Mission Possible

At the end of 2021 I started a new journey at KPMG to help shape, inspire, and further build out the new sustainability team. It will be a national iteration on the recently launched KPMG Impact plan. Though a continued stay in the climate and sustainability realm, it is a professional as well as a personal new chapter. One where integrating agendas, driving implementation, and leveraging impact remain central. Big words for bringing past years public and private, local and international experience to the table and find ambitious yet feasible and tangible solutions for wicked problems on the ground.

2021 was a challenging year. COVID-19 made many roles, and unwritten rules and expectations quite blurry. Being among others just yourself, a parent, a partner, a colleague, a father, a friend, and a son. Last week we had a family chat about raising kids. We discussed the need to sometimes see challenges through the other person’s eyes. How easy it is said, how difficult it sometimes is to put in place. Especially when your mind was set on even slightly different plans or outcomes. On how necessary it is to truly connect, and both gain and share added value, and thereby build a sustainable relationship and future.

Taking on a new challenge, I am also leaving another team. The Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM) team was one of the best teams I have ever worked with. Punching above their weight day after day, connecting dots, and catalyzing large scale action in a complex global stakeholder setting where a myriad of agendas constantly need to be (re)aligned. Thanks Andy Deacon Cathy Oke Ben Jance Marnie McGregor Melanija Tacconi Giorgia Rambelli Tommaso Santapaola Asma Jhina Shea O'Neill Nina Hotop Shannon McDaniel and Gregor Robertson. GCoM’s Innovate4Cities initiative is a gamechanger. For its integrated agenda approach, for its ambition to establish pathways to translate ambitions into tailored R&D agendas and large scale demonstration projects, and for its role as agent of change - cross-connecting between big international organisations and initiatives. It was an honour to work with Paris Hadfield Ariana Dickey Steven Bland Rachel Huxley Pourya Salehi Maryke van Staden Firdaous Oussidhoum Rodrigo Messias Edgardo Bilsky Paolo Bertoldi Silvia Assalini Raisa Soares and others. The 2021 Innovate4Cities conference we organized was but a first step to translate the IPCC reports and insights into urban R&I agendas taking not only regional disparities into account, but also the leveraging role of different types of technologies, ranging from technology and data innovation, over finance and policy innovation, to social and cultural innovation. Sessions by a.o. Meredith Adler Helen Watts and the Student Energy team, C40's Reinventing Cities initiative, the Resilience Shift sessions, the insights from our work with EIT Climate KIC on deep demonstrators and the drivers for radical change (Tom Osdoba Nikhil Chaudary), inspirational talks and insights by indigenous communities in Australia and the America on how to integrate indigenous knowledge into science (Thanks Maddison Miller and others), also UN Habitat's, ICLEI's, and UCLGs' efforts to support actors that do not always have the capacity to act or to give a voice to actors addressing informality and uncertainty issues, and many others. Guided by Debra Roberts Seth Schultz Mauricio Rodas Sheela Patel Maimunah Sharif and Ben Henderson the conference was also the acceptance that in hybrid times the quality of amount of content was unexpected and overwhelming, but also that a longer, lingering and sometimes live talk is often crucial to do more than scratch the surface and really persevere in finding solutions that address the missing middle between long term ambitions and initiatives that are not yet deployed at the speed and scale to reach them. But with around 200 sessions and 7000 participants the conference was a great achievement. Set up as a biennial event, I hope to see a future edition where we take the dialogues on system change yet one step further. In line hopefully with the UNFCCC Global Innovation Hub work (looking forward to joint next steps Massamba Thioye Carlos Ruiz-Garvia), where core human needs and connecting demand and solutions are central. Perhaps also an approach that integrates also the setup of the 1990 'Art meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy' conference that Louwrien Wijers, organized and that staged a discussion between a.o. John Cage, Marina Abramovic, Ilya Prigogine, Francis Varela, the Dalai Lama, and leading economists of that time. 30 years later it would be good to again take stock on how different lenses on the world and society could provide us with insights on how to best connect and define the values that allow radical change to happen. It was good to raise the question at the Innovate4Cities conference on why – despite the IPCC authors’ tour de force in drafting past reports – change did not happen the last decades while numbers are raising concern since the early seventies of the last century. The bundling of scientific insights, should be equally matched with a living library - set to the same standards - on practice, governance, and implementation, so to better connect why and how. Our own GCoM’s data and tools work (with Jake Elder Charlie Salzer Eric Mackres Ted Wong and Kerem Yilmaz) showed that data and tools will be quintessential to tackle the complex climate challenge but in the end also but a means to a goal and therefore requiring vision, leadership, capacity and connected stakeholder groups to make the magic work. The Sustainable Cooling Handbook (Ian Campbell Lily Riahi Graeme Maidment Rushad Nanavatti) showed that by working with many different stakeholders the process can be as insightful as the guidance presented in the end. The WEF Net Zero Carbon Cities Toolkit (Anna Acanfora Kristen Panerali Prerana Misrahi) and IEA 'Empowering Citiesfor a Net Zero Future' report (Ghislaine Kieffer Vida Rozite Brian Motherway) have pioneered in exploring new value and partnership models and will thereby help empower urban actors to discover, connect and customize proven practices. It in the same spirit I was happy to team up with Anna Krzyzanowska Philippe Froissard Laura Hetel Maria Yeroyanni Margit Noll Hans-Günther Schwarz Stephanie Klak Liz Milsom Jennie Dodson Marieke Beckmann and Miriam Badino to build on past years’ Mission Innovation achievements and fully embrace the MI 2.0 vision, to really put a systemic approach, large scale deployment, and a engaging narrative more central apart from bold energy transition commitments and increased RD&D investments. I am looking forward to see the EU Cities Mission and the Mission Innovation Urban Transition Mission take off and help urban areas move toward tipping points. I am leaving the team, not the family – some colleagues have touched heart and mind, and they will hopefully remain compagnons de route during the next years.

