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More companies are buying into sustainability reporting, but one common complaint is that with all the various frameworks, deciding on which one to use — or for many companies, which ones — can be bewildering.

Although sustainability leaders including the outgoing head of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Tim Mohin, have insisted that the "perception" of issuing sustainability reports is more complicated than the process is in reality, many in the corporate reporting world still see all the various standards as overwhelming as they are complex.

News from last week may be welcomed by those in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) space, however.

The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) have announced that they will merge into one sustainability reporting organization, the Value Reporting Foundation.

“The merger directly responds to calls from global investors and corporates to simplify the corporate reporting landscape, providing the market with a clear solution for communicating about the drivers of enterprise value,” said the two organizations in a joint e-mailed statement.

According to both IIRC and SASB, there is already strong alignment between the two groups’ reporting guidelines. But in the wake of an upcoming regime change in the U.S. that some observers say could result in ESG and sustainability funds becoming even more compelling to investors, intertwining these two sustainability reporting standards could make vetting companies across the globe more seamless.

Global inflows into ESG funds have surged in 2020 despite the global pandemic and economic crises, and the amount of assets held in socially conscious or impact funds have soared to $250 billion in the past quarter. But with such growth also comes more confusion, along with research indicating that companies can cherry-pick which ESG guidelines they wish to follow. One ESG research firm’s conclusion can vary from another’s, especially when it comes to comparing companies that are in different industries. An energy company may look spectacular on the sustainability reporting front when compared to its competitors, but it could pale when its numbers are lined up next to a corporation in the fast-moving goods sector.

In fairness, sustainability reporting is still a relatively new field, and the new Value Reporting Foundation has made it clear its framework will hardly be static. “This merger is a significant advancement toward building a comprehensive system of corporate reporting, as we work to ensure integrated reporting and sustainability disclosure have the same level of rigor as financial accounting and disclosure,” said Charles Tilley, CEO of IIRC. “But reporting should never be for reporting’s sake. Our focus is on ensuring businesses have effective governance over enterprise value creation factors and that investors are able to fulfill their role as stewards.”

Image credit: Karen Uppal/Unsplash

As millions of Americans ignore public health warnings to travel over the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s worth remembering that the health and safety of millions more is in the hands of state governors and legislators who have failed to establish life-saving mask mandates to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Instead, local business leaders are left to their own devices, pleading with their communities - and those who insist on their Thanksgiving travel plans - to simply wear a mask.

The curious case of Idaho

Some governors have ramped up statewide COVID-19 prevention rules in advance of the Thanksgiving travel season.

However, in the absence of national leadership on universal mask wearing, the patchwork of state-based efforts has fallen far short.

The state of Idaho is a case in point. All during the COVID-19 outbreak, Idaho Governor Brad Little has resisted calls for a statewide mask mandate. Even as cases have spiked in Idaho and nationwide in the runup to the Thanksgiving travel season, Little has continued to advocate for voluntary mask wearing, leaving mandates up to local governments and health districts.

By November 13 the state’s healthcare system was already nearing a crisis, partly because many health care workers were out sick or quarantined.

Little did reimpose some restrictions on social gatherings on November 13, and he called up the National Guard to assist with screening and testing. However, he still failed to make mask wearing mandatory statewide.

By November 22, the local television station KTVB reported that the state’s two-week rolling average of new cases had increased to 1,358. There appears to be no end in sight. On November 23 KTVB reported an additional 1,437 new confirmed cases, and 190 new probable cases.

Local business leaders plead for help confronting COVID-19

As the Thanksgiving travel season began to get under way last Friday, a group of 12 Idaho CEO’s issued a public plea for universal mask wearing.

“The recent surge in cases is overrunning our hospitals and clinics,” they wrote. “The pandemic has had a significant impact on our economy, our education systems, and our own mental health. We all want things to be normal; coming together to overcome this incredible obstacle is the only way to get there.”

The CEO’s also describe the mask mandates and other COVID-19 prevention measures they have established to protect their workers, emphasizing that their own experience demonstrates that “consistently following simple safety practices can prevent infections and keep businesses running.”

