevant issues and may be tempted to think they should get equal priority for balance and consistency. Without clear choices, though, you’ll wind up stuck in a swamp of undifferentiated virtue signaling.

This has become even more challenging as EU regulations weigh towards a more compliance led, and less strategic approach. While EU regulation promises to bring a seriousness and rigor to the process, as well as budget and senior strategic attention, there is a risk that the breadth and specificity of requirements overwhelms and concerns compliance teams, who themselves may have a very limited knowledge of sustainability. This necessitates far more cross-functional outreach for the sustainability team and means it is more important than ever that sustainability professionals are able to think strategically and help the whole organization prioritize.

When prioritizing, companies often face pressure to escalate some issues and downplay others that might draw negative attention. It is easy to wind up trapped between external critiques and internal resistance. That’s how a process that starts with materiality ends up as checking a box. An independent voice in the room can help, but only if that voice has internal credibility.

Most important is the top right quadrant of your materiality matrix. Here, you’ll see the environmental and social issues deemed critical by both internal and external observers. Each issue in this quadrant is likely to be multidimensional; it presents risks and opportunities and ethical and commercial imperatives.

In this quadrant, you’ll find the areas where close, ongoing dialogue with key external experts and other stakeholders will be most valuable. If you look for connections among these issues, you might see that they all relate to the same root cause (such as climate change or worker rights). This is the time to engage in robust debate in order to shape a distinctive position aligning rhetoric and action. Ultimately, these questions should be treated with the same seriousness as any corporate strategy imperative. It’s best if you can confidently select a single area of focus. Choose more than three issues, and you will be biting off more than you can chew.

If you’ve conducted your analysis rigorously, priority issues will include those that are critical—even existential—for your core business model. If your company manufactures medicines, you’ll see product liability and safety. If it makes clothing, there’s no avoiding questions of environmental impacts and worker rights in your supply chain. It’s common to view these issues solely as risks or problems, but you should be mindful that they may present significant opportunities for innovation and strategic advantage.

Clear prioritization makes developing a strategy less excruciating. You’ll be less inclined to put a range of incompatible issues into that bucket of ESG stuff or to concentrate on messaging over substance.

Once you’ve identified your priorities, you can get down to considering how to incentivize innovation, better manage risk, and/or establish ethical oversight. While you might want to look at what competitors are doing and saying, your objective is differentiation, not mimesis. Sam Hartsock , who runs qb, a sustainability consultancy, and whose clients include Bumble and Ben & Jerry’s tells me: “We explore whether specific issues present operational risks, ethical imperatives, or impact/innovation opportunities. This helped drive deeper reflections, before jumping to solutions.”

If your focus is sharply strategic, and you clearly see the challenges and opportunities each issue presents, you’ll find it much easier to incentivize the core business to focus on these issues. Even more critical, you’ll know what expertise your sustainability team (and board) needs. A failure to focus will mean that instead of recruiting for deep expertise managing your high priority material issues, your sustainability team’s job will default to data gathering, coordination, and impression management. General Motors is a good example of a company that adopted a focused strategy on a root-cause issue: climate change.

Developing a sharp strategic foc us does not let you ignore other issues. At the very least, you’ll need to report and disclose information about all the issues on your materiality map. A materiality process helps identify areas where your organization has considerable impact on stakeholders but is unfocused or unprepared to act. It will also help you identify key operational priorities you are simply expected to get right. Being equipped with this nuanced understanding of issues and stakeholder pressures will enable you to proceed confidently.

About the Author:

Alison Taylor
Clinical Professor, NYU Stern School of Business
Author, Higher Ground: How Business Can do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World

Adapted from Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World by
Alison Taylor. Copyright 2024 by Alison Taylor. All rights reserved.

Photo: PxHere

Ribhu Deo - SEA Case Story

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 10:00:00 GMT

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Ribhu Deo has rich experience working in the domain of Sustainability Consulting, CSR, Corporate Sustainability, Environmental Conservation and Public Policy. He has completed his Post Graduate Degree in Forestry Management with specialization in Environmental Management from Indian Institute of Forest Management. After this, he also completed Global Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility from Macquire University, Global Environment Management from Denmark Technical University, ESG Risks and Opportunities from Wharton School University of Pennsylvania, Certificate course in Science and Engineering in Climate Change from EDHEC Business School, and Climate Modelling from University of Chicago. Ribhu has experience of providing his consultancy to national and state government planning department with and has worked closely with several state level departments. He has an assortment of experience in diverse fields ranging from Wildlife Conservation, Government Consultancy to Environment Conservation and Public Management. At EKI, he assists clients in measuring and managing their risks and opportunities on climate change, water security, and deforestation. His work includes providing strategic measures to corporate businesses for improving their business sustainability and reducing & managing their emissions.

Follow his work:

https://ribhudeo.wordpress.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ribhu-deo-b3b86449/

Is ESG Dead? Or Just in the Middle of a Reinvention?

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 10:00:00 GMT

Daniella Foster, Executive Board Member, SVP and Global Head of Public Affairs, Science & Sustainability for Bayer’s Consumer Health Division and Board Chair at the UN Global Compact Network USA, calls for a pivot away from the "ESG" battles and to focus instead on sustainable business and the sustainability of your business.

Woke capitalism. Virtue Signaling. Just a buzzword without real substance. This is some of the language I’m sure you’ve also seen around the term “ESG,” as a part of the ongoing conversation on whether ESG is dead.

Instead, I’m a fan of Fortune’s take: ESG is dead. Long live E, S, and G . It’s time to pivot. Now!

For those, like me, who have been in this industry for a while, we know that every so often we go through a reinvention. Corporate philanthropy, corporate citizenship, corporate social responsibility, sustainability . . . the list could go on. What’s evident by these changes is that we're adapting to the business climate, with the latest incarnation moving sustainability from a nice-to-have to a business mandate.

And now we’re in the middle of another reinvention, and I think that’s a very good thing. One of the reasons “ESG” has been highly politicized is many people equate ESG with reporting and “check-the-box” management. It’s a reporting and investor acronym. It has a role, but it’s not everything. The intent – a focus on the environment, human rights, and governance – still makes good business sense and should be high on the corporate agenda. Ninety-two percent of CEOs say they are continuing their ESG programs, but most are modifying their approach. The next evolution will be focused on sustainable business AND the sustainability of your business; empowering companies to create a sustainable business model that anticipates people’s needs, helps solve world issues AND makes a profit. When this reinvention is successful, here are some of the ways I think a sustainable company will operate 10 years from now:

Aligning Lobbying Efforts with Sustainability Commitments

I participated in a COP28 session on corporate accountability and a representative from the government of Norway asked a great question: how do you know that your company is doing the right thing? One of his criteria was looking at a company’s lobbying efforts and seeing if they are congruent with their climate and human rights position. A November 2023 study by InfluenceMap showed 58% of ~300 Forbes 2,000 companies reviewed were found to be at risk of “net zero greenwash” due to their policy engagement. These are companies that have announced net zero commitments, but are not adequately supporting policy to deliver the Paris Agreement. For instance, the report calls out several gas and energy companies for making net zero commitments, but with contrarian lobbying actions such as advocating for oil and gas expansion, opposing proposed power plant rules, fossil fuel phase-outs, and climate policies.

To enable stakeholder trust and ultimately a better, more world-positive business, companies will need to align what they stand for and act upon in the public sphere.

Investment in the Future of your Business

Instead of focusing on “checking the box,” the future is about investing in the sustainability of your business, which will be fueled by being a sustainable one. Let me unpack this thought. At COP28, much of the focus was on the path to phasing out fossil fuels, but there was also a compelling conversation about the critical need to build climate resilient communities. These both can serve as business opportunities that help the world at the same time.

Companies should think of sustainability as a business accelerator, using existing strengths and core competencies as a guide. For instance, food and agriculture contributes 25% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and on the flipside, also is negatively impacted by extreme weather like droughts, floods, and heat leading to food insecurity. My company, Bayer, is a leader in agriculture, these challenges are at the core of our research and development strategy — driving us to create value for both our shareholders and the planet. We’re developing ways to mitigate the adverse impacts, such as reducing the impact of our crop protection products by 30% by 2030 (as of last year, we have gotten to 14%). In addition, we’re developing new technologies that work with the changes in climate to help farmers improve their yields and minimize their environmental impacts. One example is direct-seeded rice , which moves away from the traditional growing method of flooding a paddy. This approach improves water use per kilogram of crop by 25% and reduces on-field greenhouse gasses per kilogram of crop produced in our key markets by 30%. Innovations like these also improve people’s livelihoods – one of the main audiences is smallholder farmers and innovations like these improve their productivity and the quality of their yields, in turn helping them earn more money.

Other companies are doing this today as well, but I think more companies need to do the hard work to embed sustainability into their business model to create new opportunities to propel future growth.

Using Sustainability to Drive Vision

One reason companies fail is they don’t evolve with people’s needs. And what could be a bigger need than helping people and the planet adapt to climate change and build resilience, given the impact it is and will continue to have on our livelihoods. Climate change is impacting everything from our health to our food, to our homes, and to our rights.

Think about your audience. What do you they need today and how will that evolve in the future (when climate change is likely causing even more damage)? Is your vision aligned with this? These questions sound simple, but are good ones to go back to, to ensure you are on track to be a sustainable business.

A good place to start is seeing what concerns are at the top of the list for governments and policy makers. During COP28, 200+ countries signed a historic agreement to transition away from fossil fuels; 120+ countries signed the health and climate declaration, 100+ countries endorsed tripling reliance on renewable energy sources . . . Companies that succeed in the future will marry these needs with their business core competencies to ensure the sustainability of their business moving forward.

Don’t Wait!

While I framed this blog as a hypothesis on how sustainable companies will operate 10 years from now, there’s no need to wait 10 years to evolve. Whether we call it ESG, Sustainable Business, Impact Generation, or something else, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that sustainability can and should play a central role in how companies operate. As someone whose job it has been to embed sustainability into the business strategies of both Bayer and Hilton, believe me, I know the changes I’ve outlined take hard work to achieve. But I also truly believe – and have seen — this is a key way to help business generate impact and value for shareholders, consumers, governments, and the world.

About the Author:

Daniella Foster
Executive Board Member, SVP and Global Head of Public Affairs, Science & Sustainability for Bayer’s Consumer Health Division
Board Chair, UN Global Compact Network USA

Photo: Andrey Popov, ©️Bayer

COP28: Diving for Tomorrow's Pearls

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 07:30:00 GMT

John Elkington, Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volans and ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree, shares an on-the-ground view into COP28 — and the implications of its final declaration.

Long before I first visited Abu Dhabi and Dubai over a decade ago, I knew the story of the collapse of the region’s pearl industry almost a century before. Japan’s discovery of how to grow cultured pearls led to the implosion of the region’s pearl diving sector, an economic mainstay of the so-called Trucial States. One result: extreme poverty. Then, happily for what would later become the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, a floating oil drilling platform was moored over the Umm Shaif pearl bed and, in 1958, struck oil.

By 2021, the UAE would rank as the world’s seventh largest producer of liquid fuels. Cue horror among activists when the UAE was picked to host this year’s COP28 climate summit—and, worse, when it emerged that the conference president would be the head of the country’s leading oil company, ADNOC, or the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. A fox, as our American friends might say, in charge of the chicken house.

So much has now been said about Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber that further comment is redundant but as our flight touched down at Dubai’s international airport, and although I have long had ferocious antibodies to the COP process, I was feeling decidedly upbeat.

Partly this was because we had already heard announcements by governments, businesses, investors, and philanthropists that over $57 billion would be invested across the climate agenda. Even more striking, the once-unmentionable concept of “loss and damage” was now on the agenda. Indeed, a breakthrough deal was launched to help the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries cope with the mounting costs imposed by climate-induced weather disasters — and by slower-evolving disasters caused by sea level rise, melting glaciers, and ocean acidification.

When the deal was announced on the first day of the summit, it won a standing ovation.

Next, 118 countries committed to triple total investment in renewable energy infrastructure and to double energy efficiency funding, both by 2030. At least as important, they agreed to make the principle of energy efficiency as the "first fuel” the very heart of policymaking, planning, and major investment decisions. There seemed to be real momentum behind the change agenda.

As at Glasgow’s COP26 in 2021, I was travelling with Volans CEO Louise Kjellerup Roper, our token Dane. But when we arrived at the giant Expo 2020 site on the outskirts of Dubai, we did so as honorary Finns — this time with access to both the inner Blue and outer Green Zones. We were there at the invitation of Finland’s largest company, Neste — where, over several years, we have helped evolve their advisory council on sustainability and new markets.

I was due to speak at a Neste event in the Finnish Pavilion, entitled “Let’s Fuel Change: Accelerating Sustainable Mobility.” Successive panels drew in key players from the aviation sector, including Airbus, Boeing, and the Smart Freight Centre — which Finnish colleagues delightfully persisted in calling the “Smart Fright Centre.”

Later, we joined the high-spirited celebration of Finnish Independence Day, though there were other reasons why COP28 boosted our own spirits. One was the sheer number of people — known and unknown — we bumped into while traversing the site. The sense of a global community coming together to connect and celebrate each other was palpable.

Indeed, serendipity went into overdrive. One morning, Louise and I were headed for a meeting with Dubai Holding (Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum's personal investment portfolio, where I am joining a new advisory board), when we heard singing. Turning a corner, we came upon an Indonesian dance group performing to foot-tapping music — conjuring smiles on the faces of all within hearing. Soul-stirring.

Louise and I were also at COP28 to speak at several events organised in the Climate Finance Pavilion. The host was another client, First Abu Dhabi Bank, or FAB. Louise chaired a panel on the future of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, while I took part in a “fireside chat” with FAB Chief Sustainability Officer, Shargiil Bashir. Among other things, we discussed our new joint white paper on greenwashing and greenhushing . At the end of the session, he confided with the audience that I hadn’t asked a single question he had prepared for — but perhaps that’s the nature of this rapidly mutating agenda of ours.

The scale of our mutually reinforcing challenges was underscored by a virtual reality experience just around the corner in the Climate Finance Pavilion. Here schoolchildren and CEOs alike were immersed in a 360-degree vision of disrupted futures, kicking off with massive sandstorms and a Dubai hollowed out by forced migration, palaces reduced to flooded ruins, through to an increasingly upbeat world with vast undersea renewable energy generators gently turning as schools of fish and dolphins swam above restored coral reefs.

Then our plans to return to London were themselves disrupted. FAB Group CEO Hana Al Rostamani asked if I would travel south to Abu Dhabi for a major event where FAB was hosting 100 business leaders. I happily agreed and found myself speaking in front of the colorfully illuminated Cultural Foundation, with a brilliant Jupiter high overhead.

On the heels of FAB Vice Chairman H.E. Sheikh Mohamed bin Saif Al Nahyan and Hana Al Rostamani, I began by commending the UAE for its handling of the COP28 logistics—but noted that the real test would be the final agreement, and the extent to which it acknowledged the need for a fossil fuels phase-out. As a result, I argued, our global economy stands on the brink of profound disruption, whatever the impact of COP28 turns out to be.

As with the collapse of the pearling industry in the twentieth century, the twenty-first will see the accelerating replacement of fossil fuels with radically different energy economies. The UAE has long accepted this fact, one reason why it is has invested in the innovation platform of Masdar City. Still struggling to fulfil its original promise, Masdar’s early years were shaped by none other than founding CEO Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber.

En route to Abu Dhabi, we decided to visit a fascinating example of the UAE’s emerging sustainability-focused economy: a fish-, samphire- and mangrove-producing aquaculture facility prototyping novel forms of saltwater irrigation. Knowing the history of soil salinization that dogged traditional forms of agriculture in the region, I was sceptical. But when we were shown around by Regenerative Resources CEO Neal Spackman, I was reminded of my early interest in aquaculture half a century back.

Instead, I opted for a career promoting sustainability in business and markets. Now, if the writing on COP28’s walls and hoardings was any clue, the challenge of getting businesspeople to speak the language of sustainability is behind us. Instead, the challenge is to regenerate our economies, societies and, ultimately, biosphere.

The final COP28 declaration split our team down the middle—as it did the world. Policy-oriented folk saw it as a betrayal, evidence of the dark deeds of the fossil fuel world. No question, there were dark deeds aplenty and a fair few betrayals, intentional or not. But the activists among us saw the language in the agreement as a powerful signal that we are now seeing the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era—as the UN put it, “laying the ground for a swift, just and equitable transition, underpinned by deep emissions cuts and scaled-up finance.” A small rent, a fracture, has opened in the walls of the besieged fossil fuel wall world, which we can now work to open out, until the trickle of incremental change becomes a transformative flood.

However much lobbying for the fossil fuel and meat industries, among others, may try to stall the looming disruptions, the friction created as their old order slams into new realities is already spurring the evolution of radically different mindsets, business models, and success metrics. Think of them as the pearls of tomorrow’s economies.

About the Author:

John Elkington

Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volans

ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree

Photo: John Elkington | UAE Pavilion at COP28

Satrio Dwi Prakoso - SEP Case Story

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 14:37:20 GMT

Satrio Prakoso is an accredited professional in the green building and sustainability field. He is the Director and Principal Consultant of Sustainahaus, a sustainability consulting firm in Asia. Based in Jakarta, Indonesia, Satrio helps clients achieve green building certifications such as LEED, EDGE, WELL, Greenship, etc, as well as manage and improve ESG programs for organizations, such as Sustainability reporting and assurance, GHG accounting, GRESB, and net-zero strategy. In this interview, he shares why he pursued his Sustainability Excellence Professional (SEP) credential and tips for those starting out in the field.

Ari Tjahjanto - SEA Case Story

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:07:28 GMT

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Ari Tjahjanto, BSc (Hons), CPOD, CMA, SEA, works as an Advisor, PT Intikom Berlian Mustika in Jakarta - Indonesia. In this interview, he shares how he's applying sustainability to his current career as a People Experience enthusiast and Human Resource practitioner.

ISSP 15 Years On: What’s Next for Our Profession?

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 18:29:14 GMT

ISSP Co-founder and Presidio Graduate School Faculty Chair Marsha Willard, PhD, SEP, shares insights into the emerging trends shaping our sustainability profession and how ISSP is enabling us to meet those challenges.

When I formed ISSP 15 years ago with my three colleagues, we talked about how, if we were successful at making sustainability standard practice, there would eventually be no need for the organization — or for sustainability professionals at all. At the time, organizations that had adopted sustainability were setting ambitious goals for 2020. It seemed so far off and plenty of time to put in place the simple and logical practices we all knew were needed, doable, and cost effective.

Well, here we are…coming toward 2024. Now the new target date has been pushed to 2050. While the goals are even more ambitious — complete carbon neutrality — the conditions that necessitate these goals have grown ever more dire. The things we were helping organizations to implement a decade ago, like reducing energy consumption and waste or using more efficient and benign production processes, seem almost quaint by today’s standards. Had we universally done those simple things — things that can return value to the bottom line and are just good management practices — we might be singing a different song now and maybe our profession would, indeed, be in jeopardy. Despite the good efforts that many leading organizations have made, it was all too little, too late. Nature has lost patience with our sluggish response and has way upped the ante.

Trends worth watching

In addition to the increased social and environmental pressures in all corners of the world, we are also seeing emerging trends that will have big impact on our profession and the demands placed on our organizations. Listed below are a few of the trends I’ve been watching and incorporating into my teaching.

Demand for skilled sustainability professionals is growing. The GreenBiz 2022 State of the Profession Report cites an expansion in CEO interest in sustainability and a corresponding growth in headcount in related positions. The report writes, “For companies looking to staff up their sustainability department, the past 10 years have shown a marked increase in bringing in talent from outside the enterprise. A decade ago, 45 percent of new team members were hired from the outside whereas for the past six years at least two-thirds have been brought in from the outside.” In conversations within my own network, I hear that organizations are struggling to fill these positions and finding professionals with the appropriate training, skills, and certifications. Clearly, we are in demand and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Investor pressure is pushing companies to commit and report. The European Union and the SEC in the US are establishing new reporting requirements on emissions and other social and environmental factors that could impact business performance and be material to investors. This will increase the need for accounting and reporting and the development of new strategies for accurately measuring impact throughout the value chain of the organization.
Reporting standards are merging and consolidating. The growing pressure for companies to report is complicated by the plethora of reporting standards. Fortunately, the organizations managing these standards and related tools are merging and consolidating to simplify the process. The increased demand and complexity will drive a need for professionals versed not only in the standards, but in increasingly sophisticated accounting methodologies and processes for ferreting out data from multiple stakeholder groups.
Disruptive technologies are increasing. With keen interest, I watch the technologies that will likely upend the way we operate in a variety of areas. Dropping prices in renewable energy and new technologies in the solar, wind, and hydrogen industries will both accelerate the transition as well as up the pressure to shift to net zero carbon. Emerging battery technologies married with developments in AI will upend our entire transportation system while advances in lab grown protein and vertical farming systems will reshape how and where food is produced and delivered.

Implications for the profession

I recently revisited ISSP's 2010 Competency Survey Report that we produced to identify core competencies for sustainability professionals. Seeking to assess its current relevance, I noted that many of the competencies we identified still hold, particularly those categorized as soft skills: skills in systems thinking, communication, strategic planning, building coalitions and, frustratingly, demonstrating the business case for sustainability. But I now also see emerging needs related to the trends mentioned above.

Reporting and Accounting. The demand for reporting will draw not just on our communication skills, but also require familiarity with the shifting landscape of reporting frameworks like GRI, SASB, NetZero, CDP, ISSB, TCFD, Science Based Targets, and the Integrated Reporting initiative. It will also necessitate new abilities in accounting, tracking down data across multiple organizations and stakeholders, calculating the financial implications of activities, and required reporting on the material financial impacts of those activities.
DEI and Supply Chain Equity. Despite political efforts to thwart it, I do not see decreasing organization demand for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice efforts. Nor do I see decreasing organization requirements to address these issues in their supply chains, where they are especially complex and carry wide ranging implications. Sustainability professionals will have to navigate this complicated environment to bring employees, vendors, and board members along on the journey toward a more just and equitable business ecosystem.
Beyond Sustainability. ISSP still keeps “sustainability” in its name, and I think it should. But ‘sustaining’ what we have now is insufficient to solving the world’s problems. What will we need to learn to move our organizations to be ‘regenerative’ instead of just sustainable? What will be the business practices we need to develop and deploy to give back more to society and the environment than we take in the process of delivering our value? Members of ISSP will be called upon to figure this out, just as we figured out sustainable practices 20 years ago.

Conclusion

I suspect ISSP will be around for many more years and that membership will continue to grow. I also suspect that the profession will continue to evolve and that it will be incumbent upon those of us working in the field to grow and flex with the ever-changing landscape that forms our work. I continue to stay involved with ISSP to ensure that I’m up-to-date and ready to meet the coming challenges. Here’s to at least another 15 years of building the legion of professionals dedicated to making sustainability standard practice across the workforce and around the world.

About the Author:

Marsha Willard, Ph.D., SEP
Faculty Chair, Presidio Graduate School

IMAGE: Ted Eytan

Harrison Ashcroft - SEA Case Story

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:58:02 GMT

Harrison Ashcroft is a Small Business Sustainability Partner, based in Sydney, Australia.

I'm a Traditionalist, a Capitalist, and a Justice Oriented Advocate

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 20:15:18 GMT

Gwen Migita, MBA, Global Head of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) & Social Impact Practice at Point B, offers a pro-business and capital markets perspective on integrating fully inclusive equity and justice — as a necessity for planetary and societal survival for all.

I am married to a woman and grew up attending a Baptist church. I am culturally an Asian Pacific Islander and a philosopher. Early in my career I was fascinated by economics and educated in business marketing and management. I spent most of my career in business, consulting, and casino gaming.

All of this to say, as an American, I was a majority minority who came to be "the only" at so many levels through lived experiences and sexism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia at times. My world has mostly been impacted by mild to moderate levels of micro-aggressions, unconscious biases, and conscious biases. The more feminine I became and the more I dressed, spoke, and acted like white corporate America, the less I experienced those types of discrimination. And clearly, the more I rose in executive ranks and conformed to corporate norms, the less I was exposed to all this.

