The Sustainability Agenda

Michael has led sustainability at Levi Strauss & Co. since 2001. Under his leadership, Levi has been a leader in bringing sustainability to the apparel industry and Michael has helped drive industry collaboration on sustainability, serving as Chair of the Better Cotton Initiative and Board member of the Sustainable apparel Coalition. In this interview, Michael explians what sustainability means to Levi’s, discusses the company’s commitment to becoming more sustainable, and its profits through principles programme. He explains how the Levi’s various water reduction initiatives operate– and how they have saved over a billion litres of water– as well as plans, together with several other companies, to eliminate all discharge of hazardous chemicals by 2020. Finally. Michael looks to the future and discusses some of the signature sustainability initiatives over the coming years.The post Episode 21: Michael Kobori, Vice-President, Sustainability, at Levi Strauss & Co. Levi’s Sustainability Journey appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

How can economics deal with climate change? In this interview, Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator of the Financial Times, talks about the crucial importance of dealing with climate change and discusses the ways in which economic analysis and policy can help. He shares his views on the milestone COP21 agreement and the role of taxes and regulation dealing with climate change. Martin assesses the potential of using more environmentally inclusive economic accounting measures to help deal with environmental issues, and shares his views on emerging economic models that emphasize low or no-growth economic activity. What emerges finally, in this wide-ranging, personal, interview, is a resolutely optimistic vision, one where man’s capacity to invent and innovate can provide solutions to overcome the growing environmental challenges we face. Martin Wolf is a distinguished and highly respected financial and economic journalist and commentator – covering a very wide range of economic, financial and other topics –and has recently been a strong voice on the importance of dealing with climate change.  He has received numerous awards for his work — including a CBE for services to financial journalism in 2000 –and was appointed a member of the UK government’s Independent Commission on Banking in June 2010. Martin’s most recent publications are Why Globalization Works and The Shifts and the Shocks: What we’ve learned – and have still to learn – from the financial crisis, published in 2015. This interview was undertaken last year prior to the COP22 and prior to the election of Donald Trump.The post Episode 20: Martin Wolf: How economic policy can help deal with growing environmental challenges and climate change appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Andreea Strachinescu is head of the New Energy Technologies and Innovation unit in the Directorate General for Energy at the European Commission. She is responsible for the development of the policy and actions on non-nuclear energy research and innovation. In this interview, Andrea talks about recent developments in EU renewable energy, in particular, growing focus on research & innovation, the ways in which the EU is currently emphasizing replication & scaling of renewable energy initiatives. She also talks about the crucial importance of developments to integrate renewable energy within the existing grid & looks to the future and identifies key areas for growth.The post Episode 19:  Andreea Strachinescu | developments in new energy technologies and innovation in the EU appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Katherine Collins has had a a long successful career in traditional fund management – she was head of US Equity Research at Fidelity Investments and later as Portfolio Manager was responsible for investment decisions for the multi-billion dollar Fidelity America funds. But over her career she came to see serious shortcomings in the way traditional finance operates. Her work at Honeybee Capital today is focussed on illuminating a more human and natural path to investing – in particular applying natural science and the principles of biomimicry, a broad approach where systems are modelled on biological processes, to investing.In this interview, Katharine talks about some of the shortcomings of traditional financial analysis and calls-out the epidemic of short termism on Wall Street. She explores how new ways of looking at finance using biomimicry-like approaches can unlock value and help identify risks in companies’ long term viability. Katherine raises questions about financial models that suggest there is a systematic trade off between financial returns and ESG benefits, and talks about how these traditional analytical models can, notwithstanding their efficiency, increase rather than reduce risk. In this inspiring interview, Katharine draws on her twenty-plus years of leadership in  leading investment firms, proposing an exciting new approach where finance is about resiliency rather than rigidity, simplicity rather than complexity, with mutual value and exchange at its heart.The post Episode 18: Katherine Collins| How to connect investing with the real world and how finance can learn from nature appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Professor Kevin Anderson is an important – and outspoken – voice on how our emissions today are locking in dangerous levels of climate change and how we need immediate and strong action now, individually and collectively, if we are to bequeath our children a safe and secure future. He is the Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research holds a joint chair in Energy and Climate Change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester and in Climate Change Leadership at the Univeristy of Uppsala in Sweden. Kevin engages with all tiers of government, within the UK, Sweden and the wider EU.In this podcast, Kevin presents a stark vision of a world on the brink of catastrophic climate change—and argues that there is now no way to address this challenge without radical economic and social change. With a strong focus on the need for institutional change, Kevin draws attention to the urgent need to transform our energy infrastructure from a high- to zero-carbon over the coming decades. He weighs up various different policies to achieve this–and expresses strong concerns about overreliance on new technologies to deal with climate change (largely technologies that would remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere).The post Episode 17: Professor Kevin Anderson| Climate Change Warning appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Ericsson has been at the forefront of corporate sustainability initiatives for many years- and will publish its 24th annual Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Report on March 1 2017.  In this podcast, I speak to Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility (CR) for the Ericsson Group worldwide about the company’s sustainability journey. Elaine’s work is focused on driving Ericsson’s sustainability and CR initiatives and she is head of Ericsson Response, the company’s flagship employee volunteer program for humanitarian and disaster response, and is responsible for partnerships that explore using Ericsson’s core technology to solve compelling sustainable development challenges facing the world. In this interview, Elaine talks about Ericsson’s sustainability journey-it’s three key stages–and the work it has done to integrate sustainability deeply within the business. She explains how senior leaders at Ericsson have worked with the SDG goals –each of the executive leadership team is ambassador for an SDG goal–and how it has begun to cascade throughout the company. Elaine shows how the company’s sustainability initiatives have been good for the company–particularly in terms of employee engagement-and talks frankly about some of the more challenging sustainability decisions that the company has had to make. Finally, Elaine talks about the company’s Technology for Good programme and highlights some recent initiatives. Elaine paints a compelling picture of how a leading technology company is putting its sustainability values into practice, highlighting what can be achieved when sustainability values are embraced across a company’s senior leadership team. The post Episode 16: Interview with Ericsson’s Elaine Weidman-Grunewald: Ericsson’s sustainability journey appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

