Sustainable AF: Recent Episodes
Alex and Fe
Welcome to SustainableAF, otherwise known as everything you ever wanted to know about sustainability but were too afraid to ask. This series discusses the UN’s sustainable development goals, and each episode will explore a particular goal – what it is, why it matters and how we can address it.
As extreme heat and wildfires sweep across Europe, the gap between recognising climate risk and responding to it is becoming harder to ignore. The good news is that the evidence, expertise and many of the solutions we need already exist. Why, then, is meaningful action still so difficult?
That was the question at the centre of this special live edition of Shaken Not Burned, recorded at SOAS during London Climate Action Week. Felicia was joined by Julia Davies (We Have The Power and Patriotic Millionaires UK), Gosbert Chagula MBE (Future Impact Ventures), and Dr Harald Heubaum (Centre for Sustainable Finance, SOAS).
Their different perspectives point towards a common problem: coordination. Knowledge, authority, finance, incentives and public action remain fragmented — and they operate within systems shaped by unequal power and competing interests.
The conversation explores why governments struggle to use the expertise they already possess; why investment continues to favour short-term returns; how wealth shapes politics and public narratives; and what community ownership, trust and individual agency can make possible.
It also exposes a problem hidden inside the growing focus on resilience: people use the same word to describe very different futures. What we choose to protect, what we are prepared to change and who gets to decide will shape how societies respond to the disruption already underway.
The solutions may exist. The harder task is aligning the power, money, institutions and public support needed to put them into practice.
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Describing infrastructure as boring was a compliment. A building used to have a relatively straightforward job: keep the weather out and the people inside reasonably comfortable. Roads moved traffic, power systems supplied electricity and factories made things. Once infrastructure had been built, the task was largely to maintain it until it needed replacing.
Sure, politicians like to throw themselves behind a flashy, expensive project that raises the profile of their country (example: the HS2 railway in the UK), but what ordinary people need is reliable systems that are ticking along in the background, making everyday life efficient and manageable for the entire population.
Still, the reality is that today we need more from our buildings and infrastructure.
Buildings are now expected to cut emissions, manage energy demand, protect people from heat and pollution, support health and even help balance the electricity grid. Transport, water and energy networks must withstand conditions they weren’t designed for. Industrial systems are expected to become cleaner, more efficient and more resilient– often all at the same time.
Considering that half the buildings that will be standing by 2050 already exist, retrofitting them is the only way to get us to net zero. Meanwhile, cities must manage the relationships among all these systems while remaining liveable, competitive and capable of adapting to a changing climate.
In the final episode of our latest arc, hosts Felicia and Giulia explore one of the great challenges of our time: adapting decades-old infrastructure to the requirements of the contemporary era. More often than not, this requires investment in invisible tools, such as sensors and insulation, that most people won’t notice, but will benefit massively from.
Rodrigo Fernandes of Bentley Systems introduced us to digital twins and the possibility of understanding cities as interconnected systems. Katie McGinty of Johnson Controls described buildings evolving from inert brick and mortar into active participants in energy, resilience and business performance. Sophie Graham of IFS explored how AI and operational intelligence are changing the way industrial assets are managed. And, it turns out, sensors, insulation, and waste heat recovery aren’t boring after all.
We explore what happens when infrastructure stops being passive and starts operating as part of a dynamic system. Can intelligence help ageing assets become more adaptable and resilient? Should we invest less in building new things and more in making existing systems work better? And as buildings and industrial systems begin to sense, learn and optimise, who decides what they should optimise for?
The real transformation may not be in the concrete and steel, but in what we enable them to do.
This episode explores:
- The shift from static assets to dynamic, adaptable systems
- The role of operational intelligence and digital twins in infrastructure
- The importance of retrofitting and upgrading existing buildings
- Circularity and reuse of materials in construction
- The economic and environmental benefits of smarter infrastructure
- The systemic interconnectedness of urban systems
- The impact of climate change on infrastructure design
- The role of AI and data in optimising asset performance
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For years, sustainability has been associated with targets, reporting and disclosure. While those remain essential, they're starting to take a smaller part of the picture. As organisations operate under growing pressure from ageing infrastructure, volatile energy systems, climate disruption and more complex supply chains, sustainability is becoming part of day-to-day operational decision-making.
In this week’s episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks to Sophie Graham, chief sustainability officer at IFS, about how AI, data and operational intelligence are helping heavy industry move beyond measuring performance to improving it.
Rather than treating sustainability as a separate function, many companies’ engineering, operations and sustainability teams are beginning to work together to make industrial systems more efficient, more resilient and more competitive. From what Sophie describes as "blue collar AI" to grid capacity, ageing infrastructure and the growing importance of operational resilience, the real economy is beginning to change.
The conversation doesn't shy away from the fact that AI has its own energy, water and infrastructure demands, raising difficult questions about trade-offs and governance. How do organisations judgewhether technological progress creates a genuine net benefit?
This episode explores:
- Why operational decision-making is central to sustainability
- What "blue collar AI" looks like in practice
- How operational intelligence is changing the way industrial systems respond to disruption
- Why making better use of existing assets may matter as much as building new ones
- The changing relationship between sustainability, engineering and technology teams
- Why competitiveness, resilience and sustainability are becoming increasingly difficult to separate
This is the third episode in our latest Shaken Not Burned arc, exploring how the infrastructure that underpins modern life is being redesigned, managed and increasingly operated as an intelligent system.
Together with our conversations on digital twins and intelligent buildings, this arc analyses how operational intelligence is reshaping the systems that underpin modern economies. Whether the challenge is designing infrastructure, managing buildings or operating industrial assets, the common thread is that resilience increasingly depends on making better decisions in real time.
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For decades we've largely thought about buildings as fixed assets: we build them, maintain them, and expect them to provide the spaces where everyday life happens. But what if that's only part of the story?
The built environment accounts for around 40% of global emissions; much of it was designed for a different climate, and replacing it simply isn't an option. As cities become hotter, energy systems more complex and organisations more dependent on resilient infrastructure, the challenge is no longer just building better buildings – it's helping the ones we already have perform better.
In this week's episode, Felicia speaks to Katie McGinty, vice president and chief sustainability and external relations officer at Johnson Controls, about why today's buildings are becoming far more than places we occupy. Increasingly, they are capable of improving resilience, strengthening energy systems, supporting health and productivity, reducing operating costs and creating long-term value for the organisations and communities they serve.
The technology to do much of this already exists. The bigger challenge is recognising that buildings are assets capable of creating value. Rather than simply consuming resources, today's buildings can increasingly help manage them, becoming active participants in the wider systems that keep cities and economies functioning.
It's a reminder that some of the biggest opportunities in the energy transition may be standing around us. If most of the buildings we'll rely on over the coming decades have already been built, perhaps the next phase of the transition may be about unlocking far more value from the infrastructure we already have.
This episode covers:
- Why buildings are becoming strategic assets rather than simply places we occupy
- How operational performance is becoming a board-level priority
- Why resilience, sustainability and business performance are becoming increasingly connected
- The untapped opportunity in the buildings we already own
- How digital technologies are changing the way buildings operate
- Why the next phase of the energy transition may be about improving the performance of existing infrastructure rather than simply building more
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Modern cities appear to function effortlessly. We switch on the lights, turn on the tap, catch a train, connect to the internet or walk into a hospital without giving much thought to the systems that make it all possible. Beneath that apparent simplicity sits a network of interconnected infrastructure that keeps everyday life moving.
In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks to Rodrigo Fernandes, global sustainability director at infrastructure engineering software firm Bentley Systems, about why understanding those hidden connections is becoming increasingly important as cities face climate change, ageing infrastructure and growing demands on energy and public services.
From transport networks and energy systems to water, buildings and public infrastructure, cities rely on thousands of interconnected assets that have to work together every day. Yet these systems are often planned, managed and invested in separately, making it difficult to understand how decisions made in one part of the system can have consequences across many others
Their conversation explores how digital twins and better information can help planners, engineers and decision-makers understand interdependencies, explore different scenarios and make better long-term decisions. Along the way, Rodrigo explains why figuring out how infrastructure systems interact is becoming increasingly important for building cities that are more resilient, sustainable and adaptable over time.
In this episode:
- Why cities are systems, not just places
- How infrastructure decisions shape cities for decades
- What digital twins really are — and why they matter
- Why resilience depends on understanding interconnections
- How better information can lead to better decisions
This is a conversation about far more than infrastructure. It's about how cities actually function, why changing them is so difficult, and why understanding the hidden systems around us may be one of the most important foundations for building more resilient communities.
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Welcome to the final episode in our arc on the fashion industry, where we ask an uncomfortable question: are we trying to make fashion more sustainable, or are we mostly trying to manage the side effects of a system that produces more clothing than the world actually needs?
Over the past few weeks we've explored the industry from several different angles. We interviewed Kristina Elinder Liljas at the Apparel Impact Institute about climate risk and why sustainability is increasingly becoming a competitiveness issue.
We sat down with Áine Clarke at the Business and Human Rights Centre to discuss to discuss labour and human rights and the social realities embedded within global supply chains. We also spoke to two industry specialists, discussing the potential for fashion circularity with Niccolò Cipriani from Rifò and the world of deadstock and recommerce with Kanchan Bharwani from Empire Apparel.
At first glance, there is no obvious reason why those conversations should belong together except that they’re all aspects of the fashion industry. The further we got into the series though, the more we realised that sustainable fashion is not really a story about clothes.