Yet, there are many other populations whom people need to be aware of, whose voices are often talked over, and who should be part of efforts toward inclusion. For example, introverts and those who prefer written communication are often undervalued relative to workers who are highly articulate and speak out frequently in the American workplace. Another example is colorism, which is skin-tone bias toward those with lighter skin. What about non-traditional families such as single parent households, same sex couples, or adoptive families? What about those with invisible or non-apparent disabilities? Or those who are gender non-conforming? These are only a few examples of employees, business partners, and vendors who are a part of our global diversity and who need to be included to ensure equity, justice, and inclusivity.

Where We’re Headed

Wealth creation and an equitable quality of life for all is a necessity for planetary and societal survival. If we are going to achieve that, we not only need access to living wages, but in the business context we need access to management roles, capital and financing, and prime contracts that represent significantly more of the private sector ecosystem.

I mention this because if we are going to achieve this and lead towards the world we want, we need leaders and all of us to be more comfortable being uncomfortable. Whether it is preferring certain news or social media feeds or avoiding “irritating” conversations, we are wired to compartmentalize and tune out ideas that are different from our own. In turn, we close off the “other” social and economic backgrounds and different thinkers, which perpetuates cultural and racial disparities. The problem is getting worse with the breakdown of civics education and the prevalence of social media, the 24-hour political news cycle, and an in-person social structure. And our biases will soon be on hyperdrive given the amount of investment going into generative AI .

An Ask to the Sustainability Profession

So, how are we going to advance sustainability, improve quality of life for all, and reduce biases when the most foundational level of human needs — food, shelter, and safety — are not being met for most of the world? In my country, the U.S., morbidity and mortality rates have hit crisis levels. These factors play a huge role in the growth of extremism and political instability and adversely impact economic growth.

We in the sustainability space have much more power to impact change than we did 15 to 20 years ago. Let’s tap into that.

Let's Lean into Solutions

My banker father, who was a wise boss, coached me, “Don’t bring me problems without solutions.” Below, I offer several to think about and to act on more deeply with unusual partners or competitors.

Rather than working on what you can do, think about what you should do at a systems level. Then establish context-based goals, those grounded in both science and ethics when planning and developing measures of success. The sustainability profession prioritizes a 1.5° C climate benchmark while ethics-based thresholds tend to be dispersed by social and societal issue, racial or ethnic identity, or community-based needs. Too often we are pulled into a "company-impact-on-planet" approach, while social issues are addressed elsewhere via several departments down the hall. We need to revise our thinking on that.
Consider an indigenous-first approach to sustainability. What would this look like? How often are these populations at the table with equitable say and weight to planning and development? Consider foundational beliefs among native populations that humans are of the Earth and are caregivers of the natural world. A recent eye-opening read is “ Decolonize Conservation ”.
Be real about corporate virtue signaling and how you partner with organizations or communities that might embarrass your company. An example is corporate giving to certain business associations over addressing the fact that procurement spend should be four times higher with diverse businesses to make any real impact. How about tackling the elephants in the room such as the intersectional root causes of climate change and social determinants of health ? Before attracting workers or customers to high density, mixed-use commercial developments, let’s get ahead of gentrification and rectify exclusionary zoning in planning.
What about investing in political and lobbying capital to affect equity and opportunity among disadvantaged and minority-owned businesses, mental health in the workforce (and among caregivers), and disparities in air pollution? Each of these actions also support common government affairs objectives in companies: lower the cost of doing business and manage headwinds from changes in allocated costs of public goods and administrative actions. And remove frictions to attracting and retaining desired talent. Tie advocacy for justice and equity back to these business benefits to gain buy-in from influencers and decision-makers outside of sustainability.
Be more intentional about integrating systems interventions into your work. Regulatory, legislative, and market incentives are needed to mitigate the gross inequalities in the widening wealth gap. And, the continued systemic racism in everyday actions from the U.S. school to prison pipeline , disparities in the impacts of air pollution and the distribution of disaster relief , and the ability to build generational wealth through saving wages and home ownership . No change in the U.S. situation would mean regressing to developing world conditions in the wealthiest countries on earth .
Speak out on the backlash against corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and the slashing of the DEI workforce . Many of us have faced the early years of having one organizational role — or even a partial or a volunteer role — in sustainability. We then adapted to attach our work to the bottom line, quantified our impact, and pushed for global frameworks, standardization, market incentives, and regulations. Corporate DEI needs this help among allies. This is how many movements have reversed the tide against progress. It needs to happen here and now.

What’s Next?

Every few years, I reflect upon my life purpose and how my career serves to support this. It’s my Ikigai and my pono: my reason for being and my responsibility, my way of living. Ikigai is a Japanese term. Pono is Hawaiian. I am ethnically Japanese with five generations in Hawaii.

Many of us in the sustainability profession are deeply purposeful and intentional about our lives and our careers. Let’s take action — and get it done together!

About the Author:

Gwen Migita, MBA
Global Head of ESG & Social Impact Practice, Point B

PHOTO: Gwen Migita | West Oahu, Hawaii

Kyle Ropski - SEA Case Story

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 17:09:30 GMT

Kyle Ropski is a Constituent Service Representative for the Office of Senator Nick Miller.

What Comes When the Global Carbon Budget Is Gone? The CRO and a Negative Carbon Economy

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 20:31:11 GMT

At our present GHG emissions level, it is clear that emission reductions alone will not limit global surface temperature increase to the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C by end of century. Justin Macinante, PhD, MEL, LLB, a Climate Change Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Law School, presents a proposed mechanism that could drive the necessary CO ₂ removals — and meet the Paris target.

Global carbon budget

At the present level of GHG emissions, it is clear that emission reductions alone will be insufficient to achieve the Paris Agreement aspirational target of restricting average global surface temperature increase to 1.5°C by the end of the century. As well, emission reductions alone will be insufficient to meet the various commitments of signatory governments, often framed as achieving ‘net zero’ by a specified date.

The UN World Meteorological Organization gives a 66% likelihood that the global average surface temperature will exceed the long-term average, at least temporarily, by 1.5°C in the next 5 years. Researchers predict the global carbon emissions budget for staying under 1.5°C to be exceeded within the next decade . Emissions need to be significantly reduced and warnings continue to be given of this need: the carbon budget for staying below a 1.5°C increase will soon be exhausted. The Earth’s geophysical systems seem to be issuing warnings as well: extreme weather records are piling up in 2023, with July being the hottest month on record.

Once we exhaust the global carbon emissions budget to remain under 1.5°C — in other words, 'overshoot' — we are in ‘carbon budget deficit’ territory. In which case, every additional tonne of carbon emissions will increase this carbon debt that must be extinguished if we are to have any hope of achieving the 1.5°C target by the end of the century.

Removals, a necessity

The need for removals of carbon from the atmosphere has long been recognised by the IPCC. Land-based removals include biological means — such as afforestation and reforestation, geological means — such as direct air capture and carbon storage (DACCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), and lithospheric means— such as biochar and enhanced rock weathering. Although these solutions need to rapidly grow to an industrial scale comparable to the energy sector to achieve the impact necessary, this is a virtually non-existent industry sector at present. And there are ocean-based removals, including chemical approaches, such as increasing alkalinity, and biotic approaches, such as promoting photosynthesising organisms like seaweed or adding nutrients to promote phytoplankton growth. All these approaches need to be massively scaled up as a matter of urgency. To drive the scaling up of removals requires a mechanism to significantly increase investment, that is, a mechanism that will significantly increase the incentives to invest in removals.

Once the carbon emissions budget is exhausted, emissions trading schemes based on trading emission allowances cease to be logical. By definition, there are no ‘allowable emissions’ left: emissions after that point only increase the budget deficit, that is, the carbon debt.

Calling a spade, a spade: emissions as carbon debt

Climate change researchers have proposed a mechanism to address this situation: once there is overshoot, emissions would be defined legally as carbon debt that needs to be repaid — just as is the case for other debt obligations. And to the extent that the ‘debt facility’ is extended to the emitting entity, as debtor, that entity would need to pay interest on it.

How could this arrangement work? Johannes Bednar, PhD and colleagues at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna and Oxford University provide the argument for such a mechanism – the Carbon Removal Obligation (CRO). Recently, I have been working with them on how such a proposal could be implemented (Bednar, J., et al., “Beyond Emission Trading to a Negative Carbon Economy, The Carbon Removal Obligation and its Implementation”, 2023; submitted for publication).

The CRO policy framework, consists of two elements: a principal mechanism obliging emitters of a tonne of CO2 to remove a tonne of CO2 at the time of maturity of the CRO — issued to them as a legal instrument. This is the ‘capital’ borrowed and that needs to be repaid. Additionally, CRO holders would pay a fee: the ‘interest’ on the capital borrowed. This element of the mechanism is used by regulators to steer the carbon emissions and removals pathways.

Role for central banks and commercial banks

Who would be the regulators in such an arrangement? In the legal framework proposed, control of the climate change mitigation pricing lever — that is, the interest element — is placed in the hands of the traditional managers of financial stability, namely central banks. Doing so allows the externality of carbon emissions and climate change mitigation response management to be integrated into the economic mainstream.

Commercial banks would issue CROs, on which they charge interest, to their emitting customers in much the same way they provide debt finance to customers. Similarly, the central bank would require commercial banks to maintain reserve accounts with it, on which it would charge a base rate of interest. Thus, implementation of the proposed framework applies legal mechanisms that would be familiar to all entities involved.

Carbon debt as evidenced by the CRO instruments would be extinguished by the emitter entities acquiring and retiring removal units, which are generated and issued by removal projects. Hence, the need to extinguish carbon debt would drive demand for removals, prompting greater investment in removals projects.

Interest payments on the commercial banks’ accounts with the central bank – and perhaps also a portion of the interest payments by the emitter entities to their issuer commercial banks — could be applied to a fund, like a sovereign fund, against future climate change management risks.

In this way, applying the polluter pays principle to make emitting entities responsible for removing their emissions also addresses intergenerational equity, by providing for the cost of achieving the 1.5°C target by the end of the century. It leverages existing legal mechanisms to ensure that the removals will be real.

Standard

Additionally, it is proposed that a standard be established for the creation of removal units by removals projects, including in relation to ecosystem and social impact benefits. This would also facilitate a smoother running, more efficient market by reducing transaction costs and enhancing price discovery. At the same time, this would increase the potential for cross-jurisdictional application and trading.

Early action by governments to promote development of such a standard and put in place legislative measures indicating the direction of policy, such as a timetable for introducing CROs, would enhance private sector confidence and engagement in developing and scaling up the removals project sector.

Conclusion

The CRO policy framework sets out mechanisms by which substantially more ambitious emissions mitigation and significantly greater deployment of CO2 removals might be achieved. It is innovative in placing the climate change mitigation pricing lever in the hands of the traditional managers of financial and price stability, namely central banks, integrating the climate change mitigation response management into the economic mainstream, as part of core economic and financial management. It can drive the negative carbon economy necessary to limiting average global surface temperature increase to 1.5°C by the end of the century — notwithstanding the impending overshoot soon to be upon us.

Selected 2023 extreme weather-related events

About the Author:

Justin Macinante, PhD, MEL, LLB
Research Fellow in Climate Change, University of Edinburgh Law School
Research Associate, CO2RE

PHOTO: Cody Chan | British Columbia Forest | Unsplash

Ismail KARFAL- SEA Case Story

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 17:12:01 GMT

Ismail KARFAL is a Senior Sustainability Manager at OCP Group, where he has made significant contributions to project structuring and initiatives aimed at integrating ESG systems and improving ratings from various rating agencies.

Sessario Bayu Mangkara - SEA Case Story

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 13:41:13 GMT

Sessario Bayu Mangkara, SEA - Head of Environmental Practices Department, Green Initiative and CSR Division - President Office, Sinar Mas Land. Based in Tangerang Regency, Serang Province, Indonesia

Virginie De Visscher - SEP Case Story

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 13:37:39 GMT

Virginie De Visscher, SEP - Acting Executive Director, Business Events, Destination Canada

Reclaiming Narratives: Harnessing the SDGs to Empower Local Voices

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 14:26:28 GMT

Throughout Syria’s war, committed changemakers have worked to expand the narrative and to cultivate empathy for those affected. Lena Arkawi, MIA, founded Sourceable, Inc with a group of Columbia graduate students to enable citizen journalists to share their stories in real-time with media and NGOs. In this blog, she shares how their work is guided by the principles of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

For more than a decade, I have been a witness to the devastation of my parents' homeland. The revolution that once fostered inspiration and teemed with potential for change and hopes for democracy tragically spiraled into a humanitarian disaster – Syria. The land I once held dear now marks its twelfth year of violent strife, plagued by conflict, economic instability, corruption, and the long-lasting wounds of war. Even as global attention wanes and Syria is dismissed as yesterday's headline, Syrians press on and their stories continue to unfold.

Throughout this period, I have collaborated with committed changemakers to expand the narrative and to cultivate empathy for those grappling with unimaginable suffering. Our efforts have yielded significant results: a successful campaign that funded an ambulance for female rescue workers in Aleppo, the ongoing operation of an orphanage in Gaziantep, Turkey, and an initiative to foster integration and friendship among refugees in Arizona through a holiday campaign . Each initiative raised questions: How might we elicit empathy? Create solutions that leave a lasting impact? Empower local voices experiencing unthinkable adversities to resonate with audiences across the globe and facilitate a shared understanding of our humanity?

Invariably, I found myself captivated by the tales of both victims and heroes. I felt an urgency to ensure that their stories reach a wider audience on the most elevated platforms. Their narratives — friends escaping ISIS to seek refuge in Turkey, mothers mourning the loss of their children, and others suffering torture in prison — kept me awake at night. These are the stories that resonated with me. I witnessed their pain and suffering, glimpsed their reality, and felt a profound empathy. As a Syrian by heritage, I trusted their stories — we were bound by a shared identity. However, I have come to learn that the level of trust and empathy I experienced cannot be taken for granted.

In 2016, I assumed the role of spokesperson and campaign manager for the American Relief Coalition for Syria . This role granted me the opportunity to uncover local stories from journalists and activists on the ground and elevate these narratives to the press. A constant flow of heartbreaking accounts poured out of Syria, particularly from Aleppo, where the Free Syrian Government was falling into the regime’s iron grip amidst relentless aerial bombardment. Brave souls documented these harrowing events, sharing live updates in a WhatsApp group known as the " Aleppo Media Center " and connecting over 150 international reporters, activists, and local journalists. Despite the terrifying images and videos shared, skepticism abounded. Questions arose about authenticity and Western audiences began doubting the legitimacy of Syrians’ suffering, leading to widespread frustration and demoralization.

This skepticism led me to wonder whether innovative technology could address the trust gap between local voices and international media. That is when I and a team of Columbia University graduate students established Sourceable , a platform enabling citizen journalists to document, verify, and archive their stories in real-time and share their content directly with media and NGOs.

Guided by the principles of U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — specifically SDGs 8, 9, 10, 16, and 17 — Sourceable's mission is to empower, support, connect, and amplify local voices worldwide. It offers a unique platform that provides a comprehensive solution for local voices to substantiate their reports and ultimately make a significant impact on policy that can save lives.

At the heart of Sourceable's vision is the belief that citizen journalists, particularly those operating in conflict and crisis zones, possess the power to tell authentic stories that enable a more thorough understanding of complex and highly consequential local issues. Through our advanced technology and verification tools, we equip these courageous individuals with the means to reach a wider audience, contribute to global conversations, and make a living doing so.

A crucial aspect of Sourceable's work is the verification of newsworthy content, particularly in conflict areas. By building a culture of credibility with tools for transparency, we contribute to peace, justice, and strong institutions, aligning with SDG 16. Our platform acts as a catalyst for trust and accountability in the reporting of newsworthy events, contexts, and experiences.

A key way we grow our network of contributors is through our bi-yearly training workshops, which are specifically designed to support citizen journalists in areas affected by conflict and crisis. These workshops focus on education, capacity building, and innovative tools, all aimed at promoting equitability, improving livelihoods, and democratizing the news industry. By empowering citizen journalists with the necessary skills and resources, we enable them to share their stories confidently and accurately, opening the possibility for positive change in their communities.

Recognizing the necessity for collaborative efforts to scale our impact, Sourceable actively pursues private-public partnerships. By engaging with various stakeholders, including media organizations, technology innovators, governmental institutions, and nonprofits, we aim to revolutionize how news is shared, promote decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), and enhance coordinated effort for sustainable development (SDG 17).

In today's era of widespread mis/disinformation and AI-generated content, verified news content becomes increasingly critical. A robust international news ecosystem is dependent upon building resilient infrastructure, promoting sustainable industrialization, and fostering innovation — the mission of SDG 9. By providing a trusted platform for citizen journalists to publish their reporting and transact directly with media outlets, we contribute to the promotion of decent work and economic growth (SDG 8). Leveraging technology to create a more inclusive, diverse, and transparent media ecosystem, Sourceable aims to reshape the landscape of local and international news sharing.

I envision a world where local voices can share their stories and reach a global audience through their own, verifiable, autonomous accounts. By amplifying the voices of those most affected by conflict and crisis, we can enable the power of storytelling to drive meaningful change in their communities. Together, we can bridge the trust gap, empower citizen journalists, and create a more inclusive and transparent media landscape. We can ensure that underrepresented and often silenced perspectives find their place in the global discourse.

About the Author:

Lena Arkawi, MIA
CEO & Founder, Sourceable, Inc

PHOTO: Abd Sarakbi, Damascus, Unsplash

Jamie Arnold - SEA Case Story

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 13:44:10 GMT

Jamie Arnold, SEA - Senior Marketing Specialist with a Sustainability Modifier, SWCA Environmental Consultants, Denver, CO, USA.

Moving Towards A Sustainable Paris 2024

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 14:22:00 GMT

The International Olympic Committee, The French National Olympic Committee, and the French government commit to sustainability practices for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. ISSP Board Member Gary Tong, Senior VP at Alix Partners, analyzes what that might look like and why it matters.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and The French National Olympic Committee along with the French government as organizers of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have made a commitment to sustainability. I have gathered some key initiatives that are being undertaken:

One of the primary objectives of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is to achieve carbon neutrality. This entails minimizing emissions across all aspects of the Games and offsetting any remaining emissions through the purchase of carbon credits. Additionally, every product associated with the Games will be labeled with a carbon emission score, providing transparency, and raising awareness of the environmental impact.

Sustainable transport is another crucial focus area for the organizers. They aim to prioritize sustainable transport options such as public transportation, cycling, and walking, with the goal of reducing the reliance on private vehicles. By encouraging these eco-friendly modes of transportation, the Games can minimize congestion, decrease emissions, and promote healthier lifestyles among athletes, spectators, and the local community.

Sustainable sourcing is another critical aspect of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games' sustainability initiatives. The organizers are committed to sourcing sustainable products and services, including food, merchandise, and building materials. By prioritizing environmentally friendly options and considering factors such as resource usage, fair trade, and ethical practices, the Games can have a positive impact on local and global supply chains.

The protection and restoration of biodiversity are also prioritized by the organizers. The Games aim to embrace sustainable land and real estate management practices, promoting the conservation of natural habitats. Furthermore, the use of green building techniques is encouraged, with a specific target for all public buildings funded by the French state, including those within the 2024 Paris Olympics complex, to be constructed from at least 50% timber or other natural materials by 2022. This commitment aligns with the broader goal of reducing the ecological footprint associated with construction activities.

In addition to environmental considerations, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games also emphasize social responsibility. The organizers are dedicated to promoting diversity, inclusion, and equality throughout all events. By providing economic opportunities for relevant communities and ensuring equal participation and representation, the Games commit to serving as a platform for positive social change.

I am sure that these organizers are taking a comprehensive approach to sustainability, but some researchers don’t think that it is as easy as IOC has reported. UN’s policy brief No. 128 addressing Climate Change Through Sport pointed out that some efforts towards more comprehensive assessments have been taken by the IOC, UEFA, and FIFA in relation to the Olympics, the European Football Championships, and the World Cup. Additionally, sport practitioners, according to a study by Texas A&M University, can feel constrained from engaging in environmental initiatives due to a lack of support from their organization’s upper management and ownership, or uncertainty about fans’ responses. Some suggested steps, below, as to what the organizers for Paris 2024 Olympic Games can do to prevent some of the greenwashing concerns that might well ensue.

By implementing these measures, I am sure that the Paris 2024 Olympic Games can align with the values of the Olympic Movement and prioritize sustainability throughout their operations. These initiatives not only demonstrate a commitment to environmental responsibility but also emphasize social inclusivity and economic opportunities for relevant communities. The Games aim to set an example for future events — they hold the potential to inspire a global audience to prioritize sustainability and work towards a more sustainable and equitable world.

About the Author:

Gary Tong, M.Sc.
Senior Vice President, Alix Partners
ISSP Governing Board MemberNew Paragraph

Jahan Taganova - SEA Case Story

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 13:46:39 GMT

Jahan Taganova, SEA - One Young World Peace Ambassador, researcher, nonprofit professional, and fearless sustainable development advocate based in the US.

Embracing a Sustainability Culture with Your Hero’s Journey

Thu, 18 May 2023 14:12:58 GMT

Referencing the Hero’s Journey of Joseph Campbell and the Japanese concept of Ikigai, Nitesh Dullabh, CEO of 2POD Ventures and ISSP Governing Board Vice President, explores the key ingredients to building a sustainability culture in an organization.

Let me know if this is real in your organization or not: your company set some BOLD 2030 sustainability goals like achieving water reduction by 40%, having 85% pay equity in business functional structures and reducing cybersecurity threats in all local and global operations. Your company hired consultants to map your corporate sustainability journey, new working groups were developed and there was great enthusiasm to get sustainability right. Three years into your sustainability journey, you reflect and say, "Where have we in our organization gone wrong?" Your company made no progress on water reduction, pay equity discussions stalled, and cybersecurity was not mentioned for almost eight months.

Reaching the above sustainability goals was not a failure of clear intentions, goals, or objectives rather a failure to manifest your Ikigai, a Japanese concept that means your reason for being. Practically, it relates to an organizational failure in “stepladder culture.” You might be asking what this is – more to come. In addition, the failure was further compounded by no structure, very little oversight and accountability, and no data-driven scorecard.

The Hero’s Journey

I am reminded of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey that involves a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed and transformed. He posits the idea that myths are tales with the basic purpose of guiding the human spirit. His work calls on you to be that hero that goes off in search of that gift that is specific to you and improves the world in which you live.

In summary, Joseph Campbell proposed that all myths had a similar basic plot. Essentially, they involved a hero who accepts a call to enter a strange world. In this new world, they have to confront various tests and tasks. Sometimes they obtain the aid of a supernatural being through all of this. If they’re able to overcome the great test, they receive some equally great gift or blessing. Then, they confront the dilemma of whether or not to return to their old world. If they return, they’ll face new problems and, when they do, they’ll bring their gift to their old world to improve it.

I am sharing Campbell’s Hero’s Journey because it involves a personal mission (your Ikigai) and a collective mission that is tied to a collective culture. So, you might be asking how is a Hero’s journey tied to culture. The most current application of the Hero's Journey model is in experiences and services, and in many cases, I am also making the case that new sustainability cultures need to be developed and nurtured. Cultural foundations can deliver more meaningful and memorable encounters by tapping into their cultural and human capital and by positioning their audiences as protagonists in a journey. In this case, how best to map your organization’s sustainability culture that measures accountability at the top, middle, and bottom of the organizational ladder – hence laying the foundations of a “stepladder culture”

At the very top of the stepladder, we have the board and management, in the middle functional/divisional teams and at the bottom, teams that are on-site. There is a history of the board and management making climate commitments with very little or no consultation with the other two rungs of the ladder. This unfortunately has led to a sustainability plan with no credibility and more importantly no element of collaboration, connection, and trust that are foundational elements of building a culture of sustainability. So yes, we must start somewhere.

Encouraging a Culture of Sustainability

One great example of culture and sustainability is Interface’s story which began in 1973 when Ray Anderson discovered a market for flexible flooring. With its focus on the production and marketing of modular carpet tiles, Interface catered to the quickly rising needs of the office building boom of the mid-1970s. Anderson wanted his firm to lead by example and for Interface to become the first company with zero environmental impact. With that truly inspiring purpose, labeled Mission Zero, the company adopted a sustainability culture that outlived even its CEO. The company’s focused commitment to this purpose instilled a strong and lasting culture of change that resulted in several breakthrough innovations from restorative to regenerative, striving to restore nature.

