Healthy, Wealthy and Governance
This is the second edition of Honey Drops, and I am thrilled to share with you this collated overview of what’s been happening around the world each week.
As The Ocelli Group takes its name from the bee's ocelli, those remarkable eyes that guide its flight via the sun, I felt it a natural extension for this Corporate Sustainability newsletter to incorporate the alchemy of their nectar: Honey.
Feel free to forward on to anyone you believe would benefit from a dose of good news.
3 Thoughts From Me
9 Takeaways from AICD’s Climate Governance Forum 2024
The clearest signal coming from 2,000 attentive attendees in the ICC auditorium? Personal liability is a hell of a motivator for Boards to upskill on climate governance.
Many Boards in Australia have found themselves flat-footed by the recently-passed mandatory climate reporting legislation, meaning the day was full of actionable insights from leading business highlighting the clear impact of climate risk/opportunities on corporate strategy and operations.
Statistically speaking, a large cohort of the room would have voted for a Government three elections in a row running on the platform of climate change being a load of *insert your own polite term here*. These business leaders now find themselves not only operating in a world where climate change is playing out on a more frequent basis, but they are also personally responsible for stewarding their organisations through material threats to its ongoing success.
Enough companies are well on their way to net zero, that the first steps for a new company to take are already paved out before them. Time to roll the sleeves up.
Events like the Climate Governance Forum are key for Australian Directors due to the authenticity of the messenger. It is coming from their peers at Coles, Woolworths, Stockland, CSIRO, ASIC, AICD, QBE, Fonterra, Aware Super, Paul Ramsey Foundation, Pollination, Tribeca, Nature Finance Council and WWF Australia.
This is important, because according to MSCI, “Only 4% of directors at companies targeted for engagement by the Climate Action 100+ investor alliance [1,986 companies] met criteria for climate expertise based on their publicly disclosed biographies”.
The traditional approach of solely nominating Directors with Financial or Legal backgrounds to Boards is running its course as organisations get serious about successfully evolving with the changing business, environmental and societal landscape.
Quick plug - I am teaming up with Julien Bertoli from G Transition and Mike Johnston from Glow on 9th October to discuss how organisations can speak about their Sustainability journey with confidence.
Greenwashing (making it up) and Greenhushing (not speaking about it) are the shoulders of the Sustainability highway, leaving huge scope for companies to commercially benefit from the great initiatives they are already delivering.
In fact, there aren’t any other functions of a business where being an industry leader/good faith actor is left in the shadows.
We’ll be showing how companies are already expanding their market share by boosting consumer sentiment, increasing employee attraction and retention, as well as seeing capital flows from investors looking to de-risk their portfolio risk profile.
2 Quotes from Others:
Follow The Health
Analysis of 16 major air pollution updates issued by the US EPA in the past three years, conducted by the Environmental Protection Network, in which they admit even this probably “significantly underestimates the benefits”:
❖ Save over 200,000 lives through 2050. That’s the equivalent of a convoy of thousands of buses stretching along the highway from Philadelphia to New York City. The children, grandparents, moms, and dads on those buses will live longer, healthier lives thanks to these rules.
❖ Avoid over 100 million asthma attacks in the United States through 2050. That means fewer missed school days, missed work days, and trips to the school nurse or the emergency room.
❖ Deliver over $250 billion in net benefits annually, with total monetized public health and climate benefits exceeding regulatory costs by a ratio of six-to-one. That is, the public health and climate benefits of the rules will exceed compliance costs by trillions of dollars through 2050
Follow The Wealth
A rush toward renewables amid net exits in oil and gas:
“Clients are increasingly looking to integrate sustainability and climate risk and impact into their bond and private-debt analysis, and are looking for metrics that can guide them in making these assessments… Focusing in on private debt, the outlook for renewable energy has particularly impacted net deal count, as illustrated in the exhibit.” - MSCI Research
Source: Sustainable-Debt Dispatch (Michael Ridley, Executive Director, et al.)
1 Question For You To Ponder
I’ve been thinking about community a lot recently, and diving into the difference facets of it. We often prioritise our many responsibilities at the expense of connecting with the people closest to us.
One of the benefits I have seen community consistently provide is that of a snorkel. Having attended two weddings of people very close to me in the past month, there was a real sense of many of the guests receiving an influx of oxygen by being surrounded by fun, laughter and joy.
Weddings seem to amplify this trifecta of endorphins, yet they can be tapped into through dinners, picnics, phone calls, running groups, gyms, book clubs, yoga groups, and on and on and on.
How are you expanding your lungs with the goodness of community so you can keep doing what you’re great at?
Photo by Mario Purisic on Unsplash
Until next week,
Dan