Unfortunately, a mere letter is no match for the attention-grabbing actions of anti-mask protestors, who have been especially active in Idaho.

Among the instigators is Ammon Bundy, a nationally known figure whose purported advocacy for civil disobedience took form during an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, in 2016.

Such behavior has been encouraged by President Trump, whose campaign schedule in the runup to Election Day has been described as a weeks-long series of COIVD-19 super-spreader events.

As Thanksgiving travel goes unabated, give thanks for masks

The CEO letter does raise a point about the ability of individuals to foster the public welfare through their personal choices, and there are some interesting parallels with action on climate change.

One of those parallels is a federal leadership vacuum. In the case of COVID-19, President Trump’s failure to lead a national COVID-19 response has left CEOs howling into the wind. The Thanksgiving travel decisions of millions of Americans have only added to the disconnect.

On the positive side, the incoming Biden administration is taking federal responsibility seriously, and there is increasing evidence that universal mask wearing has bottom line benefits.

For example, a new study from the University of Utah concludes that improvements in economic activity during the COVID-19 outbreak are linked to masks mandates.

“County-level data from across the U.S. show COVID-19 cases decrease after a mask requirement is put into place,” the researchers summarized, linking that data to a consumer survey.

“A Utah consumer sentiment survey conducted as part of this study found people would be 13 percent more likely to go to a store if confirmed COVID-19 cases fell by 10 percent,” they wrote. “The survey also found people would be 51% more likely to go to a store if everyone was wearing a mask (this percent increase is similar to if a store or the state enforced mask-wearing).”

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the president is unlikely to change direction on COVID-19.

The opportunity to practice COVID-19 safety in advance of the Thanksgiving travel season has been lost, but perhaps the incoming Biden administration can work with US business leaders to prevent further tragedy from striking over the Christmas holidays.

Image credit of Boise, Idaho: Alden Skeie/Unsplash

Living through 2020 has been a little like wandering into a boxing ring with the heavyweight champ of misery. The hits just keep coming: COVID-19, racial injustice, shutdowns and isolation, job losses, polarizing political campaigns, wildfires, hurricanes and even “murder hornets.” It’s enough to affect our mental health and make even the most resilient person feel concussed.

Small wonder that so many people in the U.S. are experiencing anxiety and depression. Alcohol and substance abuse are on the rise as coping mechanisms. Rarely, if ever, has there been so much cause for concern about mental health.

The New Year looms ahead, and with it more anxiety. Will there be more lockdowns and isolation? Will things get better before 2022? With so much uncertainty, there is an even-sharper edge to the usual mixed feelings that many have as holidays approach.

With that in mind, here are some thoughts and tips on maintaining our own mental health and caring for others as the year hurdles toward its end: 

It sneaks up on you: I know this from personal experience. I’m one of those people who tends to act on his gut, and for much of my life that was a good thing. Work hard. Don’t be late. Exercise now, not later. Be social. Learn to play ice hockey. Life was a series of instincts and responses, and when I followed my instincts, things worked out great.

But over time, those instincts turned on me. I trusted my gut even when it started telling me not to exercise, not to socialize, not to worry about eating well or getting enough sleep. From my perspective, I was doing what I always did: I had a thought, it seemed like a good idea, and I would act on it. Gradually, I stopped doing anything that was good for me, in what seemed like a perfectly natural way, and despair and a feeling of futility followed. That’s depression. I learned the hard way not to believe everything I think. Fears and feelings may be powerful, but they are not facts.

Others can’t help if they don’t know: Many people, even after realizing they have a mental health problem, hide it, as I did. Asking for help is scary. People don’t like to admit weakness. They worry that family and friends will think less of them. They worry that their bosses and colleagues will judge them harshly. They worry about the stigmas of medication and seeking professional help. I kept up the charade until I hit the wall. In retrospect I see how pointless that was.

