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This article on the Biden administration’s plans and how they could affect climate resilience was written with Laurie Schoeman.

How has President Biden’s first 100 days in office helped us as we continue through this resilience decade? What’s the very early scorecard on climate change risk disclosures and the financial markets?

In a new CNN Poll, the president gets the highest rating for his performance during the first 100 days for his leadership on environmental policy, with a net positive rating of 54 percent. What is clear is his team has the social capital, vision, commitment and know-how to drive an agenda that builds an equitable, resilient and strong nation.

It’s encouraging that the new president’s climate action strategy includes important and valid emphasis on climate change mitigation. He has spoken favorably about decreasing greenhouse gas emissions primarily through increasing investments in renewable power, while increasing regulations to direct the private sector toward more efficient technologies and operations. Nevertheless, to connect this strategy to apply to all Americans, the White House must emphasize climate resilience. So far, the administration’s policies are trending in a positive direction.

Here is our top seven list of the administration’s most impactful efforts to build a climate-resilient nation.

Seven key steps the new administration has taken toward climate resilience

President Biden has reinstated America as a leader in domestic and international climate action by rejoining the Paris Agreement, committing to both decrease global greenhouse gas emissions and boost climate resilience in our communities.

The administration has so far positioned seasoned and respected leaders to champion the international and domestic climate agenda and put climate action into practice, including Cecilia Martinez, Senior Director of Environmental Justice at the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Department of the Interior; Michael Regan, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Gina McCarthy National Senior Climate Advisor; and John Kerry, International Climate Envoy.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen committed her department to examine the financial risks of climate change; to wield Treasury’s broad powers to tackle potential risks to the financial system posed climate change imposes; and to the appointment of a senior official to lead climate initiatives.

The Federal Reserve has launched a climate committee to assess the implications of climate change risks on the U.S. financial system, including banks, corporations and infrastructure.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has issued a “Request for Input” on integrating climate risk management for its regulated entities that include Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Bank to investigate housing finance system climate risks disclosure and management.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun work on potential regulations that would require companies to disclose exposure to climate risk; it is evaluating climate disclosure guidelines, and it has prepared a detailed questionnaire seeking industry feedback until mid-June.

And finally, the Commodity Future Trading Commission has announced a new Climate Risk Unit that follows on its groundbreaking 2020 report, Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System.

So what's next?

These all are significant advances. But at a moment when the nation is emerging from the economic and community disruption of the century’s largest health crisis, every move the Biden Administration makes must be related to supporting both Main Street and Wall Street. Next week, we will discuss several initiatives on which the new administration can lead that we believe can bolster climate resilience along with the economic infrastructure of the nation.

Co-author Laurie Schoeman is the co-founder of Resilience 21 and leads Enterprise Community Partners’ efforts to preserve and protect affordable housing across the nation from the risks and impacts of natural hazards and a changing climate.

Image credit: Tabrez Syed/Unsplash

The level of system change required to tackle many of the world’s most pressing challenges can seem overwhelming. Sometimes, a simple and unlikely symbol changes our perspectives. For personal care company Kimberly-Clark, it was a photo of an abandoned toilet in the middle of a field. A donation to a rural community to drive sanitation, it had never been used because the physical, social and cultural infrastructure to support its role in better sanitation hadn’t been addressed.

Kimberly-Clark is no stranger to social impact work. The company has driven impact to improve sanitation and hygiene and empower women and girls through global initiatives that provide access to sanitation and menstrual hygiene education. But seeing the picture of that humble toilet prompted a much deeper conversation about the broader physical and social system challenges at play. 

Kimberly-Clark did not donate the abandoned toilet in question, but the photo resonated with leadership to make sure any investment would result in true system change and how it would be measured: When a company invests in toilets or plumbing systems, it doesn’t just improve health and hygiene — it can change an entire community, opening up new income and educational opportunities, reducing mortality from preventable diseases, and giving people dignity and peace of mind. But it has to take the local realities into account for any of that to happen.  

With a goal to impact 1 billion lives by 2030 in partnership with nonprofits and NGOs, the team at Kimberly-Clark realized they needed to overhaul the way the company measures impact in order to demonstrate value and hold themselves accountable. That meant taking a step back to understand why it was so important to adopt a system-change perspective in the first place, and why it was so challenging to measure results. 

System change: Getting to the root cause of the problem

For answers to those big questions, Kimberly-Clark turned to Dr. Sally Uren, a member of its Sustainability Advisory Board who is also CEO of Forum for the Future, an international sustainability nonprofit that specializes in addressing global challenges by catalyzing change in key systems — from food to apparel, energy to shipping. It runs a School of System Change to help people bring the practice into their work. 

Forum for the Future defines system change as “the emergence of a new pattern of organization or system structure. That pattern being the physical structure, the flows and relationships or the mindsets or paradigms of a system, it is also a pattern that results in the new goals of the system.”

In other words: System change is both an outcome and a process — and it’s key to driving the transformational change the world needs.

Uren cited two major reasons why it’s time for businesses to take account of system change: “The first reason is simply the scale and urgency of the challenges we face,” she told TriplePundit. “If we think about what needs to happen over the next few years, to secure a stable climate, to maintain biodiversity, the science is telling us that incremental change just won't be enough.”

“We have to think about wholesale, transformational change and about the systems we rely on and how they fundamentally operate. Because tweaking around the edge of those systems isn’t going to drive the radical change that will deliver on the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals,” she added.

