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Woon Tan co-authored this story 

The second Cleantech Venture Day, held last week in London, brought together high-profile keynote speakers, game-changing clean technology companies and impact investors from across Europe. Inspiration, networking and education were the names of the game. And the organizers, U.K. network organization Cambridge Cleantech and the Nordic Innovation Accelerator, certainly delivered on their promise.

The opening keynote from Craig Bennett, CEO of Friends Of The Earth, an international network of environmental organizations, brought an activist energy to the proceedings. This complemented the rest of the day's lively pitches and keynotes, emceed by the effervescent Hugh Parnell, chairman of Cambridge Cleantech.

U.K. moves backward on cleantech: Seven government fails

Mr. Bennett gave an impassioned speech about why we can’t rely on governments to address climate change, citing a “bonfire of policies” that support clean technology and the low-carbon economy in the U.K. Here are seven examples of how he believes the U.K. government in particular has underperformed:

1. The U.K. government recently eliminated the Zero Carbon Home Standards and Green Deal, which will lock current and future generations into higher energy bills.


2. It opted to privatize the Green Investment Bank, leaving a huge question mark around how the government can promote low-carbon innovation.


3. Renewable energy subsidies are chopping and changing in a chaotic manner, leading to thousands of jobs lost in the renewables industry.


4. The U.K. government supported the expansion of Heathrow Airport. Adding a third runway at Heathrow will result in additional carbon pollution equivalent to Croatia’s.


5. Fracking policies create a whole new vested interest and fossil fuel infrastructure, which will get in the way of cleantech growth and also forcing fracking on local communities.


6. Cuts to electric vehicle grants, plus the freezing of the Fuel Duty Accelerator, take away nudges for consumer behavior change.


7. The U.K.'s 25-pence tax on disposable coffee cups turned into a whole load of froth, despite the Treasury receiving an unprecedented hundreds of thousands of public responses in support of the "latte levy."

Companies step in to fill the void: Seven cleantech startup wins

It wasn’t all negative from Craig Bennett, though. Despite his frustrations with the U.K. government, he believes now is the most exciting time to be a sustainable innovator and said cleantech startups are on the “right side of history."

The two dozen startup founders pitching for investments at the event served as excellent examples of this. To give a flavor of how they're striving to change our world for the better, here are a select few:

1. Solar Polar creates solar-thermal-powered air conditioning and refrigeration for food storage. Its technology addresses the issue of food waste, where 50 percent of food in sun belt regions rots before reaching the market.


2. Quant believes the big opportunity in smart energy lies in the residential rooftop solar and energy storage markets—and it's developing artificial intelligence tools to allow energy customers to rapidly adapt to fluctuations in energy usage and rates.


3. Wimao designs and manufactures ecological materials and biocomposite products made of recycled materials utilizing mixed and difficult-to-sort waste items.


4. Cheeky Panda is disrupting the tissue market with sustainable, skin-friendly products made from bamboo, the world’s fastest growing plant. The company is building a strong consumer brand, with ambitious plans to break into the U.S. market.


5. Origen Power is developing a process that uses natural gas to generate electricity in a way that removes carbon dioxide from the air. The team's initial vision is to support the transformation of the U.K. lime industry from being a big net producer of CO2, to being a significant net storer of the greenhouse gas.


6. Hydraloop is a smart, innovative and certified domestic grey water recycling system that saves water and energy by recycling 85 percent of domestic water without the use of filters, membranes or chemicals.


7. Zero Hertz Energy is a Finnish company specializing in delivering low-voltage direct current technology and services for utility power distribution.

At the end of the day of pitches, Zero Hertz Energy was announced the winner of the Smart Grid Innovation challenge by Jaakko Isotalo, manager of fund and dealflow for Grid VC, who when explaining the judges choice stated, “Their technology makes it possible to scale up micro production, storage and self-sufficiency of distribution networks.”

Riding the waves of social change

In closing his keynote, Craig Bennett shared that when looking at history—whether it's the abolition of slavery or the women's suffrage movement—social change takes time. “William Wilberforce did not wake up one day and decide to campaign against slavery," Mr. Bennett observed. "It takes many years of building up of public awareness—and then getting a surge of support and then a push back, and then a surge of support and then a push back.”

Mr. Bennett continued, “The pro-slavery movement only formed when the anti-slavery movement started doing really well. Our job in pushing for change can’t be to resist those waves, as they are fundamental to how change happens. Our job is to make sure every time a wave comes up, it goes higher than before and each time it goes out, it doesn’t go out as much as before, until finally we get to low tide.”

Just like the historic movements of the past, clean growth—exemplified by the rich ecosystem of clean technology startups growing in Europe—is clearly on the right side of history.

Co-author Woo Tan is the founder of Podcast Publishing Help, where he works with sustainability thought leaders and environmental impact entrepreneurs who are building personal or business brands through launching and growing their podcasts.