I believe the best thing to do if this happens to you is to focus on the people who can help, not on fear. As I explained in a recent video about mental health in the workplace for Disability:IN, when given the choice, most colleagues—and family members even more so—will choose to be helpful and supportive. But when I isolated myself, I denied them the opportunity to prove my fears wrong by demonstrating their inclusiveness and caring natures. Things got so much better when I opened up to those close to me, including my manager. I would urge everyone to be honest with others—and with themselves.

Keep an eye on your loved ones: Understanding what happened to me, and finally getting the help I needed, has given me the heart to look out for others as well as the sharp eye needed to spot symptoms. Someone suffering from depression or another mental illness might be the last to recognize it. In my case, I was probably the last to know.

If a loved one is showing signs of depression—listlessness, isolation, secrecy, over-indulgence—say something. The discussion might be uncomfortable but ignoring warning signs is worse.

This has been a rough year, to put it mildly. As a result, the holidays hold a greater-than-usual potential for anxiety and depression. Try to be watchful and protective of loved ones. And don’t neglect yourself: Keep an eye on how you’re really feeling and have the courage to be open about it.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.

Image credit: Bart LaRue/Unsplash

As we discussed yesterday, the Biden administration must honor our nation’s collective responsibility to minimize the impacts of the climate crisis on Americans and people everywhere now and into the future. How? The first two priorities, as previously discussed, include rejoining the Paris Agreement and boost jobs in the emerging resilience center. Third, the federal government should launch the long-term migration plans necessary to secure the safety of citizens most vulnerable to climate risks.

As the New York Times said this summer, the “idea of retreating from areas that can’t be defended…is a political minefield.” Nevertheless, with his five-decade career behind him, President Biden can afford to show courage and wade in. Taking on such a complicated plan has many moving parts – but bottom line, it’s time to focus on how we can protect populations throughout regions that are most vulnerable to climate change across the U.S.

Here’s why the Biden White House must focus on both migration and resilience.

Numbers and statistics don’t lie: migration is already underway

Let’s start with the numbers. To start, there were 454,000 disaster-induced displacements within the U.S. in 2019 alone, according to the extreme weather disasters measured by the International Displacement Monitoring Center. In addition, more than 386,000 homes, worth a total of about $210 billion, are at risk of coastal flooding by 2050 – and nearly two billion homes may become submerged by 2100, estimates the online real estate database company Zillow. At least 13 million U.S. coastal residents are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to sea level rise, says Bloomberg.

Those statistics foreshadow massive risks for the U.S. government – a daunting challenge that to date federal agencies apparently cannot grasp. For example, while FEMA classifies 8.7 million properties as having substantial flood risk, the First Street Foundation Flood Model identifies far more: 14.6 million properties with the same level of risk. This means nearly six million households and property owners have underestimated or been unaware of their current risk.

Meanwhile, the real estate industry has already started to integrate flooding risks into more property listings as cities like Miami Beach (pictured above) keep building along the shore even as it’s clear communities of color will bear the harshest burden as the climate crisis continues.

The financial sector is already adapting

The U.S. financial sector is responding in kind. The number and total value of flood insurance policies have been declining since 2006, meaning that households that purchased a property in coastal areas may be at increased risk of defaulting on their mortgages. Further, U.S. property insurance rates increased for 10 consecutive quarters since the fourth quarter of 2017 following Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. This 10-quarter streak tracks with greater storm frequency and intensity and follows 17 quarters of rate reductions, from the third quarter of 2014 to the third quarter of 2017.

Research has shown that after disaster-declared hurricanes, various banks have increased by almost 10 percent the share of coastal mortgages that they offloaded to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Additionally, the odds of an eventual foreclosure rose by 3.6 percent for a mortgage originated in the first year after a hurricane, and by almost 5 percent for a mortgage originated in the third year.

Four ways the Biden Administration can secure the housing market during the climate crisis

These data suggest the U.S. housing market is trending toward the next “big short.” How can that trend be halted?

First and foremost, the Biden administration should immediately establish a climate change mitigation program, as recommended by the Government Accountability Office.