System change also illuminates the root cause of a problem. “When we think about structural inequalities or structural racism, we tend to latch onto the surface-level events. But a system approach really prompts you to think about the root causes,” Uren continued. “What is driving this inequality that we see in our system? What is driving the structural racism? And we start to then understand that the drivers are much more around personal values, mindsets and history. The whole history of colonialization is a really fundamental root cause of some of the racism that we see today, and this prompts us to really reflect on how the global economy is wired.”

In the case of Kimberly-Clark, period poverty is a broader systemic challenge that has a direct influence on its social impact work. Period poverty, or a lack of access to menstrual hygiene products, knowledge and basic sanitation that enable women to manage their periods with dignity, could be caused by many factors: There may be social or cultural issues contributing to the problem, or the products may not be affordable. 

Solutions therefore need to be seen through a systems lens, Uren explained. “A systems approach allows you to understand the broader issue that you need to address alongside a particular problem that you might be solving for.” 

Four ways systems begin to change

Uren went on to outline four ways in which systems begin to change. The first is new activity — new innovations, pioneering practices or new flows of information. The second signal that a system is changing is when businesses find new ways to deliver goods and services to market — the shift from a linear consumption model to a circular economy is a good example. These shifts, in turn, often lead to new financial or legislative incentives. The number of organizations adopting new ways of doing things, or the numbers of new business models or new financial incentives working in the economy, are all indicators of a system changing.

Third, the goals and desired outcomes of the system will begin to shift. “That’s where you need collaborations,” Uren added. “At Forum for the Future, we  create collaborations to really change the goals of a given system. One example is a project with the cotton industry to change the goals of the cotton system from a system designed to deliver conventional cotton to sustainable cotton – shifting the goals of the system in this way will drive mainstreaming measures to protect the environment and ways of dealing with deep-rooted inequalities. Another example is our collaboration, aimed at transforming the protein system to allow equitable access to sustainable protein for a growing population.” 

The final signal that a system is changing centers on mindset. “Deep, structural, systemic change comes from a shift in mindset, a shift in the stories we tell ourselves and a shift in the beliefs that we hold,” Uren explained. "This is where you see new narratives emerging, and it's happening right now in our pandemic landscape: A narrative is emerging that safe planetary health equals human health. That has always been true, but that narrative wasn't really well understood before COVID-19.”

Recognize when a system is unsustainable — and take action

If she were to succinctly capture her advice to leaders on how to tackle the challenge of measuring their impact on system change, Uren said it comes down to four success factors.

Take the time to understand the concept of system change. “It’s not an easy concept sometimes, and it's also laden with jargon and it's quite academic. But taking the time to understand what a systems approach might mean to your operations is really important,” Uren advised. “Essentially it's about understanding the connections between things and understanding root causes.”

Get comfortable about blending qualitative and quantitative metrics. “For companies, there's a real desire for quantitative metrics, but when it comes to understanding system change, that's actually quite hard to do,” Uren told us. “While key stakeholders, particularly investors are keen to see metrics having a blend of qualitative and quantitative metrics is really important.”

Accept a bit of ambiguity. “We don't live in a linear world, but we keep on trying to solve for our big challenges as if it was linear,” Uren observed. “As humans, we quite like certainty, but systems don’t work like that. The systems we rely on are dynamic and complex."

Ask yourself the tough questions. “The fourth success factor is probably the most important, which is to really encourage every individual to ask themselves, ‘Is what I am doing locking in an existing unsustainable system?  Am I unwittingly perpetuating the status quo? Or am I allowing the emergence of a new way of doing things?’” Uren concluded. 

Achieving effective and measurable system change requires companies to understand the broader issue that you need to address alongside a particular problem that you might be solving for. And as Uren reminds us, “We need to be really hard and honest with ourselves. If we are, we will see systemic change deliver meaningful positive social impact sooner rather than later.”

This article series is sponsored by Kimberly-Clark and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Image credit: Bill Wegener/Unsplash

We might be a little late for Mother’s Day (especially since we're often shipping our gifts), but Father’s Day isn’t too far off, and in any event, these Mother’s Day gift ideas could really work for just about any occasion.

For those who want to send something on the thoughtful side but wish to be somewhat responsible with the environment and social impact in mind, we offer a few ideas. And yes, some out there may slap your wrists for the shipping involved (i.e., over the carbon footprint), but we think these companies present some happy exceptions. Read on, and Happy Mother's Day (and next month, Father's Day!)

Bouqs offers countless color pops of joy

We’ve long been a fan this Southern California company, which has been changing how flowers are sourced, sold and delivered for several years. Bouqs, based in Southern California, promises to deliver flowers directly from farms in regions such as South America. Customers can visit the company’s site and select a bouquet, and recipients will receive those arrangements relatively quickly. Less storage time means less waste - as much as 40 percent of all flowers marketed in the U.S. end up never sold. The company has claimed its flower farming partners can now gain access to benefits such as day care, health care and education for its employees - while practicing “sustainable, eco-friendly farming.” As far as flowers go, this is about as farm-to-table as you can get. Currently, one line of flowers will contribute funds to Campaign Zero to fight police brutality.

Orchids grown responsibly

California’s central coast (from Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz counties) is host to the perfect climate for growing many varieties of flowers. Westerlay Orchids, based in the small seaside town of Carpinteria, is a third-generation family business that excels in raising Orchidaceae. If you happen to live on the west coast, Westerlay’s orchids are available at some supermarkets, or you can arrange online to have mom or dad receive a box. The company has it down when it comes to shipping them skillfully without overdoing the packaging. Further, Westerlay has invested in a bevy of sustainable farming practices and technologies. FYI: Orchids have a small footprint when it comes to care - we’re talking a monthly rinse of the roots and a few ice cubes each week. Easy-peasy.