Interface is regularly quoted as the company internationally that has fully integrated sustainability into its business strategy. As the hero in the Interface story, Ray realized he could not do this alone. He enrolled people at all levels of the organization, taught them issues and basic principles, and challenged them to create a different business using a positive mindset to engage diverse groups and generate truly creative solutions.

Ray Anderson’s hero’s journey at Interface almost 30 years ago will continue to have a lasting impact on the importance of sustainability and the behavioral culture to bring about meaningful change. As the hero on this journey, he had the ability and gift to lead, and the ability to see the opportunities inherent in the sustainability challenge.

Key Lessons

In the example above, Ray Anderson helped build a sustainability culture by ensuring that his teams walked up and down the organizational stepladder. This helped with a culture of innovation that reinforced connection, trust, and collaboration. Key ingredients to building a sustainability culture. Developing a potent sustainability culture requires leadership and management qualities very similar to those required to lead major change processes. Value add movement up and down the stepladder, strong coalition and partnerships between stakeholders and shareholders, and measuring, monitoring, and reporting on the change in behavior are essential for cultural stickiness to have lasting success.

About the Author:

Nitesh Dullabh
CEO, 2POD Ventures
Vice President, ISSP Governing Board

PHOTO: Shane Rounce

Alexander Van Lewen - SEA Case Story

Mon, 01 May 2023 13:49:17 GMT

Alexander Van Lewen, SEA Chief Marketing Officer at Scott's Automotive and Service Centers in Fort Collins, Colorado. In April 2023, ISSP talked to Alexander about his career journey.

Climate Art: A Forum for Re-visioning

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 16:24:20 GMT

Trisha Bauman, M.Sc., Principal at TJBauman, LLC and ISSP Governing Board President, offers how climate art allows our capacity to re-vision as a community. It enables diverse identities to come together to investigate ideas, share reflections, express feelings, and invoke imaginations: human experiences that are essential to transforming the very systems driving our polycrisis threats.

Seemingly a typical day at a public beach, crowded with people sunbathing and children playing. We observe them from above. Those below — dozens of various ages, identities, and groupings — indulge themselves in their seaside leisure of reading, playing paddle ball, picnicking, scrolling phones. From our 360-degree viewing platform, 10 meters above the sand, we are free to watch the activity, to move around the platform or sit down, to stay or leave. Most of us stay, mesmerized by the apparently innocuous scene below, while fathoming its calamitous depths. We are watching ourselves.

SUN & SEA is an opera-performance created by three young Lithuanian artists, the director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, librettist Vaiva Grainytė and composer Lina Lapelytė. It was the surprise masterpiece of the 2019 Venice Biennale and awarded the top prize, the Golden Lion. Since then, it has toured and performed for audiences across four continents. The piece slides us deceptively into complete immersion and, over the course of an hour, conveys how we ended up in the climate emergency we now face and, perhaps more importantly, why we are still so far from slowing it down. Over decades of viewing much of the leading works in the international contemporary arts, I would put SUN & SEA as one of the most powerful. It happens to be climate art, and we need more of this kind of brilliance in addressing the polycrisis we now face.

Climate art has developed at a slow pace over this century. In a 2005 essay on the subject, Bill McKibben lamented, "One species, ours, has by itself in the course of a couple of generations managed to powerfully raise the temperature of an entire planet, to knock its most basic systems out of kilter. But oddly, though we know about it, we don’t know about it. It hasn’t registered in our gut; it isn’t part of our culture. Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas? Compare it to, say, the horror of AIDS in the last two decades, which has produced a staggering outpouring of art that, in turn, has had real political effect." That has now changed, and astounding works like SUN & SEA are emerging.

Climate art can transmit the often-unseen systems in which we're enmeshed and that are driving our environmental and social emergencies. And it can offer a forum for communities to come together across their diversity to consider the views of others through a medium besides public speaking, conversation, or debate. It opens us to investigate ideas, share reflections, express feelings, and invoke imaginations in view of the accelerating crises we're traversing. Reflecting, feeling, imagining — human experiences essential to both our individual and our social capacity to transform the very systems driving our polycrisis threats.

Cultural organizations, theaters, museums, and festivals are increasingly programming what can be categorized as climate art across disciplines — theater, dance, music, visual art, poetry, film, photography, public art. The focus of these works varies, from our ecological emergency to social injustice. And the styles vary as well, some resembling a sort of cultural anthropology, like SUN & SEA, some aiming to arouse our emotional drive to take action, and some evoking the lethal future ahead if we fail at systemic change.

Museums and climate art: traversing conventional domains

Around the world, museums are focusing both programming and even their missions on these issues. The 2021 annual conference of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM), an affiliate of the International Council of Museums, gathered in the Polish cities of Lodz and Gdansk to address the theme, "Under Pressure: Museums in Times of Xenophobia and Climate Emergency." The conference focused on the unexplored connections between these two crises.

Some cultural programming addresses climate and social justice through a more epistemological lens — exploring the systems, assumptions, and values that have shaped the challenges we are facing. Such programming offers communities an opportunity to encounter ideas that traverse the conventional domains of art, science, traditional and modern cultures, and civic engagement. CODE RED: Climate, Justice & Natural History Collections, an exhibition at the Maine Historical Society (MHS) in collaboration with the Portland Society of Natural History and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, does this through a place-based view.

Curated by Tilly Laskey, an MHS curator, and Dr. Darren J. Ranco, professor of anthropology and chair of Native American Programs at the University of Maine and a member of the Penobscot Nation, CODE RED examines where Western scientific methods and Indigenous science principles overlap and diverge, bringing a central focus to the Traditional Ecological Knowledge of the Wabanaki Nations. Both the exhibition and the concurrent public programming explore issues including colonialism, geographic exploration, resource extraction, and the contribution of all of these to the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and enduring structural injustice.

Galvanizing action through climate art

Many of today's cultural institutions present their climate and social justice programming with an explicit objective of galvanizing action. The Climate Museum in New York City, the first of its kind in the U.S., cites a 2022 study published in Nature indicating that a bipartisan American supermajority supports bold climate policy. Yet this supermajority is under the misperception that two-thirds of the U.S. population is opposed to such action. This perceptual disconnect engenders a pernicious spiral of silence and passivity that the museum aims to counter through its inclusive, equity-centered programming. The Climate Museum asserts that the popularity and trust held by museums can bring people together to learn and to join "the fight for a brighter future."

Similarly, the public programming of CODE RED explores Maine’s pivotal role in the modern environmental movement and offers ways that visitors of all backgrounds and abilities can take action for inclusive, positive change.

A space for re-visioning

Yet as critical as it is to inform and influence the action needed to change the systems driving our crises, it is just as essential for communities to have a forum for simply processing the weight of a challenge that will only intensify. Given the sharpening rise of eco-anxiety and solastalgia across global populations, and particularly among younger millennials and Gen Z, it is vital to have secular spaces where diverse identities can engage in inclusive, informed, and non-goal-oriented, reflective sharing. Our collective capacity to re-vision possibilities depends on easing the paralysis of anxiety and facilitating open, co-creative imagination. An agenda set on specific objectives can often thwart this more fertile source of possibility.

Art engenders emotion, imagination, creative insight, and social connection with a unique potency. Throughout human existence and across geographies, it is the touchstone of our community values, social constructs, and collective behaviors. Art can generate a depth and complexity of personal insight and social exchange in ways that expository media and social dialogue do not enable — and especially when the art is experienced through real-time, real-space presentation venues and live performance. It can foster the experiencing and sharing of our often undisclosed yet most consequential of human experiences: fear, uncertainty, hope, empathy, humor, connection, and joy.

In the context of the accelerating crises we face, climate art — particularly work that is place-based — can offer the cultural and psychological space for the full dimensionality of our human experience to be explored and shared. We need this secular space for any possibility of enabling systemic change. It allows our capacity to re-vision as a community — as essential a step to cultivating a regenerative future as any new approach, design, or solution.

About the Author:

Trisha Bauman, M.Sc.
Principal & Founder, TJBauman LLC
President, ISSP Governing Board

PHOTO: Wapi-kuhkukhahs or Snowy Owl basket, 2022, by Gabriel and Gal Frey, Collections of Maine Historical Society, MaineMemory.net, item 135770

Kok Cheow Tan - SEP Case Story

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 13:57:51 GMT

Kok Cheow Tan, SEP, CISM, CSM, CFCP, Deputy Director at C & W Services - Singapore. In March 2023, ISSP talked to Kok about his career journey.

Emotional, Rational, and Artificial Intelligence for a Sustainable World

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 16:29:48 GMT

Marco Tedesco, PhD, Lamont Research Professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Climate School, reflects on the importance of emotional intelligence in sustainability. He advises a balance of emotional, rational, and artificial intelligence for a sustainable world.

Emotional intelligence should play a larger role in our choices.

Artificial intelligence is not the solution to all problems.

Sustainability approaches using a balanced combination of AI, EI, and RI are likely to be the most successful.

How do we define intelligence? Are humans more intelligent than other creatures? These are questions I often ask myself, especially when I think of climate change, sustainability, and the impact of humans on our planet.

It is true that humans possess a unique set of cognitive abilities that are not found in other animals, such as language, abstract reasoning, planning, and problem-solving. It is also true, however, that when it comes to skills such as sensory perception and some forms of problem-solving, other animals may outperform humans. This is not only true when it comes to physical sensory skills—for example, think of birds who can navigate thousands of miles across oceans without getting lost—but also from an emotional and planning perspective. For example, many species would never deploy all the resources within their habitat knowing that this might lead them to extinction, as humans do. See the latest book by Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us .

Rational and emotional intelligence are two types of intelligence that have been studied extensively. Rational intelligence refers to the ability to think logically, solve problems, and make decisions based on facts or evidence. Emotional intelligence, on the other hand, is the ability to understand and manage one's own emotions as well as the emotions of others. If it is true that rational intelligence is often measured and represents a benchmark to define the “quality” of an individual, emotional intelligence has not been valued as important as rational intelligence, nor tools to properly measure it have gained popular consensus.

Recently, to further extend rational and emotional intelligence, humans have created and are proud of the development of artificial intelligence, also known as AI, and defined as “the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.” So, it all goes back to human intelligence. Again!

The intersection between sustainability and AI is an area of growing interest as organizations and governments seek to use such tools to strengthen sustainability through reducing carbon emissions, optimizing energy consumption, improving waste management, and enhancing resource efficiency, to name a few examples. We need, however, to remember that AI feeds on human intelligence and, very importantly, human intentions. The “black box” nature of many AI applications makes it particularly suited to introducing biases or manipulating information towards or against, for example, specific racial or social groups. As AI systems are designed and trained by humans, they can reflect existing biases and prejudices. If these biases are not addressed, AI could perpetuate and amplify social and economic inequalities. A democratic AI ecosystem is paramount for a just, sustainable society.

This is where emotional intelligence (EI) can play a role. EI is often overlooked in discussions of sustainability, which tend solely to focus on technical solutions and policies. However, EI promotes the creation and growth of strong interpersonal connections, effective collaborations, and can help making decisions that benefit both people and the planet in an unbiased way.

One aspect of emotional intelligence that is poorly considered is empathy—the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. In the context of sustainability, empathy is critical for understanding the needs and perspectives of different stakeholders, especially of those who may be affected by environmental degradation or social inequality. By practicing empathy, individuals and communities can work together to find solutions that benefit everyone, rather than just a select few.

Self-awareness, the ability to recognize and understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors is also crucial to identifying and addressing one's own biases and assumptions, as well as to recognizing the impact of one's own actions on the environment and society. By cultivating self-awareness, individuals can become more responsible and conscious consumers, and can work to reduce their own environmental footprint.

Empathy and self-awareness also improve communication skills. Effective communication is essential for building trust and understanding among stakeholders as well as for collaboration and conflict resolution, which are necessary for overcoming obstacles and finding common ground. It is also important for being able to listen and communicate to those who are affected by environmental degradation or social inequality, which requires building relationships and engaging in dialogue with people from different backgrounds and perspectives. This allows for a deeper understanding of the challenges facing communities — communities that have the right to be empowered with the proper tools rather than told what to do in “their best interest.”

As we continue to pursue a more sustainable future, it is important to remember that the emotional and social aspects of sustainability are as important as the technical solutions and policies needing to be put in place. By harnessing the power of emotional intelligence, we can create a more just, equitable, and sustainable world for ourselves and future generations. This is as important as stopping the sea from rising!

About the Author:

Marco Tedesco, PhD
Lamont Research Professor
Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Climate School

PHOTO: Pxhere

Steffen Müller - SEP Case Story

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 15:00:52 GMT

Steffen Müller, SEP, Principal Solutions Consultant for Climate & Sustainability Management at Salesforce; and Sustainability Strategy & Transformation Advisor (Freelancer). In March 2023, ISSP talked to Steffen about his career journey.

“Oh, my furniture is floating” — A Look into Promoting Flooding and Heat Stress Resilience in Self-build Housing

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 17:36:43 GMT

“When it's raining, I can't move into my street, oh I can't come in. Oh, my furniture is floating…your car is floating, you can't get into your house.” This was said by one of the focus group participants in my research study, as she described the severity of flooding conditions in Lekki, Lagos (Nigeria). Her concerns not only provide a view of flooding severity in parts of Lagos, but also echoes similar conditions in many other tropical regions of the Global South that are frequently affected by flooding and heat stress – the counterpart.

In many cities in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, and Bangladesh, with tropical monsoon, rainforest, and savannah climates, frequent and intense rainfall coupled with factors including substandard drainage and impervious surfaces lead to flooding and inundation of property. Many of these cities are also dense, with little to no vegetation, and constructed with hard and impervious surfaces — making it commonplace for temperatures to go as high as 118 degrees Fahrenheit. When coupled with other factors such as the choice of building materials, unreliable electricity supply, or at times disconnection from the grid, urban dwellers are left vulnerable to high temperatures, particularly indoor heat stress. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the global mean temperature will rise by 2.5°F to 10.4°F (1.4 to 5.8°C) between 1990 and 2100. Most concerning, it is predicted that temperatures of sub-Saharan Africa will be “higher than the global mean temperature increase” with expected “longer and more frequent heat waves” ( Shepard, 2019 ).

Flooding and Heat Stress

Coastal Nigeria is one of the most vulnerable regions to flooding and heat stress (F&HS). For one, the dense cities of Lagos in the southwest and Port-Harcourt in the south-south are low-lying. Per Rashid, et al. (2013) , a series of research studies predict that sea-level rise “will create additional flooding risks for the 600 million people living in low-elevation coastal zones.” Further risk factors in coastal Nigeria such as substandard drainage systems, low maintenance of existing drainage systems, unplanned land use, and the topography of dwelling sites expose households in these cities to localized flooding and storm surges.

Nigeria has also seen a significant and steady rise in temperatures since the 1980s, however, the power supply remains unreliable. This exacerbates the effects of high temperatures on households, especially during daytime in the dry season. When you add sensitivity factors such as low-income levels because of high poverty rates, the ability of urban dwellers in these cities to respond effectively to both flooding and heat stress diminishes.

Consequently, every year, thousands of people in coastal Nigeria are displaced from flooding, thousands of lives are lost, and there is an increased occurrence of water and vector-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria, which can be especially fatal for young children and the elderly. Furthermore, prolonged exposure to high temperatures can worsen chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and diabetes-related conditions.

In addition to these health issues, there are millions of dollars lost in property damages, including expenses related to redevelopment of damaged homes and replacement of tangible property from major flooding and waterlogging. Unfortunately, the burden of these losses is especially high for households that build their own homes themselves through the self-build housing delivery process.

Self-build Housing

Growing up in a self-built house in a diverse neighborhood with homes of both formal and informal settlement typologies, the impacts of these losses were all around me. However, I also noticed ingenious responses to the flooding as it happened, actions that improved thermal comfort, and actions that capitalized well-being despite the daily challenges from intense rainfall and hot days.

My curiosity was ignited by this ingenuity and spurred my academic research into what were the design solutions utilized by households in the tropical Global South that helped them cope and adapt to both flooding and heat stress. Were they the same as strategies I had seen? How did they differ and how successful were they? My quest for these answers led to the development of the Re-HOUSED toolkit with three tools: 1) a matrix of 149 F&HS resilience design solutions, 2) a web application to diagnose vulnerabilities and contexts of decision-makers through an algorithm I developed that predicts viable design solutions among available options, and 3) a simplified guidebook to inform non-expert and technically low-skilled self-builders on how to design-build or make improvements to their housing to increase resilience against F&HS.

What Drives This Ingenuity?

I found from my research that this handmade urbanism of coping and adapting strategies is fueled by factors such as risk perception, local and indigenous knowledge, prior experience with loss and vulnerability, ‘fight or flight’, locus of control, available resources such as building materials, household makeup, and culture.

Bottom-up resilience is primarily cultivated from the need of households to protect their dwelling. There is a higher sense of responsibility and stake in coping and adapting to climate vulnerabilities when assets are owned or built by the individuals responsible for those assets. The literature shows that self-build housing occupants in countries of the tropical Global South such as Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, and Bangladesh, are relatively more knowledgeable about their perceived risks of climate vulnerabilities and how to address those vulnerabilities to cope and adapt. Urban dwellers in both formal and informal settlements have greater flexibility to develop, explore, and utilize bottom-up solutions when they build their housing themselves or utilize self-build practices.

If occupants of both informal and formal self-build urban settlements are coping with climate vulnerabilities with a degree of success, then there are opportunities to learn about resilience in those communities and the factors that contribute to long-term success.

The Research Framework

So, how can one learn about bottom-up resilience from frontline communities and collaboratively develop viable solutions? Through my work, I have gleaned five main steps for effectively approaching bottom-up resilience.

Learning about existing solutions through ethnographic research methods or review information gained through ethnographic research.
Engage with community members and key stakeholders to identify barriers to adopting proven solutions at the local level.
Design/develop solutions with key stakeholders through Human Centered Design techniques.
Validate the application of these solutions with real-life applications/engagement with key stakeholders.
Engage with key stakeholders to identify the best communication strategies for disseminating information on the solutions.

From my experience in climate research, resilience, and adaptation, a people-centered approach is most important. This focus on lived experiences and working with stakeholders rather than for stakeholders is very present in the research I lead at the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute , where we work towards advancing solutions for affordable, reliable, and clean energy for marginalized and disadvantaged communities.

Our Work Is Far from Over

Re-HOUSED will be an ongoing initiative that, with time, I hope will include different climatic and cultural contexts such as the Colonias in the United States. I plan to continuously push the boundaries on how we can learn from frontline communities — engaging with them to better understand their lived experiences and to develop more affordable solutions and systems that not only improve resilience but also support adaptive capacity.

About the Author:

Bobuchi Ken-Opurum, PhD
Founder, Re-HOUSED Decision Support Toolkit
Director of Research, Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute

PHOTO: Rachel Claire | Pexels

Harri Timonen - SEA Case Story

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 15:05:57 GMT

Harri Timonen, SEA is a Sustainability Consultant in Lisbon, Portugal. He recently launched his own consulting business to add additional possibilities to offer sustainability knowledge and services onsite or remotely.

Better Together: Toward a Sustainable Future

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 17:41:05 GMT

I have a life motto that defines who I am and how I view the world. It resonates through my professional work, marriage and personal relationships, and childhood memories — it is core to my understanding of who I am and how I contribute to this planet. Originally coming to my life in the form of my wedding song from musician and sustainability champion Jack Johnson, it’s even tattooed on my left arm as a constant reminder.

Better together.

When taken in the context of the sustainability profession, this motto is the critical path forward toward meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The individuals dedicated to the work of the SDGs understand the high stakes in which we live as a world. The undeniable science causing ever increasing crises calls us to seek and implement solutions at grand scales, across the SDG’s. It also brings us beyond our own ambitions, our organization’s goals, and reinforces the importance of collaboration and acting in concert.

We understand how interdependent our work really is and the critical importance of encouraging broader adoption of the science fueling our actions.

As the leading professional association working across the scope of sustainability practice, ISSP's mission is to empower professionals to advance sustainability across organizations and communities around the globe. Fostering connection and capacity building ensures individuals and organizations taking up the important cause of creating a better future have the network and the tools to solve the world’s greatest challenges.

Personal Connection

Attending an ISSP member networking call affords opportunities to connect with professionals working to accelerate progress across the globe, at all levels of experience and in each sector of the industry. These calls affirm how critical interpersonal connection and conversation are to opening our vantage points, identifying opportunities to collaborate and innovate, celebrating successes, and better understanding the independencies shaping our world.

Building Capacity

The accelerating growth of sustainability practice, relying on a few high-quality professional learning resources, leaves a relatively unprepared bench of emerging professionals to fill the expanding number of open positions requiring green skills.

Organizations, held to increasingly higher standards, are understanding the importance of fundamental training for their full workforce to achieve sustainability goals, while also increasing the breadth of knowledge on their dedicated sustainability teams. According to the GreenBiz State of the Profession 2022 , “Seventy-six percent of respondents from large companies reported an increase in headcount.” This trend is echoed in the LinkedIn Green Skills Report and the U.S. Energy & Employment Jobs Report (USEER).

At ISSP we are working closely with organizations to bring sustainability fundamentals, professional development, and networking opportunities across and within industry sectors and global regions. Through Education Partnerships, ISSP is supporting academic programs worldwide to prepare students with skills needed to jump right in and accelerate sustainability action.

Strategic Partnerships

There is a reason the last SDG is Partnerships for the Goals. The targets encapsulated by SDG17 are the clear pathway for bringing the world together to enable the work required for Goals 1 through 16. Partnerships establish the financing mechanisms, the capacity and skills building, and the global collaboration on which Goals 1 through 16 depend.

Enabling partnerships and collaboration across geographies, industries, and sectors, allows for strengthening and acceleration of efforts. Partnerships break down silos and empower progress. At ISSP, partnerships enable broader access to critical professional development and industry resources, ensuring we are building a well-prepared and strategically networked workforce to achieve sustainability goals. They are foundational to the resources we bring to our individual members, to our organizational members, and to our broader community of stakeholders around the world.

A Path Forward

Sustainability practice affords the opportunity for successfully meeting the SDG targets through embracing the concept of a connected path forward toward a brighter future. The very ideas of circularity and sustainability rely upon the shared value of the resources this planet provides and understanding of the crises impeding an equitable reality. Every solution and framework—from Project Drawdown’s Solutions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals —comes back to the interconnected, multifaceted paths forward only possible through increased collaboration. These solutions are proven to accelerate when collaboration from the local to the global level occur. ISSP understands the power of a network of individuals, organizations, and partners to create the sustainable future we each need and deserve. Better together.

About the Author:

Michelle Benavides, SEA, LEED AP BD+C, M.Ed.
Executive Director
International Society of Sustainability Professionals

PHOTO: Wes Lewis | Unsplash

Jason Maitland - SEA Case Story

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 15:28:10 GMT

Jason Maitland, SEA, the President of the Sustainability Institute of Trinidad and Tobago, focuses on transforming societies to achieve balanced social, economic, and environmental progress today and tomorrow. Jason considers himself a risk and sustainability champion and functions as a change agent, where he brings a wealth of experience to both corporate and non-profit organizations.

Cycles of Sustainability — A Maturing Profession

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 15:02:30 GMT

How might the sustainability profession bend the alarming curves across all sustainability metrics—from emissions to wage inequality and to species collapse? Fabian Sack, PhD, Director at Sustainably Pty Ltd and ISSP Governing Board Member, shares insights from a three-decade career in sustainability practice.

As my tenure on the ISSP Board comes to an end after six exciting years, including a stint as president, I have been reflecting on what has changed over my three decades working as a sustainability professional in Australia. As I see it, we are now into a fourth cycle of sustainability practice.

The very early years of sustainability thinking were largely academic, aside from direct action on gross toxic pollution. I think of the Love Canal, Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring, the work of The Club of Rome in life cycle assessment. Radical efforts peppered the 60’s and 70’s, leading to the rapid adoption of environmental protection in many countries such as the Environmental Protection Administration in the U.S. This gradually consolidated into international initiatives like the historic Brundtland Report, Our Common Future.

Second Cycle: National and International Governance

During the years immediately following the 1992 Rio Declaration, there was widespread environmental enthusiasm worldwide, especially in government circles. In Australia this was expressed in a landmark intergovernmental agreement on the environment establishing principles of ecologically sustainable development. These were subsequently written into a suite of state and federal laws, many of which continue today and generate a growing body of legal precedents.