Next, the feds must emphasize resource-building in receiving communities as part of a strategy to make relocation from climate change hazards, from river and coastal flooding to wildfires. This is the easiest, most dignified and most attractive option for property owners and renters to pursue. This relocation emphasis should be a priority in fund allocations to FEMA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Both of these agencies have appropriations which explicitly allow for the acquisition and relocation of exposed communities, while the Small Business Administration (SBA) has the tools for risk mitigation and disaster recovery.

The incoming Biden administration also needs to ensure that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requires investments to assess and address climate change risks, build climate change resilience, and do no harm to avoid perpetuating environmental injustice.

Finally, the U.S. needs a Climate Community Reinvestment Act as the next generation of the CRA. Such legislation would have to focus on community resilience investments including low- and moderate-income housing outside of flooding, combined sewer overflow, and wildfire-risk zones, cooling centers, natural infrastructure for heat and stormwater mitigation, which could become possible through the use of community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and other public-private partnerships.

For other ideas and inspiration for this crucial pillar of a Biden climate action plan, check out The United States’ Climate Change Relocation Plan via the Atlantic Council. 

For the new Biden administration, accomplishing this work will ensure he makes progress on his stated aims to reduce inequality, lower levels of poverty, create a healthier environment, build stronger communities, and generate more and higher-quality jobs. Climate change is the humanitarian challenge of our time.

Lead with this in mind: the Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves report insists that the U.S. could cost-effectively spend $520 billion to reduce its disaster liability by $2.2 trillion. That’s good math for a resilience decade legacy.

Image credit: Carlos Veras/Unsplash

Many venture capitalists are making pledges to back under-represented founders (women founders and BIPOC entrepreneurs) but as we discussed yesterday, there’s evidence from minority and women founders that this isn’t translating into actual capital. Female CEOs at last count have received a dismal 2.7 percent of venture capital (VC) funding. And women of color CEOs get less than 1 percent, according to the incubator and research center DigitalUndivided’s Project Diane.

Addressing the lack of diversity in the venture capital space

To back women-led companies, early-stage financiers may need to consider the realities facing women entrepreneurs, especially in a post-COVID world, said Tara Sabre Collier, Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Oxford University, where she lectures on impact investment as well as diversity equity and inclusion. According to her, these realities include greater income losses and childcare burdens, in addition to disparities in access to capital.

“We need to look at actually building these considerations into the process and look at the role of having diversity internally and how that translates into having a diverse portfolio. A really big hurdle is that too many of these funds don't have diversity internally. We haven't actually changed the internal demographics of the VC funds in a way that would materially change their pipeline,” Collier explained. “It's not just awareness; it's actually being a diverse organization themselves.”

Sabre Collier understands these distinctions first-hand, as she told 3p: “As a woman of both African and indigenous heritage, these issues are close to me because they affect people that are in my family and people that look like me so it's much harder for me to ignore than for people that are further removed from these problems.”

Innovative solutions to bridge the venture capital and finance gaps

An early-stage investor that has taken a different approach is Lightspeed Ventures, which invests in technology-driven companies. Believing that women are the earliest adopters of consumer technology, female-fronted organizations represent over one third of its consumer portfolio and in the past five years, it has invested over $125 million in companies founded by female entrepreneurs.

“They form partnerships with a lot of emerging angels, often from underrepresented backgrounds, to find that pipeline,” Sabre Collier explained. “I think that's a really interesting model for making a VC more inclusive and starting to back more into underrepresented founders.

Then there’s the emergence of scout funds, where female entrepreneurs act as scouts and independently seek deal flow. Cleo Capital, led by prominent investor and entrepreneur Sarah Kunst, raised $3.5 million in 2019 for a debut scout fund.

As Kunst said in this Axios article, “There's a lot of response about diversity — gender and race — and there's a lot of conferences and panels and dinners celebrating or highlighting women in tech, but there hasn't been a change in where the capital goes.”