It's a story about how an industrial system optimised for speed, volume and cost interacts with water, energy, labour, materials and waste. Once you see that, many of the industry's sustainability challenges stop looking like isolated problems and start looking like the consequences of the system doing exactly what it was designed to do.
The choice is not between cheap clothing and expensive clothing. The real question is which costs are currently included in the price and which costs are not. A garment can be inexpensive because the system producing it has become genuinely more efficient, but it can also be inexpensive because part of the cost has been transferred elsewhere — to workers, communities, ecosystems and future generations.
Fashion sustainability is often presented as a question of products but our conversations suggest it may be a question of systems and processes. And if that is true, building a more sustainable fashion industry may require far more than making better clothes. It may require asking whether many of the industry's environmental and social challenges are not accidental side effects, but the consequences of a system that has become exceptionally good at delivering exactly what it was designed to deliver.
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Fashion is often described as one of the world's most polluting industries. The scale can be difficult to grasp as it feels so personal, but every year, billions of garments are produced, sold, worn briefly and discarded, with consequences that reach far beyond our wardrobes.
The industry is worth around $2.4 trillion and is estimated to account for up to 8% of global carbon emissions. It consumes around 15 trillion litres of water each year and is responsible for roughly 11% of plastic waste. Yet many of these impacts are not accidental by-products of the system. They are linked to the way the industry is organised, from production planning and purchasing practices to inventory management and sales.
Changing that system is not straightforward. But across the industry, some businesses are trying to reduce waste by keeping materials, products and resources in use for longer
This week’s episode, the third one in the fashion arc, is a little different than usual: We've brought together two conversations that explore what "reduce, reuse and recycle" actually looks like in practice.
Firstly, Giulia spoke to Niccolò Cipriani, founder and CEO of the Italian circular fashion company Rifò, about what it means to set up a sustainable fashion company. They discuss the realities of building a business around recycled materials, the challenges of fibre recycling, and why suppliers initially viewed discarded textiles as low-value inputs rather than useful resources.
Giulia then sat down with Kenchen Arjandas Bharwani, fashion consultant at Empire Apparel, who walked us through the ins and outs of the fashion supply chain – including how perfectly good garments can be discarded for very minor reasons, how deadstock accumulates, and how the off-price market helps find a home for products that might otherwise go to waste.
Together, these interviews provide a window into a part of the sustainability conversation that often receives less attention. Instead of talking about 'sustainable fashion', much of the discussion focuses on what happens before a garment reaches a shop, and what happens to it when it doesn't sell.
That raises a larger question. If waste is being created at multiple points throughout the system, can fashion become more sustainable simply through better consumer choices, or does it require changes to the way the industry itself operates? Because while individual choices aren’t irrelevant, some of the most important decisions in fashion are being made long before we ever see a price tag.
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The clothes you're wearing have travelled a remarkable distance before reaching your wardrobe.
A typical garment may spend months moving through a global network of farms, mills, factories, suppliers, logistics providers and retailers. Raw materials are sourced in one country, processed in another, assembled somewhere else and shipped across continents before arriving in stores. What begins as simple clothing design often passes through dozens of hands before it reaches the customer.
Fashion is a $1.7 trillion industry built on supply chains designed for speed, flexibility and low costs. Those same qualities have helped drive growth and keep prices down, but they can also create vulnerabilities when conditions change. As trade tensions, tariffs, climate impacts and geopolitical uncertainty increase, supply chains that appear highly efficient can become increasingly exposed to disruption.
Environmental impacts often dominate sustainability discussions, but many of the industry's biggest challenges are social: poor working conditions, labour rights abuses, weak worker protections and the lack of meaningful oversight across complex supplier networks. When pressure enters the system, those risks are often borne by the workers with the least power to influence the outcome.
In this week’s episode, Giulia Bottaro discusses what this means for fashion’s future with Áine Clarke, head labour rights in supply chains & investor strategy at the Business and Human Rights Centre.
Their conversation explores why modern fashion supply chains have become increasingly vulnerable, how business models built around speed and flexibility can amplify risk during periods of disruption, and why workers often bear the greatest costs when commercial pressures move through the supply chain.
The discussion also challenges the common assumption that transparency alone is enough. Knowing where risks exist is only the first step: without changes to purchasing practices, stronger worker protections and meaningful accountability, transparency risks becoming little more than a reporting exercise.
As sustainability increasingly becomes a conversation about resilience, this episode asks a fundamental question: who ultimately bears the cost when fashion's supply chains come under pressure?
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For years, sustainability in fashion has often been discussed almost as a parallel conversation to the business itself. Some brands publish reports, set targets and talk about responsibility, while others turn their sustainability credentials into a marketing tool.
Yet, at the corporate level, many of the real decisions are still being driven by the old metrics of margins, supply chains and growth – but that's beginning to change.
Behind the scenes, there is a vast global industrial system increasingly exposed to climate volatility, energy prices, material shortages and carbon regulation. And its stakeholders have realised that sustainability is crucial to competitiveness: climate change can affect energy prices, raw materials and supply stability.
In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks to Kristina Elinder Liljas, senior director for sustainable finance and engagement at the Apparel Impact Institute (AII), about how climate volatility is set to upend many companies' forward strategies within the next five years. From supply chain disruption and rising sourcing costs to carbon pricing and energy volatility, they explore why sustainability is shifting from a reporting exercise or a worthy side conversation to a core business issue.
In its Cost of Inaction report, the AII looks at the literal price tag of climate risk in fashion. The findings are striking, and the message is clear: inaction may just be the most expensive strategy on the board.
For an industry built on speed, scale, and razor-thin margins, sustainability is a matter of corporate survival.
This is week one of our four-part fashion arc. Over the next month, we are tearing down the curtain on global supply chains to see how this industry impacts people, the planet, and the bottom line.
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AI is no longer just a technology issue, it’s starting to reshape how whole systems operate. Yet we’re not paying enough attention to that yet: most of the focus on AI is on what it can do, with individuals and organisations alike rushing to implement this new technology.
But AI capability is advancing extremely quickly, while the systems around it — governance and regulation, infrastructure, organisational learning, labour markets, productivity models and even public understanding — are struggling to adapt at the same pace.
And all of this is unfolding inside a world already dealing with climate disruption, geopolitical instability, infrastructure stress, declining institutional trust and widening inequality.
In this week’s episode, the final in our AI arc, we explore what happens when AI becomes embedded inside the systems that underpin everyday economic and social life. Co-hosts Felicia Jackson and Giulia Bottaro discuss the implications for infrastructure, institutions, labour, energy, trust and governance — and ask whether societies and economies are prepared for the scale of change we now face.
The conversation ranges over stories about AI going rogue, the capability vs governance gap, the physical impacts of something that is still perceived by many as intangible, how AI promises the democratisation of technology while fuelling inequality, and what companies are doing to address these challenges.
For businesses, the questions are becoming increasingly operational: what governance, oversight and accountability systems need to exist once AI becomes embedded inside day-to-day decision-making? It’s worth asking: is your business prepared for what happens once AI starts influencing real operational decisions?
The arc on AI is now complete! You can find the rest of the episodes (alongside our entire catalogue) here.
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As AI systems become more autonomous, the conversation is shifting from capability toward something much bigger: trust, legitimacy, identity and participation in digital systems.
In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks to Erika Maslauskaite, co-founder and CEO of alongID, about the rapidly evolving world of digital identity, interoperability and cross-border trust infrastructure — and why these questions are becoming increasingly important as AI agents begin acting on behalf of people and organisations.
From digital wallets and verification systems to fraud, privacy and governance, the conversation explores the growing tension between convenience, security and control in an increasingly AI-driven world.
Because beneath the technology itself sits a deeper challenge: how do societies build systems that people can trust, how do institutions adapt to rapid technological change, and what happens when increasingly autonomous technologies collide with fragmented infrastructure and real-world human complexity.
This episode is a grounded and wide-ranging discussion about digital identity, AI infrastructure and the future of participation in an increasingly connected world.
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Generative AI promised to transform how we work, while Agentic AI is beginning to transform how businesses themselves are built.
In this week’s episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia Jackson talks to Ethan Ouyang, who is AI ATOMS Spokesperson and responsible for North America Market & Partnerships. ATOMS is the venture building platform developed by DeepWisdom, one of China’s leading artificial intelligence companies. It has been designed as an agentic AI system, helping businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, integrate AI into their operations.
Unlike traditional generative AI tools, agentic AI systems can take goals, execute tasks, adapt in real time and increasingly function as operational actors inside organisations. From launching products to running marketing campaigns and managing workflows, these systems are beginning to shift AI from a support tool to fundamental business infrastructure. This trend is dramatically raising the stakes in today's AI conversations.
As AI systems move from producing outputs to taking actions, they are not simply improving productivity; they are beginning to reshape entrepreneurship, business formation and operational decision-making itself. Using DeepWisdom’s platform Atom, AI agents are increasingly able to research markets, design products, launch businesses, run marketing and optimise revenue — pushing AI beyond content generation into execution.
But this rapid acceleration of capabilities raises deeper questions. As AI capability expands, governance, ownership, financial models and operational discipline are still evolving. What happens when businesses can be built faster than the systems designed to regulate them? Where does accountability sit when AI agents act on behalf of founders or organisations? And what risks emerge when speed outpaces governance?
This conversation explores:
- The shift from generative AI to agentic AI
- How AI is transforming business creation and operational execution
- Human-in-the-loop decision-making and delegated authority
- Ownership, IP and evolving business model challenges
- Why governance structures may be lagging behind capability
- Sustainability, infrastructure, and the resource demands of AI at scale
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AI is becoming one of those topics where the scale of the claims can make it surprisingly difficult to work out what is actually happening.
