Procurement with Purpose Newsletter no. 93, November 19th, 2024 with gifts from gods, COP, biodiversity offsets, sustainable labs and more
“Oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all... are natural resources and countries should not be blamed for having them, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market, because the market needs them."
That is President Aliyev of Azerbaijan, hosts of the current COP29 climate summit. Meanwhile the UN's World Meteorological Organization said that?2024 is on track to be the world's warmest year on record.
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COP29 – do they matter today?
COP events used to fill me with hope. Just as the Procurement with Purpose book was being published back in 2021, COP26 in Glasgow saw world leaders congregating and it all seemed that maybe the smartest and most powerful people in the world were going to solve these problems.
Now, we have COP29 in Baku, with the President of Azerbaijan telling the audience that fossil fuels should be exploited because they are a gift from God (who evidently has decided that global warming, floods, tidal waves, drought, species extinction and tornadoes are a gift too). Apparently, there are more oil and gas lobbyists in Baku than representatives from the developing world. The leaders of China, the USA, India, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Germany and France haven’t turned up. Keir Starmer, new PM of the UK, is at least trying and hoping to provide leadership – but to whom exactly?
In fact, the UK is one of very few countries that is almost certainly sacrificing some of its own wealth to support the energy transition. Most are following the lead of Aliyev and exploiting the resources that ‘god’ has given them. Investment in green energy is still growing because it does make economic sense in many cases. But we aren’t seeing the parallel drop in fossil fuel production many hope for, and with Trump coming into power in the US, that seems unlikely to change. And I think we have to question whether COP is fit for purpose given the lack of progress evidenced so far at this event, but more next week on the event and outcomes anyway.
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Explaining biodiversity offsets, credits and financial markets
We covered the COP16 biodiversity summit recently, and it was not a success. But there was discussion about creating stronger markets around biodiversity offsets, credits and so on. It is a complicated topic, and although my general feeling is that such approaches are not generally very good for real sustainability outcomes, I don’t pretend to understand every nuance of these new ‘financial markets’.
So I very much liked this approach from the Green Finance Observatory, which is an independent think tank working on environmental markets and sustainable finance.? It is a ‘comic strip’ from Frédéric Hache, titled 50 shades of green: the new markets on nature explained to my grandmother. It combines drawings and words to take the reader through the whole issue in a clear but not over-simplified or condescending manner. ?
He looks at the biodiversity credit market, which he rightly criticises, particularly the more extreme credits where you can ‘offset before destroying’ and the offset action can be anywhere in the world. Obviously this makes it very hard to verify, and as he says, helping bats in one part of the world does not help the flamingos you’ve wiped out in another. ?There can even be a ‘futures market’ in such credits, which can be traded with their price varying. It is amazing how the banking industry can make huge amounts of money from anything! ?
But the key point is that we know from research that in the vast majority of cases, these programmes just don’t work. Now offsets are being relabelled as ‘credits’ but Hache says they are fundamentally the same, with the same problems. He also goes on to examine the human rights issues we are seeing emerge around some offset programmes too. So do take a few minutes to have a look at his work – highly recommended. ?
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Is it time to despair?
Sometimes it feels like we’re wasting our time on all this sustainability stuff when you see the failure of various COPS and leaders who don’t support the agenda getting into powerful positions.
And some of the pushback we’re seeing has been brought on by the sustainability movement itself being corrupted by greed and personal gain. Look at all the greenwashing. Or the wildly optimistic plans for de-carbonisation that just invite cynicism ?(yes, I’m looking at you, Ed Miliband). ?Drax getting billions from the taxpayer to chop down trees, ship them thousands of miles and burn them. Or the whole new financial industry created from dodgy carbon credits – and now bio-diversity credits (see above).
It is no wonder that many have become cynical, which has helped Trump and others take a popular anti-ESG stance. Others are understandably despairing – you can sense the emotion in another excellent George Monbiot article in the Guardian recently.?
Sometimes I despair too, to be honest. But I think we have to face the fact that humans aren’t going to do anything that requires too much altruism. I’m not sure who said these words first but it was something like ‘I believe the last human on earth will kill the last living creature and barbecue it using wood from the last tree’. Sad but probably true).
People, companies, politicians, are only going to do stuff that benefits themselves, and in the reasonably short term too. So if we do believe in sustainability, we can lobby for increased pace, but we have to be realistic. Hence why adaptation to climate change is I believe more important to individuals, organisations and countries than most have realised yet. It is too late to stop it – we must adapt.
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Sustainable laboratories
The other approach we can and should take is to search hard and implement actions that do make economic sense and also support the sustainability agenda. We can focus on steps that can actually benefit our own organisations, and luckily, there are plenty of examples of what can be done.
This is a useful article titled 8 ways you can help make research labs more sustainable from London’s Imperial College, one of the top universities in the world, and one that unbelievably has 1400 laboratories, which are ‘resource intensive spaces. They use ten times more energy and four times more water than office spaces. Laboratory purchasing alone makes up 20% of Imperial’s procurement carbon footprint’.
So doing something about that is key, and the list of eight approaches is pragmatic and sensible, running through the relatively obvious (‘Buy Sustainable Products’) to the somewhat more sophisticated – ‘share your equipment’ or ‘sign up to a lab certification scheme’.
There are tricky issues in the lab environment. There is equipment that requires single use plastic, with currently no alternatives. Scientists working on potential Nobel Prize winning research don’t take kindly to being told what they can or can’t buy or how they use it. But nobody said this would be easy, and in this environment, getting it right can save money (less waste), and prove attractive to potential students and other recruits? - as well as supporting the wider goals.
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Sustainable Procurement Pledge goes event crazy!
On a final positive note, there are no less than four Sustainable Procurement Pledge events in the next seven days! ?I’m not going to say too much about them here but do follow the links if you want more information and to register – free of charge. I hope to make a couple at least, and very much looking forward to the fungi discussion, particularly as my ‘lawn’ is virtually a fungi zoo this time of year. ?
SPP Nature and Biodiversity Group – ‘Why Procurement Needs to Care About Fungi’, ?November 20th, 1300 GMT
SPP Human Rights – ‘Empowering Procurement: Leveraging Technology to Navigate Human Rights Regulations’, ?November 20th,1400 GMT ?(with Bertrand Maltaverne of Spend Matters)
SPP Emerging Tech – ‘Introduction to AI Governance, Safety, and Ethics for Sustainable Procurement Professionals’,? November 21st, 1pm PST, 9pm GMT
SPP Nature and Biodiversity Group – ‘Bringing TNFD’s Guidance on Value Chains to life’, November 25th, 1300 GMT
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Wunderhorse – not a horse, pretty wunderful though
The death of guitar bands has been much predicted and indeed, there are far fewer bands of any sort in the charts today, as solo artists dominate. The 10 most listened to artists on Spotify right now are all solo acts and there are only three bands in the top 30! But there is a bit of a renaissance in the UK, with Fontaines DC, Idles and Inhaler all making significant moves this year in terms of popularity. And Wunderhorse are moving into the higher leagues now with their new album Midas.
When I first heard them a couple of years back, I put them in a sort of alt-country/blues genre, a bit Uncle Tupelo, a bit early Dire Straits. But the other influence is grunge and at times it is Nirvana rather than Sultans of Swing that pops up in my head. All very listenable, generally short, sharp, tuneful songs, and they were excellent live at Reading this year, with an audience that was really into the band. Greater things ahead for them, I think, and this is an acoustic version of one of the best songs from Midas. ???