Greyston Bakery

Looking for an indulgence with a social mission? Greyston Bakery has for years been churning out brownies and blondies in Yonkers, New York, and the company includes Ben & Jerry’s amongst its customers. Greyston has gone above and beyond its mission of employing the last hired and first fired to bake its brownies. Three years ago, the company launched the eponymous Center for Open Hiring, a space where business leaders can learn more about the “open hiring” human resources model. You can send anyone a box, and there are vegan options, too. Be sure to get on Greyston’s email list – they do have sweet promos from time to time, including one as of press time for this year's Mother’s Day.

Make Mother’s Day a wild one with Wild Friends Foods

Is supporting women-owned businesses important to you, your parents, or considering the reality of this economy, just about anyone? Wild Friends Foods and its line of nut butters check many boxes: It’s a certified B-Corp, runs its own 1 percent give-back program and says it sources responsibly for its ingredients, whether they are nuts, coconut, cacao or honey. If love means getting a 6-pack of nut butters in the mail, then you’ll score points with a Wild Friends order: plus, spend $49 bucks or more and the shipping free. The chocolate coconut peanut butter is to die and slather for, not necessarily in that order.

Reef-friendly sunscreen

He or she, or them, may not be able to find a rental car this summer, so depending on how that industry shakes out, staycations could still be the norm this year for us and many of our parents But whether the summer plans call for Maui, Montserrat, Melbourne, Montevideo or Making Do in the Backyard, it’s about time to stock up on sunscreen. And with all the research suggesting many sunscreen ingredients are harmful to marine life such as coral (Hawaiʻi has already banned some ingredients), personal care and beauty product companies are rolling out more “reef-friendly” sunscreens. The retailer Ulta is only one example. Oh, and if your mom, dad or you are fearful as Alexis Rose of Schitt’s Creek has been of being or “moving to a place that doesn't have a Sephora for literally 2,700 miles,” that chain offers several options, too.

Whimsy adult coloring books that give a lift to talented artists

Speaking of Schitt’s Creek (we don’t indulge in pettifogging), if mom or dad is looking for something different and relaxing to do by the pool or during a Zoom meeting in which they fast lost interest, why not consider adult coloring books? We like the bundles of pencils and stencils from Pop Colors, including this Rosebud Motel-themed one in case you wanted to do your own kaleidoscopic version of Moira Rose’s Versace Pope outfit that Catherine O’Hara wore in the series finale. The “Fold in the Cheese Orange” and “Bébé Blue” are enough to inspire any fan of the show to whip out the credit card without any inner cogitations. The Oregon-based company is only one example of how we can support the creative community, which has been hit hard during the global pandemic. So in the event you lack any local access to an apothecary, check out Pop Colors' fun product lines. Other themes include bundles of pencils and books like "Game of Tones" and "Stranger Colors."

“Eko-friendly” yoga mats

There’s a reason or two why getting into a Lulu Lemon during the pandemic was about as easy as sneaking into Fort Knox. But soon, soon many of us will be able to resume our practices again. So, do you want mom or dad to once again launch into the downward dog without you risking a trip to the doghouse with the wrong gift? Well, Manduka has a line of yoga mats that the company says are manufactured responsibly – as in, rubber not harvested from the Amazon region and after manufacturing, the mats are softened with foaming agents that aren’t environmentally destructive. Options include a travel size if your parent(s) can indeed score a rental car later this summer. Again, Happy Mother's Day!

Image credit: Sai de Silva/Unsplash

A torrent of anti-transgender bills has been sweeping through state legislatures this year, and U.S. corporations finally seem to be pushing back. Rather than simply issuing individual statements affirming their support for LGBTQ rights, more than 400 U.S. businesses have joined together in the largest coalition of its kind in the U.S., and they have pledged to put their muscle behind the federal Equality Act.

Biggest ever display of support for LGBTQ rights: Why now?

It is no coincidence that a record number of businesses have organized in support of federal LGBTQ protections this year. The Equality Act has been introduced in previous legislative sessions, but the events of 2021 have made its passage more urgent than ever before.

This year has seen an unprecedented rampage against transgender Americans by lawmakers across the U.S. Since January, state legislators have introduced a record number of bills that would have an impact on transgender rights for both children and adults, numbering more than 100 pieces of legislation in 33 states by mid-April.

Editor's note: Be sure to subscribe to our Brands Taking Stands newsletter, which comes out every Wednesday.

Many of the bills are reportedly modeled on legislation composed by staff of the multinational legal organization Alliance for Defending Freedom, which is recognized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

As described by SPLC, stopping transgender youth from playing school sports is just a foot in the door for ADF’s global agenda. The organization aims to criminalize homosexuality in the U.S. and elsewhere.

SPLC draws attention to a 2012 speech in Spain by ADF’s then-global counsel Piero Tozzi, who said in part that “homosexual acts are incapable of bearing fruit — indeed, strictly speaking, they are not sexual, as they are incapable of being generative or procreative. Thus there is the need to desensitize and corrupt young minds, both to undermine resistance to the agenda and for recruitment among those that are at an emotionally vulnerable stage of development.”

More recently, SPLC drew a picture of ADF as a powerful international organization that “works with policymakers and other organizations to outlaw abortion, deny equality and marriage to LGBTQ people worldwide, and continue to push for a hard-right Christian theocratic worldview that is reflected in legislation and policies.”