We are told it will transform business, unlock extraordinary productivity gains, reshape jobs, and even help solve major global challenges like climate change. At the same time, there are growing concerns about energy demand, governance failures, bias, job losses, and the sheer speed at which these systems are developing.
The dominant narrative tends to swing between utopian optimism and existential fear, often without spending enough time on a more practical question: what actually happens when AI is introduced into real organisations, real systems, and real decision-making? This is the focus of this week’s episode, which is the first in our AI series.
Rather than debating whether AI is inherently good or bad, Felicia Jackson speaks with Professor Saeema Ahmed-Kristensen, Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Impact at the University of Exeter and Director of DIGIT Lab, about something much more grounded: why so many digital and AI transformation efforts struggle in practice and what that reveals about the limits of technology alone.
One of the most useful distinctions in the conversation was between problems that are well-defined and those that are not. AI is particularly powerful when objectives are clear, data is available, and success can be measured relatively easily. In those contexts - pattern recognition, diagnostics, optimisation - it can offer extraordinary value. But many of the most important challenges organisations face are different.
Sustainability, climate strategy, major organisational change, and social systems are messy, politically embedded and filled with trade-offs. They are often what researchers describe as wicked problems: issues where there is no single right answer, where choices create consequences elsewhere, and where uncertainty is part of the challenge itself.
That distinction matters because it shifts the conversation. It suggests that AI may be extremely useful in supporting parts of decision-making, but it does not remove the need for human judgment. In fact, in many cases, it may make governance, accountability, and strategic clarity even more important.
AI is powerful, but power is not wisdom. Better tools do not automatically create better outcomes. What they do do is make it even more important to understand what kind of organisations, systems and governance structures are capable of using them responsibly. As this new Shaken Not Burned AI arc begins, that feels like the right place to start.
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This is the final episode in our mining arc. Rather than revisiting what we’ve already covered, we step back to ask a different question: what does mining actually teach us about how change happens in complex systems?
Across the series, one tension kept coming up. The transition to a cleaner economy depends on scaling one of the most environmentally intensive industries on earth. We need more minerals, but we are deeply uncomfortable with how they are extracted. In practice, that tension shows up in whether projects can actually be built.
In this episode, we pull those threads together and explore five recurring gaps shaping the sector, from industrial dependence and supply chain constraints, to misplaced faith in quick technological fixes and, ultimately, whether our systems are even set up to deliver the transition we say we want.
One insight stands out in particular: trust is not a "soft" issue. In mining, projects that involve communities early and give them a real stake in the outcome are getting approved faster, facing fewer delays and attracting more consistent capital. In other words, legitimacy changes the economics of delivery.
Mining makes this dynamic unusually visible because its impacts are immediate and contested - but the lesson for industry is much broader. Whether it’s infrastructure, energy or data centres, more industries are running into the same constraint: formal approval is no longer enough if the people affected don’t believe in what’s being built.
This episode is an attempt to make sense of those tensions. Not just in mining, but in how we think about sustainability, trade-offs and what it really takes to deliver change.
Key takeaways:
- Why the energy transition depends on scaling a contested industry
- The five systemic gaps shaping mining today
- How trust and community involvement affect speed, risk, and access to capital
- Why social licence to operate is becoming a constraint across multiple sectors
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Welcome to the latest episode in our mining arc! In the previous two episodes, we covered the geopolitics of critical minerals and whether deep sea mining is the innovation we need to meet growing demand for critical clean tech raw materials.
This week, we turn to one of the most important lessons emerging from the mining sector: modern projects succeed when trust is built before the digging begins. How mines affect and benefit people, especially those isolated communities that live on resource-rich land, is becoming an essential part of mining operations.
Around half of the world’s untapped energy transition minerals are located on or near land inhabited by Indigenous and peasant communities, according to a 2022 study by the University of the Free State and the University of Queensland.
As demand for these resources grows, developers are learning that access to minerals alone is not enough. Communities expect to be part of the process, and in many jurisdictions they now have the power to delay or stop projects altogether. That means success depends not just on access to land, capital or permits, but on whether communities believe they have been properly heard, respected and included.
In this week’s episode, Giulia interviews JP Gladu, founder and principal at Indigenous-led consulting firm Mokwateh, about what it really means to gain the social licence to operate.
JP explains his “involve and support” mantra: involve communities from the earliest stages of project design, not after decisions have already been made, and support them with the resources they need to participate properly.
That might mean providing clear information about the project, funding access to advisers and technical experts, or creating intermediaries who can bridge communication gaps and ensure everyone understands what is being proposed. JP argues that this approach not only produces fairer outcomes, but can reduce opposition, improve project design, and ultimately speed up development by addressing conflict before it begins.
Key takeaways:
- Early community engagement is crucial for project success.
- Supporting indigenous ownership benefits all stakeholders
- Why partnership improves outcomes for companies and communities alike
- What other industries can learn from mining’s evolving approach
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Welcome to the second instalment of our mining arc. After covering the geopolitics of critical minerals (check out the episode here), this week we ask a harder question: is deep sea mining a necessary innovation, or a risk we don’t yet understand well enough to take?
Deep sea mining means extracting minerals from the bottom of the ocean, at depths of 200 metres and beyond, no easy feat. It’s often framed as the next frontier for securing the metals needed for the energy transition – batteries, renewables, electrification. But that framing sits alongside a more uncomfortable reality: these ecosystems are among the least understood on Earth, and the consequences of disturbing them may be irreversible.
This is a question of baseline knowledge: whether we even understand what normal looks like at those depths, and therefore whether impact can be meaningfully assessed at all.
Governance remains contested. Negotiations at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) – the body regulating the mineral resources of the seabed beyond national jurisdiction – have been slow and fraught, reflecting deep disagreement over whether the industry should proceed at all, or under what conditions.
In this episode, Giulia speaks with Simon Holmström, senior deep sea mining policy officer at Seas At Risk, an association of over 30 environmental NGOs from across Europe. Together, they unpack the environmental risks, the limits of current knowledge,and the evolving policy landscape.
Simon highlights the economic viability of deep sea mining, the need for precautionary measures, and the importance of sustainable practices in the face of growing demand for critical minerals.
Their main takeaways are:
- The deep ocean is one of the least understood ecosystems
- The economic viability of deep sea mining remains highly speculative
- Opposition to deep sea mining is growing across civil society and parts of industry
- The regulatory pathway, and therefore the industry’s future, is still unresolved
What emerges is not a simple case for or against, but a more fundamental question: how should we make decisions about technologies where the downside risks are uncertain, potentially systemic and not easily reversible – especially when they are being justified in the name of solving a different global problem?
In trying to address climate change, if we introduce new environmental risks we don't yet fully understand, how should those trade-offs be evaluated? Who gets to decide what level of risk is acceptable, and for whom?
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Once a somewhat niche industry, critical minerals are now dominating headlines, influencing geopolitical trends and driving international trade.
These materials are core components of technologies crucial to the energy transition and defence systems, and heightened interest in these areas is fuelling demand. For example, lithium demand jumped by 30% in 2024, while nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths all increased by 6-8% – and it is expected to keep climbing.
With the International Energy Agency forecasting demand for these minerals to triple or even quadruple by 2040, the rush for critical minerals will continue shaping international relations, highlighting the need to address major environmental and social implications.
In this week's episode, Giulia interviews Olimpia Pilch, critical minerals consultant at Minefield Consulting, on the complex world of critical minerals, their importance in energy transition and defence, and the geopolitical and environmental challenges involved.
Their wide-ranging conversation covers:
- The definition of critical minerals
- Supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical risks
- China's role in critical mineral processing and supply
- What are the potential and limitations of critical mineral recycling
- The environmental and social implications of mineral extraction
While the Global North has outsourced polluting industries, including mining, for decades, it’s crucial to understand that clean technologies need these primary sources. Amid geopolitical tensions straining supply chains, achieving the energy transition may require a new world order.
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The world is starting to feel unpredictable in ways that are difficult to pin down.
Not just because of individual events, but because of how many different pressures are building at the same time. Climate impacts are becoming more visible, geopolitics is fragmenting, technology is moving quickly and economic conditions are being shaped by multiple shocks at once rather than a single, identifiable cause.
It is tempting to treat these as separate issues. Climate as an environmental problem, geopolitics as a political one, technology as something else again. But that separation is becoming harder to sustain. What we’re seeing instead is how these pressures show up together. Changes in one area increasingly show up in others, shaping costs, constraints and the choices available. Assumptions about work, markets or even where it is safe to invest or build are becoming less reliable.
That’s the starting point for this season.
In this opening episode, Felicia and Giulia step back to look at what’s changed in how the world is behaving. Why issues that used to be discussed separately are now overlapping and what that means, whether you’re seeing it through your work or simply trying to make sense of what comes next.
Once these pressures start to show up together, their effects become harder to separate.
Climate risk, for example, is no longer only a question of long-term environmental change. It is increasingly reflected in insurance markets, in the cost of capital and in public finances. Supply chains are being shaped not only by efficiency, but by geopolitical relationships and physical constraints. What might once have been treated as separate risks are now influencing the same outcomes.
At the same time, many of the structures that guide decisions, particularly in finance and policy, are still built around shorter time horizons than the risks they are dealing with.
That is where things become difficult. There is more information available than ever before, but that doesn’t necessarily make choices clearer: different risks point in different directions and the incentives facing companies, investors and governments do not always line up. And so decisions are often delayed until something forces them.
That’s why this season, we’re going to be looking at that reality directly.