A shift is underway, but women entrepreneurs still face hurdles

Another innovative approach is rolling funds, or “always-open venture funds,” which enable fund managers to start investing as soon as capital from LPs (limited partners or investors in the funds) comes in. The W Fund, led by Kate Brodock and Allyson Kapin, is using rolling funds. In August 2020, they set a target of $48 million — representing the percent of funding (48 percent) that would need to shift from male-led founders to female-led founders to achieve gender parity in venture capital funding. And they are particularly targeting Black women founders who only receive about 0.0006 percent of venture capital investments, compared to 2.7 percent of women overall.

Another bright spot on the horizon is gender lens investing, which has grown from funds managing $2.2 billion in 2018 to 138 funds managing nearly $5 billion by 2020. In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in police custody and a global Black Lives Matter movement gaining momentum, some of these funds have pledged that they would back greater shares of Black founders and Black and minority ethnic groups. As 3p has reported, racial justice and racial equity index funds have emerged as a tool to bring investor attention to this gap.

“The data is starting to come out about the early-stage financing gap. And I'm hearing lots of investors talk about how to solve it. I think change is coming,” Sabre Collier says. “There are many ventures that can power the world. But in order for the founders of those ventures to succeed, to drive us all forward as a global society, access to capital needs to be better distributed in a more equitable way.”

Image credit: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

General Motors’ electrification strategy, centered on the company’s promise of an “all-electric future,” saw further augmentation last week as GM’s CEO Mary Barra promised an increase in financial investments in electric vehicles (EVs) along with promises of additional hiring in order to execute its plans. 

Another boost in GM funding for electric vehicles

Speaking at the virtual Barclays Global Automotive Conference, GM announced the company promises to spend $27 billion through 2025 on both electric cars and autonomous vehicles (AVs), up from the $20 billion it had promised prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

GM also expects to hire 3,000 people to focus on the technology underpinning the company’s aggressive direction, particularly in the areas of electrical systems, infotainment software and control engineering. 

Despite the challenges faced during the pandemic, GM’s efforts have continued apace, and in the latest announcement the company says its work on EVs has accelerated during the course of the year while highlighting new milestones it expects to reach.

These efforts will manifest in the promise to launch 30 EVs around the world by 2025, seeing more than two thirds of those being available in North America, with vehicles across all GM brands: Cadillac, GMC, Chevrolet and Buick. TriplePundit has already covered recent announcements of Cadillac’s new electric Lyriq, and most recently GMC’s Hummer EV, the first of many next-generation electric vehicles.

Banking on modular battery technology

Underpinning the push to electrification is the company’s Ultium battery technology, which being modular, will allow flexibility in deployment across a diverse range of vehicles and use cases.

Already - and it must be noted, prior to any of GM’s Ultium powered vehicles hitting showroom floors - the company says it is now working on the second-generation of Ultium batteries, which the automaker says will be both cheaper and able to provide a superior driving range.

In context, GM says by mid-decade battery costs will be 60 percent lower than batteries in use today in the Chevrolet Bolt EV, with twice the energy density expected. This will bring the company’s EVs closer to price parity with internal combustion engine vehicles, while edging up expected driving ranges to as far as 450 miles per charge.

Most importantly, GM insists these improvements in battery technology will allow Ultium EV vehicles to be profitable from the first generation on, which is absolutely imperative considering the company promises 40 percent of its vehicle entries will be EVs in the U.S. by the end of 2025.

Significantly, too, is GM’s assertion that the Ultium platform will reduce vehicle development timelines drastically. Using its experience in developing the GMC Hummer EV, the company says whereas 50 months was previously the benchmark to develop a vehicle, it took just 26 months to produce the Hummer EV. This means GM expects to be able to bring new vehicles to market faster than planned. 

Keeping pace with the EV competition

CEO Barra wants to place GM in a leadership position, saying, “climate change is real, and we want to be part of the solution by putting everyone in an electric vehicle.” But the company is not alone in bolstering investment in EV technology and will likely face stiff competition, not just from Tesla, but other traditional automakers as well.

For example, of Volkswagen’s promised $177 billion investments in technology in a comparable time period, the company is allocating 73 billion Euros (roughly $86 billion) towards EV and AV development. 