Image credit: Giulia Legora/Cambridge Cleantech

Consumers are becoming more sophisticated in their ability to discern between a true commitment to sustainability and action taken just for show. And they’re not afraid to call out that authenticity—or lack of it—on social media, in conversations with friends or in any other channel. This has made some brands hesitant to communicate their sustainability work, afraid of the brutal consumer backlash for well-intentioned efforts. Others are still sustainability skeptics.

In working with clients at Nielsen, I often hear, “Yes, consumers say they want sustainability, but will this actually boost my bottom line?” There is a wealth of evidence indicating it will. In fact, when sustainability initiatives are integrated thoughtfully into the strategic plan, they can do everything from streamline the supply chain to unlock a new level of consumer love and loyalty.

In Nielsen's recent report, What’s Sustainability Got To Do With It?, we took a look at three product categories—chocolate, coffee and bath products—and found that sustainability boosted sales and units sold across the board.

Why double down on sustainability?

Whether you’re well on your way or just starting to incorporate sustainability into your strategy, our latest global sustainability report, Consumers Buy the Change They Wish to See in the World, underscores these five reasons for doubling down:

1. Sustainability encourages a culture of innovation, pushing you to embrace new methods, technologies and ideas.


2. Sustainability is a way to build authenticity, creating more transparency in your supply chain.


3. Sustainability is a consumer-centric strategy. It requires you to understand and empathize with the concerns your consumers have, and how your brand can be a solution to help make their lives better.


4. Sustainability drives greater efficiency. For example, many companies set commitments to move toward manufacturing processes that reduce waste, requiring investment in research and development and sometimes the overhaul of supply chains. That upfront investment can pay off as your business benefits from a more efficient process and enhanced reputation.


5. The positive effects of sustainability are good for us, and they make us feel good, too. That goodwill can cut across your employees, consumers and other stakeholder groups.

One of the major challenges we hear companies express is knowing that sustainability is important, however not having a strategic plan for incorporating it into their brand or across the full product portfolio.

The word “sustainability” has increasingly become a catch-all term that, depending on the context, can encompass everything from environmental conservation to employee relations, and much more. Thus, for any company, it can seem daunting to incorporate all of these factors into an overall business strategy and figure out how it fits into a consumer marketing approach.

Create a sustainability strategy that’s authentic for you and your customers

To do it right, companies need to invest in truly understanding their consumers and embed sustainability into their brand’s foundation. Authenticity comes through the end-to-end integration of sustainability into your processes and complete transparency with consumers along the way. That means pushing beyond feel-good marketing and labels on packaging to a fully integrated interdepartmental execution. It requires collaboration across many teams—from sourcing and sustainability, to category managers and marketing leaders. Winning requires sustainability be part of your short- and long-term strategic planning from start to finish.

Investing in sustainability is undoubtedly an individual journey for brands that can be impacted by industry, geography, product portfolio, community commitments and other factors. We’ve seen success when companies take a tailored approach consisting of multi-stakeholder engagement, cross-functional accountability and transparency along the way. For many brands, this approach will enable consumers to take note at the shelf—and in turn reward you along their path to purchase.

Image credit: Joshua Rawson-Harris via Unsplash 

The latest report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told us that 50 percent more people will live under conditions of water stress if global temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius, as opposed to 1.5 degrees. And while the private sector must double down on its ambitions to achieve rapid decarbonization of the global economy, it must, at the same time, do everything in its power to protect the freshwater resources that are essential to all human and economic activity.

Indeed, there are hopeful signs of growing ambition from large companies to better steward the freshwater they so rely on. Take for example, Mars and its goal to ensure sustainable water use in its supply chain, with an interim target to halve unsustainable water use by 2025, through an aggressive program of working with farmers in its rice and mint supply chains to drive down wasteful irrigation.

At Ceres, where I serve as the senior director of water and food, our goal is to ratchet up this sort of water ambition among leading companies and investors. That's why, with our partners at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), we have focused on the food and agriculture sector as mission critical. In 2016, we launched the AgWater Challenge, with the specific intent of raising ambition among the world’s most influential food and beverage companies in the most water-intensive industry—agriculture.

With the global food sector using 70 percent of the world’s freshwater supply, food and beverage companies play an important role in protecting water quality and quantity. Most recently, Target and ADM joined the seven other companies participating in the Challenge in making commitments to better protect freshwater resources in their agricultural supply chains.

Unfortunately, when it comes to water stewardship, most large companies are still swimming in cramped fish bowls of relative ambition. They benchmark their water stewardship efforts against those of their peers—and not against the size and scale of the problem. This keeps collective water ambition low and increases the long-term risks for companies, as well as for communities.​

The flip side, or perhaps the evil twin, of low ambition is what I call the Tardigrade Syndrome.