Throughout my years working in sustainability questions on how to functionally embrace complexity, design a transition narrative and a process, and build critical mass towards tipping points have acted as a beacon towards long term personal and professional ambitions, convinced that the journey and the process is half of the transition. Moreover we do not have enough time left to answer all questions, but should trust some form of cathedral thinking, bold ambition, and long now leadership to bounce forward and learn along the way, with all unexpected opportunities but also unpredictable pitfalls along the way. To bring up the openness and vulnerability to come with half questions and half solutions, creating the space to collaborate and co-create, realizing that the joint experience is sometimes to best bet to come up with answers that were perhaps not the ones looked for but perhaps the ones needed and in the end allowed change to happen. ?

ESG and sustainability are about deliberately diving into the sustainability swamp. One of our GCoM partners a few months ago put the question on the table whether we are ‘really’ working together. Over the years I have seen change realized when meaningful human relationships were established. When there was a conviction that change was needed, though it might sometimes be a brutal change at an unprecedented speed and scale, but also a commitment to co-create across often diverging agendas or sectoral convictions. When joint and individual responsibility and accountability were put at the heart of the challenge. The change realised often came with a compelling narrative, an engaging story that both connected and gave a clear sense of purpose. A positive story, but that also takes into account the speed and scale needed to reach long term ambitions, as well as the local DNA (addressing the conditions that need to be brought in place to allow transition and impact to happen) and the core societal challenges (which allows the abstract sustainability challenge to be translated into a human endeavour that appeals to idealism and ethics and move beyond borders and boundaries that come with organisations or nation states).

For all the above, I will remain a believer in urban areas, as places where the battle on sustainability will be won or lost. Where both climate change effects and solutions become tangible, where public and private interest come together, and where capital, creativity, talent, technology, and ?social and community fiber find each other. Cities are where we can rediscover an ecosystem perspective, on how intricately linked societal challenges are related, where we not only define a multi-axis matrix / metrics approach but also discuss how we distribute roles and responsibilities, and set up responsibility handover protocols and how to truly bounce forward together. Discussions on how to raise and family and how to address climate change have never been more intertwined. As Frank Herbert once said ‘The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.’ I look forward to new adventures, at both private and professional level, bringing old and new perspectives, and a growing tribe of missionaries.