LGBTQ rights and globalism at the door

Right-wing pundits and politicians have spent considerable energy falsely branding the Democratic legislative agenda as a socialist takeover orchestrated by globalists. Meanwhile, ADF and its boilerplate anti-transgender bills are actual globalism in the guise of legislation that can upend the lives of millions of U.S. workers and their families through their attack on LGBTQ rights.

The rising influence of an international anti-LGBTQ organization in state legislatures across the U.S. is clearly a matter of fundamental concern for American business leaders who recognize the bottom-line benefits of drawing their employees from the nation’s richly diverse pool of talent.

“Employers care about their employees' ability to rent an apartment, send their kids to school, visit the dentist and pick up the groceries free from discrimination,” the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the U.S., emphasizes. “They realize that when LGBTQ employees and their family members are protected in their daily lives, it makes them more secure and confident in their jobs, and also more productive.”

Next steps for the LGBTQ rights movement

Business leaders finally appear to be awakening to the danger of real-life globalists exercising their influence on state laws, contrary to the interests of U.S. corporations.

Earlier this week, the Human Rights Campaign announced that 416 U.S. businesses have now joined its ongoing lobbying effort in support of explicit federal protections for LGBTQ rights through the Business Coalition for the Equality Act.

The Equality Act has achieved some success this year, having passed the U.S. House of Representatives in February. Passage in the Senate, though, will be practically impossible. At least 10 Republicans need to join the Democrats for a filibuster-breaking majority of 60 in favor.

Nevertheless, this group does provide business leaders with an opportunity to make themselves heard. Their influence could become a deciding factor in the coming months as Democrats wrestle over the question of modifying or abolishing the filibuster, thereby enabling key legislation to pass with a simple majority of 51 votes.

Next steps for American democracy

In terms of bottom-line operations, the members of the Business Coalition for the Equality Act do wield a big stick. “The 416 member companies of HRC’s Business Coalition for the Equality Act represent a major swath of America’s economic engine, with member companies overseeing business operations in all 50 states, company headquarters spanning 33 states and a combined $6.8 trillion in annual revenue,” the Human Rights Campaign explains, adding that collectively they employ more than 14.6 million people in the U.S. alone.

In addition to employing 14.6 million people, the business coalition includes well-known names that touch practically every individual in the U.S. at some point in their lives, regardless of their political affiliation. The list includes Amazon, Best Buy, Coca-Cola, CVS Health, Dow, Facebook, Google, IBM, Kellogg, Levi Strauss, Marriott, Microsoft, Monsanto, Nike, Target, Unilever and Twitter, among 400-odd others.

As if that is not enough firepower, the Business Coalition’s membership roster currently includes 647 civil rights groups along with labor unions and religious, professional, and trade organizations across the U.S.

Unfortunately, for all its numbers the coalition has so far failed to make a significant difference as the wave of anti-transgender legislation continues to move through statehouses across the nation.

In addition, a concurrent flood of new state-based voter suppression bills is all but certain to cement Republican control over key statehouses in the coming years, leading to even more oppressive laws.

The real test will come at the federal level. U.S. business leaders will make a real difference if they mobilize their financial resources to support federal lawmakers working for passage of the Equal Rights Act, and stop devoting campaign funds to Republicans in Congress who supported the failed Jan. 6 insurrection.

Another potentially powerful aspect of the Business Coalition is the inclusion of leading labor unions alongside corporations that have gained a reputation for resisting unionization, with Amazon being one especially notorious example.

That is a significant turn of events, considering the historic role of unions in turning out the vote. The Business Coalition could help motivate some corporations to take a second look at their campaign donations and deploy more resources in support of pro-union candidates who also support LGBTQ rights.

Corporate support for the union voice already passed a test earlier this year when the Major League Baseball Players Association responded to a new voter suppression law in Georgia by successfully advocating for the organization to move the 2021 All-Star Game to Colorado.

Business leaders who come out in support of the Equality Act and voter rights may soon find themselves riding a wave of support from athletes in other sports. Earlier this week, nine other professional sports players’ unions signed on to a public letter asserting the universal civic responsibility “to defend the right to vote and to oppose any discriminatory legislation or measures that restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot.”

Notably, mens’ professional basketball, soccer and football unions signed the letter along with unions that are in the crosshairs of anti-transgender legislation aimed at youth sports, including the National Women’s Hockey League Players Association, National Women’s Soccer League Players Association, Professional Women’s Hockey League Players Association, United States Women’s National Team Players Association, and the Women’s National Basketball Players Association.

It remains to be seen if ADF and its allies have awakened the sleeping dragon with their anti-transgender bills, or if the corporate response and rally for LGBTQ rights is all hot air and no action. However, the emergence of a union-corporate coalition on LGBTQ equality and voting rights is a promising sign that support for President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda will continue to grow stronger as the 2022 midterm election cycle gets under way.

Image credit: Cecilie Johnsen/Unsplash

Who are the lowest risks for banks? Women entrepreneurs, new research reveals. If only we were getting credit for it. (And yes, I mean that in both senses of the word.)

Knowing that women receive less than 5 percent of small business loans, CNote partnered with ICA Fund Good Jobs, an Oakland, California–based community development financial institution that invests in high-potential businesses, to find out if women are riskier borrowers. ICA analyzed 10 years of loan repayment data from six CDFIs (community development financial institutions) participating in the Wisdom Fund, evaluating risk based on three factors: the probability of default, the likelihood of delinquency, and expected losses. It then applied a statistical model to predict how likely different groups of borrowers are to default on their loans.

