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Smallholder farms produce a third of the world’s food. Naturally, they also produce about a third of agricultural greenhouse gases. But only a small fraction of climate finance is dedicated to these farms. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) aims to combat this dynamic with a new initiative directed at lowering methane emissions from smallholder farms.

Rapid methane reduction could be a huge key to preventing global rises in temperature. That’s because methane traps more heat than carbon dioxide while sticking around in the atmosphere for a shorter period — meaning reductions in methane could be felt much quicker.

Targeting top agricultural sources of methane

The program’s primary focuses are livestock and rice cultivation in developing countries. TriplePundit spoke with Jahan Chowdhury, senior technical specialist for IFAD’s initiative, to learn more.

While most people are probably aware that livestock produce an enormous amount of methane — up to 264 pounds per cow, per year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — many do not know that growing rice also releases a substantial amount of the potent greenhouse gas. Although rice does not experience flatulence the way cattle do, the flooded fields it traditionally requires for cultivation encourage anaerobic activity that has the same effect. In fact, rice is responsible for 12 percent of global methane output or 1.5 percent of all greenhouse gases. 

A three-pronged approach to reducing methane on smallholder farms

IFAD's effort aims to tackle methane emissions on smallholder farms in three ways. “The first objective is to support 15 countries to integrate methane in their updated NDCs,” Chowdhury said, referring to the Paris Agreement’s Nationally Determined Contributions, which are essentially climate action plans, due to be updated in 2025. 

“One thing we have noticed is that even though we have the Global Methane Pledge and a lot of the countries that are interested, we haven't necessarily seen them reflected in the policy dimension of the government,” he said. ”We're also not seeing the linkage between [the] Paris Agreement and methane reduction, so our objective is to bring convergence.”

Secondly, the initiative will support those 15 countries in creating “bankable projects” that will help them achieve the objectives in their updated NDCs, Chowdhury said. Once projects begin to move forward, IFAD aims to share and encourage more extensive knowledge surrounding methane reduction among smallholder farmers and developing nations. 

“Methane discussion is fairly new. Not all developing countries are fully aware of the discourse, the theory, the advantage, the return on investment, for example,” Chowdhury said. The fund wants to use the knowledge it gains from each country to write publications that help more countries learn about and be inspired by the work it's doing, while also influencing the global policy agenda. 

Looking toward implementation

IFAD aims to begin implementation this September, with the project lasting two years. Its funding will come from the Global Methane Hub and the U.S. State Department — with $3 million coming from the former and $1 million coming from the latter, according to a press announcement from the fund. Specific partner countries are not chosen yet, but the fund is “looking into some large emerging economies like Argentina, like Brazil, for example,” Chowdhury said. 

He listed a number of other potential partners around the world such as Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, Kenya, Malawi and Cambodia. “It's kind of a mix of, I would say, of emerging economies but at the same time low-income countries,” Chowdhury said. “It's very important for us to discuss these ideas with the government and if there's a demand, then we prepare our projects accordingly.” Information about country selection and implementation of the initiative’s three objectives will be presented at the U.N. COP28 climate talks in Dubai in December.

While neither methane nor smallholder farms are a huge focus of climate efforts, the planet has reached a point in the crisis where we truly cannot afford to ignore any of the contributing aspects. “Food systems and the agricultural sector produce one-third of greenhouse gas emissions,” Chowdhury said. “So, we won’t be able to deliver on the Paris Agreement without looking at these sectors and addressing their challenges.” 

Image credit: CIFOR/Flickr

To solve society’s most pressing problems, we need a new type of entrepreneur. 

Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of the consultancy Futerra, describes these changemakers in her new book, “The Solutionists: How Business Can Fix the Future.” Townsend defines a “Solutionist” as part-entrepreneur and part-activist who is exclusively focused on solving problems. This type of mindset is needed to tackle a wide range of societal problems such as biodiversity loss, social division, racism and exclusion, she argues. 

Townsend said she coined the term to help like-minded people find and identify each other. 

What distinguishes a Solutionist from a traditional entrepreneur is that their purpose lies in solving problems. "They don't approach social or eco-entrepreneurism and sustainable business as the latest fad for an additional value-add for business,” Townsend wrote. “Their companies, inventions, strategies and solutions are designed explicitly to confront problems — that's the Solutionist way.”