But it’s not just a matter of throwing money at it, because the proof of concept will be how well these companies execute. VW has had teething troubles with the launch of its ID3 EV due to software problems, and the market still awaits the first delivery of an Ultium powered GM vehicle.

Then there is the question as to whether there is sufficient demand for GM’s portfolio of electric vehicles; a significant risk since it will make up almost half the company’s vehicle offerings by mid-decade. Without doubt, the stakes are high in this game and GM’s commitments should be applauded at the same time as we appreciate the risk being taken in reading the tea leaves.

The stock market indicates that the strategy is the right one, however. Even before GM announced the increased level of investment in EVs to $27 billion by 2025, UBS analysts elevated GM’s stock price target to $50 per share, in large part due to an EV focus. At the time of writing, the company’s stock is at a 52-week high and vanishingly close to a five-year high. 

UBS analyst Patrick Hummel says the market will see GM as more of an “aggressive” electric vehicles manufacturer over the next year or two, instead of a slow-growth manufacturer like the rest of the Detroit carmakers and predicts, “With a focus on crystallizing value of its EV strategy...GM will likely get more credit for being a relative winner in the transition.”

We look forward to seeing the proof of the pudding, when the rubber hits the road.

Image credit: Chevrolet Media Relations

With less than two months before the Biden administration starts, here’s a gentle reminder: In April, when I labeled 2020 the start of the adaptation decade, I noted: “If one thing is increasingly clear from this COVID-19 era, it’s that countless millions of Americans – and even more global citizens elsewhere – will grow poorer from it. And this matters immensely for climate change.”

This helps explain why President-elect Biden’s climate strategy includes an important and valid emphasis on climate change mitigation. He favors 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. However, to connect this strategy to apply to poor Americans, you must emphasize resilience.

It requires much more than simply the aim of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis to “honor our responsibility to be good stewards of the planet for future generations.” Biden as president must honor our collective responsibility to minimize the impact of the climate crisis on Americans and people everywhere now and in the future. How? Here are three priorities.

Rejoin the Paris Agreement

As the U.S. rejoins the Paris Agreement, the U.S. must act on the agreement’s adaptation priorities. I wrote five years ago that our choice in that agreement is to “adapt or bust.” Consider this: U.S. disaster costs from 2016-2020 have exceeded $550 billion – a record. As of Oct. 7, 16 U.S. climate-related disaster events have triggered losses that exceed $1 billion each. These events included one drought, 11 severe storms, three tropical cyclones and a major wildfire, according to NOAA. 

Indeed, America’s growing disaster liability costs the nation $100 billion annually and grows 6 percent per year, a rate that is surging 10 times faster than the increase in the country’s population.

Hence the incoming Biden administration must take on these four challenges.

To start, the new administration should acknowledge that the U.S. is re-signing the global agreement for adaptation, resilience and reduced vulnerability. In addition, the Biden White House should follow the Paris Agreement’s guidelines, set expectations to plan and implement adaptation. Next, it’s clear the new administration should report on adaptation needs and efforts. Finally, it behooves Biden’s team to measure the adequacy, effectiveness and progress of all adaptation projects.

These steps will prove key to realize the positive returns on resilience. And the business case is real. An October report from the Urban Land Institute figures that Southeast Florida can realize at least $5 in benefits for each dollar of infrastructure resilience investment. A 2019 report from the National Institute of Building Safety maintained that modern building codes save $11 for every $1 invested.

The Biden administration must boost jobs in the resilience sector

Much is being expressed about a national infrastructure bill. And the Biden platform proposes, for instance, that new federal funding to rebuild roads, bridges or water infrastructure consider climate change. Beyond this consideration, the Biden administration should encourage the growth of resilience investments. Just as we celebrate the market viability of solar energy after a decade of government engagement, we also should be able to celebrate the market strength and investment potential of resilience. In these sectors specifically, the White House needs to emphasize the following:  

Water: Flood defense, wetland protection, stormwater management, rainwater harvesting, waste-water treatment relocation, strengthened water distribution systems and desalinization plants should be among the priorities.

Buildings: Start with green roofs and walls, water retention gardens and porous pavements.