A tardigrade (also known as a “water bear”) is a microscopic invertebrate that can survive in a dehydrated state for years at a time. Water bears are among the hardiest of multi-celled animals. Dry them out and they will happily go into an indefinite state of suspended animation.​

The Tardigrade Syndrome is when corporations take a hunker-down, go-it-alone approach to managing water risk. It’s when they falsely believe they can insulate themselves from the risks posed by our shared interdependence on water through a narrow reliance on water efficiency, geographic diversification, shifting suppliers or hedging commodity prices.

And while these approaches can minimize short-term risk, they ignore the fact that we live in an interconnected world and operate in an interconnected economy. Unlike tardigrades, human beings cannot live longer than three or four days in a dehydrated state. And in a 2 degree-world, or even 1.5 degree-world, companies likely won’t do much better.

Being more ambitious means shedding the go-it-alone mentality. Ratcheting up water ambition means embracing the fact that both science and policy are arenas in which businesses must fully engage. It means looking science in the eye and embracing the goal of zero harm to freshwater—even when we know we cannot achieve this ambition alone.

And there are a million reasons why these things are hard, if not seemingly impossible, for many companies. And certainly, a lack of understanding and interest from shareholders has been a critical barrier. To address this barrier, over the past three years, Ceres has built a global alliance of investors, the Ceres Investor Water Hub, made up of over 100 institutional investors with $20 trillion in assets under management. These investors are working with Ceres and their peers to address water risks in their own investment decision-making and to increasingly engage corporations on the issue.

As a result of this collaboration, we have seen the investor community gradually ratcheting up their own commitment and levels of ambition on water. Over the past two years, our corporate and investor members have volunteered hundreds of hours to develop a joint, open-source learning resource—the Investor Water Toolkit—designed to showcase best practices and point the way forward. As part of this work, investors developed a view on the industries and sub-industries most at water risk. Their analysis shows the degree to which water risk is potentially systemic across markets.​

Ambition is also growing within individual investment firms. Last year, the Florida State Board of Administration, one of the largest pension funds in the U.S., undertook a water footprinting of its equity portfolio, among other things, to help inform its corporate engagement strategy. Other investors have begun to align their investment approaches with Sustainable Development Goal 6 on water. Most notable is Dutch pension fund PGGM, whose work to quantitatively assess its funds’ contributions to SDG 6 has taken on board the input of the scientific community.

And just last year, asset manager ACTIAM set an ambitious target to achieve water neutrality for its US$64 billion portfolio by 2030, which it defines as investing in companies that “consume no more water than nature can replenish, and cause no more pollution than is acceptable for the health of humans and natural ecosystems.”

The IPCC report told us is that it is within our power and ability to prevent the worst impacts of climate and water-induced catastrophes.

There is immense risk if investors and companies don’t act, but there is also boundless opportunity if they do. With trillions of dollars in assets under management, the global investment community must play a role in investing in solutions to our water and climate challenges, as well as demanding higher ambition from corporations to do the same.​

We know there is a long road ahead to achieve a 1.5-degree world, and investors and companies have a critical role to play.

To all of them, I say we must work together to ratchet up our water ambition—and the time is now.

Previously posted on Ceres and 3BL Media news.

Image credit: Matze Scheel via Unsplash 

David Wei co-authored this story

According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2017 was the third-warmest year on record, the U.S. experienced three of the top five costliest hurricanes in its history that same year, and the 20 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1995.

Businesses already experience the negative impacts of climate change—including infrastructure damage, operational disruptions, logistics challenges and input supply interruptions, not to mention the effect on customers. Since 2011, the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report has ranked climate risks a high priority for business in terms of both likelihood and impact.

It is critical for business to understand the full spectrum of climate risk—not merely how physical impacts affect infrastructure, but also the extent to which their workers and assets are exposed and how communities experience and adapt to these impacts.

Making climate risk part of the business plan

It is clear from our research that businesses do not yet fully recognize and understand how climate change affects the people in their value chains. What businesses often overlook is that building climate resilience simultaneously advances other goals, including respecting human rights, increasing inclusivity, empowering women, improving the health of workers and communities, and managing supply chains.

To help businesses explore the interaction between climate and these areas—and to direct companies to opportunities for synergy and interventions that will build climate resilience—BSR is launching a series of reports on the nexus between climate resilience and other key sustainability issues: supply chain, health, inclusive economy, women’s empowerment, just transition and human rights. These reports aim to provide companies with an initial understanding of the importance of these intersections and, more importantly, the business case for action to drive resilience inside their companies, across supply chains and within vulnerable communities.

The first report in this series explores the business case for integrating climate risks into supply chain management. At its core, supply chain management has four primary objectives, any of which could be negatively affected by climate impacts:

• Reduce the overall cost of production.


• Enhance the speed and responsiveness of delivery.


