World Environment Day - 5 reasons for cautious cheer, 2 for desperate concern

Each year the 5th June is an opportunity to celebrate what Earth gives us (all of human and economic life!) and just as pertinently what we are in the process of taking away from it.

So this World Environment Day let’s briefly take stock of the many challenges we face and some of the solutions that are emerging. As a reference point let’s use a blog we wrote back in January that proposed 5 sustainable business trends for 2018 to view what’s happened in the first half of the year.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/5-sustainable-business-trends-2018-mike-barry/

These trends are unfolding broadly as we predicted and maybe seen to be offering us some hope:

1. Plastics – the momentum to tackle plastics globally is growing. The UK is providing leadership on this with the launch by WRAP of the UK Plastics Pact which brought virtually every substantial food and drinks retailer and brand to the table to commit to demonstrable change how they use plastics. Now there is an exciting opportunity for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to scale this model on a global basis to help build a New Plastics Economy.
2. Investors – Investors with $26 trillion of assets under management yesterday called on the G7 to phase out coal power. A new study predicts a $1-4 trillion carbon bubble forming by 2035, resulting in many countries ‘winning’ as they wean themselves off volatile fossil imports but some may lose substantially (Russia, US and Canada) as they are left with stranded assets.
3. Techlash – So it was Facebook/Cambridge Analytica that became the ‘posterchild’ for the lack of attention to the responsible use of data that has characterised the explosive growth of the new economy. Together with the EU’s GDPR it’s finally elicited a global debate on data which hopefully will bring in new rules and business practice that give people the confidence that technology can become a trusted, increasingly important part of their lives with the many potential benefits that this will bring.
4. Food – The rapid rise of meat alternatives (Perfect Day, Geltor, Mosa Meats, Impossible, Memphis Meats etc) has continued. This is perhaps best encapsulated by the CEO of Tyson, the world’s largest meat company, that’s investing into these alternatives despite concern and resistance from its traditional supply base – ‘I don’t want a Kodak moment’. He knows change is coming, better to be part of the change than sitting isolated, Canute like, defending the status quo. The pressure for change will only grow as a new study shows that globally meat/dairy provides 18% of calories but uses 83% farmland and contributes 58% Agricultural GHGs, 57% water pollution, 56% air pollution. And the Eating Better campaign is highlighting the issues associated with meat production and the solutions to them.
5. Human Rights – The Consumer Goods Forum has continued to build a global coalition between some of the world’s largest companies, national governments and international agencies to tackle the enormous criminality of forced labour (up to 25 million people in the private sector). UK laws on their gender pay gap has forced UK companies to be open about the challenge they face and, in not enough cases, what they were going to do about it. Modern Day slavery legislation is spreading to countries across the world.

So some progress but two environmental trends feel like they have been accelerating, indeed galloping, in the wrong direction in the last few months:

• Biodiversity – biodiversity has been under pressure for years. But new evidence, particularly on the closely related topic of birds and insects, has set alarm bells ringing again. For example, a new study shows that Puffin populations on Shetland have plummeted from 33,000 birds in 2000 to just 570 as climate change and overfishing disrupts their food chains. France’s farmland bird populations are down by a third since 1989 and in the UK they are down by half since 1970. In North America 74% of farmland bird populations have shrunk since 1966. All potentially linking back to a recent German study that suggest the mass of flying insects is down by 75%. Whilst a study of 8236 Marine Protected Areas covering 4% of the world's oceans, showed that just 2.8C of warming by 2100 will wreck the precious ecosystems/species they are meant to protect – and currently we are heading towards that level of warming……
• Climate change – Being out of the North American hurricane season can take climate change out of the headlines at this time of year! But we’ve smashed through the 410 ppm level for atmospheric CO2 levels. Oman took a staggering three years of rain in 24 hours. We’ve seen a record Arctic heatwave which has been preventing sea ice from forming and could have driven the truly horrible ‘Beast from the East’ across Europe (as reference North Greenland saw one sub 0C recording in Feb 1997, five in Feb 2011 and now 59 in Feb 2018). And a NASA study has identified 19 crucial global hotspots for water stress including China, India, California and the Middle East, none of them inconsequential. Yet more positively a new study shows that by investing $0.5trn globally we can deliver a 1.5C climate change target which would actually save us $30trn globally, whilst conversely the 3C world we are heading for is likely to cost us $10s trillions.

So let’s take a step back on all these trends. We seem to be developing some of the solutions and tools we need to build a better future – collaborations (Plastics Pact), marketplace disruptions (meat alternatives), legislation (Modern Day Slavery Acts), transparency (gender pay gaps) – yet we cannot be anything but concerned that the pace of their development is being overwhelmed by the scale of environmental harm that we are living through. Truly we need joined up, scaled solutions far faster than today.

@planamikebarry