Making the case for lending to women entrepreneurs

Three data points from ICA’s preliminary analysis stand out:

On average, women are a lower credit risk than men. ICA found that women are 2 to 4.5 percent less likely to default on loans than men.

Women of color are not riskier than other demographics. Breaking down the gender data, ICA found no statistically significant difference between women of color and other groups of borrowers in terms of default and delinquency rates.

Women entrepreneurs get smaller loans and may pay more for them. Despite their low risk profile, the study found that women typically get smaller loans than men—even when controlling for factors like industry, loan type, and loan purpose. Women also paid higher average interest rates over the study period.

These findings are particularly striking given that CDFIs primarily serve people and communities that are underserved by mainstream financial institutions, including women and people of color. We can only imagine the gap between credit and creditworthiness at traditional financial institutions, which can’t collect data on loan applicants that is unrelated to assessing their creditworthiness.

The next step: find out what’s driving these numbers

What’s going on here? We don’t know.

Maybe women are less comfortable taking on debt than men. Maybe structural bias works against women entrepreneurs in loan risk assessments and underwriting. Maybe women aren’t getting essential information about borrowing.

Maybe, we thought, we should just ask women.

Research is a key component of the Wisdom Fund, which CNote launched with CDFI partners in 2019 to funnel money from accredited investors into business loans for low- to moderate-income women, especially women of color. So, we’ve started our research with a human-centered design project focused on giving women of color borrowers the chance to speak for themselves about their experiences with the financial system - the good, the bad, and the ugly - and inform efforts to improve it.

We’ve partnered with Impact Experience to survey 50 to 60 women of color borrowers to learn how lenders can better serve them, and with 20 CDFIs to better understand the challenges that community lenders face when women of color come to them for loans. As part of this human-centered design project, 20 women participated in a two-day deep dive into the core challenges and opportunities around unlocking access to capital. At the end of this virtual gathering, we identified ways to remove barriers for women of color borrowers and connect them with networks that will help them grow their wealth and their businesses.

We can shape the future of finance

In the third quarter of 2021, we plan to share the insights and solutions that will emerge from this project with players across the financial services sector. However, we know change won’t happen by itself. We’re hoping to build a movement that will shape the future of the finance industry based on listening to, collaborating with, and learning from women entrepreneurs.

The project is now urgent. One fact that inspired the Wisdom Fund is that women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the country and yet receive a paltry amount of capital. Another is that, as the traumas of 2020 made painfully clear, women of color don’t have equal access to opportunity in this country. Working together, we can fix these inequities.

Image credit: Unsplash

Leading business leaders and policymakers have traditionally led the case to pivot and integrate sustainability across business practices. These conversations have usually targeted large corporations and neglect small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) in many countries, including Canada.

At least, that’s according to the organizers of Montreal-based PIVOT. In conjunction with McGill University and the National Film Board of Canada, PIVOT shares stories of Canadian SMEs across the country that are embracing sustainable practices. SMEs account for closely 90 percent of Canada’s total private labor force and employ 10.8 million people.

Global sustainability action plans will need to include all businesses and industries, regardless of size – now, PIVOT is helping more companies find success while sharing their stories.

SMEs can pivot and help reduce a country’s environmental footprint

Led by McGill University Associate Professor, Dror Etzion, the goals of PIVOT include helping the general public understand the need for SMEs’ engagement in climate action; gain insight on the potential of these companies’ collective business impact; and empower other SMEs to adopt more sustainable business practices.

The project focuses on telling the stories of businesses in all major sectors including food, agriculture and manufacturing. The impact generated by several of these companies and business groups extends across industries. Take, for example, Rafiq Dhanji, the executive director of the Sustainability Leadership Program, based in Hamilton, Ontario. Dhanji helps businesses across all sectors engage in climate action by reducing their GHG emissions.

Another such project is Reid's Automotive Recycling, a business that reprocesses damaged or end-of-life vehicles by decontaminating and disassembling them and then resell those cars’ parts - reducing the need for building new ones.

SMEs have a plethora of opportunities to implement change coast to coast and affect national environmental goals. In 2018, Canada ranked as the 10th-largest GHG emitting country, accounting for 1.5 percent of global emissions. Despite the relatively low number, Canada’s per capita GHG emissions exceed the G20 average. The transportation, energy and industrial sectors are among the largest contributors to Canada’s emissions. Furher, between 1990 and 2017, Canada's total GHG emission increased by 19 percent.

Before COVID-19, and now - despite the country’s lockdowns and consequential decrease in emissions - Canada has not been, and is still not, on track to meet its 2030 nationally determined contribution goal: decrease GHG emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This shortfall will consequently affect Canada’s alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement effort of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Building an inspiring business community

In a recent interview with TriplePundit, Etzion explained the primary function of PIVOT: creating “peer to peer inspiration.” This means creating and sharing stores that will resonate with SMEs, which could then enable a social movement of adopting sustainable practices.

"The whole idea of the project is that SMEs don't really want to listen to me or to a politician or to a guru to tell them what to do," Etzion said. "SMEs really care about what others SMES are doing."

These stories are compiled on gopivot.org and according to Etzion, the group will use social media and marketing tactics to reach wider audiences. The project’s organizers will focus on community, engagement, building social networks and storytelling.

SMEs can take climate action right now

The conversations, inspiration and actions surrounding business sustainability can be attributed to consumer preferences as well. Etzion explained that consumers in industries like food, hospitality, cosmetics and fashion are increasingly seeking sustainable products and services. To meet these demands and help companies do their part to contribute to climate action, Etzion shared various ways in which SMEs can embed sustainability in the manufacturing of goods, delivery sources and sourcing.