• Enhance the quality of goods and services produced.


• Manage the uncertainty of major disruptions.

The characteristics of modern supply chains—their global geographical reach, specialized inputs that are increasingly produced in specific locations, and reduced inventories from just-in-time production—render them more vulnerable to disruption by climate risks.

For example, during Thailand’s severe flooding in 2011, more than 14,500 companies reliant on Thai suppliers suffered business disruptions worldwide, and total insured losses were estimated between $15 billion and $20 billion. Western Digital, which commands a third of the global hard-drive market, lost 45 percent of its shipments. HP lost $2 billion, and NEC cut 10,000 jobs due to a global shortage of hard disk drives.

The recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) provide a clear categorization of climate risks, which are unifying the vocabulary to describe them. The task force uses two categories of risk, both of which companies should assess throughout their supply chains:

• Physical climate risks from acute weather events and chronic climate patterns are disrupting the availability of raw material and energy supply, supplier operations, and local communities along the supply chain.


• The transition to the low-carbon economy also presents policy and legal risks that result from several trends, including the pricing of greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions, disruptions from new technologies like blockchain, market risks from growing customer demand for low-carbon and climate-resilient goods and services, and reputational risks to a company’s brand equity and future business.

BSR recommends that companies address climate risks in their supply chains by focusing where they have the greatest impact and greatest influence and taking several steps:

• Consider a broad range of climate risks, and prioritize parts of the supply chain that are most at risk.


• Implement supply chain actions, including with internal procurement teams, suppliers and through broader collaboration—and develop measurable targets for these efforts.


• Evaluate the impact of supply chain actions, and adjust programs and goals over time.

By integrating climate risks and building the climate resilience of the communities on which supply chains depend, companies increase the likelihood of fulfilling their supply chain objectives.

Previously posted on the BSR blog and 3BL Media news.

Co-author David Wei leads BSR’s climate practice to maximize the impact of their applied research, collaborative initiatives and work with individual companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build climate resilience. He is also the international policy lead for the We Mean Business coalition. You can find him on Twitter @ClimateWei. 

Image credits: 1) NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center via Flickr 2) Courtesy of BSR and the We Mean Business coalition 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging tool that enables us to more effectively integrate information, analyze data, and use the resulting insights to improve decision-making. Extraordinary advances in AI happen every day. For instance, robots and driverless cars are becoming increasingly common.

These technologies are driving a new wave of economic progress, solving some of the world’s most difficult problems and providing solutions to some of the most profound challenges in human history. AI has the potential to transform many sectors such as information technology, telecommunications, transportation, traffic management, health care, education, criminal justice, defense, banking and agriculture. To realize its full potential, governments need to create public policy that fosters AI innovation while mitigating unintended societal consequences.

As these technologies advances more deeply into everyday use, it also raises concerns about possible negative impacts on jobs, personal privacy, society, the economy and politics. Some experts estimate that about half of our jobs will be taken over by automation and robotics within the next 15 years. But if companies need fewer workers due to AI, what happens to the humans who once held those jobs? Without adequate safeguards or the incorporation of ethical considerations, the AI utopia can quickly turn into dystopia.

What is AI?

AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence by computer systems. Artificial intelligence is not the same as machine learning—a process by which a computer can learn a skill. AI refers to a computer that can "think" for itself. AI can encompass anything from Google’s search algorithms, to IBM’s Watson, to autonomous weapons.

Predicting an AI future

PwC estimates that “artificial intelligence technologies could increase global GDP by $15.7 trillion, a full 14 percent, by 2030.” A 2017 study from Redwood Software and Sapio Research concluded that 60 percent of businesses can be automated in the next five years.

There are numerous examples where AI is already augmenting human capabilities in significant ways. In stock exchanges, for instance, high-frequency trading by machines has replaced much of human decision-making. AI can be used to solve an array of environmental problems, such as climate change and natural calamities prediction. AI will also take over many hazardous jobs in the future. Several companies are trying to build a robot that can act as a human companion, and China is using AI to improve healthcare and speed up diagnoses.

China dominates in global AI funding and is investing a lot in this futuristic technology for everything from smart agriculture and intelligent logistics to military applications. In the U.S., President Donald Trump is demanding that the Pentagon create a new military service—a “Space Force”—to assure American dominance in space, using AI.

For businesses, AI enables people to use their creativity for verification, validity, security and control. AI is currently used this way in manufacturing, construction, rescue operations, personal security and speech recognition, as well as in customer service and support and as a smart home manager.

The bottom line

Nobody can predict what the future will bring, but AI may ultimately create more jobs than it displaces. By offering new tools for entrepreneurs, it may also create new lines of business that we can’t imagine now.