And these problem-solvers are focused on action. "A traditional entrepreneur is driven probably by excitement, by their product and vision, [and] financially where they can be front page of Fortune, front page of Forbes,” Townsend told TriplePundit. “But a Solutionist is driven by [the fact that] their product, their service, their business is going to solve the world's problems.”

In her book, Townsend outlines energy, infrastructure, transport, food, materials, finance, biodiversity, digitization, culture and the creative industry as key areas in which Solutionists can solve problems. 

For example, Solutionists in the food industry might work on the research and development of foods that can help people reach optimal nutritional levels — and that they actually want to eat. Or they might work on developing marketing campaigns that encourage consumers to participate in the industry’s transition to net-zero emissions.

It’s time to communicate about solutions 

The urgency of many of the world's problems, like climate change, is already clearly communicated, Townsend said. Now, it’s crucial to engage with the entertainment and culture sector to tell stories about solutions. 

“We've got so many of the technological solutions that we need. We know what policies we need, they're just really difficult to get signed off,” Townsend said. “We have got so much of that infrastructure [of] solutions already worked out, it just needs to be implemented. The thing which we don't have yet is the story.” 

That means engaging with creative industry professionals like scriptwriters, musicians, artists and social media creators to tell creative and impactful stories.

“We're in a dystopia,” she said. ”We don't need any more dystopia stories. And we don't need utopias either because that would be comforting but not very helpful. What we need is adventure stories of how we're going to get from where we are to the solutions.” 

Compelling narratives not only kickstart conversations about challenges like climate change, but they also educate consumers about the solutions required to tackle them — especially in niche, complicated areas. Right now, funding and resources should be put toward telling stories about these solutions, Townsend said. 

How aspiring Solutionists can overcome challenges 

Being a Solutionist comes with its own set of challenges, like traditional entrepreneurship. However, there are some key differences. Entrepreneurs require funding to kickstart their projects. But Solutionists should ensure their investors are as interested in their business impact as they are in income, Townsend told 3p.

This path is a long-term pursuit that does not come with immediate rewards. “You tend not to save the world in the first two years of trying to do it," Townsend said. Having grit, tenacity and flexibility in adapting your plans is important. She encourages balancing a determined mindset to accomplish your goals, while being relaxed and flexible in how you achieve them. 

Solutionists, especially young people, can benefit from managing expectations of themselves and their impact realistically, Townsend said. This means taking breaks, making mistakes, and alleviating themselves from the pressures of perfection and failure. And instead, focusing on the big picture — that they are working on solutions that they know are impactful, notwithstanding external validation. 

Featured image: Pixabay/Pexels

The vast majority of the world’s automakers have coalesced around the concept of building their electric vehicles with fixed batteries. But some still see battery swapping as a better solution for getting a fresh charge, quickly, into an EV.  

Even the fastest charging vehicles available today cannot match the speed of battery swapping. So, why spend 20 minutes charging —  and often much longer — when you can get fully charged batteries installed in just five minutes? 

Today, the answer is obvious. There isn’t a battery swapping solution in place at scale, at least not in the U.S. But as a concept, it’s nothing new, and dates back toward the advent of the automobile itself. 

Many early vehicles were electric, and the first experiments with battery exchange have been traced back to the 1890s. By 1912, General Electric commercialized a “battery service," allowing electric vehicle owners to swap batteries for a monthly fee and per-mile charge. But, of course, things were about to change.

“What ended up destroying battery swapping is that gasoline worked extremely well,” John de Souza, president and co-founder of Ample, a San Francisco-based electric mobility company, told TriplePundit. But now that we’re in a new era of EVs, de Souza and his team at Ample believe it’s time to take another look at it. 

“The only way to get electric vehicles to work is to make something that works as well as gas,” de Souza asserted. “We wanted something that would be fast, we wanted to work across vehicles, and we wanted to have something we could deploy efficiently.” 

To that end, Ample has developed its own battery swapping system. It incorporates both a battery pack, which Ample claims can be retrofitted into any EV, along with its own free-standing, battery-swapping pods, which can be set up in about three days.

