The Sustainability Agenda

In today’s episode, we speak with Professor Ioannis Ioannou on business sustainability four years after his first interview for this podcast. Professor Ioannou gives an overview of the progress that has been made over this time. He argues that sustainability is the mother of all disruptions–and as it is a domain where companies lack necessary experience and knowledge and skills, some iconic brands are heading for the corporate graveyard. He also discusses his recent research that shows that companies are increasingly adopting a similar set of sustainability practices within their industry–and when companies don’t keep up with these minimum sustainability practices, its performance will suffer. Professor Ioannou is optimistic about the progress corporations are making toward sustainability, but also believes that the level and speed are not enough, nor should we rely solely upon corporations to achieve the systemic change needed to fight climate change.Ioannis Ioannou is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School. His research is focused in the area of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility and understanding whether, how, and the extent to which companies and capital markets can lead on the path towards a sustainable future. He is a global influencer, speaker, and advisor to many, engaging with top executives around the world. He has frequently published in top-tier academic journals as well as popular and managerial press outlets, as well as presented his research around the world.He is currently an Associate Editor of the Strategic Management Journal. In 2016, Prof. Ioannou was awarded the 2016 ARCS Emerging Sustainability Scholar Award. He recently launched a pioneering, 5-week online course on Sustainability Leadership and Corporate Responsibility.The post Episode 91: Interview with Professor Ioannis Ioannou, leading sustainability researcher at London Business School appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

In today’s episode we speak with John Dennis Liu on the large-scale disruption of ecosystems caused by human activity and the approach we must take to ecological restoration. Everyone likes to focus on CO2, but that’s just one greenhouse gas indicator of an egregious problem. We need to shift our focus from placing too much value in material things and abiotic approaches like renewable energy to focus on climate regulation and restoring symbiotic relationships between living systems, starting with integrated water management.John Dennis Liu is a Chinese-American filmmaker and ecologist. He left journalism over 20 years ago to create and direct the Environmental Education Media Project, and in 2017 created Ecosystem Restoration Camps, a critical tool to build knowledge and skills for revitalizing large-scale damaged ecosystems. He is a Rothamstead International Fellow for the Communication of Science at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institution. He has won awards for his filmmaking, including Hope in a Changing Climate which is an inspiring documentary about the hope ecosystem restoration offers us.The post Episode 90: Interview with John Dennis Liu, filmmaker and ecologist appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

In this episode we speak with Naomi Klein, renowned author and activist on the state of crisis we’re in and the hope provided by Green New Deals. We’ve made a lot of progress in lifting the importance of climate change in the progressive political agenda, but Naomi explains that we can’t just apply a narrow, technocratic solution. We need a solution that puts social, racial and gender justice at the center. She describes the power of a science-justice-guided approach, and the danger of a hierarchy-based worldview we must fight against. Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept, a Puffin Writing Fellow at Type Media Center and is the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.The post Episode 89: Interview with Naomi Klein, author and activist appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Today we speak with Dr. Mike Hulme about climate change from an enlightening perspective that encompasses the relationship between science and policy, science and culture, the politics of climate change, and the possibilities for action in the world. Mike claims we are beyond “stopping” climate change, we must be pragmatic and scale back to simply trying to avoid most egregious problems. We must not rely on artificial, one-size-fits all deadlines put into place regarding a specific number of degrees or tons of CO2, and also consider the world’s other problems beyond climate change.Dr. Mike Hulme is a Professor of Human Geography in the department of Geography at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. His work explores the idea of climate change from a range of perspectives, historical, cultural, scientific, revealing various ideological, political and ethical dimensions to the way climate change is deployed in public and political conversations. The post Episode 88: Interview with Professor Mike Hulme on the culture and politics of climate change appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Today we speak with Dr. Keir Milburn about the ongoing shift of young people to the left in the UK. In this interview, Keir notes how the material interests of older people are aligned with the performance of the financial sector and real estate whereas younger people are less tied to such measures and more invested in public and social good. Keir argues that we need to find a way to get people with many different views to want to work toward the same thing. We have no time to wait and we must move from the place we’ve gotten through awareness raising through efforts such as Extinction Rebellion into action.Dr. Keir Milburn is a British writer, activist and lecturer on political economy and organization at the University of Leicester. He has a special interest in generational politics and is the author of Generation Left, exploring the large scale move to the left by young people in Britain. Keir’s research also explores the potential for progressive governance, in particular public commons partnerships as a means to socialize the way we process economics decisions.The post Episode 87: Interview with Dr. Keir Milburn on generational politics, and Public-Commons Partnerships appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