Energy: Grid resilience along with back-up generation and storage should be a priority.

Information and communications technology: The Biden administration should strengthen data distributions systems, in addition to climate monitoring and data collection that can inform and build community resilience such as early warning systems that can assist with the relocation of citizens.

Health: Treatment and monitoring for diseases that might increase due to climate change as well as the treatment of respiratory conditions from wildfires.

To be sure, the resilience mission cannot be left to the private sector to steer. Even those corporate leaders purporting to be for poverty alleviation – such as Certified B Corps – have overall not made it a part of their platforms.

Migration plans to protect vulnerable Americans

The New York Times has said the “idea of retreating from areas that can’t be defended…is a political minefield.” But with a five-decade career behind him, a President Biden can afford to show courage and wade in. Taking on such a complicated plan has many moving parts – and that will be the focus of tomorrow’s discussion on rethinking housing across the regions that are most vulnerable to climate change across the U.S.

Image credit: Markus Spiske/Unsplash

While making up half of the world’s population, women entrepreneurs receive less than 20 percent of startup finance. Despite their best efforts, these constraints are even more prominent for women of color. And yet women started 42 percent of new businesses in the U.S. between 2018 and 2019, with women of color accounting for the lion’s share: 89 percent. Clearly, something doesn’t measure up.

Grappling with the barriers that face women entrepreneurs, and particularly those from underrepresented groups, has been the focus of the work of Tara Sabre Collier over the past 15 years. She is a Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Oxford University, where she lectures on impact investment as well as diversity equity and inclusion.

During an interview with TriplePundit, Sabre Collier set out the considerable barriers that female, and particularly female entrepreneurs of color, are up against—and some of the innovative ways that the gap in capital is being bridged.

Women entrepreneurs face legal and cultural barriers to capital

For one thing, Sabre Collier noted, there remain legal barriers in many parts of the world that can prevent access to capital and to entrepreneurship. According to the World Bank’s Women, Business and The Law database, of the world’s economies, more than 30 percent restrict women’s freedom of movement and 40 percent have laws constraining women’s decisions to join and remain in the labor force.

In the Western world, as Sabre Collier continued to explain, most of these legal barriers have been dismantled; the problem instead is social and cultural factors, unconscious bias (unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups) and a lack of women decision makers at the table deciding allocation of private capital. In addition, women entrepreneurs are more likely to have had career gaps, to be in lower-paying jobs, and face a gender wage gap. 

“All of these factors add up,” she says. “As a result, women have less savings and less wealth built up. You combine that lower aggregate wealth with greater household labor requirements for women, which has been exacerbated by COVID. That means the amount of additional work a woman has to do beyond her day job limits the amount of time she has available to invest in her business, far more than what happens with a man. By the time she joins an incubator accelerator, her business is still on average, farther behind. It's gotten less capital injected into it from her because she has less capital, and she has less time, and time equals capital.”

Sabre Collier continued: “When they graduate from these accelerators, women typically don’t really benefit. “It's not really helping them raise that much more additional capital. And part of that is because they're being compared to men. A lot of the investors are expecting to see traction: for the venture to be at this number of users or this revenue level, but she wasn't even on equal footing when she came into the accelerator. So really, if we want to back more women led companies, we need to look at the earlier stages.” 

Fighting the gender pay gap and unconscious bias

In the U.S., white, non-Hispanic women are typically paid just 79 cents for every dollar a white, non-Hispanic man makes, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families. For women of color, the gap widens: Latinas are typically paid just 55 cents for every dollar; Native American women 60 cents and Black women 63 cents.

“So that lower pay means the amount of savings one has available to bootstrap the business is lower,” Sabre Collier added. “You combine this with the fact that once you do bootstrap and you go through acceleration or incubation, you're going to also face unconscious bias and pattern matching.”

The latter is a tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s beliefs. For instance, people naturally tend to do a sort of pattern-matching, assuming that if they were successful, then someone who looks like them or went to the same school will be more likely to succeed, as diversity and inclusion expert Paolo Gaudino explained in Forbes.