By going inside specific industries and areas of the economy, the aim is to understand how these pressures play out in practice, where decisions are actually made, and how different parts of the system influence one another. Not to simplify what is happening, but to make it easier to see what matters and how to respond when the path ahead isn’t always clear.
Each industry or topic we explore will be paired with a conversation like this one, stepping back to break down what’s happening and what it really means. We hope you’ll find it useful.
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Two years on, we have reached season 6!
We have explored a wide range of topics, from the just transition to the planetary boundaries, through the circular economy and climate risk. Now, it's time to delve even deeper into our quest to help you build sustainability literacy.
The current multicrisis is affecting industries in different ways: companies are facing challenges that are unique to the context in which they operate.
That’s why, in this season, we’re tackling one sector at a time, exploring the risks and trade-offs behind business as usual. Each arc will comprise four episodes to drill down into fundamental shifts, innovation, and regulation: expect in-depth analysis on mining, fashion, AI, and many more.
We are living in turbulent times - what happens next depends on how well we understand the world around us. At Shaken Not Burned, we believe that sustainability literacy is a key tool in identifying where risks and opportunities lie. Join us for season 6 as we decode how the decisions driving our economies, industries and institutions are unfolding in practice.
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The food system underpins our entire society. Its stability is crucial: when it starts to wobble, prices rise, availability becomes uncertain, and stress travels quickly from farms to household.
Yet, much of modern agriculture still operates under deep uncertainty. Farmers spend tens of billions of dollars every year on crop protection chemicals, largely without being able to see how much of what they actually apply reaches the plant.
When you don't have that visibility, the rational response for many is to manage risk with excess. However, overuse of pesticides has far-reaching impacts not only on ecosystems, but also human health.
In this week’s episode, Felicia speaks to Vishnu Jayaprakash, founder and CEO of Agzen, an MIT spinout that has developed an AI-based system that measures and controls the amount of chemicals being sprayed on crops. Its technology helps farmers cut chemical use by 30-50 % without sacrificing yields.
The conversation explores the intersection of climate risk, food systems, and the role of technology in making agriculture more efficient and sustainable. Vishnu shares his personal journey into agriculture and what led him to develop Agzen.
Sometimes, the fastest, deepest changes will not come from tearing systems down, but from seeing them more clearly and addressing them differently. Whether making industrial agriculture more precise is a bridge to something better, or a way of prolonging a model that ultimately needs bigger change, is an open question. What is clear is that visibility, accountability, and better information shape what's possible.
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Buildings shape much of our daily lives, but their environmental impact often goes unnoticed. Yet the built environment accounts for nearly 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions, from the energy used to heat and power buildings to the materials used to construct them.
In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia talks to Drew Shula, founder and CEO of Verdical Group, about the role the construction sector plays in climate action. The conversation explores how decisions made during design and construction can influence emissions, costs and resilience for decades, and why much of the real progress in reducing building emissions is happening at the local level.
From energy modelling and building standards to the challenge of scaling sustainable construction practices, this episode looks at how the built environment is becoming both one of the biggest climate challenges – and one of the most practical places to make progress.
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There are talks of endless economic crises, yet the rich are getting richer. Even though many countries promise a welfare system, healthy job markets, and in general decent quality of life for the masses, the numbers suggest that inequality is only getting worse.
According to Oxfam, in 2025 billionaire wealth jumped by over 16% to $18.3 trillion compared to 2024 levels. This massive amount of money is spread among only 3,000 people, who are worth an average of $6.1 billion each. Perhaps more shockingly, billionaire wealth has gone up by 81% in just five years. Is there even a country or industry where average wages have grown at the same rate since 2020?
Meanwhile, 25% of the global population can’t afford regular meals, and nearly half are living in poverty. But why are we talking about this in a sustainability podcast? One of the central tenets of Shaken Not Burned is pursuing a just transition: if the world's richest 1% own around 45% of the global wealth, we can’t expect this money to be invested in a way that will benefit all people in an equitable manner.
In this week’s episode, Giulia interviews Julia Davies, impact investor at We Have The Power and a member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, on what we can do to recalibrate the world's wealth system.
For Julia and her fellow Patriotic Millionaires UK members, the answer is simple: increase taxes on wealth, not on work. The organisation proposes a tax of 2% on wealth above £10 million – however, the UK government doesn’t seem to be listening.
The conversation explores the implications of wealth extremism, emphasising the importance of community solutions and systemic change to address these pressing issues, advocating for a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources.
Crucially, all of us can do something about this, as individuals or business owners: support the campaign and “vote with our wallets”: that is, buy from ethical companies and small- and medium-sized businesses, rather than massive corporations.
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Climate action is facing political backlash, from watered-down EU regulation to the overturning of the EPA’s endangerment finding in the United States. Yet beneath the headlines, systemic climate risk is becoming harder for central banks, insurers and investors to ignore.
In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks with Rachel Delacour, co-founder and CEO of Sweep, about the Climate Contribution Framework, developed with Mirova, ICARE and Winrock International. The framework builds on existing emissions standards but moves beyond footprint alone, assessing how companies reduce emissions, scale low-carbon solutions and finance climate innovation.
As investors search for credible signals of long-term resilience, this conversation explores whether we’ve been measuring the wrong thing — and what it would mean to evaluate companies by their full contribution to net zero rather than by emissions alone.
Sweep and Mirova Research Center launched the Climate Contribution Framework (CCF): A New Standard for Corporate Climate Action. This pioneering methodology developed by I Care by BearingPoint, and Winrock International offers an unprecedented unified, science-based benchmark to fairly measure and value the full spectrum of corporate contributions to global net zero.
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In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia Jackson speaks with Rob Cobbold, founder of Native Squared, about what credible nature finance looks like when you start from land, communities, and long-term stewardship — rather than carbon metrics and abstract credits.
They unpack why many current funding models for nature protection struggle to deliver durable outcomes, how carbon-first and uplift-based approaches can exclude the ecosystems most worth protecting, and why intact nature often fails to qualify for finance at all.
Trust — between funders, communities, companies, and ecosystems — is the missing infrastructure in nature finance: benefit-sharing, governance, and time horizons matter more than ever. Importantly, Indigenous and local communities are among the most effective stewards of ecosystems.
The conversation reaches a surreal but revealing point when Rob explains that, in some cases, the most legally robust way to protect a forest may be to buy the logging rights – and then not log it. It seems that it’s easier to use the same legal tools designed for extraction for protection, compared to the systems supposedly built for conservation. It’s hard to think of a clearer illustration of how upside-down current models have become.
Rather than offering a new “solution,” this episode focuses on judgment: how different models define value, who benefits, where responsibility sits, and how to distinguish genuine stewardship from compensation dressed up as impact.
Nature is foundational to climate, economies and human wellbeing, not an optional add-on: biodiversity loss and climate change are deeply interconnected and mutually reinforcing.
Unfortunately, carbon-centric funding models can undermine nature protection rather than support it. Damaging behaviour can be perversely rewarded because it shows that action is needed: if a forest is being logged, the current system can ensure that funds are directed to that area to avoid logging. At the same time, pristine forests are not legally entitled to funding because it is assumed they don't need protection. Intact rainforests, coral reefs, mangroves – essentially, those ecosystems doing well – often can’t access finance because they aren’t “additional” enough.
Outcomes matter more than processes, even when certainty is impossible.
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What happens when the world is on fire – and someone tells you the solution is a financial instrument?
In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia Jackson speaks with Sean Kidney, co-founder and CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, about how green, climate, and resilience bonds went from a niche idea to a multi-trillion-dollar global market, and why that matters now.
This isn’t a technical deep dive into taxonomy footnotes or ESG compliance. It’s a conversation about how capital actually moves, who it serves, and what it takes to redirect finance toward climate action, adaptation and resilience at scale, without pretending markets are driven by sentiment alone.
Sean explains why long-term investors such as pension funds and insurers are central to climate finance, why bonds unlock scale, and how adaptation and resilience investments can be financed even when they don’t generate obvious revenue streams.
Along the way, we unpack the myths around “financialising” resilience, the role of labels and taxonomies, the political and social limits of climate finance, and why trust and legitimacy may be just as important as clever instruments.
As we figure out the markets of the future, we must remember that green finance today is sensible long-term planning. That shift, from should we? to how fast can we?, may be the most hopeful signal of all.
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At last week's 2026 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, the language of cooperation and resilience may have been everywhere, but the world seems to feel more fragmented, more uncertain and more politically charged than ever.
In this episode, Felicia Jackson is joined by Sherry Madera, chief executive of CDP, to unpack what Davos revealed about the shifting risk landscape, and what businesses are actually doing about it.
Drawing on CDP’s latest Corporate Health Check of 10,000 companies, the conversation explores why the focus is moving away from ambition and targets toward preparedness and resilience. Only a small number of companies are genuinely ready for physical climate risk, transition risk, water stress and nature loss and those that are prepared are quietly outperforming.
Felicia and Sherry discuss why waiting for political clarity is no longer a neutral choice, how insurers, lenders and investors are already pricing physical risk, why ESG language is fading while resilience and adaptation rise, and how AI has unexpectedly pushed water to the centre of boardroom decision-making.
This episode is about risk, resilience, and what it really takes to build long-term value in a fractured world — when the physics keeps moving, whether politics agrees or not.
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In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia talks with Francisco Martin-Rayo, chief executive of Helios AI about the uncomfortable truth behind today’s food prices: climate volatility is no longer a future risk — it’s already reshaping what we can grow, where we can grow it, and whether certain foods show up on our shelves at all.