In today’s episode with Professor Colin Mayer, we look at the role of corporations in society. Colin believes that corporations must evolve from a focus on profit maximisation to embrace purposeful goals as being positive contributors to society. Ultimately, this is should be enforced by law and performance measured using principles for purposeful business. While Colin is hopeful about the growing momentum building, he recognises that we have a long way to go.Professor Colin Mayer is the Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies at the Said Business school at University of Oxford where he was Dean between 2006 and 2011. Colin’s research explores the regulation of financial markets and institutions international comparisons of financial systems and corporate governments and their effects on the financing and control of corporations. He also has a longstanding research interest in the role of corporations in contemporary society.The post Episode 86: Interview with Professor Colin Mayer on corporate purpose appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Today we talk about the expectations and outcomes of the COP 25 climate summit with Professor Maisa Rojas, COP 25 scientific coordinator. Professor Rojas hopes that this will be be a time for mobilization and turning scientific reports into action. However, she acknowledges the large social and political hurdles remaining, and that getting people to change their values is not as straightforward. Professor Rojas also talks about the importance of science communications and the role of scientists in dealing with climate change. Professor Maisa Rojas was the scientific coordinator for the COP25 climate summit and director of Chile’s Center for Climate and resilience research she’s also an Associate Professor of the Department of Geophysics at the University of Chile. Her two main research areas are paleoclimate, the study of past climates, and regional climate change.The post Episode 85: Interview with Professor Maisa Rojas, COP 25 scientific coordinator appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Described by the New York Times as “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” Noam Chomsky is a pioneering American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, social critic, and political activist.Sometimes called “the father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. Chomsky has been a hugely influential figure in the international anti-war movement –and an unrelenting critic of international power. In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky, together with Edward Herman, skilfully analyse the way in which the marketplace and the economics of publishing significantly shape the news.He holds a joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, and is the author of more than 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media.In this fascinating and timely interview, Professor Chomsky shares his views on the urgent environmental crises we are facing today—and says, following the recent IPCC report, that it is indeed “time to panic” about climate change (he is also very worried about growing nuclear challenges).  He talks about the disastrous impact of the U.S Republican Party over decades, a denialist organisation, and discusses the emergence, and dangers, of growing climate nationalism and fascism in the US.Chomsky argues that the US urgently needs a Green New Deal, a theme at the heart of his recent book with Robert Pollen, The Political Economy of Climate Change and the Green New Deal.  He notes the way the Green New deal is discussed in the media is a continuation of a massive propaganda to demonize the work of government over several decades.While acknowledging the impact we can have as individuals by modifying our personal consumption, Chomsky argues that these personal choices don’t measure up against the massive decisions on a national and global level, for example, stopping fossil fuel companies relentlessly developing new production facilities. Chomsky sees great potential for social protest, noting the recent impact of Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise movement in the US.The post Episode 84: Interview with pioneering linguist, social critic, and political activist on the environmental crises we are facing appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

In this wide-ranging interview, Nate highlights the vital, and oft-overlooked, role that a systems synthesis plays in our understanding of the human predicament. Integrating human behavior, energy, money, economy, ecology into the story that brought humans to this point – is the only way we can make sense of future paths, according to Hagens. He paints a picture of a society deeply dependent upon the massive productivity of fossil carbon and hydrocarbons rich energy sources- “in some ways capitalism is the natural biological response of a social species finding a huge bank account of fossil carbon and hydrocarbons”– but, interestingly, he argues we are not only carbon constrained but behaviorally growth constrained and will kick any cans -debt, rule changes, etc to keep global economies growing. Nate also talks about the implications of this – that we are soon approaching a ‘Great Simplification’ and what this means for communities and young people, living differently and preparing.Nate Hagens is a well-known speaker on the big picture issues facing human society and currently teaches a systems synthesis Honors seminar at the University of Minnesota ‘Reality 101 – A Survey of the Human Predicament’   Nate is on the Boards of Post Carbon Institute, Bottleneck Foundation, IIER and Institute for the Study of Energy and the Future.  Previously, he was lead editor of The Oil Drum, one of the most popular and respected websites for analysis and discussion of global energy supplies and the future implications of the upcoming energy transition. Read his recent publication for more: Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganismThe post Episode 83: Interview with Nate Hagens on energy and sustainability appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

We are living in a very vulnerable, unprecedented situation–an ecological crisis which is as social as it is environmental. The way we look at technology and economic systems, and the way we interact as social beings in a globalized world is often as if they are separate from nature, but in reality they’re inextricably intertwined.Today we speak with Unai Pascual, an ecological economist, on the human disconnect with nature, the importance of ecological services, and the need to broaden our focus beyond economics and markets. Unai argues that we must adopt a more multi-dimensional perspective that includes not just tangible resources and money but also fairness, social justice, respect for diversity and nature.Unai Pascual is an ecological economist. He’s an Ikerbasque research professor at the Basque center for climate change at Bilbao in Spain and one of the lead authors of IPBES’ global biodiversity and ecosystem services assessment. In 2018 he was also nominated co-chairman of the IPBES assessment on the values of nature. In Europe and especially in developing countries, he has conducted research with a focus on the interactions between climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystems. He has written many journal articles and published books and chapters, given talks about the links between land use change and human well-being, and has an active role in international policy bodies.The post Episode 82: Interview with Unai Pascual, Ecological Economist appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.