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Our greatest enemy
“Time is your greatest enemy”. This is Maverick’s first lesson when tasked with teaching a younger generation of fighter pilots. Nobody knows better than him how to cut corners in the air and skim over sand dunes. He is the master of seconds. Yet throughout Top Gun, a longer scale of time overlays the narrative,…
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The interplay between nature and finance
In March, the TNFD released a prototype of its long-awaited nature-related risk management and disclosure framework. A guidance for financial institutions and corporates to measure their impacts and dependencies on nature, and risks stemming from biodiversity loss, the framework marks the emergence of nature into international financial policy. It is a sign that the right…
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THE NARRATIVE CONVERGES WITH NATURE
“Your kind never sees us whole. You miss the half of it, and more. There’s always as much belowground as above”. Richard Powers 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner The Overstory begins from the perspective of a tree, raising all too common human short sightedness. Look beneath the canopy and you’ll discover the complexities of our plant…
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All-important soil
Much of the ongoing global extinction is taking place underground. Booming metropolises of biological production and exchange crumble in silence, at a rate of 75 billion tonnes per year. Soil, the most biologically diverse material on Earth, is a cornerstone of life driven to irrelevance by our mechanised understanding of nature. Soil feeds us, its…
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Remembering climate change adaptation
‘When people do not dread authorities, then a greater dread descends’. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is all too familiar with this feeling Laozi describes in his Taoist studies. Over the past month, everyone has been shocked by Working Group 1’s Assessment Report. The cataclysm is not only real; it’s within reach. Business…
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Blue pathways
Punctuated by heat, fires, and floods in all corners of the world, July 2021 exceeded all climate scientists’ models. Climate change is taking place at a faster and greater rate than previously envisaged. Perhaps less visible, but no less dramatic, are conditions off-land. Countless practices disturb our oceans today – overfishing, plastic disposal, deep sea…
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Europe’s plan for carbon border adjustment
One-third of European greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are embedded in the import of goods and services. While the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) sets a price and limit on carbon emissions for domestic firms, no such measure exists for products made abroad. Without better accountability of imported emissions, there will be no real industrial decarbonisation.…
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Towards a measurement of the trade-biodiversity nexus
Biodiversity degradation is an underevaluated knock-on effect of trade liberalisation. That’s because enhanced demand through free trade agreements (FTAs) increases land clearing, whether that be due to agriculture, mining, fishing or hydrocarbon extraction. Costs on climate, linked to energy-intensive industrial production and freight transport, are also enormous. Since 2019, opposition to the EU-Mercosur deal has…
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Reconciling sovereign debt and natural capital in low-income countries
Falls in FDI and trade imposed by lockdowns, concurrent with the need to manage unstable health and economic systems, has plunged low-income countries (LICs) into a debt spiral. Globally, sovereign debt has increased by around $10 trillion. Not to say that it was stable before the pandemic; in fact, the IMF signalled half of LICs…
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Green and values-based Connectivity between Europe and Asia
Connectivity is one of the focal points of the new EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. The term is also central to the Connecting Europe and Asia Strategy and the EU-Japan Partnership on Sustainable Connectivity, while talks have begun with India on a connectivity-focused partnership. When calling for the establishment of a Global Connectivity…
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VALUE IN NATURE 