John is a pioneer in the world of corporate responsibility and sustainable development -as a writer, consultant, and serial entrepreneur he has been at the forefront of sustainability thinking for four decades. John is the author or co-author of 19 books —- he is credited with coining key sustainability terms including environmental excellence, the triple bottom line, and People, Planet & Profit. He is also co-founder of four environmental and sustainability businesses, including SustainAbility. His latest, Volans, launched in 2008, is a future-focused business working at the intersection of sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation. In this interview, John talks about key sustainability lessons and insights developed over this career—and how he sees the future of sustainability. He talks about the innovative work that Volans is doing with the United Nations Global Compact –and shares his optimism for technological innovation as a means to deal with climate change. John talks about the potential of exponential technologies, why he believes in stretch and exponential targets to impact climate change, and the power of breakthrough business models. Finally, John reflects on the appropriateness of existing financial investment models to finance green investment.The post Episode 15: John Elkington| Exponential technologies, climate change, and sustainable development. appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

From a vantage point of 40 years experience helping create the field of sustainability, Hunter Lovins is in an excellent position to explain where sustainability is today–and to highlight the latest thinking that will drive regenerative practices, the next wave beyond sustainability. Hunter is the President of Natural Capitalism Solutions, an entrepreneurial NGO that helps companies, communities and countries implement more regenerative practices profitably. Hunter is on the steering committee of Leading for Well-Being, an international team charged by the King of Bhutan to reinvent the global economy. A Professor of Sustainable Business at Bard MBA in New York, she is also one of the entrepreneurs creating Change Finance, an advisory moving money from harm to healing. In this podcast, Hunter gives her vision for a sustainable future, building on A Finer Future, a forthcoming book she is co-writing for the Club of Rome, on whose Executive Committee she serves. Hunter talks about the power of resource efficiency, renewable energy, and the potential for tax shifting. She describes the potential for positive change with cutting-edge ideas like Biomimicry and Regenerative Capitalism. This is a resolutely positive vision of change and building a better world, inspired by Buckmister Fuller, Dana Meadows and many others. But it is only possible if we take action today.The post Episode 14: Hunter Lovins| New thinking that will drive Regenerative Capitalism, the next wave beyond sustainability appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

Little had been written on the role of environmental taxes when Paul Ekins wrote The Living Economy in1986. Since that time we have learnt a lot more about the potential role of taxation in dealing with climate change, yet there has been relatively little implementation of these ideas. In this podcast, Professor Ekins gives his view on the crucial role of smart regulation, new technologies and carbon taxation in dealing with climate change. He also discusses role of markets in solving climate problems, the challenge of inequality, and the prospects for a low-carbon high-growth economy. The post Episode 13: Professor Paul Ekins| Smart regulation, new technologies and carbon taxation appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.

After several false starts, many experts now believe that the green finance sector is at a tipping point. Investors are paying attention to ESG factors as never before, there is an explosion of investor interest in green bonds, and195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, fully ratified global climate deal in Paris in 2015. In this podcast, eco-finance pioneer Tessa Tennant gives her view on recent developments in green finance, explores the implications of the Paris Agreement, and talks about her latest initiative NDCi.global –which aims to connect professionals around the world working to finance and implement the national climate commitments (NDCs) underlying the recently ratified Paris Agreement. Finally in an update to the original podcast, Tessa gives her feedback on COP22 and looks at a possible future where the US government is less committed to taking action on climate change.The post Episode 12: Tessa Tennant | The future of green finance appeared first on The Sustainability Agenda.