This isn’t just about floods and fires. It’s about quieter, more destabilising shifts in seasons, rainfall patterns, pests and temperature thresholds that are undermining harvests and driving volatility through the global food system, often long before anyone notices the impact in the supermarket aisle.
Francisco explains how Helios uses artificial intelligence to forecast climate risk and price volatility across agricultural commodities and countries, and why the real problem isn’t a lack of data but a lack of decision infrastructure. Together, they unpack why food systems are uniquely fragile: from rural data gaps and long investment cycles to finance, procurement, and policy rules that lock farmers and buyers into crops that no longer make sense in a changing climate.
As always, at Shaken Not Burned we're not about having all the answers. What we believe matters is building the knowledge we need to ask better questions, in order to understand what’s actually breaking, why it’s breaking, and how better information — used well — could change who holds power in the food system and how resilient it can become.
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In a world obsessed with financial capital, what if the assets that matter most for resilience don’t show up on a balance sheet at all?
In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia talks to Sallyann Della Casa, founder of the mentorship and learning platform GLEAC, to explore the idea of quiet capital, the invisible forms of value that increasingly determine who adapts and thrives in an AI-driven world.
Quiet capital includes trust, networks you can actually mobilise, deep contextual knowledge, purpose, and community. These are the human assets that can’t be automated away — and yet are consistently undervalued because they’re hard to measure.
Together, Felicia and Sallyann discuss why experience and judgment matter more as intelligence becomes cheap, why so many digital and AI transformations fail despite “working” technology, and how organisations quietly undermine resilience by treating people as interchangeable. They also explore why Gen X may be one of the most overlooked — and exposed — generations in the current transition, and why trust may be the most critical form of capital we have left.
This is a conversation about resilience, relevance, and redefining wealth in a world of accelerating change.
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2025 hasn’t been the easiest year. Amid ongoing genocides, Trump becoming US president again, and the EU backtracking on some of its most innovative policies, it feels like progress on sustainability matters has been slow, even non-existent.
Meanwhile, billionaires are becoming richer, artificial intelligence is taking people’s jobs and attention spans, and the climate breakdown continues at a pace. Notably, last year the Earth reached its first tipping point, meaning that warm water coral reefs are unlikely to recover from the damage seen so far unless we drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
All this begs the question: are we fed? Many people are *feeling hopeless: it’s undoubtedly frustrating to put effort into a cause that feels like emptying the ocean with a spoon. For those who have joined the sustainability scene in the past five years or so, it may look like we will never achieve any meaningful change – but is this really where we are?
In the first episode of 2026, Giulia speaks to two seasoned sustainability professionals: Shaken Not Burned co-host, journalist, entrepreneur, and academic Felicia Jackson, and Mike Scott, writer, journalist, and director at Carbon Copy Communications.
In an attempt to assuage her concerns, which are shared by many listeners, Giulia asks the guests how bad the situation really is, and whether history can provide some reassurance that things can be salvaged. Spoiler alert: we have been here before, and somehow made it through.
If you are feeling hopeless in these early days 2026 – and we can’t blame you – look at what’s been achieved so far. For example, renewables were previously labelled as expensive and unreliable, and now account for huge chunks of the energy mix of many countries. Electric vehicles are a normal sight on the road. Companies and consumers alike are valuing sustainable products. Just a decade ago, all of this would have been unthinkable.
As we start the new year, let’s dream big. Let’s set goals that feel completely wild and unattainable. Let’s get together and continue fighting the good fight. Hopefully, we will look back in 10 years’ time and realise all of this was more than doable.
We at Shaken Not Burned will be here, every step of the way. Thank you so much for being a part of our community, and let’s make 2026 a year to remember!
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Water scarcity is already one of the world’s biggest risks — so why do we treat long showers as inconsequential?
In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia talks to Carly Hunt, head of strategic partnerships at Showerkap, about how everyday behaviour shapes water resilience. They explore why most water solutions overlook human habits, how behavioural nudges can cut water use without forcing change, and what early pilots in hotels and universities reveal about the power of small shifts.
The conversation also challenges the idea that individual actions don’t matter. Carly shares how one user cut their water use by around 50% — saving 54 litres a day, or roughly 20,000 litres a year — simply by changing shower habits. Scaled across households, campuses or hotels, those “small” changes quickly become market-level impact.
From seven-minute showers to real-time tracking of water, energy, and carbon, this conversation shows how smart design and behavioural science can quietly drive large-scale impact — and why resilience may start with the most ordinary moments of daily life.
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We are a podcast, but we have to admit: images can speak more than words. A powerful visual can tell a story, evoke sensations, and even inspire action. And isn’t that an essential tool in communicating about climate and sustainability?
Yet, for one reason or another, we resort to cliches: a polar bear on melting ice, a blue marble image, hands joining together over some greenery. Sure, they are cliches for a reason – but which are the alternatives, and how can they capture the attention of our audience?
In this week’s episode, Felicia interviews Dr. Rebecca Swift, SVP creative at Getty Images, to explore the fascinating world of visual communication. They discuss how iconic visuals shape public perception, the emotional connections brands can create through imagery, and the importance of authenticity and transparency in messaging.
Rebecca talks about how the advent of artificial intelligence risks eroding trust, how humour resonates across all ages, and provides tips on how to create imagery that is honest and free of cliches for corporates.
Imagery depicts reality, while simultaneously shaping our view of the world. For sustainability, this means providing an example of how change can look like, making us believe it will be possible.
Getty Images' "Visualizing Sustainability" report: http://reports.gettyimages.com/VisualGPS-Visualizing-Sustainability-Report.pdf
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PFAS, or forever chemicals, are one of the most urgent but misunderstood issues in environmental health.
This group of nearly 15,000 man-made substances are used to make many products more durable or waterproof, but they don’t break down. Instead, they accumulate in our water, our soil and even our bodies.
While we don’t yet have a full picture of their impacts, we know that they have been linked to health issues, such as increased risk of cancer and immune disorders. So, how do we deal with them?
This week, Felicia speaks to Anoosheh Oskouian, president, CEO and co-founder of Ship & Shore Environmental, a company that produces systems for industrial air pollution control.
They talk about the historical context of PFAS, how they end up being released in the atmosphere at the manufacturing level, and, most importantly, how this can be prevented. The conversation highlights the challenges in enforcing prevention measures, the need for global standards, and the future of PFAS management and awareness.
Awareness and education about the forever chemicals are essential for public health and safety. We need policymakers to tighten regulations because prevention is crucial, and also more cost-effective than remediation when it comes to our health.
Note: the inventor of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant who added lead to gasoline, mentioned by Felicia, is Thomas Midgley Jr.
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Carbon markets are intended to be the backbone of climate finance – but they’re often criticised for being opaque, inefficient, and riddled with credibility issues.
This week, Giulia talked to Alex Taylor, co-founder at KlimaDAO and Carbonmark, about the messy reality of the voluntary carbon markets, from opaque pricing, questionable credit quality, middlemen capturing most of the value, as well as why so many people doubt the whole system.
KlimaDAO tried to use blockchain to make the market more transparent and efficient by tokenising carbon credits and putting them on-chain, exposing real prices, cutting out intermediaries. That is the sort of move expected to result in more transparency, liquidity, and, crucially, accountability.
Yet, there are always challenges in new approaches, and the conversation doesn’t dodge the 2022 ‘zombie credits’ controversy: when older and largely inactive credits bridged via Toucan ended up dominating KlimaDAO’s early pools, raising concerns from independent analysts about quality and integrity.
Alex talks candidly about what went wrong, why it happened, and how they’ve redesigned their systems to focus on higher-quality and removal credits. This could be a case study in what it takes to rebuild trust in a market many people already see as flawed, and the role technology can realistically play in cleaning it up.
The real question is: will it deliver? And what does it mean for the future of climate finance if the markets themselves are being rebuilt from the ground up?
This episode examines the integrity challenges across voluntary carbon markets, why additionality and credit quality matter, and how efforts like KlimaDAO aim to fix long-standing problems. It revisits the ‘zombie credits’ controversy and explores the regulatory questions shaping the sector’s future.
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Europe talks a big game on marine protection but, beneath the surface, the picture is far more fragile.
This week on Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks with Professor Callum Roberts, one of the world’s leading marine biologists and lead scientist on the Convex Seascape Survey. His research reveals a climate risk we almost never count: what happens to the carbon stored in our seabed when it’s torn up by trawling.
The ocean floor is one of the planet’s largest natural carbon stores, locking away vast reserves built up over millennia. But each time a trawl drags across the seabed, that carbon is disturbed – some is released back into the ocean, some into the atmosphere. The scale of this disruption is still uncertain, which is why Callum now leads the Convex Seascape Survey, a five-year research effort to map, measure, and understand these hidden climate dynamics.
In this conversation, Callum explains why marine protected areas in Europe aren’t enough, how seabed carbon loss could reshape our climate models, and what meaningful protection actually requires.
We also explore the policy and finance implications: why seabed health matters for supply chains, food security, and long-term resilience – and why ocean action must sit at the heart of climate strategy, not the margins.
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Let’s dive into a part of climate action that too often sits behind the scenes: the hard work of making impact measurable and decision-ready. Sustainability teams may spend years drowning in data, frameworks and reporting demands, yet businesses still struggle to answer the simplest question of all: what’s the best choice to make?
This week, Felicia speaks to Nick Catania, co-founder of ClimatePoint, a company that is building bottom-up tools that trace impacts through the full life cycle of a product. The purpose is to quantify the delta between business-as-usual and climate-positive alternatives, to reveal the real, cumulative effects of a company’s decisions.