Internationally, the NGO community established the first iteration of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), beginning the effort to mainstream triple bottom line (TBL) reporting. Other international initiatives, such as the Ecological Footprint, gained momentum in pursuit of the United Nations Millennial Goals. I had the good fortune to be part of a corporate effort to apply TBL reporting, including ecological footprinting, in the early '00s. During these first two cycles, most sustainability jobs were in academia and later in the public and NGO sectors. These professional roles tended to be technical or strategic in focus.

Third Cycle: The Business Case for Sustainability

In the early 2000s, market forces in Australia and other developed economies were noticing the potential impact of sustainability on commercial activity. Increasingly the business case for sustainability was made in terms of reputational risk and licence to operate, and professional practice centred in public relations and to a lesser degree in governance. This had the positive impact of bringing a focus to engaging stakeholders and more generally on the social attitudes toward sustainability. More concerningly, fossil fuel interests worked hard to capture and divert the emerging debate on climate change, setting the groundwork for a decade of inaction.

Corporations globally sought to demonstrate that voluntary action discounted the need for regulation. In Australia, tying progress on corporate sustainability to profitability meant that the global financial crisis (GFC) reassigned resources to more fundamental business drivers, causing the sustainability profession to contract rapidly and ending the third cycle.

An Australian exception to the post-GFC shift away from sustainability practice was local and regional government, where climate impacts, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, and resource scarcity could not be ignored. Over the past decade, this grassroots voice has become increasingly global, expressed particularly across small island developing states in forums like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the annual Conference of the Parties (COPs) to the UNFCCC.

Along with these events, there has been increased international attention on the threat posed by the drivers of unsustainability—a global economic, community, and ecosystem threat.

Fourth Cycle: Towards Sustainable Markets

Noting the immediacy of this threat, the international finance community is working to encourage sustainable investment through mechanisms like ESG (environmental, social, and governance) disclosures and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Regulators are following suit. This coordination of the market and regulation has led to a new wave of sustainability professionals, a wave sufficiently robust that it has pushed through the disruptions of the pandemic.

An important factor in the robustness of the current cycle is demographic change. Millennials in Australia, schooled during the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), are now a growing political force with concern for the realities of climate change, social inequity, and planetary constraints. This generational momentum is global and increasingly mainstreaming sustainability themes across policy and commercial activities, such as the push for a circular economy. With it, there is increasing recognition of voices championing traditional knowledge, both in Australia and elsewhere.

The Next Cycle: Transformation?

The challenge now for the growing cohort of sustainability professionals is to work together towards the truly transformative practices required. We must bend the alarming curves across all sustainability metrics—greenhouse gas emissions, wage inequality, species collapse. Mindful of lessons from the past, we need to encourage radical thinking, international cooperation, evidence-based decision making, social inclusion, and the coordination of markets and states. And we need to be wary of regulatory capture, of spin, and the disingenuity of vested interests.

I believe that the ISSP, guided by its Sustainability Hall of Fame and working with its strategic partners, is well placed to support the sustainability community to do its important work. Sustainability professionals have a set of transdisciplinary, transformative skills which distinguish them from other professions—skills recognised by the SEA and SEP credentials. As I turn my complete attention back to academic practice at the University of Sydney and my work with clients, I’m grateful for the unique opportunity ISSP has lent me to interact with so many truly dedicated sustainability professionals around the world.

About the Author:

Fabian Sack, PhD, SEP
Director, Sustainably Pty Ltd
ISSP Governing Board

PHOTO: Fabian Sack | Forest regrowth three months after Australia's Black Summer Fires | NSW South Coast

Spotlight Shifts to COP28 As Sustainability Goes Political

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 02:38:31 GMT

A global context of heightening political turmoil has surrounded COP27. In view of the current stakes, John Elkington, Chairman & Chief Pollinator at Volans Ventures and ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree, urges all of us in sustainability to learn to do politics. And to shift our lens to COP28.

We long dreamed of sustainability becoming part of mainstream politics—often overlooking the inconvenient truth that politics can make mincemeat of even the most urgent and well-founded change agendas. With politics now in turmoil wherever we look, the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference—aka COP27—will find it hard to capture and hold the attention of the global media and political classes.

So, while in no way wishing to undermine the efforts of the COP27 organizers, and this year’s summit coincides with the merging of the sustainability and security (energy, food, water, climate, social, health, etc.) agendas, we also must urgently expand our focus from Sharm el-Sheikh, where Egypt is hosting COP27, to Dubai Expo City where the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is due to host COP28.

The logic is simple. The current disarray in global politics is so great that climate change, yet again, will often be drowned out. That said, Putin’s vicious invasion of Ukraine means that most EU countries are advancing their targets for moving away from hydrocarbons. Several—notably Austria, Denmark, and Portugal—have already committed to having 100% renewable electricity by 2030.

Anti-ESG, pseudoscience and PR

But then there is the less-good news. Who would have predicted a few years back that American states would now be announcing their intention to step away from funds offered by BlackRock—one of the world’s leading asset managers? Louisiana, to take just one benighted example, has said that it plans to pull an extraordinary $794 million out of BlackRock investment funds, blaming the asset management giant's push to embrace environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment strategies. The apparent logic: capitalism should have no truck with sustainability and the fossil fuels sector should be allowed to cripple the planet, wherever profits can be made—and jobs, taxes, and assorted inducements, legal or otherwise, protected.

State Treasurer John Schroder explained, "This divestment is necessary to protect Louisiana from mandates BlackRock has called for that would cripple our critical energy sector." Delusional—and profoundly anti-capitalist—but symbolizing a new phase in the sustainability arms race.

BlackRock, as the firm has counter-argued, remains a major investor in fossil fuels. But its overall direction of travel—as prudence dictates—is away from fossil fuels. Despite the current uptick in demand for fuels of every sort, driven by Putin’s energy war, the evolutionary trajectory is clear. Whatever Putin (and Schroder) may imagine, fossil fuels are headed for the boneyard.

Again, who would have predicted that United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres would say in public that, “We seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested heavily in pseudoscience and public relations—with a false narrative to minimise their responsibility for climate change and undermine ambitious climate policies.”

Sustainability is going seriously political

For decades, the change agenda was sufficiently remote from the core political debate that it was generally handled by lower grade officials and, in business, by specialist managers, many of them public relations specialists or lawyers. No longer. What is remarkable now is that sustainability is crashing into mainstream politics and mainstream markets. One of the results is that the change agenda is becoming increasingly politicised.

Witness the U.S. Republican Party’s push-back against the climate elements of the recently legislated Inflation Reduction Act. And we have seen it in my own country, the UK, where a chaotic Conservative Prime Minister took a wrecking ball to the country’s environmental rules and reputation for good governance.

She also took the idiotic step of banning the country’s new king, Charles III, from attending COP27. Ridiculous because he has a considerable standing in the world of climate action and could have represented the country’s better sides. One popular newspaper ran a live camera focused on a lettuce, to see whether the vegetable of the Prime Minister expires first. She lost to Rishi Sunak.

Similar trends are now seen in countries like Italy and Sweden, with right-wing populists winning support—and almost never supporting any meaningful elements of the sustainability agenda. You see it in Brazil, too, where I spoke recently at a major business forum hosted by the forestry, pulp, paper, and packaging company Klabin. In the background, the news media were full of increasingly angry exchanges between supporters of the presidential campaigns of Jair Bolsonaro, who had been president since 2019, and former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as “Lula.”

The world sensed that this was a truly consequential election, with massive ecological implications for Amazonia—and hence the rest of the world. Those voting against Bolsonaro—and many people in the wider world—knew that he has been incompetent, corrupt, and an aggressive champion of the intensifying destruction of the Amazon ecosystem.

They also suspected that a Lula government would be unlikely to address the country’s current unsustainability with anything like the urgency needed, but many concluded that it could hardly be worse than what has been happening recently. In the event, Lula won by a thin margin, but Bolsonaro supporters retained control of the country’s Congress, suggesting major battles ahead.

An inflection point

The key message from all of this is that we must learn to do the politics. And that is why we are now developing a new Volans program focusing on Corporate Advocacy, looking at how companies and business leaders can play a legitimate and effective role in driving the new politics. Early partners include Unilever and the Porticus Foundation.

Ahead of COP28, we are also partnering with the UAE Government and the First Abu Dhabi Bank on a global commission on access to clean fuels. One question that will need to be asked there is how a fossil-fuels-based economy like theirs can adapt to a future world where selling coal, oil, and then gas will be viewed in the same light as selling hard, addictive drugs?

The sustainability paradigm has been building for over 60 years. Given that revolutionary new paradigms take 70-80 years to engage fully, I sense that we are at an inflection point—and that the next 10-15 years will be decisive, whether the outcomes are good, bad or ugly.

PHOTO: Neil Palmer | Wikipedia

About the Author:

John Elkington
Chairman & Chief Pollinator
Volans Ventures
ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree

The Circular Economy: Cities Leading The Transition

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 01:34:29 GMT

Marta Suplicy, Municipal Commissioner of International Affairs for the City of São Paulo, asserts that cities—even megacities such as São Paulo—can lead the transition to a circular economy. Drawing from Sao Paulo's impressive initiatives, Suplicy shares the inspiration and the road map for regenerative urban policy, with no one left behind.The circular economy is a key to not only fighting climate change and implementing sustainable development, but as a tool for transforming our reality and the cities we live in. It is an instrument that allows a municipality to harness the potential of food production, food security with a shorter production chain, and lower emissions. It can open new perspectives and opportunities as well as offer ways of building a new economic model. The transition to a fair and responsible circular economy also involves the study, planning, and setting of priorities with the effective participation of civil society.

Latin America is a region with great biological diversity, allowing truly transformative experiences to create regenerative value chains from our abundant resources while promoting and fostering local economies. Over the years, São Paulo has been paying close attention to issues such as regenerative agriculture and waste management to build well-structured urban policy. In recognition of this leadership, we signed a Cooperation Agreement with UN-Habitat. And in early 2020, we were recognized as Strategic Partners with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, alongside London and New York City.

Connecting The Dots: A Robust Public Policy

In addition to these potentials, São Paulo has already approved and is developing a circular food system across our city. It is promoting new businesses, jobs, training, and education opportunities by creating a system of positive overflows. The Connect the Dots project is one of our biggest success stories in recent years and is now entering a next phase. The initiative was the winner of the Bloomberg Philanthropies' Mayors Challenge Award in 2016 and subsequetly was featured in the BBC's documentary series Transforming Cities. After several successful years and with the end of Bloomberg’s financing, São Paulo is preparing to make Connect the Dots a lasting public policy. Cases like this will serve as inspiration for the development of urban and sustainable food systems.

Another food circularity initiative in São Paulo is our Combatting Food Waste program, which leverages the hands-on knowledge of our public agencies overseeing our food supply logistics. São Paulo's food waste is delivered to the Municipal Food Bank, where it goes through screening before 85% is donated to those facing food insecurity. The 15% unfit to distribute for meals is then delivered to the city's sustainable composting yards. This residual food waste is transformed into high quality organic compost, used throughout our city's parks and distributed for free to our residents.

Rainforest and Plastic

With over 12 million inhabitants, São Paulo has the potential to significantly reduce climate impacts through circular economy systems that offer a sustainable model for urban public policy. The city is one of the first and remains one of the few regional metropolises to commit to a circular model for plastics and to enact the reduction and elimination of single-use plastics. Our main partners for developing São Paulo's circular economy include the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the United Nations Environment Programme, with whom we have collaborated since 2019 in The New Plastics Economy. This partnership applies a circular economy model to areas beyond the food initiative, transforming São Paulo into a circular capital.

The circular economy also provides opportunities to foster more sustainable land use, one that cultivates organic food from regenerative agriculture while ensuring income generation for farmers and protecting native rainforest. This path is transforming São Paulo into a green capital and enabling a just and equitable economy. As recognition of that, São Paulo received the title Ibero-American Green City from the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities (UCCI) this past September.

Communication and Public Engagement

In early May 2022, we hosted the inaugural Circular Economy Week in Latin America, offering a spectrum of circular economy panels with experts from academia, civil society, business, and the public sector. To engender broad public engagement with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), São Paulo hosted the first “ Virada” SDG Event in July 2022, with 10 event hubs throughout the city. Partnering our municipal school system, Virada brings meaningful education and understanding in the SDGs to our youth living across the farthest reaches of metropolitan São Paulo.

We believe that these types of events and public communication initiatives offer both the inspiration and the dialogue necessary to engaging our city's diverse stakeholders and to furthering effective policies. Yet more than that, education is one of the main pillars of this circular transition. It is only by fostering knowledge around climate change and the importance of sustainable business that we will be able to make the powerful shifts towards a circular economy. This is made possible with the help of schools, theatres, live events, televised talks shows, and even TV soap operas. All these platforms help us to address and engage with the range of topics at hand.

Conclusion

As you can see, São Paulo is harnessing many innovative solutions to address climate change and sustainability through a circular economy approach. From best practices to success cases, these initiatives create a whole series of incentives that drive the development of circular solutions for the city. For cities like São Paulo, there are incredible opportunities for wealth generation through the broad implementation of the circular economy and the ongoing dialogue between municipal leadership and citizens. We have a plan and a commitment with our community, and we are driven to deliver it.

Making the transition to a circular economy can provide a policy response for meeting the multiple crises of both climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, where cities can be the enablers of the systemic shift that is necessary. We understand the action that is needed. Yet to build lasting change, it is key to have everyone on board and committed to delivering impactful projects and policies for a greener future, with no one left behind.

That is our path. And along it, every citizen’s heart in São Paulo is beginning to embrace the circular economy.

PHOTO: Fábio Andrade | Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo

About the Author:

Marta Suplicy
Municipal Commissioner of International Affairs
City of São Paulo

Six Things Every Business Can Do to Waste Less Food

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 18:56:06 GMT

I focused my major in college on energy efficiency. It seemed so obvious—why use resources to produce more energy when we could figure out ways to use less? It was that same question that struck me years later when I was working on a sustainable agriculture project and stumbled upon numbers showing how much food was going to waste throughout our food system. I would speak with farmers and food companies and say, “This report says approximately 40% of food is going to waste, and 25% of our water is going to grow it—could that possibly be true?” They would think for a moment and respond, “Yeah, that sounds about right.” But they didn’t seem to think it was a problem. I was shocked that this amount of inefficiency in our food system was simply accepted. It was like energy efficiency, but for the food sector. Except no one was talking about it, let alone doing anything.

That was 10 years ago. People are now waking up to the issue of food waste, though we are still in the early days—just as energy efficiency was back in the 1970s. The ReFED Insights Engine indicates the U.S. let a huge 35% of food go unsold or uneaten in 2019 . That’s almost 90 billion meals’ worth of food , roughly 2% of the U.S. GDP.

The impacts of surplus food and food waste on our climate and natural resources are enormous. In fact, if global food waste were a country, it would be the third largest GHG emitter in the world. This is due to the methane produced from food decaying in landfills; the resources it takes to grow, transport, cool, and cook food even when it is ultimately disposed of; and the conversion of native ecosystems to agriculture.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) predicts the world will need to produce 56% more food in 2050 , which will require the conversion of rainforests and native grasslands into farmlands unless food systems become more efficient in using the food already being produced. Cutting food loss and waste in half could reduce that demand by more than 20%, saving natural ecosystems from conversion into agricultural land and saving massive GHGs. This is a big part of why Project Drawdown ranks reducing food waste as a top solution for mitigating climate change. And the co-benefits of this would include reducing freshwater use by 13%, reducing projected biodiversity losses by up to 33%, and avoiding conversion of natural ecosystems for a land area the size of Argentina.

Fortunately, food waste is a solvable problem and things are starting to move in the right direction. In the past few years, more than 200 food businesses have committed to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 to cut food loss and waste in half by 2030. Several of them are already achieving significant reductions: General Mills has cut food loss and waste within their operations by 24% since 2020, Kroger has cut it by 19% since 2017, and foodservice company Compass has achieved a 33% decrease since 2020.

So, what can you do as a sustainability leader to cut food waste at your own company—even if you’re not in the food business? Throughout your operations, your company likely manages huge amounts of food—at internal meetings, in your employee cafeterias and breakrooms, and at special events. You also may have the ability to influence what your vendors and suppliers do and what happens in the communities where you operate. Here are some easy actions to get you started:

Talk to Your Foodservice Vendors
While your foodservice vendors may have existing food waste diversion programs, they often need client support to implement necessary changes. Talk to your vendors to create joint reduction goals and open the discussion to learn where operational or contractual changes could lead to less waste, e.g., different requirements for end-of-service, offering half portions, flexibility in menus, and other steps.

Be Waste-Conscious When Planning Business Meetings and Events
Whether it’s a 20-person meeting or a large, multi-day conference, we’ve all seen the extra food sitting uneaten at the end. Reduce this by getting pre-orders from attendees for smaller meetings and when ordering catering, order slightly less than what you expect, as most meetings include absentees or attendees who choose not to eat. For larger events, hone guest counts as the event gets closer. Ask your caterer for options to reduce buffers, for some if not all dishes. And provide to-go containers for guests or staff to take leftovers home.

Measure and Set Targets
You manage what you measure—so determine your waste, evaluate its impact and the impact of taking more action, and then develop a plan to address it. Ask your foodservice vendor to be a partner in this. And include food waste reduction as part of your company’s greenhouse gas mitigation plan. Perhaps even consider adopting the international 2030 target and joining the U.S. Food Loss and Waste 2030 Champions program .

Educate Employees
Households are the largest source of food waste—according to ReFED’s analysis, 37% of all surplus food is generated in homes . Help your employees better manage their food through education and engagement programs. Studies show that consumers want to waste less food, they just don’t know how.

Establish Food Donation Relationships

Establish a relationship with one or more organizations that can pick up surplus food when needed. Often local governments or your local food bank will have a list of which groups are accepting donations. And be proactive about it so that you have a rescue partner ready when it’s needed—that way, good food won’t be waiting around while you are struggling to determine where it can go.

Recycle Food Scraps
Despite your best efforts to prevent food from going to waste, there will always be food scraps—bones, banana peels, etc. Compost them, send them to anaerobic digestion, or better yet, find animal feed outlets.

We all touch food. And we need more than the food industry to be involved if we are going to make a dent in this issue—and reap the environmental, economic, and social benefits that will come from it. That’s why it’s important to remember that you have the ability to make a real difference. Solutions exist to stop food waste. And you can use your leverage to get them adopted.

About the Author:

Dana Gunders
Executive Director, ReFED

Photo Credit:

ReFed

On the Move: Urban Mobility and Progress Towards the SDGs

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 18:24:48 GMT

Urban Mobility is a vehicle for global transformation and progress towards the SDGs. From the air we breathe to how we conduct our morning commutes, our relationship with our cities and life within urban hubs is constantly redefined through the changing modes of transport networks. However, the role of urban mobility goes far beyond getting us from point A to point B. City infrastructure and transport sectors present an opportunity to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

UN leaders from around the world are gathering in New York City this month at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development to discuss progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I cannot help but think about how our progress toward the SDGs is currently reflected in cities globally and the tangible impact urban mobility has on our capacity to continue to advance toward the goals.

The City and its Ecosystem of Leaders, Industries, and Citizens

Today according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), cities account for 80% of global GDP, two-thirds of global energy consumption, and more than 70% of annual global carbon emissions. Over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and this is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Cities underlie our progress toward the SDGs, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicts that 65% of SDG targets won’t be achieved without proper engagement with municipal and regional actors.

City leaders, together with transport authorities, play a critical role in the development of accessible, affordable, and efficient mobility infrastructure and services. For example, the European Commission's 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities scheme has signed on more than 100 European cities that have pledged to become climate-neutral by 2030. Besides conceiving, designing, and funding these mobility transformations, such public authority initiatives offer a platform for collaboration. The C40 Cities global network of mayors engages with over 10,000 businesses to capture value from public-private sector partnerships.

Various authorities, including the International Transport Forum at the OECD, have acknowledged that active participation of the broader urban ecosystem is required to achieve climate-neutral municipal transport, and this is further highlighted by this year’s HLPF’s focus on SDG 17 (Partnerships). Transportation, energy, manufacturing, and technology sectors drive construction, power infrastructure, and capitalize on advances in disruptive technologies. Naturally, in addition to multi-sector collaboration, a multi-stakeholder approach including citizens — who use public transport, purchase vehicles, and participate in the sharing economy — will be key to facilitating sustainable demand that will guarantee uptake, help finance upfront investments in urban mobility, and derive SDG-related benefits.

Driving Environmental and Societal Progress through Urban Mobility Solutions

As a sustainability professional, I am conscious of the intersections and synergies across the SDGs. In the context of urban mobility, the intersection of environmental and societal benefits becomes apparent through SDGs 7 (Affordable and clean energy) and 13 (Climate action), and SDGs 5 (Gender equality) — which is also a focus at this year's HLPF — and 8 (Decent work and economic growth).

During the recent pandemic-related lockdowns, where we witnessed improvements in air quality and traffic congestion in cities across the globe, I had the opportunity to work with the World Economic Forum on developing the System Value Framework , exploring cities in developed and developing markets. The analysis highlighted that government support to decarbonise Europe’s cities by transitioning to electrified transport has the potential to deliver approximately 64 metric tonnes of CO2 emission reductions, € 5 billion in human health benefits through reduced air pollution, and create just under 200,000 incremental jobs in 2030. The strategy entails increased investing in EV charging infrastructure and supporting smart charging mechanisms to unlock value from grid flexibility.

Beyond transport electrification, we are already seeing signs of these types of city transformations becoming a reality. These include metropolitan hubs such as Barcelona’s “ superblocks ”, investment in hydrogen buses and a pandemic-triggered expansion of cycling infrastructure . Through examples such as Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s instrumental role in developing the “ 15-minute cities ” vision, and Shenzhen’s innovative policies driving EV adoption, which I witnessed while attending the 2019 UNLEASH innovation lab on the SDGs, it is increasingly apparent that municipal governments play a critical role as catalysts for change. Cities offer enormous opportunity for innovation and can serve as testbeds for experimentation, which is particularly relevant in the context of the SDGs. Many municipal and regional actors have taken notice.

Nevertheless, the solutions that are unveiling in London or Paris cannot be replicated for the majority of the population around the world, particularly in developing economies. While the use cases may be similar, the challenges to solve are different. When it comes to public transport, newly developing cities face issues around population density, sparse transport links, and the need to travel long distances to arrive to employment hubs.

In regard to gender equality and economic inclusion, women and girls often face inadequate or no access to reliable, safe modes of public transport. Significant levels of harassment and violence against women are reported across transport systems globally. Safety provisions are critical to enabling women to travel freely, access work, and become financially independent. These issues rise to the top in cities with total populations of over 20 million. In countries around the world, I have experienced first-hand the feeling of unease when traveling alone at night on public transport. And while initiatives such as female-only carriages on trains provide a level of comfort, I am acutely aware of the progress that needs to be made to improve gender inclusiveness and safety across multimodal city transport.

Moving Forward

In this decisive decade, we require a transformative change in cities of all sizes and stages of development. While successful initiatives today demonstrate potential for replication, it is key to acknowledge the need to adapt to cultural, environmental, and economic nuances in order to deliver equitable climate action and societal progress.

We have less than 2,000 working days to achieve the targets set out in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As microcosms of these global challenges, cities are catalysts for change. From national and municipal government policies and initiatives, to benefits derived from multi-sector partnerships, it is evident that actors across the board need to come together. As end-users of urban mobility solutions, it is also up to us to demand action from our leaders and to demonstrate support for SDG-aligned mobility investments in the cities we call home.

About the Author:

Chhavi Maggu, MEng, SEP
Sustainability Strategy Manager at Accenture
ISSP Governing Board Treasurer

Photo Credit:

Pradamas Gifarry | Jakarta | Unsplash

Ocean Revitalization: Collective Business Action for the Ocean

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 18:18:15 GMT

The ocean has been the focus of my life and career, and World Oceans Day, which we celebrate on 8 June, is a chance to better understand our blue planet and how important the ocean is to all of us. And ever more so, it's a chance to look at what we need to do to ensure its future health and productivity. Although vast and diverse, the ocean is “out of sight and out of mind” for many, even though a broad range of ocean-related assets and economic activity provide goods and services that are critical to the whole of humanity.