Ample’s system comes at a time, though, when EVs are already working pretty well without swappable batteries. EV market share is growing, with new models being released all the time. And importantly, advancements in battery technology are bringing each new generation of EVs closer to the convenience of gasoline-powered cars.

So, why does Ample think we need this now? Is its system a solution in search of a problem?

Fixed batteries are getting better, so why change?

De Souza offered a number of inherent limitations which he thinks EVs with fixed batteries will always have, and that Ample’s system avoids.

“A Tesla spends a third of its energy just taking this huge battery around,” de Souza said, referring to the heavy battery packs necessary for longer electric range. “But what if you could just put in the right size of the battery you need? Your car is more efficient. And when you need more range, put more batteries in.” 

Similarly, “What if you could upgrade your technology?" he continued. "As new battery chemistries come out, you can actually benefit from those and not be stuck with the one you got seven years ago.” 

And what about when the battery's warranty expires after eight years, at a time when it may have degraded? This renders a car “basically worthless,” de Souza said. EV batteries cease to be useful when they degrade to 80 percent of their original energy density, “but you are paying for the full 100 percent,” he said. “What if you could actually use the car for 15 years like a lot of people do, and not have to get rid of it?”

All questions worth asking. Yet building a successful business around battery swapping has proved elusive. Famously, and after much promise, Palo Alto-based Better Place folded just six years after its founding with huge debt. So, what’s different now?

Battery swapping reimagined

“The big difference with Better Place was they tried to standardize the battery and ask all the [auto manufacturers] to standardize, too — that doesn’t work,” de Souza explained. “Fundamentally, we completely changed that.” 

Ample developed two key innovations which he believes will bring it success while avoiding the pitfalls that sank Better Place. 

Firstly, Ample ensured it could use the same battery cells in any car. And secondly, it designed a system that works across vehicles from different manufacturers, without the manufacturers having to change anything.

To be clear, this is not a do-it-yourself deal, though. Ample does require cooperation with the carmaker for each model to ensure the startup's batteries mesh properly with the car both mechanically and electrically.

In order to get Ample’s battery pack into a vehicle, an “adaptor plate” is made which follows the same size and contours of the carmaker's original battery. Once this plate is fitted into the same footprint, Ample loads in its own battery modules. It’s the modules that are subsequently swapped when the vehicle is in service.

Secondly, Ample ensures its battery solution follows all the necessary software protocols of each vehicle to ensure the battery gives the car all the information it needs to work seamlessly. 

Once on the road, when drivers need a fresh charge, they maneuver onto one of Ample’s battery swapping pods, where discharged batteries are robotically removed and new ones are installed beneath the vehicle. 

The number of modules installed is flexible — for example, fewer modules can be put in for commuting, while more modules can be added for longer trips. The customer then pays for what they use, calculated based on the number of battery modules installed and the amount of energy consumed.  

Ample’s pods handle recharging duty, optimizing for off-peak and/or renewable energy availability while also balancing the use cycles to make sure battery cell life is maximized.

Another important feature: Since Ample owns the end-to-end lifecycle of the battery cells, when they reach end-of-life, it can ensure the cells are recycled. Most vehicle and battery manufacturers don’t close that loop. 

Can Ample break into the mass market?

It’s the early days, but Ample’s product is already in use. For about two years, it’s partnered with Uber in supporting a group of drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ample’s technology is installed in two vehicle types — the Nissan Leaf and the Kia Niro — and drivers have access to 12 swapping stations. 

So far, the Uber project has been a success. Drivers have avoided substantial downtime they would otherwise spend charging, while the operating costs have proven cheaper than both DC fast charging and gasoline, de Souza said.

Going forward, Ample has plans for further deployments in California, as well as new markets in Japan and Spain. It’s focused on fleet operators initially, as well as retrofitting passenger cars, but has its sights set on trucks in the long term. 

At this point, Ample’s technology is certainly niche. But the way de Souza talked about the opportunities indicated he believes this model is a better mousetrap for the EV industry as a whole. Is it realistic that Ample could disrupt the segment? 

Since there’s already considerable momentum behind the fixed-battery EV paradigm — and a related industry around charging infrastructure — closing the gap on that head start won’t be easy, especially as that business model rapidly iterates and improves.

