We have been doing a lot of reading around the subject of the climate crisis, of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and of impact investing. It’s a huge subject and getting bigger by the day.
In the literal, tangible sense, no one can have failed to have noticed disturbing happenings – from hurricanes to droughts to wildfires to the extinction of species to melting ice-caps and so on – even if there are a few left standing who believe these are entirely in the natural order of things and still question man’s contribution to them.
Also, in the literal, tangible sense we are talking about trillions of dollars and rising as we edge closer to 2030, the year towards which the SDGs are geared. The wider world is rudely awakening to our earthly emergency and the relatively new way of conducting business – which does the planet a favour as well as investors’ pockets. It is precisely because it is worth so much and our collective future depends on it that there is an ever-increasing amount of material being produced on the topic.
A lot of this material is properly frightening. Long papers, huge documents and back-breaking volumes contain information that is mind-spinning but also enlightening and compelling.
Stories abound. Often they concern individual endeavour, like that of the young African engineer whose friend’s grandmother had pneumonia and who, on learning the extent of the disease and its horrendous child mortality rate, developed a special jacket for swift diagnosis, something which plays a vital part in saving young lives. There is Pirelli, which most of us associate with a rather un-SDG5 (gender equality) calendar. But this is a company now focused on producing ingenious tyres out of rice husk waste.
There are quotes, facts and figures which astonish. Did you know, for example, that today more people are dying of obesity related illnesses than they are of malnutrition? And that 50% of agricultural expansion has occurred at the expense of forests? That there has been 100% of urban growth since 1992? 105% increase in the global population since 1970? Ten times the amount of plastic pollution and 100% increase in greenhouse gas emissions since 1980? The head REELS with the sheer volume of doom-laden intelligence.
And there are of course narratives surrounding these facts and figures which are testament to the global and imaginative quest for solutions and to the vast scope of human ingenuity.
We own that the selection in the blog is pretty random and subjective; but for Brightwell the posts are all nuggets that struck us because they are either urgent, terrifying, important, pessimistic, optimistic, wonderful, quirky, funny, riveting – or all of the above.
It is worth mentioning right here that half of the global population is still living on less than $2 a day and climate change comes at a cost of $24 trillion.
The world has a long, long way to go to solve our climate-related crisis but, meanwhile, in terms of seeking solutions, there is a good deal of inspiring investment, thought, action and innovation to be celebrated.
Here goes.