Some call them avoided emissions or Scope 4: they are the emissions generated outside of a company’s product life cycle or value chain. ClimatePoint seeks to find what it calls the… climate point, or when a company’s operational emissions are outweighed by its positive impact.
In the interview, Nick argues that traditional carbon accounting falls short, and explains how system boundaries shape the stories told by businesses. The conversation covers the growing pressure for credible, comparable data as the Paris Agreement enters its next phase, and why visibility is fast becoming a competitive advantage.
Once you make the invisible visible, you open the door to better decisions and faster climate action. When we make impacts comparable and traceable, we change which choices look attractive, which innovations scale, and how leaders understand risk.
Measurable, comparable impacts change the incentives; and when incentives change, the system starts to shift.
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What does it really mean to be net zero? In a world overflowing with climate claims, standards are becoming the new currency of trust, as they set technical definitions and create common ground.
This week, we’re exploring something that could reshape how the world defines and delivers climate ambition: the new ISO net zero guidelines.
Our guest is Noelia Garcia Nebra, head of sustainability at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO’s purpose is to bring credibility to achieve net zero, a race that’s been plagued by confusion and greenwashing.
The organisation has partnered with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to align accounting rules, improve comparability, and restore confidence in what “net zero” really means.
The new guidelines are designed to make ambition measurable and accountability possible. They promise to bridge the gap between lofty corporate pledges and the proof needed to back them up. By creating clearer expectations, they also help direct capital toward credible action, reducing the risk of greenwashing and reinforcing confidence in global climate goals.
According to Noelia, we all have to start speaking the same language. Without shared definitions, there can be no shared trust, and without trust, there can be no real transition.
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The Conference of the Parties, or COP30 this year in Brazil,can seem remote – bureaucratic, elite, hard to connect with. But it’s also one of the few spaces where solidarity can still take shape.
The same is true of philanthropy: when it’s built on listening and trust, not hierarchy or control, it becomes a bridge between people and resources rather than another layer of power.
This week's guest is Raysa França, climate justice educator and philanthropy advisory manager at Impatience Earth. We talk about philanthropy, power, and persistence – and why, even when global climate talks feel distant or political, moments like COP30 still matter.
We explore how gatherings like COP can foster connection and shared purpose, not just negotiation, and what decentralising power looks like in real terms, from who gets funded to who gets heard.
Ultimately, showing up – in partnerships, at summits, in uncomfortable conversations – is an act of resilience. Hope isn’t naïve: it’s a practice of persistence.
Raysa offers a powerful reminder that the very act of coming together – across borders, sectors, and disagreements – might be one of the few things still holding our shared future together.
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Working in sustainability means getting the story right.
We may have crunched the numbers and estimated the risks of biodiversity loss in a certain area, or the opportunities arising from decarbonising a certain sector. But if we don’t communicate effectively with our stakeholders, there is a real risk that all of this effort will go to waste.
This is particularly true when interacting with stakeholders requires navigating cultural differences. So how can storytelling help enable a just transition?
In this week’s episode, Giulia interviews Somia Sadiq, a peacebuilder, environmental planner, and all-around communications expert. She is the founder and CEO of Narratives and Kahanee, and very recently published her first novel, Gajarah.
Somia explains how to create spaces for difficult discussions around climate change, how to champion cultural nuances in business settings, and what approach to take when interacting with people who have different opinions.
At a time when most of us are stuck in echo chambers, we cannot afford to shy away from establishing a dialogue: we must harness the power of words to find equitable solutions.
Hate misinformation? Us too. If you can spare some time, help us in our next endeavour and take our Climate Misinformation Survey!
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Every day we read new headlines about climate extremes, yet behind the noise lies a quieter, more corrosive threat: misinformation.
In this week's episode of Shaken Not Burned, we explore why climate misinformation isn’t a communications issue or a social-media nuisance, but a systemic business risk that can destabilise economies, erode public trust, and undermine effective climate action.
Our guest, Harriet Kingaby, co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network, explains how misinformation spreads through ad-tech systems and algorithmic incentives that reward outrage over truth. She reveals why brands, often without knowing it, end up funding the very content that delays the energy transition and weakens democratic resilience.
In conversation with Felicia, Harriet unpacks how climate misinformation is engineered rather than accidental and who profits from confusion, why fewer than 5% of companies list misinformation on their risk registers, and the hidden links between advertising, data, and the erosion of public trust.
The episode also provides practical steps businesses can take from pre-bunking and inoculation to demanding supply-chain transparency in digital media, explaining why the human side of persuasion and how emotion, trust, and relatable stories work better than facts alone.
We also invite you to take part in our Climate Misinformation Survey, a new initiative exploring where and how people experience false or distorted information, so organisations can build stronger defences against it.
By treating misinformation as a core resilience issue, businesses can lead the shift toward transparency, rebuild public trust, and strengthen the foundations of a sustainable economy.
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This week, we are talking about the turbulence surrounding ESG and sustainable finance. The question we’re exploring: is the backlash against ESG a crisis, or a necessary correction?
Joining us is Professor Thanos Verousis, an economist and researcher on sustainable finance at Vlerick Business School. Together, we unpack why ESG is under fire, what went wrong, and how finance can evolve to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
It is tempting to see ESG as the future of finance or to dismiss it entirely as a failed fad. But as Thanos explains, ESG was never meant to be the system. It is a measurement tool. Sustainable finance requires something deeper: transparency, regulation, and a willingness to grapple with real trade-offs.
The discussion covers the tension between financial returns and social trade-offs, how a narrow financial definition of fiduciary duty is shifting to include climate and social concerns, why alliances often stall, and how ESG is interpreted differently globally.
As Thanos puts it: “Sustainable finance will only mature when we are honest about trade-offs, transparent in pricing externalities, and inclusive of those not yet at the table.”
ESG hype was bound to face correction: by reframing this moment as a sustainability correction, finance has a chance to rebuild on stronger, more resilient foundations.
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Think about the products you use every day at home. The hand soap. The cleaning spray. The sponge for the dishes. The face cream. The toothpaste.
Why do you buy certain brands, with certain packaging and certain ingredients?
Whether it's because they were the products of our childhood, or the advertising has convinced us, or the price is just too convenient, we may not spend much time questioning our purchase decisions. It feels like consumers are pushed towards disposable items that contain powerful chemicals that may not necessarily be good for people or the environment.
But is there another way?
In this week’s episode, Giulia speaks to Ira Guha, founder at Asan, to challenge the consumer products status quo through the lens of the menstrual cup.
They explore the history of menstrual products, including their environmental and health impacts, and the issue of period poverty. Ira shares insights on the need for education and behaviour change to promote reusable options, which are not often displayed in shops and pharmacies, remaining a bit of a “secret”.
Breaking the taboo surrounding menstruation ignites the discussion on the vast array of reusable products. By opening up to other people who menstruate, we can discover that they are more environmentally friendly, and arguably more comfortable, than what the status quo has us believe.
This blueprint can be applied to all those products that we use on a daily basis. Can you make the switch to a reusable option today?
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Is ESG really “dead,” or are we asking the wrong question?
Perhaps, we should examine what it takes to run a truly responsible business in today’s high-risk environment.
This week, Giulia is joined by Steve Kenzie, executive director of the UN Global Compact Network UK, to explore how the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative is pushing companies beyond paper commitments and into real accountability.
It is tempting to think that ESG acronyms, ratings, and disclosure frameworks capture what responsibility means. Meanwhile, as Steve explains, the underlying pressures – climate change, inequality, resource stress – are not going away.
Business as usual is untenable. The companies that survive will be those that embed principles, acknowledge trade-offs, and act with long-term value in mind.
In the first episode of Season 5, we explore why debates over ESG branding miss the real sustainability pressures, how the UNGC helps businesses align with global needs, and what needs to change to scale true sustainable practices.
This is a reality check – and a call to courage – for leaders navigating backlash, complexity, and the quiet temptation to wait it out.
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At the heart of Shaken Not Burned is sustainability literacy. But not in the sense of teaching acronyms or repeating headlines. What we mean is something bigger: the skills to understand how systems really work – and how to change them.
The same skills that help you spot greenwash or untangle climate policy are the ones we all need to face today’s challenges: misinformation, polarisation, geopolitical shocks, even the cracks in democratic norms.
Here’s the thing: we don’t need more theories telling us where we should be. We need the how. How do we move from brilliant ideas and elegant frameworks to action that actually changes things?
We are placing power at the core of our project. Not power as something distant or elite, but power as agency. Knowing where you stand, what you can influence, and how your actions ripple through the system. That shift – from paralysis to agency – is the foundation for resilience and change.
This season we’ll be exploring how people are already doing it. Different approaches, different products, different ways of thinking – but all rooted in action, not theory.
Whether you’re running a business, allocating capital, or simply trying to build a better future, Season 5 is about finding your leverage points and learning how change actually happens.
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What does it take to scale real-world climate solutions fast?
In this episode, we explore what happens when you treat climate action like an engineering challenge, not just a moral imperative.
Joining us is Nick Wirth, aerodynamicist, engineer, and former Formula One team owner turned cleantech entrepreneur. Today, he’s applying high-performance engineering to supermarkets, trucks, and buildings through Wirth Research, saving clients energy costs and cutting emissions with every installation.
Nick walks us through his journey from designing wind-tunnel-free F1 cars to developing AirDoor and EcoBlade, technologies which are now being used across the UK retail sector to cut heating and cooling loads by up to 70%.