Nevertheless, Ample is currently working with five auto manufacturers, indicating at least some are open to entertaining a different approach, even if only alongside their own fixed-battery vehicles. 

Crucially, though, we asked de Souza whether car companies actually want to give up developing their own battery technologies. After all, they compete on range and charging times — it’s how they differentiate themselves. 

“They definitely want more flexibility from the battery,” de Souza replied, explaining how automakers have to worry about commitments on battery sourcing and chemistries amid ever-changing regulatory conditions. Maybe solutions like Ample’s would take some of this pain away, leaving makers to just build, as de Souza put it, “phenomenal cars.”

Images courtesy of Ample

To change the course of the way things are, we must imagine what could be. Some argue that eliminating all beef and lamb production is a solution to enhance environmental sustainability. Others assert that current meat alternatives are bad for health and the environment. So, what if we change not what we eat but how products are produced, focusing on improving and protecting the land, air, water and animal welfare? 

New Zealand is proud of its Māori heritage and its commitment to the concept of Te Taiao. This belief calls for a deep respect for and responsibility for the natural world, including the health of the climate, land, water and all living systems. When nature thrives, the belief is that so do our families, communities and businesses. 

Farming that respects the land, the animals and the farmers produces better products and coincides with a tangible shift in consumer behavior, as more want to understand where their meat products come from and how they are raised. And more growers are committed to creating a sustainable future for generations to come by farming positively for the planet and people. While some of these farm ideals are new to today's methods, it's how New Zealand has farmed for generations.  

New Zealand has wide open spaces and acres of verdant green land, which is a perfect formula for producing some of the best agricultural products in the world. We believe that the formula for excellent, great-tasting and nutritious products is deeply rooted in a farming philosophy that respects and cares for our animals that are grass-fed on farmlands. But it is not just the land that creates some of the most sought-after products. A holistic approach enables us to thrive, from sustainable farming to farming communities to animal welfare and environmental protection.  

Families of farmers

To understand the dedication to high-quality agricultural products from New Zealand, it is essential to understand the central role that farming plays in our regional and national economy, creating robust and multigenerational farm communities.  

There may be many voices regarding how to farm, but most agree that farmers and the communities they create are critical to our world. While many farms in the U.S. are small or family-owned, four companies comprise nearly 70 percent of all U.S. beef production. These companies often practice industrialized meat production, with feedlots focusing on maximum output and less on animal welfare and the environment. 

In New Zealand, over 90 percent of farms are family-owned, creating a multigenerational ecosystem that connects people to the land, animals and the environment. These family farms believe in a connected ecosystem central to regenerative agriculture. New Zealand's beef and lamb farmers use methods that have evolved over generations and are well-adapted to local environmental conditions. These methods conserve soils and waterways for future generations, support rural communities' social and economic fabric, and serve as a model for farmers worldwide. 

Care for animals 

In New Zealand, sheep and beef cattle are overwhelmingly free-range and pasture-fed, unlike conventional grain-fed or feedlot livestock. Thanks to our temperate climate, our animals can roam outside all year round, as nature intended.

New Zealand farmers are committed to raising animals humanely, and given our strict biosecurity and quality control processes, and our geographic isolation, our efforts have resulted in an animal disease-free status recognized by the World Organization for Animal Health. 

Our country is among the lowest global users of antibiotics in cattle and sheep production due to our extensive outdoor farming, which reduces the chance of infections spreading, as well as strict regulations that only permit antibiotic use for animal health reasons (under veterinary control). New Zealand farmers do not use hormone growth promotants (HGPs) or antibiotics to enhance production. Animals are only treated with antibiotics when necessary for the animal’s health and well-being, and all antibiotic use is reported.

Environmental care 

Compared to the global average, New Zealand beef farms produce fewer carbon emissions, with the sheep and beef sector aiming to become carbon neutral by 2050 – helping to make New Zealand beef the sustainable choice. 

Our farms are some of the most efficient producers in the world. The carbon footprint of sheep and beef production is estimated to be around half the global average, according to an on-farm Life Cycle Analysis using the traditional calculation approach with a warming-impact gas comparison metric called GWP100. An emerging calculation approach, using GWP*, which determines a carbon footprint based on a product’s actual contribution to the warming of the planet over a period of time rather than total emissions, shows that New Zealand sheep have not contributed to any additional warming in the last 20 years and are arguably climate neutral.  