For example, PIVOT has showcased Tall Grass Prairie Bread Company, which grinds its own grain and bakes its own bread and pastries, many of which have gained popularity. Before establishing the business, co-owner Tabitha Langel worked with various partners to understand market demand and provide a product that was both appealing to consumers and valuable to farmers.

For industries that serve consumers who aren’t inclined towards sustainability, Etzion suggested that SMEs can re-strategize their resources, adopt energy efficiency technologies and switch to renewable energy.

Flexahopper is one such company that exemplifies this shift. The plastic fabrication company based in Alberta has installed solar panels atop its molding plant in Lethbridge, which resulted in significant reductions in electricity costs.

"I think the next few years are going to be dramatic and meaningful in terms of more and more people becoming committed to this cause, recognizing its importance of allocating resources to it and doing meaningful things," added Etzion.

PIVOT illustrates that large-scale changes, such as efforts to decrease per capita GHG emissions or get Canada back on track for its national targets, is a collective and incremental effort. And going beyond competition, small and mid-sized enterprise owners can also look to each other for inspiration to develop more sustainable practices within their companies.

Image credit: Jopwell/Pexels

In case the recent spate of police shootings, violence against Asian Americans and the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin have not made it clear to business leaders, a recent survey that queried more than 8,000 employed adults concludes that executives are in a good place when it comes to speaking up about the most contentious social and political issues here in the U.S.

Six in 10 employees said they want their companies’ senior leadership and CEOs to take a stand, according to a CNBC/Survey Monkey poll completed last month and announced on Friday. In a challenge to the long-held assumption that politics should stay out of the office, about the same percentage of employees (61 percent) say they feel comfortable sharing their political views with their colleagues.

Not that corporate leaders necessarily agree with these sentiments: The higher up on the org chart, the more reticent an employee was to say that political issues and topics like social justice should be part of any public dialogue, according to the survey.

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Some of the demographic gaps in how employees feel about corporate activism aren’t surprising. Ethnic and racial minorities feel more strongly about such views than whites, women more so than men, and younger workers are more open to having a vocal CEO than their older colleagues.

Despite what may appear to be tension across the U.S. workforce, the data also shows that overall people are largely satisfied with their employment situation. Well-paid for their work? Done. Career advancement? Not bad — 6 in 10 feel confident about future prospects. The same goes for questions about how employees feel about being valued by colleagues, autonomy in doing their day-to-day tasks, and whether they feel as if they are doing meaningful work.

The difference, however, is that if employees feel as if their companies are making progress on the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) front, they then feel better about their work. If their employers are viewed as laggards on DEI, the CNBC/Survey Monkey survey data suggests they also feel less positive about their pay and future opportunities for career advancement.

“Just 60 percent of workers who think their organization isn’t doing enough in the realm of diversity and inclusion say they are paid well for the work they do, compared with 80 percent of workers who think their work is doing about the right amount of work on DEI and 82 percent of workers who think their company is doing too much to address DEI issues,” the survey’s authors wrote.

The return to the office vs. virtual debate and DEI may not intuitively seem related, but given the concerns many workers have about returning to the office in a post-COVID world, now would be the time for companies to ensure their workplace culture is one that makes everyone feel included and valued.

“As a new generation of workers assume leadership positions, executives would be wise to ensure that their place of work is welcoming to people of color. This is the time for businesses to ‘build a different corporate culture,’ and ultimately, one that suits a more socially aware younger generation,” said Malia Lazu, a lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, during a recent discussion with Forbes’ Ellen McGirt.

Image credit: Unsplash

It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. Developers are deploying killer robots that blast their victims with 8,000 volts. There is a crackle, a puff of smoke, and then the target is dead. In this case, this invention is being heralded for promoting sustainable agriculture by reducing pesticide use and promoting soil health.

Bringing artificial intelligence, and killer robots, to farming

The Small Robot Company (SRC) is an agri-tech startup that brings artificial intelligence to the farming industry. Ben Scott-Robinson, CEO of SRC, believes farming will radically change in the next two decades and become unrecognizable. His vision embodies weed control without the use of chemicals with agility and precision.

SRC is developing a team of robots for deployment on farms. “Tom” (seen above) fulfills a weed-mapping role and can monitor 50 acres of crops daily. Complete with LED lights, Tom and his family of killer robots can even work at night while farmers sleep. “Wilma” is the brains of the operation and processes the data from Tom. She examines the health of each plant and then gives orders to “Dick.” He then kills weeds by zapping them instead of relying on herbicides. SRC just introduced Tom to the United Kingdom market, and Dick will begin field trials in October.

Utilizing RootWave weed zapping technology

Both Tom and Dick use an autonomous electronic platform powered by a Tesla battery. Dick uses a weed zapping technology by RootWave, which was named one of the most disruptive companies in the U.K. in 2019. It has received grant funding from the U.K. government to create next-generation products. RootWave has also released the RootWave pro, a professional hand weeder and a tractor-pulled weeder product for fruit crops.

RootWave technology zaps weeds by generating heat directly at them and boils the plant from the inside. It leaves weeds in place, where they naturally decompose. This no-till approach helps build soils, prevent erosion and capture carbon. The same technology can also help eliminate tenacious invasive plants that can overtake native plants.

Boosting soil health and pollinator habitat

“The way farming needs to be done is changing,” said Scott-Robinson in an interview with the Guardian. “It isn’t just about producing large quantities of food; it’s also about caring for what happens in the field.” Artificial intelligence can gather information about soil health and the prevalence of pollinators, enabling a fundamentally different approach to farming.