It is quite obvious that interacting with AI will soon become an everyday activity. AI can be used to tackle profoundly difficult problems and find solutions that are important to human wellbeing. These developments are generating substantial economic and social benefits. At the same time, AI poses the greatest ethical challenge we have yet to face. It has the potential to move civilization forward in progressive ways. But the way AI systems are developed needs to be better understood due to the major implications the technology will have for society as a whole.

The possibilities of AI are endless. Its future will be created by us, and it will influence the choices we make and the actions we take. While this revolutionary technology has the potential to become the single most influential human innovation in history, we have no way of predicting how it will behave. But, with appropriate safeguards, we can ensure that AI systems are intentional, intelligent, and adaptable without sacrificing the important qualities that define humanity.

Image courtesy of IBM

 

This article series is underwritten by Aetna Foundation and went through our normal editorial review process. 

The opioid crisis is one of the most serious threats to public health in America since the crack/cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network, there were 2,252 deaths associated with cocaine in 1988, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that around 66 percent of the more than 63,600 drug overdose deaths in 2016 involved an opioid.

Florida, one of the states hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, serves as an example of what a collaborative relationship can look like when multiple organizations join forces to achieve a common goal. In April of this year, the Florida Alcohol & Drug Abuse Association (FADAA), Florida Hospital Association (FHA), Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, Congressman Gus Bilirakis and Senator Bill Nelson announced a new initiative in the hopes of strengthening connections between hospitals and community-based behavioral health programs.

One such program is All in for Florida: The Emergency Room Intervention Project, a peer-to-peer counseling program connecting individuals hospitalized for opioid overdoses with access to treatment services at that critical moment when intervention is possible.

TriplePundit sat down to talk with Bruce Rueben, president of the Florida Hospital Association, to learn more about the All in for Florida program. Rueben emphasized the impact on Florida, noting that from June 2016 to June 2017, 18,000 emergency room visits were caused by people overdosing on opioids. Out of those individuals, 78 percent were discharged to their homes, 12 percent left against the doctor’s medical advice, and only 10 percent were treated for overdose.

“With numbers this staggering, something had to be done,” Rueben said. “It’s overwhelming our emergency rooms and has some pretty significant unintended consequences. This is changing the quality of life in communities, and hospitals are the front line, so we are compelled to deal with it.”

All in for Florida uses a peer-to-peer model to address the concerns of opioid abuse: Many of the peer counselors have overcome addiction themselves. “Trained peer counselors are available in the emergency room so that when a patient is there, they can meet with them and talk with them about treatment programs to meet their specific needs,” Rueben added. The concept was first tested at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, where 450 overdose victims were treated in the ER over the course of the six-month pilot. Rueben notes that the program was “very successful” and has since expanded throughout the state of Florida.

FHA also understands that effective treatment is holistic. It can be argued that changes in the job market and the collapse of once bustling industries is driving a sense of hopelessness that has not been seen in this country in decades. Addiction is also deeply tied to mental health, and FHA hopes to address the whole person with their new program.

As caregivers, we look at this holistically from a caregiver perspective. We consider not only what we can do when a patient comes in, but what can we do to reduce the potential for this crisis to continue. We’re working at the state and federal level on policies, [on the] prescription and distribution of opioids, and alternate ways to effectively manage pain. We are promoting access to mental health services throughout Florida. We are looking to increase those resources to put more emphasis on mental health programs. We are working with community-based partners on mental health to try to leverage all of our efforts and resources.

Every community, family and person fighting opioid addiction faces a unique battle, which is why it’s imperative to look for local solutions to solve this national crisis. It takes resources to have an impact on an issue this large, and by setting aside such resources to fund treatment and find solutions for the over prescription of addictive opioids, health care companies can help to change the trajectory of this epidemic. The collaboration between the Aetna Foundation, FAADA and FHA gives us a solid example of what partnership and progress can look like when various sectors come together for positive change.

 

Image: Unsplash/rawpixel

Founded by filmmaker James Cameron and Dalio Philanthropies President Ray Dalio, OceanX supports scientists as they explore the ocean and share their findings with the world. Uniting leading media, science and philanthropy partners, OceanX seeks to educate people about the oceans as a means of engaging them in conservation efforts.

With its own research vessel and the world’s most advanced underwater cameras—capable of shooting high-quality video more than 3,200 feet below the surface—this unique media project shows people the ocean like they’ve never seen it before. It helped capture the first footage of the Giant Squid in Japan and traveled with the BBC to depths below the Antarctic Ocean never before reached by humans, among a number of other milestones.

Last week, OceanX and its team of filmmakers, scientists and media pros got a boost in the form of a new partnership with billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Philanthropies, the group encompassing all of Bloomberg’s charitable activities, distributed $702 million in social investments last year, and the former New York City mayor is already one of the world's leading supporters of ocean protection and conservation.