New Zealand’s indigenous biodiversity is unique; our farmers are kaitiaki — guardians — of the land. Nearly a quarter of New Zealand’s total native vegetation — including woody native vegetation such as mānuka/kānuka and other native plants such as tussock — grows on sheep and beef farms. Our lush country has added 2 million hectares (nearly 5 million acres) to the country’s conservation estate, the largest private sector contribution to biodiversity in New Zealand.

Quality control 

With a growing understanding that the world needs to produce food more sustainably comes increased scrutiny on validating farming methods. First introduced in 2017, the national New Zealand Farm Assurance Program (NZFAP) and the updated New Zealand Farm Assurance Program Plus seek to assure our international consumers that our products are, first and foremost, authentic, with independently verified best-practice animal raising and production assurance standards. 

Under this program comes assurances in terms of integrity, origin, traceability, biosecurity, environmental sustainability, and animal health and welfare, all essential ingredients for maximizing product returns and meeting the expectations of our diverse audience. With farmers audited every three years by an independent audit and certification body, the NZFAP delivers to both national and international food safety standards.  

Our commitment to a better future 

While there may be healthy disagreement on how to save our valuable environmental resources, we all agree that we need to make changes in every industry. We believe all producers can do better to reduce carbon emissions, prioritize animal welfare, and allow grass-fed herds to roam freely on sustainable farms. 

We believe in action versus reaction. The time is now for all producers to commit to making sustainable changes to create a viable future. We can collectively share information, learn from one another and fight for better outcomes. As we share our journey, we look forward to learning more about yours.

This article series is sponsored by Beef + Lamb New Zealand.

Image courtesy of Beef + Lamb New Zealand

More than 108 million people were displaced at the end of 2022, the highest level ever recorded. That means roughly 1 in every 74 people on Earth are dealing with the uncertainty, social stigma and economic hardship that comes with leaving home behind. Migrants are more likely to be unemployed and live in poverty, even if they hold professional degrees. But a newly expanded partnership between Slack and the U.K. nonprofit CodeYourFuture could help refugees and displaced people build new careers in the tech sector. 

"For people who are forced to move, many don’t see themselves getting settled into a new country, finding a high-paying job, building a life for their family as something that is necessarily accessible to them," said Deepti Rohatgi, executive director of Slack for Good, the company's effort to bring historically underrepresented people into the tech space. "You can't be what you can't see, right? And the fact that we are giving this hope to potentially millions of people is incredibly exciting."

Tech careers can change lives

Around seven years ago, Slack linked up with partners including the Last Mile program at San Quentin State Prison in California to launch Next Chapter, a technology apprenticeship for people leaving prisons and jails. In the years since, the program has placed nearly 50 formerly incarcerated people into highly-skilled apprenticeships and full-time positions at companies like Slack, Zoom, Asana and Square. 

"We found a model that worked, that provided training and support and made a pathway into high-paying tech jobs for a population that is incredibly large in the U.S.," Rohatgi said — referring to the roughly 1 in 3 U.S. adults with criminal justice histories. 

Seeing the success of the program and how tech training can change lives, the Slack volunteers behind Next Chapter were inspired to apply what they learned to another global crisis: the wave of migrants entering Europe who often struggle to find employment and economic stability. 

"We did an analysis of a bunch of different groups — and what we found was that, similar to formerly incarcerated individuals, nobody had found a pathway for refugees into the tech sector and into high-level, high-paying jobs," Rohatgi told us. "So, we wanted to take our time and build a similar program that was more global in nature and had a bigger footprint." 

Creating new opportunities for refugees and displaced people

Rohatgi spoke with leaders at more than 40 nonprofit organizations and ultimately landed on CodeYourFuture, which trains refugees and low-income people for careers in the tech field, as a core partner for this work. 

CodeYourFuture's existing curriculum trains would-be tech professionals in software engineering, with more than 70 percent of graduates going on to careers in the field, according to the organization.

The new CYF+ program — launched by Slack and CodeYourFuture in January after nearly three years of development — goes a step further, with a model that's custom-made to train refugees and other displaced people for the in-demand field of site reliability engineering. 

