The Sustainability Agenda

Michael has led sustainability at Levi Strauss & Co. since 2001. Under his leadership, Levi has been a leader in bringing sustainability to the apparel industry and Michael has helped drive industry collaboration on sustainability, serving as Chair of the Better Cotton Initiative and Board member of the Sustainable apparel Coalition. In this interview, Michael...

How can economics deal with climate change? In this interview, Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator of the Financial Times, talks about the crucial importance of dealing with climate change and discusses the ways in which economic analysis and policy can help. He shares his views on the milestone COP21 agreement and the...

Andreea Strachinescu is head of the New Energy Technologies and Innovation unit in the Directorate General for Energy at the European Commission. She is responsible for the development of the policy and actions on non-nuclear energy research and innovation. In this interview, Andrea talks about recent developments in EU renewable energy, in particular, growing focus on...

Katherine Collins has had a a long successful career in traditional fund management – she was head of US Equity Research at Fidelity Investments and later as Portfolio Manager was responsible for investment decisions for the multi-billion dollar Fidelity America funds. But over her career she came to see serious shortcomings in the way traditional...

Professor Kevin Anderson is an important – and outspoken – voice on how our emissions today are locking in dangerous levels of climate change and how we need immediate and strong action now, individually and collectively, if we are to bequeath our children a safe and secure future. He is the Deputy Director of the...

Ericsson has been at the forefront of corporate sustainability initiatives for many years- and will publish its 24th annual Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Report on March 1 2017.  In this podcast, I speak to Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility (CR) for the Ericsson Group worldwide about the company’s sustainability journey. Elaine’s work is focused...

John is a pioneer in the world of corporate responsibility and sustainable development -as a writer, consultant, and serial entrepreneur he has been at the forefront of sustainability thinking for four decades. John is the author or co-author of 19 books —- he is credited with coining key sustainability terms including environmental excellence, the triple...

From a vantage point of 40 years experience helping create the field of sustainability, Hunter Lovins is in an excellent position to explain where sustainability is today–and to highlight the latest thinking that will drive regenerative practices, the next wave beyond sustainability. Hunter is the President of Natural Capitalism Solutions, an entrepreneurial NGO that helps...

Little had been written on the role of environmental taxes when Paul Ekins wrote The Living Economy in1986. Since that time we have learnt a lot more about the potential role of taxation in dealing with climate change, yet there has been relatively little implementation of these ideas. In this podcast, Professor Ekins gives his...

After several false starts, many experts now believe that the green finance sector is at a tipping point. Investors are paying attention to ESG factors as never before, there is an explosion of investor interest in green bonds, and195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, fully ratified global climate deal in Paris in 2015. In this...

Author, media theorist, professor, activist: Douglas Rushkoff wears many hats. At the heart of his work is a recurring theme: how to redevelop society to better serve humans. In this episode, Douglas discusses his latest book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, which raises fundamental questions about what he calls the “old extractive, growth-based capitalism.”...

Paul Dickinson founded CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, in 2000 with a vision to help the global economic system operate within sustainable environmental boundaries, and to prevent dangerous climate change.  CDP manages a data platform that gathers data on the greenhouse gas emissions from major corporations around the world. The data reported through CDP is used...

BSR has been providing socially responsible business solutions to many of the world’s leading companies for almost 25 years, working with 250 member companies around the world to create a more just and sustainable global economy. In this podcast, BSR CEO Aron Cramer, gives his frank assessment of where companies are on their journey to sustainability,...

John Kay is one of Britain’s leading economists and has a long-standing interest in the relationships between business and society; he has been writing about responsible business, the role of stakeholders, and business and society for several decades. In this interview, John talks about the real meaning of corporate sustainability, which goes way beyond ESG...

In this episode of the Sustainability Agenda, Professor CB Bhattacharya, one of the word’s leading sustainability researchers, gives his perspective on his evolution of corporate sustainability over recent decades. Professor Bhattacharya discusses his latest research and gives a preview of his new book. What is the trade-off between sustainability and profits? How do investors respond...

When it comes to getting a perspective on the future of sustainability, who better to speak to than renowned author, futurist and sustainability pioneer Hazel Henderson. A long-time pioneer promoting the integration of environmental and social considerations into economics and business, Hazel has been a key mover in numerous key sustainability initiatives since the mid-1970s....

It took many decades over the early 20th Century for a standardised way of presenting financial information to investors to evolve. A similar process is now under way in an effort to include non-financial information in mainstream accounts. But we have to do it in years, not decades. Nowhere has there been more progress than with respect...

By many measures, humans have shown themselves to be a pretty successful species. But we are living unsustainably. We are consuming more resources than the Earth can provide– we are in global ecological overshoot. The Ecological Footprint, developed by the Global Footprint Network, is a leading measure of human demand on nature, reflecting the productive...

Marks & Spencer launched its Plan A progamme in 2007 with the ambition to make the company the world’s most sustainable major retailer. This far-reaching ecological and ethical programme is now in its 9th year. In this interview, Mike Barry, who oversees Plan A, and was part of the initial team that developed the programme,...

Over the comings years, sums of between US$5 and $7 trillion a year will need to be invested in infrastructure, clean energy, water, sanitation, agriculture, to meet Sustainability Development Goals.  New Climate Economy estimates that a massive $93tn investment will be required across the whole economy by 2030 to keep the temperature rise below 2...