My own interest and involvement in the ocean evolved from marine environmental science to coastal management and conservation, and then to focusing on the key industries and economic systems impacting our oceans. I see that engaging business, industry, and the investment community at a global scale is critical to ocean sustainable development — now and for its health in the years to come.

The international community recognized these links when it crafted the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The preamble to Agenda 2030 includes a focus on prosperity, ensuring that “all human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social, and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.” SDG 14 more specifically concentrates on the need to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.”

The Business of Ocean Sustainable Development

A brief look at the business end of the blue planet highlights just how big a role the ocean economy plays in supporting prosperity and sustainable development. Key factors include:

Healthy protein from fisheries for millions, especially in developing island and coastal countries, with an estimated 3 to 4 million fishing vessels around the world;
An increasing amount of food from aquaculture, which has been growing 7% per year in recent decades and is now producing 50% of seafood;
Subsistence and artisanal fisheries that supply essential food and livelihood for millions, especially in developing island and coastal countries;
Over 90% of international trade through cost- and carbon-efficient shipping via more than 80,000 merchant vessels crisscrossing the globe;
Ports and coastal infrastructure that all countries depend on for trade and economic development;
Offshore energy resources that supply a rapidly increasing amount of low-carbon wind energy, the promise of major wave, current and tidal energy, and up to 30% of hydrocarbons;
About 98% of international telecommunications, carried on more than 1.2 million kilometres of submarine cables;
Recreation and tourism options for every ocean interest, with cruise tourism growing at 8.5% per year in the decades before the pandemic;
Desalinated seawater to support coastal cities, with desalination supplying 90% of the freshwater in some countries;
Innovation and technology to discover and document biodiversity discoveries and ecosystem secrets in the deepest, darkest corners of our oceans—the furthest reaches and most extreme conditions of our blue planet.

However, human use of the ocean as well as increasingly impactful land-based activity are damaging our ocean and diminishing the prospects for sustainability. My own research and studies in years gone by have focused on these issues, such as nutrient pollution and algal overgrowth on coral reefs or the effects of sediment runoff from poor land use practices that smother coastal ecosystems.

The Need and Opportunity for Collective Business Action

To address these issues impacting our blue planet, we need to look at the ocean industries. Ocean industries operate in a fluid, three-dimensional, interconnected ocean space. This means that any and all industry activities, responsibilities, and impacts are also linked—as must be industry endeavors toward sustainable development. The best efforts by a single company or even a whole industry sector will not be enough to secure ocean health and productivity into the future.

This creates a compelling business case for industry leadership and collaboration in tackling ocean sustainability, stewardship, and science. Achieving the SDGs means other stakeholders must engage with the leadership of these industries and companies. We need collaboration to ensure businesses operate in a manner compatible with the balanced environmental and economic needs of both the local communities and the global ocean in which they operate.

As an example, the growth of organisms on the sides of ships, fishing boats, and other vessels (biofouling) often includes species that are not native to where those vessels eventually end up. This accidental import of alien species can cause major ecosystem disturbances and harm economic outcomes, such as introducing pathogens that can ultimately decimate shellfish farms. Tackling this problem requires a coordinated, multisector approach to detect and prevent these species transfers.

A Platform for Collective Ocean Action at a Global, Multi-Industry Scale

To foster and accelerate “Corporate Ocean Responsibility,” we're seeing at the World Ocean Council (WOC) an increasing number and range of ocean industry companies joining us from around the world. This international, multi-industry alliance for ocean stewardship and collaboration is working to identify the risks, the gaps, and the cross-sectoral, science-based solutions for ocean sustainable development.

For example, WOC is catalyzing cross-sector collaboration to assist fleets of merchant ships, fishing boats, aquaculture facilities, and wind farms to integrate standardized sensors into vessel hulls and platform structures. This enables the collection of ocean data to improve safety and environmental management, from predicting hurricanes to modelling current patterns.

For WOC's annual Sustainable Ocean Summit (SOS), launched in 2010, I developed the “Ocean Executive Forum,” a multi-sector panel of CEOs from the key maritime sectors, including shipping, fishing, aquaculture, and port management. This is the only forum bringing together business leaders from diverse ocean sectors — leaders who otherwise don't interact — to address ocean sustainability challenges and possibilities for shared solutions.

Overall, the WOC is fostering industry leadership, collaboration, and action on ocean sustainable development in ocean governance, marine spatial planning, marine sound, biofouling/marine invasive species, marine mammal impacts, plastics and marine debris, and the adaptation of ports and coastal infrastructure to sea level rise and extreme weather events.

The ocean is 71% of our planet’s surface and most of this is in areas beyond national jurisdiction. In other words, these vast areas of our blue planet are the high seas or interactional waters that constitute our global commons. As immense as the ocean is, much of it is in trouble and in dire need of revitalization. Given the diverse kinds of ocean activities across our global seas and the shared nature of this global public good, coordinated international business action is critical to the ocean's future — and thus for the health of our global ecosystem and for our global human community.

About the Author:

Paul Holthus, MA
Founding President and CEO
World Ocean Council

PHOTO:
Ronan Furuta | Port of Oakland, CA | Unsplash

The Biodiversity Conundrum: Building a Shared Future

Mon, 16 May 2022 01:23:05 GMT

It has taken the world almost 40 years to (largely) accept that climate change is happening, but the world doesn’t have another 40 years to accept that biological diversity faces accelerating diminution from anthropogenic behaviors. Biodiversity—its successes and its failures—is a critical sounding board for the long-term sustainability of all life, including human life, on our planet. Vicki Brady, MSc, FEIANZ, CEnvP, President of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand (EIANZ) and Environment Business Partner at AGL Energy, shares a call-to-action for environmental and sustainability practitioners everywhere: unite as we have never done before in a global, coordinated, and sustained effort to use the best science we have to advance positive ecological projects.The UN International Day for Biological Diversity is 22 May, this year tackling the theme of Building a shared future for all life. Biodiversity—its successes and its failures—is a critical sounding board for the long-term sustainability of all life, including human life, on our planet.

As a Scot now living in Australia, I have been exposed to the biodiversity across northern Europe, the tropics of Far North Queensland, drought-ridden Central and Southern Queensland, and beyond.

As an environmental scientist, I am familiar with the vast spectrum of Australia’s and the region's uniquely rich biodiversity. Australia is home to an estimated 300,000 species, of which only one-third have been described. This includes 250 species of native animals, 550 species of birds, 680 species of reptiles, 190 species of our wonderful frogs, and more than 2,000 species of fish. The remainder comprises invertebrates, including insects.

Our neighbor across the Tasman Sea, Aotearoa New Zealand, is home to an estimated 70,000 terrestrial flora and fauna species. The relative geographical isolation of New Zealand also means that many of these species are endemic, including over 80% of the 2,500 species of native conifers, flowering plants, and ferns. And let’s not forget the descendant of the Triassic Period, the delightful tuatara, which until 2008 had not successfully bred on the New Zealand mainland in over 200 years.

Looking further to our neighboring nations of the Pacific Islands, we see some of the most complex and richest terrestrial and marine ecosystems on Earth, inhabited by small populations living largely off the land and in collaboration with the biodiversity around them.

Climate and biodiversity: an interrelationship

All this—and biodiversity everywhere—is at risk. As is our human population across the globe. We can no longer think of environmental values as individual criterion on the local scale. Climate change is threatening species survival, habitat success, water temperatures, and seasonality across our planet. We are an interwoven, global melting pot of biological needs.

Up to half of the current global biodiversity is at risk of extinction in the next 200 years. That won’t take a generation to resolve. Someone much better at modelling than I am tells me it will take approximately one million years to recover from that level of biodiversity loss.

Climate change and biodiversity go hand in hand. Ecosystem health is essential to mitigating our climate crisis; and the climate crisis accelerates our diminishing biodiversity. It has taken the world almost 40 years to (largely) accept that climate change is happening, but the world doesn’t have another 40 years to accept that biological diversity is being impacted by anthropogenic behaviors. I'm confident we don't need that long.

The Game of Tetris

We must draw upon the knowledge of our First Nations Peoples, regardless of our global region. I would argue even further that we could consider the pre-human environment in some cases to assist with dramatic, yet ecologically beneficial, reforestation of historically cleared areas. Incorporating these techniques into our agricultural practices can lead to a net positive outcome for the environment. Reducing our reliance on chemical treatments and working with more traditional methods where possible will enable biological benefits from insects, birds, and native plants.

I paint somewhat a bleak picture, and I do so to drive home the urgency of action that is required to deliver the outcomes the Australasian Region, as well as the planet, requires for our success. But it’s not all bad.

Globally, we see the greening of urban areas with rooftop spaces, community gardens, and canopy cover commitments. We see projects incorporating biodiversity into design through fauna bridges, from the simplest rope bridges to complex habitat structures over tunnels. Legacy mine pits are repurposed for recreational water activities and for pumped hydro projects in the renewable energy and storage industry, reducing the ecological footprint of renewable projects advancing decarbonization. Simple ideas being applied to solve complex problems will continue to benefit all living things.

And offsets? Here in Australia, offsets are notoriously complicated and triggering an industry of regulation and compliance. To optimize impacts, any site must be monitored to understand if we are contributing to a net loss or a net gain. It’s time to invest in ecological monitoring: camera traps, time-lapse videos, acoustic monitoring, community groups, professional teams, and volunteers to ensure offsets are well implemented, tracked, and successful. Offsets aren’t the solution to our problems, but they contribute to mitigating biological impacts.

We are all on the same team

Writing to you from my home in a post-flood Brisbane, Queensland, where many families remain displaced, I look to us all for what we can do to mitigate impacts from the climatic changes that each one of us is now experiencing as part of life. Embracing positive ecological projects, such as reforestation and planting of mangroves, as well as appropriate fire management, we can work together to reduce impacts caused by climate change and to steward our potential for ecosystem health.

I have been privileged to represent the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand (EIANZ) in various roles for almost 14 years and now serve as President. I invite environmental and sustainability practitioners everywhere to unite as we have never done before in a global, coordinated, and sustained effort to use the best science we have. We must harness the knowledge, understanding, expertise, passion, and ingenuity of practitioners around the world.

Nature underpins our lives. It underpins our very existence. Biodiversity and its success are fundamental to our social, economic, environmental, cultural, recreational, and spiritual well-being. Can you think of another system in which just being in it is scientifically demonstrated to improve mental and physical health? National parks, state forests, beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, the ocean—we are all part of biodiversity.

Humans must remember, and it is our job as environmental and sustainability professionals to ensure, we are but one (albeit numerous) species in the biodiverse place that we call Earth.

PHOTO: Loretta Rosa | Blue Mountains, NSW | Unsplash

About the Author:

Vicki Brady, MSc, FEIANZ, CEnvP
President, Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand
Environment Business Partner, AGL Energy

Empowering Women and Girls and Addressing One of the Most Pressing Global Challenges

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 01:12:35 GMT

Without the balanced socio-economic empowerment of women and girls, building a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable future is an impossibility. On the occasion of Earth Day 2022, Shannon P Marquez, PhD, MEng, Dean of Global Engagement at Columbia University; Faculty, Columbia Climate School and Mailman School of Public Health, encourages us all to choose a regenerative future through empowering women and girls and addressing one of the most pressing global challenges in our lifetime—universal access to water and sanitation.Annually on April 22nd, we celebrate Earth Day and reaffirm its mission of environmental stewardship, calling on the world to make transformative change to protect our planet and all people; an act that is inherently dependent upon gender equality. Without the balanced socio- economic empowerment of women and girls, building a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable future is an impossibility. Accordingly, on the occasion of Earth Day 2022, which this year has a theme Invest in Our Planet, I encourage us all to reflect on this moment to act boldly to choose a prosperous, equitable and sustainable future through empowering women and girls and addressing one of the most pressing global challenges in our lifetime—universal access to water and sanitation. Our commitment to this bold endeavor—to invest in our planet through the lens of gender equality and social inclusion and the sustainable provision of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for all—has to extend far beyond raising awareness and knowledge of issues of global concern. It has to further environmental stewardship.

Annually on April 22nd, we celebrate Earth Day and reaffirm its mission of environmental stewardship, calling on the world to make transformative change to protect our planet and all people; an act that is inherently dependent upon gender equality. Without the balanced socio- economic empowerment of women and girls, building a healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable future is an impossibility. Accordingly, on the occasion of Earth Day 2022, which this year has a theme Invest in Our Planet, I encourage us all to reflect on this moment to act boldly to choose a prosperous, equitable and sustainable future through empowering women and girls and addressing one of the most pressing global challenges in our lifetime—universal access to water and sanitation. Our commitment to this bold endeavor—to invest in our planet through the lens of gender equality and social inclusion and the sustainable provision of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for all—has to extend far beyond raising awareness and knowledge of issues of global concern. It has to further environmental stewardship.

Achieving SDG 6 and the Targets Enabled by WASH

We need to empower leaders to understand how the global water crisis impacts their own lives and what can be done to “leave no one behind” and promote transformational change at the individual, household, institutional (e.g. schools and health facilities), community, and societal levels. The numbers speak for themselves: 785 million people still lack access to basic water services, more than 2 billion people worldwide do not have access to basic sanitation (over 25% of the global population), and 3 billion people worldwide lack adequate facilities to safely wash their hands at home. Addressing the global water crisis incorporates gender equality and social inclusion principles and approaches, such as achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” by 2030, as well as the SDGs and targets enabled by WASH, including: reducing poverty and achieving universal access to basic services (1.1 and 1.2); ending all forms of malnutrition (2.2); ending preventable child deaths, combating neglected tropical diseases and waterborne diseases, and achieving universal health coverage (3.2, 3.3, 3.8 and 3.9); providing safe and inclusive learning environments (4a); ending violence against women and girls and reducing gender inequality (5.2 and 5.4); ensuring adequate, safe and affordable housing for all (11.1) and reducing deaths caused by disasters (11.5), all of which are supposed to be universally relevant and applicable in all countries.

Leaving No One Behind Means Addressing Gender Inequalities

I believe that water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are fundamental for human well-being and universal access must be ensured to achieve positive outcomes to health, education, livelihood, dignity, safety, and gender equality. Among the millions of people who lack a basic drinking- water service, and billions who lack access to basic sanitation services, a large proportion are poor and living in low-income rural communities. Moreover, the lack of access to WASH affects women and girls disproportionately. This negatively impacts the education of girls, possibilities for improved public health, and the reduction of health disparities—all essential for socio- economic development.

I have seen first-hand that in many low-income countries, women and girls are negatively impacted by a lack of private and safe sanitation facilities, particularly for menstrual hygiene; in addition, maternal and child health are also seriously affected by inadequate WASH—for example sepsis is considered one of the biggest causes of neonatal mortality , largely due to unhygienic practices during childbirth. In this regard, menstrual health and hygiene (MHH)— which is at the nexus of WASH—is vital to the empowerment and well-being of women and girls worldwide. This requires more than just access to sanitary pads and appropriate toilets, but also includes ensuring women and girls live in an environment that values and supports their ability to manage their menstruation with dignity. Further, household sanitation facilities or water on premises are thought to decrease risks of violence associated with open defecation or water collection. Accordingly, there is consensus that gender inequalities related to WASH are particularly large , as women and girls experience strong gendered norms surrounding water and sanitation, such as expectations of fetching water, caregiving, and hygiene roles within the household and community. And some anecdotal evidence demonstrates that “ gender and power relations within WASH interventions has also been shown to improve women’s self- confidence in intra-household relations, participation in society, and community-level decision making . ” Easily accessible WASH is thought to increase women’s economic opportunities and economic empowerment as there is less time and energy spent on unpaid work and women have more time for productive or leisure activities. Inadequate water supply results in substantial opportunity costs for women, including time available for child-care, food preparation, household hygiene, and income generation.

Empowering Women and Girls Through Transformative WASH

Finally, the empowerment of women and girls through transformative WASH can also promote economic empowerment and ensure women and girls the opportunity to make choices and actionable decisions for themselves, their households, and communities, including:

the safe management and access to WASH infrastructure and services that reflect the needs of women and girls, including MHH;
shifts in attitudes regarding harmful gender norms and roles within the household, which has the potential to also reduce gender-based violence;
decreasing the health burden related to gender and social inequality, including decreasing rates of diarrhea and other infectious diseases at the individual and household level;
girls attending, actively participating in, and succeeding in school as well as more time for women and girls to pursue economic endeavors since there is less time required to haul water;
economic empowerment through WASH entrepreneurship and productive water uses;
balanced participation in WASH decision-making at the household and community level; and
women voicing their expectations and influence in decision-making within the WASH sector.

Above all, investing in our planet by advancing the empowerment of women and girls through transformative WASH can create a dignified, enabling environment where equitable policies and systems can allow women and girls to reach their full potential.

PHOTO: Shannon P Marquez | India

About the Author:

Shannon P Marquez, PhD, MEng
Dean of Global Engagement, Columbia University
Faculty, Water Center-Columbia Climate School, Environmental Health Sciences-Mailman School of Public Health

Corporate Water Strategy: Where We Were and Where We're Going

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 01:01:35 GMT

When it comes to water management, compliance and stewardship, where did we start and where are we going?

After over twenty years of experience in corporate sustainability and water strategy consulting, it is clear that water management and regulatory compliance alone is no longer a viable corporate water strategy. There is now a pressing need to address “outside the fence line” water issues, such as scarcity, poor quality, inequity in access to safe drinking water, and the impacts of climate change. While regulatory compliance for water and associated management practices are the cornerstone of a corporate water strategy, they do not deliver the full value to corporations, communities, and other stakeholders.

My view is that one of the initial, and perhaps the most publicized, water stewardship strategies was The Coca-Cola Company’s (TCCC) “Replenish” strategy. In 2007, TCCC set an aspirational 2020 goal to safely return to nature and to communities an amount of water equivalent to what the company uses annually in all its beverages and their production ( Water Stewardship and Replenish Report, 2011 ). They beat their 2020 goal by five years ( Beverage Daily, 2016 ). In 2016, this strategy and set of goals achieved replenishment of approximately 191.9 billion liters of water to local watersheds and communities across 71 countries—which, according to the company, was the equivalent to 115 percent of the water used in its finished beverage products the previous year.

This was a pivotal event in moving from water as regulatory compliance and “inside the fence line” management issue. Since the launch of TCCC’s replenish strategy, many more companies have moved to water stewardship strategies and some also framed their strategies as “replenish.”

Where We Are: Water Stewardship and Net Zero

Water stewardship has taken root with most multinational companies across a range of industry sectors adopting this strategy to manage risks outside the fence line. Water stewardship is no longer only a strategy for consumer-facing companies. Now sectors such as mining, semiconductors, heavy manufacturing, and information and communication technology companies are building leading water-stewardship strategies.

However, we are again at a pivotal stage in how companies manage water as a critical resource for their supply chains, operations, and engagement with their customers, communities, and workforces. There are two trends that I consider to be significant in this regard: The move to “net zero” for water ( GreenBiz, 2022 ) and a focus on watershed health.

First, net-zero for water. Several companies are now approaching water strategy in a similar manner as they approach climate change. The primary challenges with a net-zero strategy for water are that: 1) water is not fungible, and the spatially and temporally dynamic nature of water means that, unlike a common, global carbon pool, water is not the same from one location to another; and 2) net-zero is a concept rooted in target-setting and reporting. Water is more complex than carbon and has attributes, such as social and spiritual dimensions, that make a net-zero strategy for water more complex.

Second, a focus on watershed health initiatives. Companies such as PepsiCo and ABInBev are focusing on investments in watershed health to build sustainable and resilient communities and supply chains ( PepsiCo and Water and Water Stewardship | AB InBev ). This is an important movement and focus as several companies are looking at watersheds holistically and supporting the scaling of innovative digital technologies to measure water quality, quantity, supply chain performance, and productivity on a real-time basis.

Where We're Going: Innovation and Impact

Companies are increasingly focusing on investment in technology innovation and quantifying the positive impact of their water stewardship strategies. This trend is driven largely by the launch of corporate venture and innovation programs designed to accelerate the identification and deployment of innovative technologies. For example, ABInBev launched the 100+ Accelerator and PepsiCo launched PepsiCo Labs . Notable is that the 100+ Accelerator program now includes The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, and Colgate Palmolive.

Companies are also focusing on how digital technologies can deliver real-time data in watersheds to better manage crop productivity ( CropX ), water use ( N-Drip ), and surface water quality ( Gybe Water Quality ). This trend will continue as companies better integrate water strategies into their business strategies to support growth and build sustainable and resilient supply chains and communities in which they operate.

The journey from water management to water stewardship to water strategy, fully integrated into a business strategy, is illustrated in Figure 1, below.

Water is no longer solely an issue of regulatory compliance. It is now a critical resource that fuels business growth, economic development, social well-being, and ecosystem health.

Going forward, we must accelerate how multinationals engage with innovation in public policy, technology, education, and awareness, and increase diversity and entrepreneurship in the water sector. There are a few companies bold enough today to venture into investing in changing the status quo beyond current strategies to reduce their water footprint. There is an opportunity to do more. And we must capitalize on it now.

TOP PHOTO: Inge Maria | Unsplash

About the Author:

Will Sarni
Founder & CEO, Water Foundry
Founder & General Partner, Colorado River Basin Fund

ISSB's Impacts on Sustainability Officers

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 17:36:58 GMT

The ISSB can make Chief Sustainability Officers more relevant or less relevant. They Have to Choose.

My friend Bhakti Mirchandani has written about the historical significance of the creation of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). She is absolutely right about this. Sustainability is going mainstream in the corporate and investment communities, and the ISSB will help to further accelerate this. It will give us the same high-quality standards for measuring and reporting on sustainability performance that we have for financial performance. Along with this will go much higher-quality internal control and measurement systems and, ultimately, the same degree of internal and external audit rigor that goes into the financial statements. Finally, financial and sustainability reporting will be on par in terms of quality and relevance. This will enable true integrated reporting. Companies and investors will be able to rigorously understand how sustainability performance and financial performance contribute to each other. There are still those locked into an ideology that sustainability = philanthropy, despite the growing body of empirical evidence that a focus on a company's material ESG issues contributes to financial performance.

All good news, right? Ironically, maybe not for Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs), by whatever name, who fail to appreciate how much the ISSB is going to change their lives. Ironically, the ISSB could make the role of CSO less relevant. And, let’s be honest, while most companies proclaim their deep commitment to sustainability, the role of the CSO is often a marginal one when it comes to resources, seat at the executive table, and influence on strategic and capital allocation decisions. The ISSB could make the situation worse. Or it could make it much better. It all depends on how a CSO decides to handle this, and his or her relationship with the CFO.

I will explain this more, but first let me put this in some historical perspective. I think it’s fair to say that I am one of the earliest enthusiasts for an International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), going back 30 years. I started working in the domain of sustainability reporting, without knowing it by name 30 years ago. Long before it was fashionable. It was a marginal, erratic, fringe activity until the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) came along in 1997 and started to put intellectual credibility and structure to the concept.

More acronyms came along, and subsequent years have seen the formation of CDP (2000), the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB-2007), the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC-2010; I was one of the founders), the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB-2011; I was the Founding Chairman), and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD-2015). The IFRS Foundation, much to my happy surprise, issued its consultation for the ISSB in September of 2020, just two years after my Oxford colleague Richard Barker and I published our Green Paper “ Should FASB and IASB be responsible for setting standards for nonfinancial information? ” This paper was the basis of a heated debate at the Oxford Union. While the “Ayes” supporting mandated corporate sustainability reporting carried the day about two-to-one, it was far from a unanimous vote.

During these past three decades, we had two conversations going on. One was between the CEO, CFO, and Head of Investor Relations with shareholders. These conversations were all about financial performance and financial materiality defined in a narrow sense. The other was between the CSO and the company’s stakeholders, where materiality was defined in broader terms that typically included both “single materiality” (what matters to investors) and “double materiality” (what matters to stakeholders in terms of making the world a better or worse place). While this distinction is still relevant, and the ISSB is focused on single materiality, the line is a blurry one and can change quickly through dynamic materiality .

Over a very short period of time, the IIRC and SASB merged to form the Value Reporting Foundation, which is being consolidated into the ISSB. It was recently announced that the same will happen with CDSB, and the TCFD framework will also inform the work of the ISSB. A Chair (Emmanuel Faber), Vice Chair (Sue Lloyd), and Special Advisor to the Chair (Janine Guillot) have been named. Soon the ISSB will issue its exposure drafts for climate and sustainability reporting in general. Sustainability reporting will move from the land of NGOs and done so on a voluntary basis to the land of securities regulators and done on a mandated basis.