"The prior graduations that CodeYourFuture had were much more front-end, lower levels," Rohatgi said. "People were getting jobs, but what we saw when we had conversations with them is they weren't growing in their careers. What we decided to do with CodeYourFuture+ is focus on a very specific skill set — highly, highly skilled engineering that is in huge demand. You cannot find enough system engineers in Europe, so to build the pipeline, that's what took us so long was to create the curriculum to get that training done."

The program includes an open-source site reliability curriculum, developed by CodeYourFuture along with Slack engineers and volunteers from other tech companies. In only two months, the curriculum has been downloaded more than 2,000 times. "There's a huge demand for the content," Rohatgi said. "We created a curriculum that anybody can use, which I think is super exciting." 

A work placement program for refugees that's starting small and poised to scale

Along with the open-source curriculum, Slack and CodeYourFuture are trialing a work placement program that mirrors Next Chapter. The first two participants started in January with an eight-week course, followed by a a six-month paid work placement at Slack. Rohatgi checks up on them often and says they're settling into their new roles. 

"They love it. We build so much support for them," she said. "They have an executive coach who is an early Slack engineer in that team. So, if they have questions, they have somebody they can ask, who can help them with their code, who understands what Slack does. They also have a coach on the CodeYourFuture side." 

Still, the roles are demanding, and the work is not for everyone. "The engineering work they do is hard," Rohatgi said. "It's not going to be an option for all refugees and for everybody or, frankly, every coder. Similarly with Next Chapter, not everybody who comes home from prison can be an engineer." 

Understanding how well the curriculum prepares apprentices for their work placement and how they're able to take on the role is essential for future success. "I think they're learning a lot, they're growing a lot and they have all the support they need," Rohatgi said. "We have every intention of continuing to hire more apprentices, and hopefully we'll scale to other companies."

Next Chapter grew from Slack as the sole employment partner up to 17 participating tech companies today, and Rohatgi sees CYF+ following a similar path.

"We're using the Next Chapter program as a model," she said. "Once one company signs on and we prove the model works, then we get to two. And then once you get to two, the model's proven —  you prove you have great candidates, that the conversion rate from apprentice to full-time employee is high — and then other companies will join pretty quickly is what I found. But I do think a big reason for that is because we spend so much time building these programs. These programs aren't something we do in three months. These are programs we build in three years."

Looking ahead 

Slack and CodeYourFuture are in talks to launch a second work placement cohort this fall. They're actively seeking other tech companies to get involved — and they're already seeing an interest. 

"System reliability engineering is a very in-demand field, so there are a lot of companies that are interested in this program and in getting this talent," Rohatgi said. "I've had a few conversations already, both with CodeYourFuture and a couple tech companies, for engaging in getting these folks. So, hopefully it not only continues at Slack, but scales to other companies." 

There's a clear business case for more employers to get involved. "This isn't necessarily social responsibility. This is good business," Rohatgi said. "You get a very well-trained engineer that you need, that you aren't able to find, and I think that's what makes Next Chapter different and what makes this program different." 

Further, people who are given an opportunity they didn't see themselves having tend to be highly motivated once an employer does open the door. That's a big motivator for tech firms, which face the highest employee turnover rate of any industry, according to recent research from LinkedIn. 

"One thing we see with Next Chapter, and obviously this is a different situation, but what we see is that when you do give people a chance, they tend to stay," Rohatgi said. "So, you don't have that turnover issue we see with lots of other folks. It's just good business, frankly." 

Companies interested in participating in CYF+ are encouraged to contact CodeYourFuture. 

Images courtesy of CodeYourFuture

When Russia launched its unprovoked war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, hundreds of businesses in the U.S. and around the world quickly cut ties with the rogue nation. Now some of those that stayed are beginning to risk the consequences of inaction. Their experience underscores the importance of maintaining consistent corporate values in the face of threats to global stability.  

Lesson 1: Corporate values have bottom line value

In some quarters, it has become politically fashionable to question the appropriateness of corporate values and ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles. But a growing body of evidence demonstrates the financial merit of value-based action.

Researchers at the Yale School of Management are among the analysts who are building a data-driven case in support of the corporate social responsibility movement. “Across many fronts, we have shown in quantitative analysis of business performance that doing good for society is not at the expense of doing well for shareholders,” the Yale team wrote in an update on their work published last month.  

