Cross-sectoral partnerships, incentivizing ownership and entrepreneurship at the community and business levels, and jobs, especially jobs for women. These were among the recommendations that came out of a panel discussion, moderated by BCtA, on leveraging low-carbon economies to create prosperity and realise the new 2030 development agenda. The panel was part of the fourth Annual Responsible Business Platform held in Singapore.
This year’s event, Sustainability 2015: Delivering Climate Action and Goals for a Better Future, brought together more than 500 business leaders, investors, policy makers and NGOs from around the world to share innovations and explore practical solutions for addressing climate change while delivering on the sustainable development goals. It included Abigail Herron, head of Responsible Investment Engagement for Aviva Investors, Ashok Khosla, founder and chairman of Development Alternatives Group, Josefina Patricia Magpale-Asirit, commissioner for the Energy Regulatory Commissions of the Philippines, and William Kwende, chairman of Agritech Group.
The discussion touched on a wide range of issues. All agreed that partnerships between stakeholders are vital. Khosla took the idea one step further, suggesting that by engaging more than one sector, something he calls integration, partnerships are able to generate additional synergies not possible with a single focus.
According to Herron, the concept is equally important in the finance sector, where integrating environmental, social and governance considerations must be considered as part of the valuation consideration. Aviva Investors has also had great success using integration when approaching regulators, by creating coalitions comprised of NGOs, investors and companies to present a multi-dimensional case of policy support in various industries such as corporate reporting, sustainable fisheries and sustainable stock exchanges.
Incentivizing the private sector to invest in energy solutions in economically or technologically unviable regions, while at the same time empowering those communities to both sustain and build on that investment, requires ingenuity. The Philippines’ government pledged a 70% reduction in carbon emissions as part of its 2030 agenda commitment. This is in addition to a previous commitment to country-wide electrification. With more than 7,100 islands, of which many are remote and sparsely inhabited, delivering on these commitments comes with challenges. As a result, the government is using a combination of subsidization to encourage investment, especially in renewable energies, for business. For communities, education coupled with a small, usage-assessed tax to ensure ownership responsibility on the part of communities is helping to realize the goals.
This sense of ownership, Kwende noted, fertilizes the ground for innovation and entrepreneurship. Embracing innovations from different, generally technologically advanced parts of the world, such as drip irrigation and temperature control systems for smallholder farmers, what he calls climate smart technologies, are vital. When those companies then partner with small domestic companies, they sow local entrepreneurs, who will be the most opportunistic. At the same time, when the technologies work, and are affordable to users, profits follow; if a company is selling a $1 technology to a billion people, it’s big business.
Importantly, he also noted that the world is already operating in a low carbon context. Integrating smallholder farmers into the value chain requires energy. But it must be seen as an opportunity to bring in clean energy. If we don’t, he noted, over the next decades we will bring 1 to 2 billion more people into a dirty energy scheme.
Not surprisingly, the idea of job creation was agreed to be key to advancing economic growth. But perhaps the most unexpected, and well-received suggestion for creating prosperity in a low-carbon context came from Khosla; reducing fertility rates. Statistics show that when women are educated and/or have a job, they reduce their fertility rate by one sixth to one tenth in their lifetime. Making women’s lives better, he noted, could result in 1 billion fewer people on the planet, which could be the ultimate key to a low carbon economy.
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