The new partnership will support the OceanX platform and its mission to "increase the world’s collective understanding of our oceans and the vital need for conservation," Bloomberg and OceanX said in a video message at the fifth annual Our Ocean Conference in Indonesia. The effort will be seeded by a combined commitment of more than $185 million over four years.

“More than 3 billion people depend on the oceans for food and their livelihoods. That means threats to marine ecosystems—like climate change and overfishing—also threaten lives around the world,” Bloomberg, who also serves as a U.N. Special Envoy for Climate Action, said in a statement. “We’re teaming up with OceanX to ensure that ocean conservation receives the attention it deserves.”

The partnership's inaugural project is an expedition to the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean. Designated in 2016 by President Barack Obama, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is home to a vast undersea mountain range formed millions of years ago by extinct volcanoes. Scientists will visit Northeast Canyons on OceanX’s marine research and exploration vessel, the Alucia, to “demonstrate [the monument’s] importance” and “illustrate the need for marine conservation across the globe,” according to Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Working complementarily, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ partners will leverage OceanX’s powerful imagery, video and media storytelling to advocate for marine conservation. The two groups also pledged to invest—"both independently and together"—in projects related to ocean exploration and scientific discovery, awareness and education, issue advocacy, policy development, and conservation.

Bloomberg Philanthropies has invested $69 million in ocean protection efforts since 2011. This latest commitment marks an extension of the group’s Vibrant Oceans Initiative—established in 2014 with a mission to reform local and industrial fishing practices and protect critical marine areas in top fishing nations.

In partnership with groups like Oceana and Rare, Vibrant Oceans launched programs to protect more than 1 million square miles of marine habitat in Brazil, Chile and the Philippines, increasing coastal fish populations by 390 percent at key sites. The initiative will extend similar programs to at least seven more countries—including French Polynesia, Indonesia, Peru, Tanzania and the U.S.—over the next four years, according to Bloomberg Philanthropies.

This new collaboration will unite Bloomberg's efforts with those of Ray Dalio, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist behind both OceanX and Bridgewater Associates, one of the world's largest hedge funds.

Such an alignment of powerful interests couldn't come at a better time. More than 30 percent of the world's fisheries "have been pushed beyond their biological limits," according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Meanwhile, the ocean has absorbed roughly 30 percent of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and more than 90 percent of the heat associated with global temperature rise, according to the Ocean Conservancy, further stressing marine ecosystems.

“The health of our oceans is intertwined with our continued health and wellbeing on land, and increased threats to the ocean require that we focus our attention on addressing these issues,” Dalio said in a statement. “We need to drive toward a global understanding of and passion for the oceans, which we believe will ultimately lead to their protection. We see the pairing of our exploration expertise and resources with Michael’s conservation and advocacy work as part of the necessary collective efforts to address the issues facing our oceans.”

To learn more about this new partnership and check out some of OceanX's awe-inspiring underwater footage, watch the video below:

https://youtu.be/xW6ir4fdEOw

Image credit: Jeremy Bishop via Unsplash

Leaders from nearly every country attended the World Health Organization’s (WHO) inaugural Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health in Geneva last week, along with academics and nongovernmental organizations, but there were no corporate leaders in attendance. The absence of companies suggests that air pollution isn’t front and center on business leaders’ radars. Here are three reasons why it should be.

1. Air pollution is bad for business.

The WHO director general went as far as to suggest that air pollution is “the new tobacco.” But it’s not just our health that suffers: air pollution costs the global economy $225 billion each year in lost labor income. Pollution and traffic congestion can disrupt daily business operations, while a recent study showed that “poor outdoor air quality is likely to have a negative impact on your job performance, even if you work indoors at a desk.”

Poor air quality poses a risk to employee health, too, which can lead to more sick days—air pollution in central London, for example, has been shown to cause the equivalent of over 650,000 sick days each year.

Furthermore, cities that have severe air pollution problems will increasingly be seen as less desirable places to work and live, thereby negatively impacting talent recruitment. A survey released by Bain & Co. and the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that 53 percent of American firms operating in Chinese cities have experienced difficulty in recruiting senior talent, with the majority blaming air pollution.

Pollution can also affect profits: a Yale study found that Spanish consumers spend nearly $50 million less on days when ozone pollution is just 10 percent worse than usual.

2. Transparency, tech and data will soon tie air pollution back to brands.

The big, scary numbers I outlined above are easily dismissed as someone else’s problem. But nearly every business contributes to air pollution via operations and supply chains. Common sources include the emissions from burning fuels used to heat buildings, emissions from cooking, and harmful gases released via distribution and delivery vehicles.

Human rights advocates traced sweatshop abuses to apparel brands using old-fashioned sleuthing. These days, technology for sensing air pollution is more available to citizens, cities and companies—and new innovations come to market almost daily. Open-source data analytics is also democratizing insights.

Local hotspots can already be detected using these technological advancements, and soon the health and economic impacts from air pollution will be traced to fleets and specific locations.