Investors are eager for this to happen, because they will finally have the high quality and comparable information they need on a company’s sustainability performance. And who will they talk to about this? The same people they’ve been talking to before — the CEO, CFO, and Head of IR. Of course, this will raise challenges for those used to talking to investors. They will have to learn to talk sustainability performance and show its relevance to financial performance. This will not be easy. Sustainability is a complex domain covering a broad range of environmental and social issues, and it doesn’t have (yet) anything like the underlying framework of double-entry bookkeeping. But this can be learned. And these people have the advantage of already having credibility with the investment community. They also have a big incentive to become bilingual. The portfolio managers who make the buy and sell decisions are learning how to integrate material sustainability factors into their investment decisions.

I can envision the ironic scenario where the CSO becomes more fringe as sustainability continues its move into the mainstream of corporate and investor decisions. The way things stand now in most companies, the CSO will not be part of the conversation. Sure, he or she will continue to engage with stakeholders and report on double materiality issues, but the center of gravity of the sustainability conversation will shift to the increasingly bilingual finance folks.

It doesn’t have to be that way. So, what is a CSO to do? The answer is a simple one. Learn to talk financial performance and show how it is related to sustainability performance. It’s no harder to learn finance than sustainability. It’s probably easier. Think hard about the cause-and-effect relationships between different factors of sustainability performance and different factors of financial performance. Think hard about the relevant time frames. Think hard about how to work with the CFO to implement integrated thinking in the company so that integrated reporting contributes to internal decision making, rather than being the after-the-fact ornament it is in most cases.

One last thought. There has been an ongoing debate about who the CSO should report to. Obviously, there’s no single right answer to this. I do think there are wrong answers, like marketing, PR, and public policy. Sure, it’s always good to report to the CEO. Everyone wants to.

But my vote is for the CSO to report to the CFO. There are two good reasons for doing so. The first is that it will facilitate mutual bilingual learning. The second is that CFOs know all about standards and the rigorous internal control and measurement systems for implementing these standards and reporting on them. Sustainability reporting needs a big upgrade here, and the ISSB will make this possible.

CSOs are at a juncture. They can stay in the world they’re comfortable with. They’ll still be respected, but their voice will be less. Or they can stretch themselves and become more of the conversation with the stakeholder called shareholders. The choice is theirs.

Photo: TJBauman

About the Author:

Robert G. Eccles, PhD
Visiting Professor of Management Practice, Said Business School, University of Oxford

Three New Year’s Resolutions Inspired by COP 26 Failure

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 01:47:05 GMT

The August Intergovernmental Panel report (IPCC) report, Climate Change 2021 , was a code red for humanity. The November COP 26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, was billed as humanity’s last and best chance to keep the all-important goal—of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—alive. The press hyped it as an opportunity to avert climate catastrophe. The urgency was clear. Hopes were high.

Instead, the Glasgow Climate Pact signed at the end of COP 26 calls upon countries to (1) transition towards “low-emission” energy sources, (2) escalate efforts to “phase down” “unabated” coal power, and (3) phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. There is malevolent wiggle room in all three resolutions. They have no deadlines, no teeth, and no urgency.

A friend suggested that if I could get past the profanities, I might enjoy the biting humor in Jonathan Pie: The World's End and its damnation of COP 26 dynamics. I did. I expect that climate scientists identify with the despair of the astronomers in Don’t Look Up about their warnings of impending catastrophe not being taken seriously by governments. Me too.

The Bitter Takeaways

The good news is that I learned three hard lessons from the 26th COP-out.

The fossil fuel lobby is awesomely powerful. The fossil fuel industry lobbyists constituted a larger delegation (503) than any single country. For the last 25 COPs, they have managed to prevent final agreements from acknowledging that climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

We can’t rely on national governments to fix climate change. Conferences Of the Parties (COPs) convene U.N. member states. According to new research from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), national governments subsidized the production and burning of coal, oil, and gas by $5.9 Trillion in 2020. How can we trust national governments to prevent a crime against humanity that they are using our tax dollars to abet?
Country-level pledges are unreliable. Countries bring their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to COPs, pledging to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) contributions to the climate crisis. However, these pledges are not legally binding commitments nor are they adequate Even if countries kept their COP 26 NDC pledges, temperatures would rise 2.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—well above the danger threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Target Demand Reduction

For me, these are very inconvenient truths. They engendered feelings of despair, even a temptation to give up. If I can’t rely on national governments to straight-arm the fossil fuel lobby and stop the production of fossil fuels, what hope is there?

Yet, realistically, expecting COP 26 to be any more effective than the previous 25 COPs is akin to Charlie Brown’s wishful thinking that Lucy won’t pull the football away . It’s time to wake up and use a different strategy. Instead of sitting back and relying on national governments to cut back the supply of polluting fossil fuels, we need to roll up our sleeves and reduce the demand for them.

The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stones; it ended because we developed better technologies that made stone-based technologies obsolete. The fossil fuel age will not end because we run out of fossil fuels; it will end because we have transitioned from a fossil fuel-powered economy to a renewable energy-powered economy. We need to make fossil fuel energy unnecessary, unwanted.

The transition to “net-zero” is all about reducing demand by weaning ourselves off our dependence on fossil fuels. As defined by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) , businesses meet the Net-Zero Standard by cutting their GHG emissions 50% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. The net-zero movement is a fossil fuel demand-reducing movement. Perfect.

The Road to Net-Zero: Influence The Influencers

But how do we get a critical mass of businesses to commit to reduce their GHGs 50% by 2030? Best would be to follow the money and influence the influencers. So, my three New Year’s resolutions are to work with influencers to:

Convince buyers to use sustainable procurement, which requires suppliers to disclose their sustainability performance, and then give preferential treatment to suppliers that are taking the most action to reduce their GHGs.
Convince stock exchanges and investors to require listed companies to disclose the risk of climate-related impacts on their financials, as well as their plans to mitigate those financial impacts by taking action to reduce their GHGs.
Convince bankers to offer sustainability-linked loans, which require borrowers to disclose their sustainability performance, and then give preferential treatment to borrowers that are taking the most action to reduce their GHGs.

Companies will want to improve their sustainability scores, lower their GHGs, and transition away from fossil fuels so that they qualify for favored treatment from buyers, investors, and bankers.

Unleash Market Forces

Is this wishful thinking? Not at all. Some buyers, investors and bankers are already doing these things. We have the necessary tools and expertise to help more do the same. Our challenge is to quickly scale our efforts so that a critical mass of buyers, investors, and bankers adopt these practices. This will unleash market forces that mobilize a global critical mass of companies’ self-serving drive to net-zero demand for fossil fuels.

Can we pull this off? I’m not sure, but I’m going to have fun trying, and will start with the deployment of sustainable procurement at federal and municipal levels. As well, I plan to offer webinars that help others assess whether similar tactics could be useful in their own sustainability champion efforts. Glasgow made clear: it's up to us. Let's go.

PHOTO: Pradamas Gifarry | Unsplash | Ratchathewi District, Bangkok

About the Author:

Bob Willard, PhD, SEP
Chief Sustainability Champion & Founder, Sustainability Advantage
ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree

What’s the Story on the Rights of Humans?

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 01:40:16 GMT

Human rights are rights we all have because we exist, we live, we breathe. They are not given by a state or religion or other body of power. They are inherent and universal to us all, regardless of nationality, gender, ethnicity, religious practices, color, or any other label and have been codified in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Human rights range from the most basic—food, education, health, housing, work, the right to live, and liberty—to the right to choose how one participates in and is entitled to that realization for their dignity. These fundamental rights push back against the concept of the “other.” As long as we are alive, we share this world, we blend.

These rights and how they are enacted are supported by Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarks at the Tenth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights held at U.N. Headquarters in 1958. Having served as the first Chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, she acknowledges that we must all strive to ensure that these rights are available to all. She states that the work starts at very intimate levels:

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. [...] Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt, United Nations, 1958

Who is the other?

In a time of discord and division, it can seem all too easy to blame or focus on “otherness” as the root of our difficulties. What box do people want to put me in? There have been times of unity between Muslims, Christians, Jews, people whose skin might be some shade of black, brown, red, yellow, or white, where harmonious interaction and life side by side created the opportunity for growth in civilization. Sadly, today few of our societies emulate that perspective. Too often, we allow deep fear to serve as our guide. Much of our world population cannot “see” the other and, out of “other” fear, we choose to dehumanize those who seem different. That allows us to treat people as a detached number, it allows us to not feel pain when “the other” is erased, all because they seem to be different from us.

Let’s reset and get to know each other

In my work as a consultant on legacy development and philanthropy, and as a board member for Refugees International and Advisory board member for the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, the rights of humans are always at the forefront of my attention. For example, when the work is in respect of financial resources for the underserved, the first questions that arise are: who, what and how will financial resources for the underserved be accessed? Who will direct those opportunities? If the work is around food security, the same question will arise. The narrative becomes a dilemma of causality: who has the right to access food and who controls the access to something as fundamental as food. If you are hungry, you may also be ill and unable to participate in education options, economic activity. What has happened to the human rights of those affected?

As a result, I have become invested in and intertwined with human rights and inequality reduction. How we choose, as professionals in sustainability, to support the rights of those impacted may need to be re-evaluated or changed up to reignite options and opportunities. Going back to Eleanor Roosevelt, it starts in small places. It is how we chose to treat each other, how we participate. In a presentation and discussion by a group of thought leaders from a variety of fields in 2019, I came to appreciate how human rights are not a zero-sum game. As one participant stated, no one loses their rights when everyone else has theirs. However, it is easy to fall into the quagmire of which right has privilege over another. A new social contract is needed so that individuals and communities can imagine coming together, working together, helping each other in times of need or plenty, and sharing the same environment for the benefit of all, prioritizing their communal needs.

The value of personal narrative

Sharing our personal stories or narrative allows us to find places of connection and shared interest, thereby taking away the fear of the unknown and allowing reflection on the path ahead. In all the work that one may do to further human rights, the telling of stories can guide how we might navigate or pivot with respect to implications and challenges of choosing civil and political rights over economic, social, and cultural rights, for example. Stories allow us to connect at deep levels and share commonalities, creating new relationships, connecting communities and perspectives. In my journey, I talk to people on the subways of New York, because I want to know their stories. A compliment on a pair of shoes gave me a gift. With enthusiasm, the wearer told me that her shoes were originally her wedding shoes in Pakistan. Each wearing, she is reminded of her home in Pakistan and what she has created in New York, her journey—first as a refugee, now as a teacher. The shoes remind her of the rights she has now versus those denied her in her home country, and she relayed that she will go back if she feels she would be able to participate safely as she does in New York. This exchange was a reminder for me of the importance of work in human rights.

What you can do today

As you consider Human Rights Day this year, consider one thing you could do that would have a positive impact on one person, or reflect on what you would be willing to give up to allow someone else to experience a better life. Sometimes we are so deeply connected to the work we lead that we lose sight of cognitive biases or of small opportunities around us that can lead to more impactful insights and results. Take a few moments to reflect on your work, put yourself in the shoes of others and imagine their lives from another vantage and how your efforts support beneficial changes in their life. Engage your colleagues, their perspectives are likely to be different, even if nuanced. Would you change anything you do in order to make one person’s life better, today, this week, this month, this quarter, this year? Each small act of kindness, compassion, and empathy begets another and brings us closer to realizing the rights of others.

We all live our lives within the parameters we grow up with and what we have experienced, with what we chose to keep and what we chose to discard. Are you religious or not, carnivore or not, wealthy or not, of color or not? Using such designations allows us to separate and believe we have nothing in common with each other. Fundamentally, regardless of where we live, we all want the same things in life: to participate in our lives, that of our families and our community and the larger world; to be able to care for ourselves and for our families, to feel safe and loved, to be able to live with ourselves. Our journeys may be different, yet where we end up is much the same place.

Enabling human rights is essential to creating sustainable development opportunities across the globe. The lack of access to basic rights and resources impedes populations' economic participation. And the lack of economic possibilities hampers access to the basics that sustain healthy communities. It feels a little like the chicken and the egg conundrum. By staying people-focused we have the opportunity to create the change we seek, inclusive of all the rights of humans while re-imagining development.

PHOTO: Radek Homola | Unsplash | Deserted refugee camp in Calais, France

About the Author:

Liz Stern
Board Member, Refugees International
Advisory Board Member, Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities

I’m Only Six—You Figure it Out!

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 01:37:14 GMT

I rarely disagree with Greta Thunberg, but—while she won’t know it—we temporarily parted ways over the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. Before the event even opened its doors, she had insisted that: "We are tired of [leaders'] blah, blah, blah." And of course I agreed. Later she said that the event was a "PR exercise"—and, again, I agreed. Of course it was. Pretty much everyone we met there was doing PR of some sort.

But then she insisted, before the summit had closed its doors, that COP26 was a "failure.”

Hold on a minute, I thought as I trudged along as part of the rainswept Fridays4Future march she would shortly address. My instant reaction was to conclude: “No! No. 1, it’s too soon to know. And No. 2, COP26 may just have succeeded in opening a window on a very different political landscape.” An unintentional, but critical outcome.

A Place for Youth

COP26, I believe, marked the crossing of a critical psychological threshold, indeed a political threshold, where older people who run—and have often screwed up—the planet are being forced to acknowledge that young people should have a voice. Will have a voice.

The question now is not so much whether, but where, when and how?

But first let’s step back in time to consider how young people fared in earlier stages of our industrial economies. Some days before our CEO and I joined the 100,000 people of all ages at the Climate March, I rode the train to Glasgow. As we sped north, I began reading Jeremy Paxman’s new book on the critical role coal played in Britain’s rise to global power. Fascinating.

Black Gold begins with an early example of the truly awful price that endless mining communities paid in life and limb. The book’s opening pages tell the frightful story of the Hartley mining disaster of 1862. This single catastrophe created 103 widows and left 257 children and 47 dependent adults with no means of support. The ages of the dead ranged from seventy-one down to ten—indeed, a single family lost seven children and teenagers.

Clearly, the Industrial Revolution was no paradise for young people, but perhaps they had it easy in contrast to the future prospects of many young people now alive as the consequences of all the coal, oil, and gas we have burned come home to roost.

It was striking, in fact, how many voices at COP26 were busily heralding the end of coal as a fuel. New agreements unveiled in Glasgow included a pledge signed by 25 countries, including the United States and Canada, to stop public financing of overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022. The UK also unveiled its Global Coal to Clean Power Transition, featuring new commitments from 23 countries, including Poland, South Korea, and Indonesia, to phase out coal power.

One Minute to Midnight

"Today, I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight," said Alok Sharma, President of COP26, but where were the biggest coal-burners, China in particular? Conspicuous by their absence—and busily burning more coal than ever in the midst of the latest energy crisis.

"It's one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock, and we need to act now,“ intoned Britain’s Johnson, no great friend of climate action in the past. “If we don't get serious about climate change today, it will be too late for our children to do so tomorrow." Well-informed people in his audience knew that he was actively considering the first new coal mine in the country since decades.

Dubbed “a clown” by some politicians from other countries, he was soon enmired in yet another “sleaze” scandal, very much of his own making. And his declared, laudable intention of “uniting the world to tackle climate change” proved something of a damp squib—with the presidents of countries like China and Russia, no slouches when it comes to burning fossil fuels, refusing to even show up in Glasgow.

But one theme kept surfacing in my brain as I watched fireworks screech into Glasgow’s night skies for several nights running, first for Diwali, then for Guy Fawkes night. In headlines: the shape of a new and very different political settlement is now beginning to emerge. Yes, in places like New Delhi, with millions of people ignoring firework bans, air pollution monitors literally went off the scale as toxic clouds built up across the region. But, as they say, it often gets darker just before the dawn.

You Figure it Out!

It’s interesting how some major businesses are now picking up on the theme of child eco-anxiety and activism. An Amazon TV ad currently running has young people from around the world encouraging businesses to clean up their act. And one line that still rattles around my brain came from a small boy awed by the scale of what needs to be done to fix all of this: “I’m only six!” he protests. “You figure it out!”

One afternoon, I walked out to the Green Zone in Glasgow’s Science Centre. There I watched a new film, Here We Are , designed to get children thinking about our home planet. Based on a book by Oliver Jeffers, who took the audience through a range of iPad-based drawing exercises during the Apple-sponsored event, the film contained well-rehearsed lines like, “Take care of our planet—it’s the only one we’ve got!” But I was forcefully impressed by the quality of Apple TV+ production—and it seemed the audience was, too.

Bringing Youth on Board

One session I had to miss featured Barack Obama. His key message: "To all the young people out there—I want you to stay angry. I want you to stay frustrated." But he advised global youth, “Channel that anger. Harness that frustration. Keep pushing harder and harder for more and more. Because that's what's required to meet that challenge. Gird yourself for a marathon, not a sprint."

He honoured the dedication of activists such as Greta Thunberg who are "forming movements across borders," and urged young people to get out and vote for politicians who will stand against climate change. "Vote like your life depends on it, because it does," he concluded.

More practically, B Lab UK got together with The Body Shop International to present Boardroom 2030 , a new project exploring how youth boards might help business leaders to tap into the very different views, priorities, and wisdom of young people.

The sort of questions being asked: Consider who should have a seat at the table. How can you include your employees and the voices of young people? Looking beyond the bottom line and the year ahead, what topics should be discussed? What should all businesses be discussing in boardrooms in 2030?

I was impressed how Body Shop CEO David Boynton patiently listened to advice that would scarcely have been new to him or his top team—but this was a pilot project, and I came away convinced that this trend can only build over time.

Extreme Youth Hangout

Finally, at least here, I spoke at an event in what was billed as the “Extreme Hangout,” hosted by lawyers Mishcon de Reya on an old ferry—whose decks occasionally rocked as river traffic passed on the Clyde. This was part of the youth fringe for COP26.

And the rocking of the decks was a timely reminder of the seismic shifts that will impact our politics and economies as young people move into the mainstream—creating very different currents, tributaries, and estuaries.

As Alex Rhodes, Head of Mishcon Purpose, explained, “Globally, young people are the most impacted by climate change, yet they are the least enfranchised. Working with One Young World and the Democracy and Culture Foundation, [Mishcon] have held The Global Youth Climate Inquiry , hearing evidence from global youth leaders on how climate change is impacting them and understanding how they can be better enfranchised in decision-making and action taking.”

Having taken part in the inquiry, I was delighted to be invited to take part in an “Extreme Youth Hangout” panel discussion focusing on the question of how we bring young people into the decision-making process that will profoundly impact their futures.

As it happens, another of the books I had been reading on the train a few days earlier was Generations by Bobby Duffy. Early on in the book he notes that, throughout history, “tumultuous times awaken generational awareness.”

What with the malign effects of the pandemic prefiguring the coming impact of the climate and biodiversity emergencies, young people are growing up in a world that could radicalize them to the point of chaos, or help build their characters and commitment to solving great challenges in the same way the Second World War did for many who took part.

A Future that Works for the Young—Of All Species

We face intergenerational challenges that require us to evolve intergenerational solutions, including radically different politics and economics. The battle now is to create a world that is fit for the young of all people—and all species.

In his summary of a Federated Hermes event where I also spoke, the investment firm’s international CEO, Saker Nusseibeh, encouraged his audience to come up with courageous ambitions to drive future progress.

After Glasgow my own commitment to helping younger people, as the closest proxies we have for the future generations that have long been central to the sustainability agenda, has only grown.

PHOTO: John Elkington | COP26 Climate March, 6 November 2021

About the Author:

John Elkington
Founder & Chief Pollinator, Volans Ventures
ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree

Biomimicry to Create a Regenerative Future

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 00:26:00 GMT

As we observe the breadth of UN observances in October, from World Habitat Day to World Migratory Bird Day to United Nations Day, we might all be wise and ask a tree—or perhaps a migratory bird—how we might achieve the UN’s SDGs .

Biomimicry has long been known as “innovation inspired by nature” and a “model, measure, and mentor” for sustainable design. If we need ideas, innovations, or guiding principles to help us achieve the SDGs, we need only ask nature . Why? The premise is that evolution reflects extremely rigorous quality-control standards—less than 1/10th of 1% of all species that have ever lived on Earth are around today. Those that have survived, and share the Earth with us, know how to live within the limits and boundaries of the planet, as well as live with each other. Biomimicry gives us tools for discovering functional strategies, processes, and systems that exist in nature and then emulating them to create sustainable design solutions. Honoring and preserving the world’s habitats and inhabitants also honors and preserves the source of the innovative and inspiring solutions that we need to create a future that is regenerative.

Beyond sustainable design, biomimicry can help us think about and approach all problems differently. Environmentalists often get accused of being “tree huggers,” but I must admit that when I need solid advice, I often ask a tree. Not out loud, of course—I just look quietly out the window at my neighboring Doug Fir. My questions might be as simple as, “What should I say in this blog piece?" or as consequential as, “How might I best use my unique position, skills, and passions to make positive change in the world?” Trees don’t understand what it means to write blogs or try to change the world, so it asks me a series of clarifying questions. Pondering these questions helps me slow down, reflect, and tap into my deeper knowing, my own “wild wisdom.” Taking this approach to asking nature can yield both more simple and more systems-based solutions.

Practicing biomimicry has also given me, and an expanding group of colleagues, a new way to understand how we got ourselves into this mess—climate change, social injustice, poverty—and how we might get ourselves out of it. According to Donella Meadows, the most effective place to intervene and make change in a system is to shift paradigms.

The paradigm that got us into this mess is one of scarcity, individuality, competition, greed, fear, and resistance. This is the paradigm of predatory capitalism, supremacy, and exploitation. It’s what we’re talking about when we refer to “The Real World.”

Nature’s paradigm, on the other hand, is one of abundance, synergies, systems, trust, curiosity, and resilience. Nature’s design solutions are multi-functional, responsive, adaptive, and regenerative. Participants in nature’s “economy” value and leverage what is locally available and abundant. All living things in nature support the systems they depend on, taking only what they need and giving back in the process of simply living. This is the paradigm that we need to re-align with nature and to create a future that is regenerative.

Shifting from the conventional to the natural paradigm may sound impossible, but nature’s paradigm is also our own natural human paradigm. We already know it.

Think about the last time you enjoyed a long sunset, smiled at the smell of rain, or lost track of time while playing the guitar, gardening, or talking with a close friend. During those moments, was your worldview one of scarcity or one of abundance, competition or synergy, fear or curiosity, greed or trust, individuality or systems, resistance or resilience? You already know and live the natural paradigm, particularly when you feel most alive.

In the workplace, we’ve all heard that culture eats strategy for breakfast . That’s the natural paradigm beating out the conventional paradigm. We’ve also all read about the qualities of a good leader. Those are qualities that reflect the natural paradigm. We all know that resilience and innovation are critical for surviving change and disruption. Those are products of practicing the natural paradigm. So even in the “real world,” we recognize the benefits of the natural paradigm.

The conventional paradigm, and the thinking and designs that it generates, got us into this mess. We can use biomimicry, the natural paradigm, and our wild wisdom to achieve the UN’s SDGs and create a future that is regenerative.

PHOTO: D.DeLuca

About the Author:

Denise DeLuca, M.S., SEA
Director, MA in Sustainable Design, MCAD
President, ISSP Governing Board

SDG16: 'Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions'

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:21:06 GMT

United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal Number 16 , (SDG16) labeled “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”, was crafted to promote strong humanitarian, government, and for-profit institutions essential for human survival, personal health, and planetary well-being. SDG16 recognizes that strong institutions of all types—government agencies, for-profit business, NGOs—are all needed to advance the SDG’s aspiration for peace, justice, and equity. Indeed, it’s well-known that regions without strong institutions are more inclined towards poverty, social and political unrest, and unhealthy, unsustainable communities.

Institutionalizing sustainability planning means consulting the Sustainable Development Goals as an aspirational framework. Doing so is now a pervasive and growing trend in virtually all large institutions throughout the world, regardless of their mission. Moreover, this trend is increasing rapidly as the leadership at virtually every major business sector, from finance to mining, from real estate to aviation, has publicly committed to sustainability planning and, especially, to some level of climate action.