Change is underway. After all, women control $14 trillion of personal wealth in the U.S., and they are a driving force using that money towards new strategies in the world of finance, including impact investing. Nevertheless, women entrepreneurs still face an uphill climb when it comes to accessing conventional means of funding.

Tomorrow: We’ll continue with how women entrepreneurs are now tapping into alternative sources of funding so that their ideas can become reality – as in new startups that can help boost local economies.

Image credit: Unsplash

Water UK, the trade association representing major British water companies, has released a plan for achieving in net-zero carbon emissions in the water sector by 2030, 20 years before the government’s economy-wide net-zero emissions goal.

A data-driven approach toward water stewardship

The Net Zero 2030 Routemap used a decade’s worth of data and technical expertise to develop several pathways to help the water sector achieve net-zero emissions through technology, regulatory, and supply chain collaboration and initiatives. The solutions include increased efficiency and use of alternative technologies, especially through biogas, renewable energy generation, restoring peatland and grassland, planting trees, and transitioning to electric and alternative fuel vehicles.

If the goals cannot be fully met through those measures, carbon offsets will make up the balance of any residual offsets. The Routemap acts as just that, allowing some flexibility for water companies to determine their firm-specific action plans.

A step forward for climate action

The Routemap represents the first effort by an industrial sector anywhere in the world to deliver a detailed plan to achieve net-zero carbon of operational emissions by 2030. That is comes from a water sector group is more remarkable. Water companies are in a unique position because they supply an essential public good that relies on massive infrastructure. It is also the sector that is already one of the most affected by climate change, both because of its inputs and demand.

Further, the primary source of emissions from the water sector is from energy use and it is also costly for water utilities. Energy consumption by municipally-owned water utilities can represent 30 to 40 percent of a city’s electricity bill. That matters in particular where electricity is generated using fossil fuels.

Convincing water companies to address leakage

The high demand for energy worldwide is due to treating and moving water. For most utilities, dealing with decaying infrastructure, leakage is a significant problem. Water that is lost through leakage - also known as non-revenue water (NRW) - is literally money down the drain. While average expected leakage rates should be around 10 percent, in some places they can be over 60 percent. And as infrastructure continues to break down, that rate has increased by 27 percent since 2012.

Despite some improvements in recent years in leakage rates in the United Kingdom, some parts of the country could run out of water in twenty years due to uncontrolled leakage. The Routemap sets a goal to triple the rate of leakage reduction by 2030, setting a clear target for getting NRW under control.

While the Routemap notes that there is uncertainty in how to reduce leakage rates significantly, it could take a page from another notebook. Israel has managed to get its national leakage rates down to about 7 percent, with some utilities getting their rates down as low as 2 percent. Israel’s infrastructure is relatively new and it does have to deal with large fluctuations in weather conditions. Nevertheless, the U.K. and other countries could look at Israel’s use of technology and innovation as a way to address leakage. Israel has about 300 water technology companies looking at how to innovate the sector—from satellite-based detection to smart meters that can detect a leak before it happens.

A model for not only conserving water, but driving new technologies

The next step for the Routemap is figuring out a practical, step-based approach, which will get fully underway in early 2021. Giving utilities the flexibility to determine how to meet the goals makes success more likely as they can fit initiatives into each company’s budget and operations plans. It also gives individual water companies ownership over the solutions, determining what is the right mix of technologies and policies for its particular service area.

But an important component of this is a national goal. As Israel as made water a top national priority at the government level, the Routemap is to help water companies achieve the economy-wide emissions reductions goal set by the national government. The water sector has to be part of the climate solution. A national policy in the U.S. could potentially not only kickstart technological innovation, but also bring private and public investment dollars into the sector akin to what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 did for the clean energy sector.

Climate discussions necessarily focus on the energy, industry, and transportation sectors - the three largest emission sources - but the water sector is also part of both of those as well as every other facet of modern life. If countries, the U.S. included, are smart, they’ll ride the wave of engaging the water sector in solutions to the greatest policy and economic issue of our times.

Image credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann/Unsplash