Now, SRC is exploring the concept of weed recognition because not all weeds are harmful to crops. Some are essential fodder for pollinators, while others may help with providing nitrogen. SRC is also researching how to analyze soil health and biodiversity by using a microphone to gather data on bird songs and other pollinators.

Avoiding harmful pesticide use

Sadly, studies show that 95 percent of herbicides do not reach their targeted pests, and they often end up in waterways. Herbicide-resistant weeds are a growing concern to many farmers, yet they can be challenging to identify. Prevention strategies include reducing pesticide use, rotating crops and mechanical weed control practices. Numerous pesticides are suspected or known carcinogens. Sadly, many farmworkers are poisoned by pesticides each year in developing countries; depending on the source cited, as many as 20,000 deaths annually are attributed to these chemicals. Hence there’s an opening for these killer robots.

“The dream double bottom line for farming is increasing yields sustainably. For at least the last two decades, farmers have been trying to increase yields while reducing damage to the environment,” said Sam Watson Jones, President and co-founder of Small Robot Company, in a press release. “But the weed burden necessitates treatment - and unfortunately at the moment, we have a farming system which dictates a blanket approach.”

Robots specifically designed for the farming industry already exist but overall, they are new to the market. EcoRobotics uses robotics to dramatically reduce the use of pesticides with a robot that uses artificial vision. Vitibot has an electric vineyard robot that handles mechanical weeding, spraying and stripping. Naïo Technologies has produced three models the weed and hoe farmland in various applications, including vineyards and large-scale vegetable farms.

“How quickly farmers take up the use of robots is yet to be answered,” said Andrew Diprose, the CEO of RootWave, in an interview with the Guardian. “We have a solution that allows you to weed your fields without chemicals, carbon emissions, tilling the soil, and at some point, without an operator. It really is the future, and it’ll take us a bit of time to get there. But we will get there.”

Image credit: Small Robot Company

At its most basic, education is about uplifting the individual. That means providing the tools and knowledge necessary to give people choices about their futures and a chance to be productive, and hopefully happy, in their lives and work.

Such is the mission of Anna Julia Cooper Episcopal School (AJC) in Richmond, Virginia. Small in size but overflowing with caring and ambition, the 12- year-old school, which calls itself “a community of affection,” serves 119 students in grades four through eight, most of whom are children of color from low-income families. The school’s leave-no-need-unmet approach results in a majority of graduates enrolling in private high schools and about a third heading to college. Some even return to AJC to work.

“This is an exercise in equity,” said Head of School Michael Maruca, who has been with AJC from the beginning. “This is a practical, concrete institution trying to make equity real. These kids’ families won't get this experience elsewhere.”  

Education with a focus on equity

The school’s namesake, Anna Julia Cooper, was an educator, author, activist and prominent African-American scholar, born into slavery in 1858. She died in 1964 and is remembered for her work promoting education and civil rights for African Americans and women.

Cooper’s vision of making education attainable for everyone is one the AJC school takes on for itself. Seventy-five percent of students come from nearby public housing developments in a neighborhood in Richmond's East End. As of October 2020, the local poverty rate was 65.2 percent and the unemployment rate 12.9 percent, according to census data. 

All students receive free tuition, the equivalent of $14,000 a year. And most enter reading below grade level, Maruca said, so the curriculum has a heavy emphasis on basic skills. The school also administers fewer standardized tests than public schools to give staff more instructional time.

“In our mission, we talk about helping students change the trajectory of their lives,” Maruca told us. “Every single day, every hour, we give kids experiences, love, safety and nurturing, and we create a center of gravity that serves as a counterweight to all of the difficult challenges they carry. We try and educate them in the traditional sense as well as we can, in writing, reading and math. When you become proficient, you feel good; when you become competent, you become confident.”

Eliminating race and family income as barriers to education

For decades, Black and Hispanic students, particularly those from low-income households, have been less successful in school than their white and Asian-American counterparts. 

“The National Center for Education Statistics reports consistently growing or barely narrowing gaps between white and Black and white and Latino students in math and reading test scores since the early 1980s, as well as in the rates of attainment of bachelor’s or higher degrees since the 1990s,” Stella M. Flores, Director of Access and Equity for the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy at New York University, wrote for Inside Higher Ed in January. 

Another recent study from Stanford University attributed the gap in part to the high concentration of Black and Hispanic children in high-poverty schools with limited resources. “If we want to improve educational opportunities and learning for students, we want to get them out of these schools of high-concentrated poverty,” Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and leader of the study, told Reuters.  

The team at AJC has managed to bring quality education and resources to a struggling neighborhood, with positive results. One hundred percent of the school’s first graduating class, in 2012, went on to attend and graduate from high school, and 70 percent of those alumni enrolled in college. 

At the time AJC was founded, people in the community thought middle-school-aged children were the most vulnerable to dropping out of school or getting into trouble in the neighborhood. But this is by no means the only group that could benefit from the school’s model, Maruca said. “The needs are pressing and unending in an area like this,” he told us. “Now we are working our way back down.” 
 
To do that, Capital One's New Market Tax Credit Team (NMTC) is helping to fund a $9 million expansion that will allow AJC to almost double its population to 224. The additions include a gym and more classrooms so the school can begin admitting kindergarten through third-grade students. This fall they’ll enroll students in the second and third grades, with kindergartners and first graders arriving fall 2022. “When the new buildings open, I’m probably going to cry because of all the time and effort invested,” Maruca said.