This means taking action now to better understand a company’s air pollution footprint can give that business a competitive edge in accelerating solutions (we need to measure before we can manage). The good news is that hyperlocal air pollution insights already being collected in places like Oakland, Houston and London can have myriad benefits. For example, block-to-block information on air quality could inform where electric vehicles would provide the greatest return on investment for health and the climate.

3. Tackling air pollution is a two-for-one in meeting corporate sustainability targets.

Many business leaders have made commitments to prevent climate catastrophe and set clear science-based emissions reduction targets—all of which is especially important in light of last month’s IPCC report findings.

A common problem I hear from businesses that have set climate targets is that many find it hard to know exactly what to do once the ink dries on a commitment. They're often left wondering how to secure resources and people for action, and how to show impact—especially after the low-hanging fruit such as energy efficiency in company-owned facilities is picked.

Seeing as many sources that contribute to climate change are also sources of air pollution (transportation, building operations, etc.), targeting health and climate co-benefits together is a way to set priorities, build support and momentum, and demonstrate impact faster. Investing in solutions to address air pollution would also help the climate—and who in business doesn’t love a two-for-one deal?

In the end, do you want to be the business that found growth opportunities in protecting people and the planet? Or do you want to be left holding the dirty ashtray?

Previously posted on EDF+Business and 3BL Media news.

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This article series is underwritten by Symantec and went through our normal editorial review process. 

Even organizations focused on public benefit regularly collect and store users’ personal information. This means that rules like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) apply to nonprofits and social good organizations as much as private-sector companies. In fact, nonprofits, philanthropic groups, and foundations are potentially exposed to even greater risk in the event of a data breach or theft, as the reputations they’ve painstakingly cultivated can be tarnished overnight.

That is exactly what happened in 2016 to the National Childbirth Trust, a United Kingdom-based charity that saw a data breach leak the sensitive information of more than 15,000 expectant parents. Closer to home, the Utah Food Bank was subject to a data breach that gave an unauthorized individual access to the nonprofit’s most important data asset—the personal information of more than 10,000 donors.

One of the biggest challenges is that many nonprofits, including those mentioned above, are small organizations that focus on issues outside of the digital space and lack dedicated cybersecurity staff. When the GDPR went into effect in May, nonprofits saw a flurry of action as they tried to ensure they were compliant.

Any organization with any members or donors in Europe must comply with the GDPR. Some organizations chose the path of least resistance—dropping their small European subscribers due to the high potential costs of compliance. Most, however, chose to comply even if they had limited European membership, for the simple reason that—as is the case in the private sector—data privacy is no longer optional.

“It is my perception that nonprofits are very interested in understanding [GDPR] requirements and complying,” said Meghan Hanson, deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer at Techsoup, an international network of NGOs that provides tech support for nonprofits.

Steps nonprofits can take to ensure user privacy

Each type of communication requires explicit consent under the GDPR, meaning organizations must give European users a chance to opt-in to email, phone, mobile or any other form of communication. The simplest step nonprofits can take to ensure their opt-in for email lists, petitions or other online tools is GDPR compliant, which often means adding an opt-in checkbox as compared to the more common opt-out box.

 

The system a nonprofit uses to collect and store user data—most often a customer resource management (CRM) tool such as Salesforce, CiviCRM or Engaging Markets—must be sufficiently privacy-protective, as well. To aid in this, TechSoup points users to a white paper that offers cybersecurity and privacy guidelines for nonprofits, released by Microsoft.

Another thing nonprofits can consider is Cyber Liability Insurance, which helps cover the often massive costs that accompany an unexpected data breach—including legal expenses, notification costs and even post-event good faith marketing campaigns. While an organization should always do all it can do to ensure data privacy and protection, there are often incidents outside the control of a nonprofit's staff, such as breaches at third-party vendors.

Encoding privacy as an organizational value

The key, as is often the case, is to encode privacy as a core value and consider it as a factor in any project. The TechSoup team has taken it upon themselves to be a model for GDPR compliance—and responsible data management and protection more broadly—in hopes of showing smaller nonprofits how it's done.

 

“TechSoup applies the GDPR principles to all of its personal data processing operations,” Hanson told us. “In particular, we endeavor to process personal data fairly and lawfully; only process personal data for specified and lawful purposes; hold relevant and accurate personal data and, where practical, keep it up to date; not keep personal data for longer than is necessary; keep personal data secure; and ensure that personal data is not transferred between partners or other organizations, or overseas, without adequate protection.”

In a future where data privacy and security is on the minds of consumers and regulators, nonprofits—which are often fighting for the rights of the vulnerable and looking to improve society—will have to practice what they preach.

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Top companies are intensifying their efforts to meet key societal needs around the world, according to a pair of reports released this week. Total corporate giving increased by more than 15 percent over the past three years to a record $23.8 billion, according to the 2018 edition of Giving in Numbers.