We explore why sustainability only scales when it delivers a strong return, how overlooked retrofits could unlock widespread adoption of heat pumps, and what supermarkets reveal about behavioural economics and invisible design.
The good news is that the business case is stronger than ever. The challenge now is moving fast enough, and thinking big enough, to match the moment.
Nick’s story is a powerful reminder that many of the answers we need already exist. What’s missing isn’t innovation but implementation at scale. Listen in, and find out what it looks like when a Formula One mindset meets a broken energy system – and decides to rebuild it.
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Let’s step out of the ESG echo chamber and into a much bigger conversation: what are the real limits of our planet and how close are we to crossing them? Life on Earth has remained stable for the last 12,000 years, but that stability is starting to unravel.
It’s tempting to treat climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and land use as separate “issues,” each with their own strategy, timeline, and department. But that’s not how Earth works, and businesses that think that way are flying blind.
In this week’s episode, Felicia speaks with Dr. Katherine Richardson, Earth system scientist, professor of biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen, and one of the architects of the Planetary Boundaries framework.
We explore why six of the nine planetary boundaries have already been breached and what that really means for our future. Katherine explains how Earth system science reframes sustainability, moving us beyond the idea of simply doing less harm toward a far more urgent goal: staying within the planet’s safe operating space.
We may be overdue for a social tipping point, and business leaders can help accelerate that shift. We ask what executives actually need to understand about science (hint: it’s not the chemistry), and examine how outdated metrics, short-term thinking, and misaligned incentives keep many companies stuck, while others are quietly forging a different path.
This episode is a wake-up call, but also a message of hope. Change is happening, albeit not fast enough. But as we’ve learned from smoking bans to seat belts, social tipping points often come quickly if enough of us help push.
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From climate volatility to food insecurity and antibiotic resistance, the global food system is at a breaking point. Industrial agriculture contributes up to 25% of global emissions, drives biodiversity loss, and strains farmers with volatile prices and precarity.
It’s clear we need to change how food is made, not just how it's consumed: one bold solution is clean agriculture.
In this week’s episode, Felicia speaks with Jim Mellon, entrepreneur, investor, and executive chairman of Agronomics, a company backing cellular agriculture and precision fermentation to create meat, dairy, eggs, and oils, without animal cruelty, deforestation, or ultra-processed additives.
Agronomics is invested in companies such as Meatly, BlueNalu, Liberation Labs, and Clean Food Group, aiming to industrially replace high-impact ingredients such as palm oil, dairy proteins, and even bluefin tuna with bio-identical, lower-impact alternatives.
In this episode, we unpack what clean agriculture really means, and why it’s fundamentally different from plant-based food and from GM. We explore its potential to cut emissions, reduce antibiotic use, ease pressure on land, and stabilise food prices in an era of growing volatility.
Jim Mellon why new fermentation infrastructure is critical, what investors often misunderstand about this emerging sector, and how dogs might just be the unlikely bridge to a cleaner, more sustainable future for meat.
Whether you care about emissions, animal welfare, farmer livelihoods, or just the price of chocolate, this episode makes the case for why clean agriculture might just be the food system moonshot we need.
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The world needs to plug a biodiversity finance gap worth $700 billion per year to effectively protect and restore nature, according to the United Nations. This issue is garnering more attention as sustainability efforts have evolved from reducing carbon emissions to protecting nature – moving from ‘do no harm’ to taking positive action.
A turning point was the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, to which most countries agreed in 2022, defining biodiversity commitments, pushing for reporting and regulation and calling for more than $200 billion from public and private capital.
One potential solution is raising financing through biodiversity markets. But establishing biodiversity credits isn’t as simple as carbon credits: a tonne of CO2 emitted has the same impact globally, while nature and biodiversity impacts are very specific and local.
The history of the development of the carbon markets has had its own challenges, as they were fraught with significant controversies, raising concerns about the same issues developing in the biodiversity markets. In this week’s episode, Giulia explores this new space with Simas Gradeckas, founder at Bloom Labs.
The conversation touches upon the role of corporate responsibility in addressing biodiversity loss, ethical considerations surrounding projects in the Global South and putting a priceon nature, the differences between compliance and voluntary markets, and the future prospects for scaling biodiversity finance.
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There’s no denying that continuing to treat the natural world as we do will lead to ecological breakdown. We don’t seem to take into account how our consumption of natural resources affects the planet – which, ultimately, may stop providing those resources in the first place.
UK economist Kate Raworth has developed a model, called doughnut economics, which provides an alternative system where humans can thrive without breaching planetary boundaries. In her landmark book, “Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist,” she suggests seven transformation points in our current economic system.
In this week’s episode, Giulia explores this framework with Carolina Eboli and Jo Woods, board members of the London Doughnut Economy Coalition. The interview covers the Coalition’s work at a local level, engaging communities in South London while acknowledging the urgency to maintain a global perspective in addressing these issues.
The conversation also touches upon the challenges for businesses in integrating the doughnut principles in their operations. While some companies have successfully implemented them, adopting this mindset isn’t straightforward, as each business navigates its unique context. Yet, this shouldn’t discourage action; ultimately, operating within planetary boundaries means future-proofing and building an organisation for the 21st century and beyond.
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From heating and cooling to construction materials and power demand, buildings are responsible for up to a third of global emissions –but rarely get the political or media attention they deserve. This week, Felicia talks to Lord Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, to explore why that needs to change now.
We dig into why electrification is the only real path to decarbonising the built environment, and why heat pumps – not hydrogen – are the smarter, more efficient bet for home heating. Better insulation can drive down energy costs; we urgently need to upgrade transmission and distribution networks, despite the costs and complexity because, without them, electrification can’t deliver.
We also look at the opportunity for the Global South to leapfrog outdated systems and build smarter from the ground up, designing cities and buildings that are efficient by default, not by retrofit.
It's clear: there’s no single solution. We need a range of solutions and systemic shifts, tailored to place and purpose, including smarter design, reuse of excess heat, and flexible demand systems that reduce pressure on the grid.
If we’re serious about climate action, we can’t keep ignoring the buildings we live and work in. The transition won’t succeed without them, and done right, it could mean lower energy bills, healthier homes, and a more resilient future. This is not about net zero targets but about what we build today, and how we power it tomorrow.
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In this week’s episode Felicia Jackson talks to Phil Korbel, co-founder and director of advocacy at The Carbon Literacy Project, about what it truly means to move beyond awareness into action.
Too often, climate conversations are filled with well-meaning phrases and distant threats. We hear about melting ice caps, rising seas, and catastrophic futures—but what do these really mean for our daily lives, our work, and our ability to shape the world around us?
We dive into what carbon literacy actually is: not another layer of theory, but a practical framework that helps individuals and organisations understand their carbon impact and, crucially, do something about it.
Phil shares stories of real people, from corporate executives to shop floor staff, who have shifted not just how they think, but how they act. Whether it’s changing how a company sets its net-zero targets, or how a single employee reimagines waste in a retail store, these are stories of measurable, empowering change.
Ifyou’re interested in learning more about carbon literacy for your organisation, or for yourselves, you can find out more at www.carbonliteracy.com. Or if this is something you’d be interested in us delivering for you, let us know at Shaken Not Burned and we'll see what we can deliver - reach out to info@shakennotburned.com.
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With extreme weather disrupting harvests, food prices spiking, and soil health declining globally, regenerative agriculture is emerging as a compelling solution – not just for farmers, but for everyone who eats.
This week, Felicia talks to Andrew Voysey, chief impact officer at Soil Capital, about why regenerative agriculture matters to farmers, industry and individuals.
Regenerative agriculture isn’t just about greener farms: it’s about the resilience of our food system in the face of increasingly volatile weather. But while data shows how broken soil leads to broken supply chains and higher prices at the checkout, the public conversation hasn’t caught up. We talk about climate and food prices as if they're distinct – but they're not.
We have headlines about drought, and headlines about inflation, but no understanding of how the two are connected. We’re not just talking about emissions or yields; we’re talking about the very resilience of our food system. And resilience is now a business, cost-of-living, and national security issue.
We assume change will cost more. But staying the same is already costing us. We need to reframe the conversation – urgently.
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There are many ways to take climate action: one of these involves going to court. An increasing number of groups worldwide are driving change through legal means, in a process commonly known as climate litigation.
Climate litigation matters because it brings climate responsibility into the legal arena, where science, rights, and accountability can meet enforceable action. It's not just about winning court cases—it's about creating leverage for systemic transformation.
The strategic use of law has an important role to play in the sustainable transition. Some landmark cases have led to policy reforms or court-ordered emissions reductions, influencing broader societal and economic change. Even if courts rule against environmentalists’ claims, bringing a climate case to court raises awareness among the public and can set precedents for future lawsuits. But what does it mean for companies?
We explore this topic in this week’s episode with Zaneta Sedilekova, director of climate and nature risk at Planet Law Lab. In conversation with co-host Giulia Bottaro, they unpack the definition of climate litigation, how this trend has grown in the last few years, and the role of citizens in keeping governments and corporations accountable.
The conversation also touches on high-profile cases – one of which, Saúl Luciano Lliuya vs RWE, is due a decision imminently. This landmark case is the first one where an individual, a Peruvian farmer named Saúl Luciano Lliuya, is claiming damages against the German energy giant RWE for historical emissions, which in turn are behind the risk of floods in his town.
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Not long ago, climate ambition was peaking: companies were racing to make net zero pledges and get approvals by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). But now, the mood has shifted.
While most businesses haven’t completely walked away from climate action, many of them are rethinking their plans, moving deadlines forward or cutting their targets. Unfortunately, some are abandoning their initiatives altogether.