Despite concerns that ESG has become politicized and weaponized, analysts also make a demographic case for corporate social values as companies compete for talent in the up-and-coming workforce of Generation Z.

Lesson 2: Long-term benefits outweigh short term risks 

As an example of businesses that are doing good, the Yale team cited businesses that exited Russia to protest the invasion of Ukraine. Some businesses saw the writing on the wall and announced their intention to exit Russia almost immediately after the invasion began. Others soon followed.

The Yale team compiled a dataset of 1,200 businesses over the next three months, enough to reach a conclusion. “We find that equity markets are actually rewarding companies for leaving Russia while punishing those that remain behind,” they summarized in an updated report on May 31, 2022.
 
The tendency of media and analysts to focus on initial losses may have created the impression that companies took a permanent hit when they left Russia, but that is not what happened.

“Despite disproportionate focus on asset write-downs and lost revenue from Russia, we demonstrate that the shareholder wealth created through equity gains have already far surpassed the cost of one-time impairments for companies,” the team reported.

Lesson 3: Think globally

In addition to protecting their own brand reputations, businesses that left Russia helped to build public support for a multinational effort to help defend Ukraine with military aid as well as stepped-up economic sanctions against Russia.

In that context, leaving Russia reflects a broader awareness of the power of brands to defend against global threats.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, it upended a 70-year period of relative economic stability in Europe and raised the threat of a cascading effect on other nations, including several members of the European Union as well as the U.S., Canada and the U.K. through their membership in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. Russian President Vladimir Putin upped the threat level by suggesting that Russia was willing to deploy nuclear weapons. 

All in all, leaving Russia was not simply a matter of leaving some business assets behind. It was also a matter of preserving assets in other parts of the world.

Lesson 4: Read the room

Some companies that stayed in Russia may have been lulled into a false sense of security by the usual ebb and flow of public opinion and corporate reaction. For example, corporate outrage over the 2018 murder of the journalist Jamal Kashoggi was quick to explode, but the outrage flamed out just as quickly, along with the media attention.

Some companies may have also been misled by the reaction to Russia’s initial actions against Ukraine in 2014. That resulted in government sanctions, but a Russian propaganda campaign muddled the response within Ukraine and globally.

The invasion of 2022 was different in kind and scale. The fact of an unprovoked invasion, the potential for spread across Europe, and reports of Russian atrocities combined to feed a news cycle that continues to this day. 

That difference is reflected in the corporate response to the invasion of 2022. In a report on April 7, 2022, Yale team leaders Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian recognized the significance of the strong response against Russia. They compared it to the successful boycott against South Africa in the 1980s.
 
“The corporate exodus … was a remarkable display of the power that companies have,” they observed. With Russia, there is another “chance to draw a line … and make a difference," they added.

Leave, before it’s too late

Companies that stayed in Russia failed to maintain consistent corporate values, failed to measure long-term benefits against short-term losses, failed to acknowledge their power to influence international affairs, and failed to recognize the once-in-a-generation significance of a corporate response.

The Yale team has criticized companies including Heineken, Unilever and Mondelez for dragging their feet on their pledges to leave Russia, CNN reported last week. 

They may come to wish they had acted more quickly. As of Monday, the Russian subsidiaries of Danone and the Danish brewer Carlsberg are now under state control, following a decree that provides the Russian government with the authority to seize foreign assets, CNN reported in a follow-up. 

Another company reported to be dragging its feet is the U.S. oilfield services firm SLB (formerly Schlumberger). On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that SLB continued to export equipment to Russia, up until last week.

This week the Yale team also scored 224 companies with an “F” grade for their ties with Russia. Many are located in China and other sympathetic nations. The list also includes the U.S. companies Carl’s Jr., Cloudflare, Guess, Sbarro’s Pizza and TGI Friday’s, among others.

With the war dragging on, Russia appears to be playing a waiting game, banking that support for Ukraine will be exhausted. At this critical juncture, companies that have remained in Russia can sit on their hands and wait to see what happens next, but they still have a chance to take action, join the exodus and help make a difference.

Image credit: Yohan Marion/Unsplash