Produced by CECP: The CEO Force for Good and The Conference Board—and widely considered one of the world’s most robust annual assessments of corporate social investment—Giving in Numbers surveys more than 250 global corporations about their giving efforts.

Almost six in 10 of those companies increased their giving in a three-year matched set between 2015 and 2017, the report found. The top 25 percent of them now invest nearly 2 percent of their pre-tax income in community programs. “Corporations are becoming more generous,” Alex Parkinson, senior researcher at The Conference Board, said of the results in a statement.

Trends in corporate giving

Now in its 13th year, Giving in Numbers assesses the funds, resources and skills that companies invest to solve pressing global challenges.

“The data and trends from this year’s [report] confirm that businesses are standing strong with their social strategies while pursuing ever greater effectiveness,” said Carmen Perez, senior director of data insights for CECP, a coalition of more than 200 of the world’s largest companies with a combined annual revenue exceeding $7 trillion. Key trends observed this year include:

Companies are focusing on core programs. Companies are seeking a deeper impact from their giving campaigns by making fewer, bigger community investments around causes their teams care about.

Disaster relief is on the rise. A slew of devastating natural disasters struck last year—including Hurricanes Maria, Harvey and Irma, as well as record-breaking floods in China, India and Sierra Leone. Companies responded by increasing their contributions for disaster relief by more than 200 percent, in terms of total cash giving, over the past three years, the report found.

Employee engagement drives better results. Companies that offered unrestricted gift matches—or “open matching”—donated a higher dollar amount in 2017, according to the report. "But these company-employee dynamics are not self-sustainable," wrote report author André Solórzano of CECP. "Companies have to maximize the use of their resources in terms of time, money and staff."

Measuring impact is now commonplace. In 2015, 81 percent of the companies CECP and The Conference Board surveyed reported measuring the societal outcome of at least one of their grants. That number increased ever further, to 84 percent, last year. “The data also show that companies that measured both societal outcomes and the business value of employee engagement also showed growth in societal investments and employee volunteer participation,” the groups concluded in their report.

These findings are promising, but companies have yet to truly tap their giving potential, said Daryl Brewster, CEO of CECP. “It is encouraging to see leading companies lever their resources, capabilities and business discipline to expand their role as a force for good in society," he said in a statement. "While more can be done, the latest version of Giving in Numbers shows the social investment practices and strategies of purpose-driven corporations that are on the leading edge to drive sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.”

Employee choice plays an increasingly large role

As their companies give more, philanthropy is also becoming more important to employees, according to a report released this week by Giving USA Foundation and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Specifically, employees increasingly want a choice in how their employers give back—and to whom. They’ve also come to expect options for how they make their gifts, from payroll deductions and online platforms, to skilled volunteer opportunities and matching gifts, the report found. Distilling academic research and information from a variety of sources, the report concluded with insights for corporations, as well as their employees and nonprofit partners.

“We know that workplace giving today reflects the changing nature of work, the role of technology, and the attitudes and aspirations employees bring to the workplace. As a consequence, workplace giving campaigns offer an exciting opportunity,” Una Osili, Ph.D., associate dean for research and international programs at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, said in a statement. “This report makes it possible for stakeholders to apply what we already know and look to new areas of research, such as how employers can better engage diverse employees in workplace giving campaigns.”

Key findings with respect to building corporate culture and community include:

Employee choice is key. As also evidenced by the CECP report, employees want to use their skills and time for causes they find personally meaningful. They also  “respond well” when their companies match time, donations and other resources to these causes, the groups concluded in their report.

Engaged employees are more generous. Employees who feel loyalty to their companies and are actively involved in their employers' responsibility efforts tend to give more to workplace giving campaigns, the report revealed. “Therefore, it is important that companies educate their employees about opportunities to get involved and keep in touch with employees about the outcomes of ongoing CSR efforts,” the groups advised.

Nonprofits should look to business for volunteers. “Nonprofits should not only seek strategic partnerships that benefit the nonprofit, but the corporate volunteer group as well for best results,” the groups wrote in their report. While they encouraged volunteering partnerships with employee groups, they also cautioned nonprofits to be aware of the potential added costs for training such large cohorts and developing new programs to put them to work.

“This report underscores the importance of the partnership between nonprofits and corporations,” Rick Dunham, chair of Giving USA Foundation, said in a statement. “These findings emphasize to companies, fundraising professionals and nonprofits that effective communication—through a wide range of platforms—empowers employees to become donors and advocates for their causes in and through their workplaces, which is not only advantageous for the nonprofit, but for the corporation as well.”

Giving USA Foundation and The Giving Institute will host a free online panel on November 7 at 12 p.m. Eastern Time to discuss recent research in corporate and employee giving. You can sign up here.

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