With courage we can deliver a livable world

Over the past few weeks, I’ve traveled the world celebrating innovators who are hard at work solving the world’s grand challenges. From my native Iceland to the RE*Leadership Forum in Berlin to the Earthshot Prize Awards in Singapore, the ideas and passion on display have blown me away.

The next generation of business leaders and innovators are cleaning our air, restoring nature, reviving the oceans, tackling climate breakdown and building a waste-free world. They are leading an energy revolution from solar solutions to Ammonia-on-Demand. They are electrifying transport and transforming buildings into carbon sinks. They’re catalyzing a food revolution and replacing plastics with bio-based packaging (made from algae and mushrooms!). They’re inventing technologies for tracking carbon emissions and measuring the environmental and human impacts of business activity.

The next generation is already innovating to future-fit our shared home and sustain all life that lives here. Beacons of light in a dark time.

“The Earth is at a tipping point,” Prince William, founder and president of the Earthshot Prize Awards, reminded us last week.

“Either we continue as we are and irreparably damage our planet, or we remember our unique power as humans and our continual ability to lead, innovate and problem-solve.”

Surrounded in Singapore by change catalysts from every corner of the world, once again I felt the power of people coming together in common cause. This is our time to “Earthshot,” urged Earthshot CEO Hannah Jones, using it as a verb (and wishing it finds its way into the Oxford Dictionary).

This is a moment for all of us to step up as leaders and embrace our roles as “Earthshotters.” At the same time, I know this is a choice each of us must confront internally — especially considering the pain and fear, even helplessness, so many are feeling.

“The brave (hu)man is not (s)he who does not feel afraid, but (s)he who conquers that fear.” —?Nelson Mandela

Where do we find the courage and resilience to continue showing up for a world in need? This was the topic of a session I co-hosted in Singapore with Christiana Figueres, B Team leader and chair of The Earthshot Prize. Together we held space for a bold yet vulnerable conversation about shared challenges, working together and sustaining ourselves. Attendees shared their challenges openly and also how, and where, they find courage in the everyday to work through their fears toward action.

I’ve long believed that, with courage, anything is possible. Throughout my life I’ve found that courage enables that first step, then another, and over time confidence emerges through brave actions.

Action breeds hope; hope inspires action. We need plenty of both, today and going forward.

And we could use more bold spaces for unlocking the courage and humanity it will take to scale game-changing solutions and mobilize capital toward investments in a livable world.

We need to see courageous leadership in Dubai at month’s end, when world leaders and country negotiating teams gather for COP28, the UN climate summit. Time is truly running out to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C and achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and Global Biodiversity Framework.

If you’ll be in Dubai for COP28 and are interested in taking the “seat of courage,” please get in touch . Across three days (December 3-5), I’ll be hosting Cups of Courage, bringing together private, public and third sector leaders willing to drop from the head to the heart and share what inspires them as they work to green the world’s energy systems, restore nature and transform finance. All three events will take place at 10-11:30 AM local time at the UAE House of Sustainability (Actionist Hub) in the Green Zone. Hope to see you there.