Hundreds of institutions throughout the globe are increasingly seeking to redefine and re-imagine how to manage their entire value chain from a sustainability perspective. Investors, employees, community leaders, customers, the media, government regulators, local governments, athletes, fans, and other stakeholders expect all the institutions and businesses they deal with to be a responsible environmental steward, and they increasingly expect to have access to information about their environmental profile and commitments.

Sustainability planning by any institution, whether government agency, a fashion business, finance, or sport must ultimately be driven by a recognition that nature is the ultimate source of all economic value. Nature provides the ecological services on which all life depends. Accordingly, building strong institutions to promote SDG16, “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions” is driven by our collective obligation to address unprecedented and urgent ecological and social challenges including climate change, poverty alleviation, livable wages, gender bias, racial equality, etc.

SDG16 focuses on the need to create and support institutions that authentically respond to these sustainability challenges, including public demands for more livable and sustainable communities. Accordingly, sustainability engenders new management priorities for the 21st century institution. It goes without saying that the strategic relevance of sustainability planning for any institution is invariably unique to its mission. However, scientific rigor, ethical transparency, equity, and effective policy development rely upon validated assessment methodologies.

As recent fires, flooding, drought, and storm events throughout the world have made eminently clear, the effects of climate change and the growing global demand for climate action have imposed an unavoidable obligation on all institutions to develop sustainability plans that advance the UN SDGs. At minimum, all institutions engaged in sustainability planning should look to SDGs 1, 2, and 3 (end poverty and hunger, promote good health) and eliminate all avoidable greenhouse gas emissions.

Pursuing sustainability is indeed ‘The right thing to do’ and that may be enough to motivate more committed organizations. Eventually, however, all institutions need to get to the place where sustainability is recognized as crucial to its long-term mission, whether as an NGO, a government agency, or a for-profit business. As the Harvard Business Review reported two years ago:

“Corporate boards of directors must tackle questions about sustainability in a new and urgent manner. If they don’t, they will hear from investors about their lack of action. In just the latest indication of the investor community’s increasing scrutiny on sustainability, Yahoo announced in 2018 that it would start publishing sustainability ratings for publicly traded companies. In order to fulfill their obligations, every listed company board must now become ‘sustainability fluent.’” [1]

Recognition of the need for SDG16, of the need to institutionalize sustainability planning does not obviate the fact that attempting to do so in complex institutions, whether a for-profit business or an international agency, is not without meaningful challenges. These barriers to sustainability are 1. economic, 2. technical, and 3. cultural. An organization is a shadow of its leadership, and the ruthlessness of the market does not go away because we have good intentions. Accordingly, in order to overcome the three barriers to sustainability, an institution must benefit from authentic support from its leadership, including adequate investment of financial resources and personnel.

Without authentic support by its leadership, the shift in culture and operations needed to implement sustainability will be stymied. Indeed, as Tables 1 and 2 below indicate, the single most important attribute of a successful sustainability plan is support from senior leadership, while a lack of leadership support and resources is the number one reason that sustainability plans fail.

Table 1

Why Sustainability Initiatives Succeed

Senior leadership support
Employee engagement and interest
Clear goals and metrics
Effective internal communication
Introduction of environmentally friendly policies [2]

Table 2

Why Sustainability Initiatives Fail

Lack of investment of resources
Competing priorities
Culture change challenges
Organizational obstacles
Lack of a compelling Case for change

As the chemistry of the atmosphere continues to change, as climate impacts evolve, as government policies change, and as ecological and social challenges expand, the need for institutions to promote the UN SDGs could not be more urgent. Promoting sustainability planning and collaboration by all institutions—government agencies, for-profit, and NGO alike—can help all institutions, indeed all people, plan for the inevitable worsening climate impacts we should expect.

[1] “What Boards Need to Know About Sustainability Ratings,” Silder Wall Spitzer and John Mandyck, Harvard Business Review, May 30, 2019

[2] Table One and Table Two are excerpted from “Sustainability Business Cases,” December 2019 version, slides 38 & 39, published by Sustainability Advantage exclusively for “Master Slide Decks” subscribers.

PHOTO: Iswanto Arif | Unsplash

About the Author:

Allen Hershkowitz, PhD
Founding Director & Chairman, Sport and Sustainability International
Environmental Science Advisor, New York Yankees

My Obsession with Overshoot

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:16:12 GMT

There is no other possible future than a regenerative one. This means that, rather than living off depletion and liquidation as we currently do, we will live off what the biosphere can renew. Because by definition, we cannot deplete forever, even if we want to.

The only question is how fast we get to a regenerative future. That is also at the core of the climate dilemma:

Acting too slowly and letting climate change get the upper hand will destroy a good portion of the planet’s regenerative budget.
Acting fast may take more short-term sweat but will leave humanity with more options, more biocapacity, and a bigger portion of non-stranded assets.

But overshoot is still defining our context

So far, humanity is riding the slow track, delaying its transformation to a regenerative culture, thereby favoring disaster over design as the transition strategy. The result is even more massive overshoot — human demand exceeding the regenerative capacity of our natural ecosystem — leaving even larger ecological debt.

Here are the numbers: From this January 1st until July 29th, humanity used as much from nature as the planet can renew this entire year. Hence July 29th was this year’s Earth Overshoot Day. And this may be an underestimate, because it is based on the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts , which use about 15,000 data points per country and year, but still have significant holes. Nevertheless, they document that human demand currently exceeds what Earth renews by at least 73%.

In contrast, if we want to maintain some good portion of our existing biodiversity, humanity may not want to usurp all of it. Professor E.O. Wilson suggests to just use half the planet’s capacity, which might give us a chance to maintain 85% of the planet’s biodiversity. From a regenerative perspective, this means that the current human metabolism is more than three times larger than the Earth's ecologically safe limits (1.73 Earths / ½ Earth = 3.46).

Overshoot is the underlying cause of most environmental ills — from biodiversity loss to deforestation, water and air pollution, fisheries collapse, and greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere — leading to ever wilder weather patterns. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2021 considers seven out of the top 10 likely and impactful risks to be environmental (or nine of the top 10 if “infectious diseases” are also categorized as environmental).

Human demand persistently overwhelming the biosphere may well be the second most severe challenge humanity is facing in the 21st century. It is the biological (not the non-renewable) resources that are most limiting to the human enterprise. For instance, while fossil fuel underground is limited, even more limiting is how much can be burnt without runaway climate change — and that again is limited by how much of the excess carbon the biosphere can remove. Similar for minerals. It is the energy that limits digging deeper mines and concentrating dispersed ores; and energy is ultimately most limited by biocapacity.

The biggest risk of all

The risks imposed by overshoot are topped only by one other risk: that of not responding. Tragically, most cities, corporations, or countries — including Switzerland, my native land — fall into this category. Their lack of response makes it unlikely that each one of them will be prepared in time for the challenges associated with persistent overshoot.

The National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, which are used to determine Earth Overshoot Day, show that the residents of Switzerland use 4.4 times more from nature than Swiss ecosystems can renew. It is like using 4.4 “Switzerlands”.

Switzerland has financial capacity to shield itself. But 72% of the world population now lives in countries that have both an ecological deficit and less then world average income, which makes it unlikely they can compete for the needed resources on international markets. Yet, the overshoot option is time-limited. Even for Switzerland.

It is unclear whether Switzerland has the resolve to prepare itself adequately for the predictable future of climate change and resource constraints that overshoot inevitably entails, particularly after Swiss voters rejected the proposed CO2 law in June. While good efforts exist in Switzerland, such as boosting thermal efficiency of houses or using electricity from hydropower, the country overall is still far from being fit to operate in a world of increasing climate change and resource constraints.

Waiting is of no benefit

Most importantly, addressing climate is not just a noble cause. In fact, there is no advantage for cities, companies, or countries to wait addressing climate or overshoot risks.

Plenty of opportunities exist that can decrease overshoot — actions that are economically viable. To demonstrate this, Global Footprint Network is showcasing 100 Days of Possibility . For 100 days, from Earth Overshoot Day 2021 to COP26, we are offering numerous ways that each country, city, or business can #MoveTheDate and ready themselves for a world increasingly defined by global ecological overshoot, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource constraints.

Because waiting keeps them unprepared for a future that has never been more predictable: one of more climate change and fewer resources — one that also will inevitably be fossil fuel-free.

Photo: Robert Wallace on Flickr. The image is unaltered following license terms .

About the Author:

Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D.
Founder & President, Global Footprint Network
ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree

France Reaffirms Its Commitment to the SDGs in the Context of the HLPF

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 23:12:38 GMT

The Covid-19 crisis has illustrated in a most dramatic fashion the insufficient resilience of our societies. With its far-reaching impact, affecting the three dimensions of sustainable development, this pandemic exacerbates vulnerabilities and threatens our collective pledge to leave no one behind. It shows there is still a long way ahead for the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

For the first time since 2015 and the adoption of the Agenda, we are experiencing serious setbacks in its implementation. The pandemic has pushed more than 120 million people worldwide into extreme poverty; it has worsened food insecurity and widened pre-existing inequalities of all kinds at the expense of our most fragile populations. Forced school closures have also had a devastating impact on 1.5 billion children’s education and well-being, while diverse lockdown measures have seen growing unpunished violence towards women and girls.

The High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) of the United Nations, which took place from 6 to 15 July 2021, and in which France participated actively, enabled Member States and various stakeholders to discuss the ways to ensure a sustainable and resilient recovery from Covid-19, putting us on track to realize the 2030 Agenda.

In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, we first need to address this crisis with a sense of urgency.

To put an end to this pandemic, the only reliable solution at our disposal is to ensure universal access to vaccines. The Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), and more specifically its vaccines pillar, the Covax facility, are key to realizing this goal. Out of 3.2 billion jabs administered worldwide, only 60 million have gone to people in Africa. Tangible action is needed: as announced at the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay last month, France will double its original commitment and deliver 60 million doses by the end of the year.

The Covid-19 crisis is not only a health crisis, but also a socio-economic one. As a result, numerous countries have experienced severe public debt distress. As early as May 2020, the G20 and the Paris Club agreed upon the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), enabling more than 70 countries to regain budgetary flexibility and engage in more substantive emergency recovery plans. In order to answer any forthcoming issue about debt sustainability, they also adopted the Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the DSSI, which enables creditor countries, in the Paris Club and beyond, to coordinate and cooperate on debt treatments for low-income countries.

As we enter the Decade of Action to deliver the SDGs, the clock is ticking, and States should not use the unprecedented acuteness of the pandemic to shirk their responsibilities. Even before the Covid-19 outbreak, our development trajectories were structurally incompatible with the achievement of the SDGs. We should therefore use this pandemic as an opportunity to put ourselves back on track, with more resilient, just, and sustainable trajectories.

One of our major issues to do so is to address the SDGs’ financing deficit:

France urges all countries to respect their Official Development Aid (ODA) commitments. Through a new programming bill on inclusive development and combating global inequalities, currently being adopted in France's Parliament, France is strengthening the means and tools of its development policy. This bill targets a growing trajectory for ODA, reaching 0.55% of France’s Gross National Income (GNI) by 2022 and a final aim of 0.7%. It sets clear objectives to concentrate aid in the form of grants to the benefit of the most vulnerable countries.
Building back better after the Covid-19 crisis requires mobilizing all sources of financing. One of the messages put forth in the Paris Summit on Financing African Economies in May is that reinforcing internal public resources and fighting against illegal financial flows are paramount to adequate funding for sustainable development.
Furthermore, the private sector should also contribute, and clear standards ought to be set to avoid SDG-washing. The Framework for SDG Aligned Finance launched by the OECD and UNDP answers this urgent need, and we should now work towards its operationalization.

More than ever, the 2030 Agenda must remain our collective roadmap:

The integrated and crosscutting nature of the 2030 Agenda guides our action. Global public goods are deeply interrelated, and we need to consider them in a comprehensive way if we want to prevent future crises from happening. A good example of that is the Prezode Initiative , an innovative international endeavour that draws on multiple areas of knowledge with the ambition of understanding and assessing the risks of emergence of zoonotic infectious diseases.
The 2030 Agenda is based on multilateralism: issues related to global public goods do not have any borders. They thus require a coordinated approach at a global level. France will continue to take its full part in the fight against global inequalities and in the protection of global public goods.

These messages are, among others, the ones that France has conveyed throughout the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2021. France played an active role in most of the sessions of the Forum, which were rich in recommendations, best practices, and knowledge-sharing. The French Mission to the UN also organized, on the side lines of the Forum, a high-level side-event on the role of partnerships between Governments and civil society to build policies and responses for a sustainable, inclusive, and resilient recovery from Covid-19 and for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. Finally, we co-sponsored several side-events to the HLPF on various themes, all related to the SDGs (such as public health and climate, circular economy, One Health approach for human, animal and environmental health and pollution prevention, agroecology, and food security, etc.). As we move through this Decade of Action, France will continue to work in a multilateral spirit towards the realization of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement.

Photo: Dikaseva on Unsplash

About the Author:

Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière
Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations

A Super Year for Nature, and the Policy Stakes Could Not Be Higher

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 23:07:41 GMT

This year starts the United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. It also sees meetings of two of the three Conventions arising from the Rio Earth Summit almost three decades ago, making it a ‘Super Year for Nature’¹. Although the Conventions on climate change, biodiversity and desertification have different individual aims, they share common goals around protecting the environment and the unique ecosystems which make up this planet.

Climate change, loss of biodiversity and increasing desertification are inevitable results of the ways of life many of us have enjoyed for a generation or two and which are increasingly being aspired to around the world. It is progressively harder to ignore that a fossil-fueled, resource-hungry global economy is not a realistic future scenario — it is literally consuming the Earth and its diversity of life.

Despite any appearances to the contrary, for most of us in Australia the interrelation of climate change, loss of biodiversity and increasing desertification is now obvious and accepted. A reputable national survey last year showed that only one in ten Australians denied that climate change was occurring. More than three in four Australians were concerned about climate change driving bushfire, drought, reducing food supply, destroying our reefs, creating weather, raising the sea level, and causing mass extinctions.

But, as in so many countries, our institutions have not to date given effective expression to this collective concern, casting this as a matter of individual choice, despite the results being experienced by all. Policy change has been far too slow, and without policy leadership business responses, where these are credible, are likely to lead to further disruptive transitions, impacting the most vulnerable and further eviscerating social cohesion that might foster a civil society capable of addressing our common future.

This super year for nature gives some hope that coordinated national and international policy leadership may be possible. In the lead up to CoP 26 in Glasgow in November, global focus on responding to climate change has sharpened (as our Australian Prime Minster is experiencing), and now countries are expected to agree on a Post-2020 Global Framework for Biodiversity and new targets for protecting biodiversity at October’s UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China. Business is expected to play a new and expanded role in implementing key outcomes on biodiversity, as has been the case with climate change.

In my work on the ground, building capacity to respond to the risks of climate change and to forge a more sustainable future, I see slow but growing recognition of the importance of our relationship with nature in policy and practice. In the face of the economic and social consequences of fire, drought, and ecosystems collapse, some of our most recent policy frameworks are acknowledging that the environmentally attuned values and culture of First Nations people can build resilience. Policy makers are very slowly adopting a social-ecological systems approach and are little by little acknowledging the fundamental importance of biological diversity. These are still by no means the policy mainstream, but there is vocal support from some parts of the business community, notably the finance sector, as sustainability risks are being internalised. This chorus echoes themes long-championed by local governments and their affiliations, as well as the enduring efforts of the not-for-profit community.

Global progress on biodiversity would give excellent momentum to the UN Climate Change Conference. Success in both these areas will hopefully provide some impetus for action on desertification and so for action on food and water security. Only if substantial and coordinated action in all these three areas can be achieved will we have some chance of achieving the ambitious targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

¹The CoP of the least well-known of the three Conventions, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, was also to have been held this year but has been postponed due to Covid.

Photo: Kaique Andrades on Pexels

About the Author:

Fabian Sack, PhD, SEP
Director, Sustainably Pty Ltd
ISSP Governing Board

Closing the Gap Between Intention and Action

Thu, 20 May 2021 23:04:03 GMT

We are all here today because the climate countdown has begun, and we are nowhere near where we need to be.

António Guterres

Secretary-General of the United Nations

Countdown TED Talk

A summer 2020 study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication , George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication , and Covering Climate Now indicates that about eight out of ten Americans (79%) are interested in news covering the actions being taken by the U.S. government in response to global warming. While one might lament that this means one of five Americans is not interested in public-sector climate action, the trend line of interest points upwards. And in the past few years, we have seen a wave of messaging and gestures by businesses, financial institutions, and politicians communicating the intention—or "purpose"—of making the world a better place, decarbonization being a key part of that. In a recent LinkedIn post by Martin Rich, Co-founder & Executive Director of Future-Fit Foundation, an ISSP partner, he signals a recent Bloomberg article entitled ESG Assets May Hit $53 Trillion by 2025, a Third of Global Assets Under Management. That sounds like a strong positive in the capital markets space, yet so far, the sum of measurable action is far less potent. As Martin states, "ESG, sustainable, responsible, ethical, green are all words being used interchangeably to mean everything and nothing. There are formal(-ish) definitions, but the average saver is utterly unaware of them. The implication is that your money is helping to save the world; but mostly the promises are empty."

We are facing a gap between intention and action in sustainability. As U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres sums up, we are nowhere near where we need to be. We have much of the necessary technology, yet we urgently need to accelerate the necessary action to bring emissions to net zero by mid-century and to getting halfway there by 2030.

Ways to accelerate and scale change include policy, industry regulation, and compliance to those standards. And momentum there is picking up across countries. As important, and a driver to policy and industry transformation, are social norms: the expectations and behaviors of citizens, consumers, employees, investors, and civic leaders. Interactions, storytelling, discussion are all fundamental to culture change, and I suspect that closing the sustainability intention-action gap will be no different. Leveraging systems thinking to understand a given context and how it shapes expectations, extending the reach and relevance of credible messengers, changing what people believe that others like them are doing—these are the ways to transform social norms and to scale behavior change.

In many ways it was in that spirit that Countdown, a global initiative by TED and Future Stewards, was launched online last October 2020. As TED Founder Chris Anderson stated at Countdown's kick-off, the initiative is a massive collaboration aiming to bring together every citizen of planet Earth who wants to do something about two things that "stand out starkly"—we have pushed the Earth to its limits and the crises we face are interconnected.

Last month my fellow ISSP Governing Board member, Denise Deluca, and I served as co-organizers and co-hosts of our inaugural TEDx Countdown event for ISSP. TEDxISSP was one of hundreds of Countdown events held across more than 90 countries over the past eight months. Our event brought together our ISSP community—sustainability professionals from around the world as well as luminaries from our ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame—all with the purpose to discuss solutions to the climate crisis and to turn ideas into action. We kept attendee numbers low to allow fluid discussion between our participants and our special guest Hall of Fame honorees: John Elkington, Mathis Wackernagel, Bob Willard, Susan Burns, Joel Makower, and Hazel Henderson.

Each of our three TEDxISSP sessions—Urgency, Transformation, Action—featured two of the TED Talks programmed in the Countdown global launch. U.N. Secretary-General Guterres' opening remarks shared the dire truth for why we were gathering, "Science tells us we must limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We are on track for three degrees at least." Between sessions, attendees discussed the talks in small breakout groups, each group joined by one of our Hall of Fame Honorees sharing their insights.

One goal for TEDxISSP was to bring sustainability to a broader audience, to those who may not self-define as "sustainability professionals." In that view, we were incredibly fortunate to include The New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly as a special guest to “live draw” our Countdown event and to share those drawings in real-time with the tens of thousands following her on social media. Liza recently innovated this form of "live drawing" to amplify newsworthy events. Her recent Medium post, Drawing For The Earth , shares both her fabulous drawings and her reflections on our event.

Events like TEDxISSP serve to turn "ideas into action" for sustainability. Yet, as importantly, they create a stronger sense of "we" in the effort to scale sustainability. As John Elkington, Founder-Chief Pollinator of Volans and ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame Honoree, remarked early during our TEDxISSP event, "... for those of us who have been a part of this whole change moment for quite a long time, it began as a quite lonely exercise. And it has begun increasingly to be a crowd sport, and that's a joy." As this crowd sport continues to grow, I trust we will see the sustainability intention-action gap increasingly close.

About the Author:

Trisha Bauman, M.S.
CEO & Founder, TJBauman LLC
Vice President, ISSP Governing Board

Science-based Targets for Nature are Critical to the Climate Solution

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 22:58:41 GMT

A systemic challenge like the climate crisis requires systemic solutions. Recent science has made clear that solving climate change is not a 2050 imperative but one for today—the world will need to be well on the path to mid-century carbon-neutrality within the next nine years if we are going to hold global average temperatures to no more than 1.5-degrees Celsius of warming. To meet this level of urgency, communities, companies, and investors are calculating and adopting science-based targets. Science-based targets (SBTs) are measurable, actionable, and time-bound objectives, based on the best available science. For climate, science-based targets give companies a clearly-defined pathway to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals. For nature, they will allow businesses to align their strategies with Earth’s limits and societal sustainability goals, like the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

Already, more than 1,200 companies are now committed to set science-based climate targets because they see the future is net-zero. These targets ensure their business strategies incorporate emissions reductions at an ambitious enough pace and scale to play their part in limiting global temperature rise in line with science.

Now we need to add nature into the equation. Nature needs protecting in its own right—as the provider of everything humans depend on to live our lives and run our businesses. And, critically, we can’t reach our climate goals without simultaneously addressing nature loss.

Building on the momentum of science-based targets for climate, the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) was set up to develop an integrated solution to the nature and climate crises. The SBTN aims to break down silos between organizations, issues, and approaches in order to solve the interrelated challenges facing the global commons: climate change and the degradation of ecosystems critical for human well-being.

The SBTN is developing science-based targets for nature for companies, along with both climate and nature targets for cities. The nature targets for companies and cities will assess their impacts and dependencies on nature - by which we mean all non-human living entities - and in turn their interaction with other living or non-living physical entities and processes. This definition, from the IPBES Global Assessment 2019 , recognizes that all of these interactions bind humans to nature and beyond that, the interactions between species, soils, rivers or nutrients bind them to each other.

Addressing these two issues simultaneously will be the most efficient and effective way for business to take action on both nature loss and climate change—issues that have been defined as the greatest risks and opportunities of our time. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Nature and Business report estimates that nature-positive transitions could generate up to US$10.1 trillion in annual business value and create 395 million jobs by 2030.

Our approach at SBTN is a consolidated and comprehensive one. The targets address the interconnection of issue areas, allowing companies to take action on multiple issues at once and avoid creating new problems. When designed and implemented correctly, SBTs for nature will help companies to resolve interrelated climate and nature risks, including creating resilience to climate hazards, such as heat waves, floods, and droughts. As operations reorient to meet these targets, they can help conserve freshwater resources and increase water security, regenerate land systems, support healthy, diverse oceans and conserve biodiversity, and prevent species extinction.

The SBTN’s approach need not be duplicative nor require increased monitoring and reporting burden for companies. For many, the approach will build on existing resources and tools and, therefore, consolidate actions that companies are already taking. It draws heavily on the Natural Capital Protocol, existing practices in land-conversion-free supply chains, and lifecycle (impact) assessment (LC(I)A). In addition, it recognizes the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and SBTs for climate; contextual water targets ; context-based targets more broadly ; CDP ; Global Reporting Initiative (GRI ); and the Corporate Ecosystem Services Review as valuable for helping companies collect and organize data for SBT setting.

We will not limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C without protecting and restoring nature. Now is the time to bring every possible solution to bear. Companies need to take responsibility for their own impacts and dependencies on nature alongside cutting emissions in line with science. Buying carbon credits for projects outside of a company’s own sphere of influence will be nowhere near enough to achieve either their climate or nature goals.

The SBTN’s initial guidance on science-based targets (SBTs) for nature , published last year, is a first step toward integrated SBTs for all aspects of nature: biodiversity, climate, freshwater, land, and ocean. Developing further enterprise methodologies to use SBTs for nature are well underway. These will enable voluntary action for nature and climate, in turn enabling stronger policy as governments gain confidence to set stronger climate and nature policies.

We invite the ISSP community to get in touch with us to begin your journey of setting SBTs for nature as integral to reaching global climate goals. You can also learn how to join our Corporate Engagement Program . In addition, we invite the ISSP community to join us in co-designing our targets and helping us to road-test them for impact, cost-effectiveness and user-experience. Together, we can build an integrated solution to the nature and climate crises.