The goal of the New Market Tax Credit program is to identify areas of need in underserved communities and fund projects to meet those needs, said James LaFleur, a relationship manager with Capital One. “We see our transaction as allowing at least 100-plus students to get an in-person education that is not easy to come by,” he told us. “This way, more kids can be involved.” This investment fits perfectly within Capital One’s Impact Initiative, an initial $200 million, five-year commitment to the advancement of socioeconomic opportunity. 

Academic and emotional support: A winning combination for students and families 

While the number of students at AJC is a fraction of the 24,000 in the city’s public schools, the Richmond Public Schools’ high-school graduation rate for 2016-17 was 75.39 percent, which shows the impact of AJC’s approach of providing students and their families with high levels of academic and emotional support. Breakfast, lunch and snacks are free, and students have access to a number of after-hours activities. And a month of summer school is mandatory. 

The helping hands stick with students even after they leave: An extensive graduate support program assists AJC students in applying to private high schools. If someone gets accepted to a school and the whole tuition isn’t covered, AJC makes up the difference. Staff members also keep tabs as students progress through high school and help them apply to college or look at other options.

“We’re in it for the long haul,” Maruca said. “There is no magic formula. The best possible things we can give them are to be safe and a nurturing environment. We used to have a lot more disciplinary issues, but the culture we’ve created is so strong, those have dropped off. We try to teach the students that when they do good things, good things happen. That’s how the world works.

“I tell teachers to focus on the kids standing right in front of them; whatever is happening now is what they should focus on. We’re blocking and tackling. We’re just trying to move the ball down the field.”

The school already has its success stories. One alumna — who grew up in a local public housing development and often asked Maruca to pick her up and take her home — is now back at AJC. The former student went on to attend an independent high school and graduate from Randolph Macon College, and now she works with AJC alumni. “When she talks, kids listen to her,” Maruca told us. 

Another student overcame numerous obstacles in his life and at one point was living with a teacher, Maruca went on. But he graduated, attended an independent high school and joined the Marines. Now, he wants to join the police force, which came as somewhat of a surprise to his former mentors. “He is a completely different person,” Maruca explained. “I would never have guessed he would want to be a police officer.”

Room to grow: Financial investment helps this school serve more people 

At AJC, staff members are excited to work with younger students. “The best time to begin education is in utero, but the closer you can get to that, the better,” Maruca continued. “The sooner we can get started with those goals, the less ground there is to make up and we have more time to work with them. The reading needs [of the new students] is going to be overwhelming.” 

AJC staff are interviewing potential students who have not been in school for all of first grade. With many more applications to the school than it has openings, staff weigh factors such as income — family income must be at 130 percent of the federal poverty level or lower — with preference to students who live in one of the four low-income housing buildings in the area and have siblings attending the school.

The biggest daily challenge is to keep at it in the face of long odds, Maruca said. “The folks we work with are always coming up against limits, either in terms of the concrete hope they have for a different future or because the gravitational pull of their environment is so strong, or they are running out of data on their phone, and then everything in between,” he told us. “Students all have something inside of them — we try to provide the environment for seeds to develop and grow.”

This article series is sponsored by Capital One and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.      

Image credit: iStock courtesy of Capital One

Recently, the banking giants JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup made commitments to move trillions of dollars within the coming decade towards a variety of sustainable investments. JPMorgan Chase has vowed to put $2.5 trillion towards areas such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and developmental finance. Citigroup on the same day made a commitment to $1 trillion over ten years to “sustainable finance,” an umbrella term which includes half of the capital going towards climate solutions, and the other half going towards issue areas like health care, racial equity and affordable housing.

Similarly in January of this year BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with nearly $7 Trillion in assets, made a commitment to sustainability by demanding that those companies with which it does business disclose how they are pushing towards a net-zero economy. BlackRock also joined an investor-led initiative to ensure corporate greenhouse gas emitters take action against climate change. That announcement helped balloon its initiative to what the firm says is over $41 trillion in sustainable investments or committed assets towards this cause.

Increasingly, we are seeing that the world’s largest financial institutions are having a greater say in how business takes on the existential threat of climate change. However, there are concerns within the environmental community that these players aren’t taking these actions in good faith and with an eye towards a more sustainable and equitable economy, but rather cashing in on a “trend” or simply protecting their own necks against the plethora of environmental risks they see growing. On that point, Swiss Re recently warned that climate change could cut the world economy by $23 trillion by 2050.

So, should these financial giants be trusted to be legitimate environmental stewards who will work towards the drastic changes we need to combat climate change, or are they simply being reactionary to the ongoing concerns by insurance and risk experts?

Pressure from environmental, sustainability and racial equity activists have forced the issue of climate change, and now the global financial sector has decided that it too wants to be a part of the movement. The leverage that large capital firms can place on others, even if done reactively, can help to stem the tide of carbon pollution and shift huge amounts of necessary resources and funding to areas like renewable energy, natural resource management, sustainable farming and carbon capture. Our current global climate crisis efforts so far have been decades behind and severely underfunded, and so any influx of capital that can be used to combat the climate crisis will be seen as a worthwhile investment.

While these vows by the world’s largest corporations should be taken with a grain of salt, these sustainable investments are a great start. To that end NGO’s should also monitor these commitments to ensure that these pledges of sustainable investment include no greenwashing. However, our climate future depends on the buy-in by the business community to agree that climate change is real, it has real world detrimental impacts, and if we do not change the ways in which we conduct business things will get worse. In making these trillion-dollar, long-term sustainable investments, these companies are agreeing with those terms and acknowledging that things must change, and that they have a part to play in that necessary change.

Image credit: Mike Mozart/Flickr