Photo: Gary Cunliffe

About the Author:

Erin Billman
Executive Director, Science Based Targets Network

How Food Banks, Rooted in the Fight Against Hunger, Advance the SDGs

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 22:54:53 GMT

Discussions surrounding the world’s food systems are gaining steam in the lead up to the UN Food Systems Summit in September, where The Global FoodBanking Network is looking forward to working with other food systems leaders to think through ways to transform how we produce and consume food.

While the Summit conversations will focus on getting us back on track to reach Zero Hunger by 2030 (SDG 2), the commitments made will also impact our progress toward other SDG targets and present sustainability professionals with opportunities to advance their work in tandem with food security advocates.

At The Global FoodBanking Network , we see this intersection of opportunities play out through the work of our food bank partners. Food banks are local hunger-relief organizations that rescue surplus, wholesome food and redirect it to people facing food insecurity. They have the unique ability to access local and global food supply chains as well as to leverage the reach of community-based organizations, making them critical players in the fight against hunger.

While rooted in providing hunger relief, the work of food banks does not stop at SDG 2. The world currently wastes one-third of the food produced for human consumption — an unconscionable fact, considering nearly two billion people are undernourished and the devastating impact food left in landfills has on the environment. And so, as food banks redirect food that would otherwise go to waste, they are important partners in the effort to halve food loss and waste by 2030 (SDG 12.3) and combat climate change (SDG 13). They work closely with small- and large-scale farmers and industry to identify excess supply and then deliver it through regional and local community programs to people facing hunger. Their efforts create a win-win situation: people suffering from food insecurity gain access to the safe, surplus product, and the negative environmental impact of food in landfills is reduced.

This cross-cutting work helps advance other goals in the SDG agenda. Consider food banks’ efforts to address child hunger. Food banks collaborate with food companies and local governments to develop school-based feeding programs in underserved communities. These programs are a practical and cost-effective way of reaching children facing food insecurity. And the impact of school feeding programs goes beyond filling empty stomachs. Research shows that school feeding programs help reduce poverty (SDG 1), improve education outcomes (SDG 4), and strengthen poor communities more broadly.

And in a world where 60 percent of the undernourished are women and girls, GFN partner food banks across 44 countries provide critical access to food for all people. Indeed, it is well documented that when women are given the same resources as men (SDG 5), they are a driving force against hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, especially because women make the majority of the nutrition decisions for their families.

This is just a sample of how the work of food banks in combatting hunger has an impact far beyond the simple provision of food. While providing food, reducing food loss and waste, combatting climate change, and so on, food banks drive development in their communities. They build local leadership and strengthen the populations they serve.

Governments, businesses, civil society organizations, and global citizens are rallying around the SDGs to make the world a more equitable, safer, and thriving place. These commitments can be put into action when the right partnerships are in place. We must continue to collaborate, share best practices, and take advantage of resources such as the ISSP in the years leading up to 2030. With less than a decade to go, now is the time to take a step back and consider the ways your work might benefit from unique partnerships. How can we work together and identify creative ways to find connections between our agendas? How does our work cut across the full array of SDGs? The opportunity to collaborate with others who are working on sustainability issues — especially less usual partners, like food banks — should not be missed.

About the Author:

Lisa Moon
President and CEO, The Global FoodBanking Network

Breaking the Cycle of Intergenerational Urban Poverty

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 23:46:04 GMT

Harlem Children Zone's 'Cradle to Career' approach for comprehensive social change has many asking, “How do I replicate Harlem Children's Zone in my city?”

This is probably the question we get more often than any other from organizations and service providers, particularly outside of New York City. The success of Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) in changing lives over the last two decades has created a hunger in other places to bring about HCZ-level transformation. We are extremely humbled by the replication question and are committed to help strengthen the broader field of practice.

It should be noted that when we discuss replication, it is a focus on the core elements of our model and not on creating HCZ franchisees or exact replicas of our operations in Harlem; having the flexibility to account for local context is critically important.

Based on the HCZ philosophy, these are the five elements that need to be present for an organization to effectively reproduce our model:

Building and rebuilding community. There needs to be a comprehensive knowledge of the community being served and the people living in that community, what we call “place-based” work. The groundbreaking revelations of researchers like Raj Chetty have shown us the devastating impact that the neighborhoods where we live have on our life chances.

Working at scale. You need to make sure you are having a meaningful impact by reaching a tipping point, a saturation. When HCZ was created, there wasn’t any real empirical reason why the geographic boundaries were drawn the way they were except that the idea was to reach a critical mass of 10,000 young people. That number represented about 70 to 80 percent of the young people in our geographic area. If you can lay your hands on a majority of the young people, you start to create a cause culture. Your presence begins to have a major influence on the direction of peer groups.

“Wait a minute—Kwame got into college? Well, I know I can get into college too!” Kids do what other kids do. If you’re on the corner selling drugs, kids are going to do that. If you’re on the court playing ball, they’re going to do that. If you're going to college, they're going to do that. It’s about creating a level of momentum to affect the peer group thrust. Because of the society we live in, this can be one of the most difficult aspects to sustain. You have to build up the financial stability and infrastructure to be able to scale up without straining the threads of the whole enterprise.

An integrated set of best practice programs from cradle to career. This part of the strategy is critical, yet one of the hardest for organizations to achieve. It means not just having a high-quality early childhood program over here, nothing for elementary students, and then maybe a middle school program over there. No, it has to be integrated across the longer developmental stages of our young people: from birth through college to career. We have to create a net of services that is so tight, no one is falling through the holes.

Use of data. This is crucial; it’s not enough to love these kids and be mission-aligned. You have to be able to deliver with excellence. And the way you know you’re meeting the mark is with clear goals and measurable outcomes in areas like education, health, and wellness.

A culture of accountability. You must acknowledge that this work is hard. In order to execute, you not only must have talent, but you must hold folks accountable to a level of excellence that the community deserves. At HCZ, we have formal ways of doing this, like year-end and mid-year evaluations. But we also have what we call “walk-around management,” which can mean informally dropping in on folks to see how they’re holding up. This is not a place where you’re sitting behind your desk. We have to hold our staff accountable to do what they say they’re going to do—and they must hold us accountable as leadership to set them up for success.

These five elements serve as the foundation to effective place-based interventions. While the work is complex and comprehensive, it is not impossible. What has driven our success is that unrelenting spirit of possibility within the communities we serve. This is nation-building work, and I am hopeful that as a field, we will collectively achieve our north star of millions of young people on the pathway to social and economic mobility and racial equity—ultimately breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

Photo: Sergio Alexis Perez mural in Harlem, New York, by Shaun Dawson

About the Author:

Kwame Owusu-Kesse
CEO, Harlem Children's Zone

Radical Optimism

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 23:33:56 GMT

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Supporting Change Agents Around the World

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 23:19:40 GMT

There is no argument that the world is facing a host of existential challenges. We look to our leaders to guide us successfully through these times, but in the end, it will require many hands to do the work. No other profession is as uniquely qualified to advance the knowledge, the skills, and the direction that those hands will need as the field of sustainability.

From industry leaders to forward-looking professionals, we saw this coming as early as 30 years ago. When I entered the field in the mid-1990’s, I was inspired by the early-adopter organizations that were making bold moves to be the first to test and try the sustainability strategies being created to help transform business and government. My experience as a sustainability consultant put me in touch with inspiring professionals across many organizations, all tapped to lead the sustainability effort in their respective workplaces. Because this was new, few if any of these people had any training or education in sustainability, and most were working in isolation, trying single-handedly to make change happen.

While intentions were noble, our efforts often felt disjointed and unlikely to achieve the unified coordination that the issues required. Four of us in Portland, Oregon, thought we had a solution to this problem. If indeed it would take an army to affect the kind of change we needed, then we would create the organization that would amass and organize that army. Our mission for ISSP, which we launched in 2007, was to connect all these disparate people working around the world so that they could share tools, knowledge, experiences, missteps, and achievements. We wanted the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) to be the “go-to source” for anyone trying to do this work. The growth of ISSP over the years suggests that there was a felt need for this professional community to come together. Since that beginning 14 years ago, we’ve not only provided a platform for the training, resourcing, and networking of thousands of professionals internationally, we’ve also codified our professional practice, established standards of performance, and developed professional credentials to advance the field.

When we began ISSP, our notion was that if the sustainability effort worldwide was successful, then the need for our profession would disappear: we would have achieved our vision of making sustainability standard practice across all business, governmental, and community operations.

Well, we’re not quite there yet. We find that the urgency to achieve this goal is only increasing, and ISSP is needed now more than ever. Yet in the face of an increasingly dire situation — escalating social and economic inequity, rampaging wildfires, ocean fishes displaced by plastic — the compounding events across our globe appear to be putting some wind in the sails of our profession. The results of the recent election in the United States will likely put my country back into the Paris Climate Agreement; as of this year, renewable energy is now the cheapest way to produce energy – historically, ever; and investors like BlackRock are shifting investments away from fossil fuels and socially irresponsible businesses. These are opportunities to be seized.

ISSP is well positioned to accelerate the change we need. As ISSP looks to the coming decade, we aim to broaden our reach and impact. By building our professional community, providing the necessary resources to advance our profession, collaborating with organizations whose missions overlap with ours, and expanding our education partnerships, ISSP is committed to leading all professionals to a future where sustainability is indeed standard practice. Our vision will then be achieved.

About the Author:

Marsha Willard, SEP
Faculty, Sustainable Social Impact MBA and DBA Programs, Saybrook University
Co-founder & Governing Board Member, ISSP

Together, We Can Change the World

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 19:13:02 GMT

Lawyers are ESG allies. As one of Shakespeare’s best-known quotes is “first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Many forget that these words were spoken in Henry VI by a tyrant seeking to impose his will on a subjugated populace. A less well-known passage, but one that more aptly describes the role lawyers play as trusted advisors, is from Measure for Measure: “Come; fear not you; good counselors lack no clients; though you change your place, you need not change your trade.” That positive view of a lawyer’s role is particularly useful in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) arena, where lawyers are increasingly called upon to help clients navigate and solve complex challenges in a way that not only meets legal requirements but also advances broader societal goals. Helping clients advance their ESG agenda is a pretty great way to make a living while making a difference.

The core role lawyers play as trusted advisors is embedded in our code of ethics. Model Rule 2.1 of the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct requires us to exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice to clients; in so doing, we are encouraged to look beyond the four corners of the law to consider moral, economic, social and political factors that may be relevant to a client’s situation. In my firm’s environmental and renewable energy practice, most clients demand and value advice that goes beyond a narrow reading of the law. Indeed, environmental law recognizes that social and governance issues must be carefully considered to ensure that decisions about major projects appropriately avoid, minimize or mitigate adverse impacts.

The COVID pandemic has heightened our society’s awareness that the private sector can and must play a role in addressing the climate crisis, and that the corrosive effects of racial discrimination and gender inequity continue to plague us. And there is a growing cohort of activists within the private sector (especially younger people) that are committed to advancing these ESG issues. In our firm, for example, these efforts are extending well beyond traditional pro bono work and charitable donations, and are driving the creation of new practice areas that align with the progressive missions of our clients. For example, we are helping clients remediate and redevelop contaminated properties, accelerate the construction of wind and solar projects, build affordable housing, mitigate carbon emissions from buildings, bring clean energy jobs to disadvantaged communities, and create waterfront parks that integrate climate resiliency into their design. These developments are not unique to law firms; other professional service firms are following suit. The rising demand for ESG solutions is creating new opportunities for lawyers and other professionals to forge alliances in service of the public good. We can all be allies in that movement. And most of us want to be.

Lawyers bring certain useful skills to ESG matters. We are trained to find ways to make things happen. We help clients navigate their way through a thicket of complex and sometimes vexing regulations and standards. We break issues down into their component parts and put them back together in a way that fits within a client’s corporate culture and the applicable legal framework. We press regulators to say yes when they may be inclined to say no. We help companies finance solutions to environmental and other challenges. And through the exercise of what one of my law professors called “moral suasion,” we press clients to take a broader view of their interests and consider alternate ways of doing things that will result in better outcomes. It is exciting to have the opportunity to use these skills in the dynamic and evolving ESG field.

In 1965, just after the Selma march, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to an overflow audience of lawyers at the NYC Bar Association. Thanking attorneys for their support of the civil rights movement, Dr. King noted that “the road to freedom is now a highway because lawyers throughout the land, yesterday and today, have helped to clear the obstructions, have helped to eliminate roadblocks, by their selfless, courageous espousal of difficult and unpopular causes.” Today, although ESG professionals do not face the overt hostility faced by civil rights workers at Selma, they can still use the help of lawyers and other allies to clear obstacles and forge a path forward.

About the Author:

Jeffrey B. Gracer
Principal at Sive, Paget & Riesel
Chair, NYC Climate Action Alliance
US & UK Board Member, The Climate Group

Sustainability as the Only Way to Build Back Better

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 17:38:36 GMT

"Today we have a surplus of multilateral challenges and a deficit of multilateral solutions."

António Guterres, UN Secretary-General at the marking of the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations, 21 September 2020

It is important to put this blog in today’s context where we are battling the simultaneous challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequalities. The 75th anniversary of the United Nations that was celebrated last month on September 21st could not have come at a better time as it reaffirmed the United Nations as the only global organization that can give hope to people and deliver the future we want. The urgency for all countries and all stakeholders, including the private and business sectors, to come together and to fulfill the promise of the nations united has rarely been greater. COVID-19 exposes both the weaknesses of our socioeconomic and health systems and the devastating effects of inequality on the most vulnerable people in a time of crisis. As we also celebrate this week the 72nd anniversary of the United Nations Day (October 24th), we have more than ever a reason to mark the ratification in 1945 of the UN Charter. COVID-19 has shown that global problems can be addressed effectively only through multilateralism and global solidarity.

We, as sustainability professionals, need to ask ourselves how we can contribute to building back better and putting us on the path to sustainable development. We need to use this crisis as an opportunity not to go back to unsustainable ways of producing and consuming. For a company to remain competitive even over the next five years, it needs to define policies and strategies that will put it on a sustainable path right now. COVID-19 has made us all aware that something was horribly wrong with the world pre-COVID. Successful businesses will be those that meet the needs of as many people as possible, utilize as few resources as possible, and engage in meaningful, ongoing dialogue with their stakeholders.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), if achieved, would create a world that is sustainable: socially fair, environmentally secure, economically prosperous, inclusive, and more predictable. They have also shown that to achieve sustainability, we need to tackle all three dimensions of sustainable development together — economic, social, and environmental — to establish synergies among the SDGs and related targets, but also to look at trade-offs.

Sustainability is a long-term trajectory. For a company to pursue sustainability, the SDGs need to be part of its business model and aim toward sustainable solutions through strategic planning and innovation, and not as a public relations add-on. A company needs to use a sustainability lens for every aspect of strategy, from appointing board members and senior executives to prioritizing and driving execution. A long-term systemic view, incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, is essential to establishing shareholder value, marketing products and services that inspire consumers to make sustainable choices, and to using the Goals to guide regulatory policy, capital allocation, and leadership development — including women’s empowerment — at every level.

All of this would strengthen the position of sustainable development professionals working in companies. Sustainability professionals can drive synergies and work across sectors and teams so that sustainability really becomes a leading principle in all aspects of business strategy and not a public relations exercise. But they can only be empowered if board members firmly stand behind them. And only if they are given senior executive positions in companies. It is not enough that a few larger companies are doing it. It is important that all companies, including small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) do it as well. Throughout SMEs, sustainability professionals can then work with their peers in other companies to drive sustainability of markets and value chains. And policy makers need to create an enabling environment for such companies to be able to invest in sustainability through preferential loans and tax breaks. It has never been more important than now to encourage and instigate this type of a business model when COVID-19 has given us this opportunity to reset our world. This will be then a real contribution to building back better and greener.

Both policy makers and companies need to do their part as equal partners in achieving the SDGs. Policy makers need to create an enabling environment through legislation and public-private partnerships so that true cost can be paid for natural and human resources and longer-term investment is encouraged. Companies, on the other hand, need to create sustainable value chains, respect human rights, be transparent in their work — including paying taxes — and drive innovation and technologies that would benefit everyone. Only the whole of these multisector efforts can successfully drive sustainable economic growth, create more just and inclusive societies, and ensure environmental protection and stewardship of natural resources.

About the Author:

Irena Zubcevic * , M.Sc.
Chief, Intergovernmental Policy and Review Branch
Office of Intergovernmental Support and Coordination for Sustainable Development
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Member of ISSP

* The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.

COVID-19 And The Longer Horizon

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 17:08:26 GMT

Within the global landscape of a pandemic, long-unaddressed social justice issues, and expanding civil protest, all of us at ISSP wondered how best to support our sector during this uncertain timeline. No better place to inquire than among the esteemed honorees of our ISSP Hall of Fame. With Fabian Sack, my Governing Board colleague who was then serving as our president, we asked each of our fourteen Sustainability Hall of Fame honorees if they would share their thoughts on where we are, what we're facing, and how our sector might most effectively advance the work to be done. Our Sustainability Hall of Fame video series, COVID-19 And The Longer Horizon , fully released this week, offers their insights.

In COVID-19 And The Longer Horizon, Hall of Fame honoree Bob Willard, ISSP-CSP, describes our current reality as the first time in human history that we confront a "perfect storm" of sustainability crises: the ever escalating climate crisis, a public health crisis, and an economic crisis. And he adds, "It's important that all three of them be in the mix as we try to figure out how we come out of this, and what the lessons learned from this incredibly challenging situation are."

In the face of this "perfect storm," changing attitudes and behaviors in communities around the world are impacting both our work and our potential for influence as sustainability professionals. The facts of science and the insights of experts now receive increasing attention from a broader public. The values of social justice galvanize hundreds of thousands to march in solidarity for diversity, inclusion, and equity around the globe. The spheres of professional life and personal life blur as digital devices serve as one of our few portals to the COVID-19 world outside. We can see these social, political, and professional shifts beginning to dismantle the siloed thinking and siloed values that for too long have shaped the systemic issues underneath the crises we face. These systemic disconnections are the very issues that we, as sustainability professionals, work to solve.

The right voices at the right time can foster uncommon cooperation and galvanize extraordinary action. Never before have global cooperation and global action been more necessary. The overwhelming take-away from COVID-19 And The Longer Horizon is the interconnectedness across both the challenges as well as the opportunities of this unprecedented moment. The global framework reflecting this interdependency is of course the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The intrinsic power of the SDGs is their interdependency: any enduring progress in sustainability is interdependent with the progress across each and every of the seventeen global goals. And the very interdependency of the SDGs also presents the complexity — and often the dilemma — to today's problem-solving and decision-making, across sectors and across the world.

Navigating that complexity is the distinct strength of sustainability professionals. As we enter the decisive decade leading up to the 2030 SDGs, the problems our sector seeks to meet and solve are daunting. Yet, the opportunities have never been greater.

"I really feel that sustainability, survival, the planet, our health — has all become one issue in our times. In a way, what the pandemic has done is collapse all of these false separations. It's literally made the divisions disappear."

Dr. Vandana Shiva
Director, Navdanya
ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame

As ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame honoree John Elkington, Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volan Ventures, Ltd., states in our video series, "We’re in a period where the old order is coming apart." He continues, "But that’s the most extraordinarily exciting time to be alive and working in an area like this. Because if you can get your agenda coherent enough and clear enough to key people, by God, you can move in the right direction at a very much greater speed and a very much greater scale than in normal times, when most people think they know what they’re doing."

Stay connected to this space, our ISSPBlog. Here, our contributors bring you the resources, the inspiration, and the insights to ensure that your work advances at "a very much greater speed and a very much greater scale." Both are necessary to what we need to accomplish.

About the Author:

Trisha Bauman, M.Sc.
CEO & Founder, TJBauman
Vice President, ISSP Governing Board

Dr. Vandana Shiva
Director, Navdanya
ISSP Sustainability Hall of Fame

About the Author:

Trisha Bauman, M.Sc.
CEO & Founder, TJBauman
Vice President, ISSP Governing Board

sustainabilityprofessionals

Two Courses, One Mission: Building Sustainability Practitioners Who Are Ready to Act

Why This Matters for ISSP Members

From Influence to Impact: Upcoming Webinars & Working Sessions for Sustainability Leaders Ready to Scale Change

Webinar: The advantages and challenges for small businesses in sustainability

Implementing the AIMS Framework: From Momentum to Scale

Why These Sessions Matter Now

Turning Member Feedback into Action: ISSP’s 2026 Strategic Plan

What the ISSP 2026 Strategic Plan Is—and Is Not

Strategic Priority 2: Updating the ISSP Body of Knowledge

Strategic Priority 3: Strengthening Member Engagement and Community

Listening, Learning, and Rebuilding Connection: Reflections from Our First ISSP Town Hall

Elizabeth Dinschel, MA, MBA, is the Executive Director of ISSP

Why We Called This Town Hall

What This Means for ISSP

What We're Already Working On

Moving Forward, Together

Can sustainability be saved by tackling loneliness, not just CO₂ emissions?

﻿ Can sustainability be saved by tackling loneliness, not just CO₂ emissions?

So, what can companies do about loneliness?

Toward Appropriate and Responsible AI: Pathways to Sustainable Adoption and Infrastructure

Toward Appropriate and Responsible AI:

Pathways to Sustainable Adoption and Infrastructure

Start With Community: The First Mile of Sustainable Development

Start With Community: The First Mile of Sustainable Development

Ari Tjahjanto - SEA Case Study

Do the Math: Why Financial Modeling Is Essential for Sustainability

Do the Math: Why Financial Modeling Is Essential for Sustainability

Rhonda Maxwell - SEA Case Study

Who Gets to Tell the Story of ESG?

Who Gets to Tell the Story of ESG?

Edwin P. Nerva - SEP Case Story

The New York Climate Clock

THE NEW YORK CLIMATE CLOCK

A CLOCK FEW NOTICE AND FEWER UNDERSTAND

A CALL TO ACTION, AN ANXIOUS WARNING, SYMBOLISM: WHERE DOES THE CLOCK STAND?

Luis Alvarez - SEP Case Story

Elizabeth Cockle - SEA Case Story

A Tourist in Antarctica: Witnessing its Wonders and Warnings for a Changing World

The fragile Antarctic ecosystem

Behind the curtain of the Thwaites Glacier

Pollution knows no borders

A call for systemic solutions

Joseph K. Muiruri - SEA Case Story

Climate Risks in US Real Estate: A Looming Economic Downturn Despite Political Denial

Climate change and the home insurance crisis

Rising insurance costs and the domino effect

The socioeconomic implications of a changing housing market: climate migration

Opportunities amidst risks

Michael F. Horowitz - SEA Case Story

Navigating the Climate Action Journey: Lessons from Building a Movement

Intergenerational collaboration and diversity

The power of community

Friendship and joy in the movement

After the Sustainability Recession: It’s time to expand our focus from responsible business to regenerative markets

Markets Wobble As Politicization Grows

Sustainability is our biggest market failure

At best, tariffs are short-term remedy

Good Business: Three Case Studies in Corporate Power Wielding on Climate Change

The Corporate Sustainability Thesis

Holy Cross Energy: Changing Utility Leadership to Cut Carbon Footprint

Kimberly-Clark: Exerting Public Pressure on Business Partners

Using Advertising as a Tool for Activism

Meaningful Corporate Climate Action is Good Business

Case Study: Interview with TAFE NSW, ISSP Organizational Member

Through your experience as an impact strategist, what sets the Diploma of Sustainable Practice at TAFE NSW apart from other similar programs?

How does the DoSP prepare students for the Sustainability Excellence Associate credential exam?

Why do you enjoy teaching sustainability at TAFE NSW?

What are some examples of how students or alumni have put their sustainability skills into action?

Student Spotlights

TAFE NSW helps Berowra charity queen build a more sustainable future

Housing leader credits TAFE NSW with helping her attract $380k in grant funding

Sophia S. Mwema - SEA Case Story

Ponzi Schemes Are Destructive, Particularly the Biggest One: Global Overshoot

Why Attend Greenbuild 2024?

Together, we’ll learn how to build:

20 Things You’ll Get from Attending Greenbuild 2024

Rouba Nassar - SEA Case Story

Partnerships Can Move the Needle on Sustainability

Attuning to start

Can sustainability be saved by tackling loneliness, not just CO₂ emissions?