In this week’s episode, which was our first-ever live recording, co-host Felicia Jackson interviews Chris Hocknell, director of Eight Versa, to explore whether corporate decarbonisation is dead, or just due for a rethink.
Their conversation – which is followed by a Q&A with the audience – delves into the challenges companies face in achieving net zero targets, the complexities of supply chains, and the economic pressures impacting sustainability efforts. Chris talks about the evolution of carbon neutral compared to net zero, the credibility of carbon offsetting, and the role of nature-based solutions.
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It's a turbulent time for the global economy, which is leading some companies to row back on their sustainability commitments and focus their efforts on what is deemed essential spending.
However, environmental impacts go both ways: a company can create environmental damage, for example by polluting the air or water, but it can also be at the receiving end of this damage, when ecosystem breakdown leads to flooding or wildfires.
Last week we introduced the concept of climate risk, what it is and why it matters. At this point, preventing and managing climate risk becomes essential spending. But how can companies prioritise it in times of economic crisis? In our latest episode, co-host Giulia Bottaro goes into more depth on how to address this challenge with Dave Jones, former California insurance commissioner and director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
Dave explains how evaluating climate risk is no longer a “nice to have”, especially as climate disclosure requirements are becoming a regulatory obligation globally. The discussion also delves into the role of insurance in managing climate risk, the importance of nature-based solutions, and the need for transparency and proactive measures in corporate practices.
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Extreme weather is here. Supply chains are vulnerable. Insurance costs are rising. And whether or not governments pull funding for climate science or roll back disclosure rules, businesses, economies, and insurers still have to grapple with the very real impacts. Insurers can’t afford to ignore mounting losses, and companies can’t afford to ignore their exposure. Risk still needs to be priced, especially in a world where the costs are only going up.
In the latest episode of Shaken Not Burned, host Felicia Jackson sits down with Tom Sabbatelli-Goodyer, VP of climate risk at FIS, to unpack one of the biggest threats to modern business: climate risk.
Recorded before the latest wave of political shifts – including the US election, the roiling tariff trauma and pushback on climate and ESG, as well as the EU’s delay on CSRD – the conversation feels more relevant than ever. While regulation may stall, and ESG becomes a political football, the physical reality underpinning climate risk remains unchanged.
Tom and Felicia explore what climate risk really means today – from acute shocks like floods and wildfires, to chronic pressures like sea-level rise and declining productivity. They break down how businesses can move from awareness to action, with smarter scenario planning, better data, and tools designed to make resilience a strategic advantage, not just a compliance box.
This is not just another climate conversation. It’s a wake-up call for decision-makers navigating a world where climate is no longer a future problem - its a financial one happening now.
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Our economic system is based on extracting as much value as possible from natural resources, without taking into consideration the principles and processes that power our ecosystems.
Somehow, as humans, we have come to believe that we are not part of the natural world in an “us and them” situation. But, really, we are all the same. How can we survive without the Earth?
Keeping our planet liveable means integrating our activities with nature, protecting and serving ecosystems, rather than exploiting them. If we focused on regeneration, rather than extraction, we could create a new balance.
In our latest episode, Giulia talks about the regenerative economy with Erinch Sahan, business & enterprise lead at Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL). They cover the concept of biomimicry, how companies can adopt a regenerative approach, and the benefits it will bring to society, from an environmental but also a social perspective.
- DEAL’s tools for businesses
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Cement might not be sexy, but it is responsible for 8% of global emissions – and it's in everything from critical infrastructure to homes. It's fundamental to development and its decarbonisation is critical to net zero success.
This week, Felicia dives into the future of construction with Grant Quasha, CEO of Eco Material Technologies, the largest supplier of low-carbon cement alternatives in North America.
They unpack how industrial waste like coal ash and steel slag are being transformed into sustainable building materials, why AI is reshaping power and construction demands, and how policy and carbon tariffs are influencing the green building revolution.
Tune in to learn:
- How blended cements are taking over the market
- Why AI data centres are changing how we build
- What carbon tariffs mean for the future of materials
- And how cost-efficiency and sustainability can finally align
It’s not just about reducing emissions – it’s about rethinking what we build with, for generations to come.
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Welcome to another week of Shaken Not Burned!
If you live in today's world, you may be inclined to think that capitalism is the only viable way for our economies to exist. After all, it's been like that for centuries, but this system is not serving the vast majority of people, and certainly not the environment.
Most companies today have the main goal of growth: expanding their market share, increasing revenue and profits, boosting returns to shareholders. However, we live on a planet that has finite resources – endless growth is just not possible.
The concept of degrowth has emerged as an alternative to the current extractive system, proposing that economic activity focuses on human needs and well-being. In this week’s episode, Giulia interviews Sara Mahdi, degrowth scholar at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, to unpack the meaning of degrowth and how it can be applied in practice.
Further reading:
- What is degrowth?
- Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help
- Stakeholder capitalism: A brief history of GDP and its use
- Our episode on stakeholder capitalism
- Degrowth lessons from Cuba
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Over the last couple of years forest carbon credits have become an increasingly contentious solution to the climate challenge because of questions around additionality, permanence and leakage.
Scandals have emerged over how carbon credits are estimated and assessed, much of which stems from outdated or flawed methodologies. The risk of greenwashing is a core concern, that credits have been used by companies to appear climate-friendly without delivering real impact.
With advancing technology, stronger regulation and the introduction of dynamic baselines however, nature-based solutions like forest conservation and reforestation are critical to the capture and storage of CO2 in natural ecosystems. The market is evolving quickly, offering significant opportunities as it matures.
In this episode, Felicia Jackson sits down with Lisett Luik, co-founder of Arbonics, to dive into the challenges and potential of nature-based carbon removal, from using satellite data and LiDAR to build a “digital twin” of forests, to navigating the complexities of carbon markets, trust, and transparency.
The conversation also explores how companies like Microsoft are evolving their carbon removal strategies, highlighting the spectrum of approaches available—from avoidance and forest conservation to cutting-edge technological removals. It examines what makes forest carbon credits either valuable or controversial, and emphasizes the essential role nature-based solutions will play over the next 30 to 50 years, even if their impacts aren't always permanent.
And for those of you interested in the articles discussed on the podcast, or want some further reading:
- Measuring Forest Carbon (remembering allometric equations)
- Realigning Climate Finance: Is It Time We Move From Oil to Soil?
- We won't achieve gigatonne carbon removal
- Carbon Removal’s Wrong Turn
- The Frontier Coalition for Carbon Dioxide Removal (technical)
- The Symbiosis Coalition for Nature Based Carbon Removals
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In our current economic system, a company director's primary responsibility is widely considered to be to maximise profits for its shareholders. Their interests take precedence over those of other stakeholders – such as employees, communities, and customers – but this comes at a cost.
When the return on investment is prioritised, the consequences are socialised: for example, air pollution caused by industry affects public health, which local communities and, ultimately, the government are likely to pay for. Such externalities are not included in the cost of operations.
The roots of this ideology can be traced back to economist Milton Friedman, who argued in the 1970s that corporate executives' main duty is to their employers: the shareholders. But what happens if we prioritise stakeholders instead?
In this week’s episode, Giulia discusses this issue with Rob Karpati, partner and senior advisor at investment advisory firm The Blended Capital Group. As they cover the differences between shareholder capitalism and stakeholder capitalism, Rob emphasises that prioritising stakeholders isn’t charity, but smart investment that fosters sustainable relationships and creates value for all parties involved.
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Agriculture is responsible for around a quarter of global emissions, yet the environmental impact isn’t reflected in the cost of food. The food industry faces the challenge of balancing supply and demand in a world of finite resources, alongside the externalities that modern food production has created – from biodiversity loss to rising health concerns linked to ultra-processed foods.
This week Felicia talks to Alastair Cooper, head of venture at Cibus Capital, to explore one of the most pressing challenges of our time: the need for a sustainable food system. The conversation uncovers the hidden costs of agriculture, the investment gap in sustainable farming, and the innovations that could revolutionise how we produce food.
Despite growing awareness, investment in agri-tech and sustainable farming solutions remains far behind other sectors like renewable energy. Alastair explains why private capital is essential for scaling solutions such as robotic precision spraying, microbe-based soil enrichment, and pheromone-based pest control, which could significantly reduce the industry’s environmental footprint. At the same time, shifting government policies and new regulations on natural capital could play a pivotal role in reshaping the food economy.
This episode is a must-listen for investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and consumers looking to understand how financial flows, government policies, and technological breakthroughs can drive the food transition.
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The energy transition is firmly part of the mainstream discourse: politicians and companies often talk about it but, at times, it can feel like an abstract concept.
Maybe our lives don't look much different at the moment – sure, there are more electric vehicles on the road and solar panels on roofs – but there is a huge amount of work going on in policy and industry to decarbonise our energy systems. While these new strategies require a whole set of changes on the supply and demand side, they bring out enormous opportunities.
In our latest episode, Giulia speaks to Isabella Suarez, Southeast Asia lead at TransitionZero, to understand where we are with the energy transition. The conversation covers the definition of the energy transition, the technological advancements we can count on and the challenges we are facing.
We touch upon the importance of energy efficiency, the world’s dependency on fossil fuels, and how professionals can engage in the energy transition. It’s a massive endeavour that requires different types of action depending on the country where it’s taking place, but it’s one of the most crucial steps we can take to mitigate climate change.
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Climate resilience is essential to protect communities in vulnerable regions against extreme weather events. But the volume of funding for adaptation in the Global South, which bears the brunt of climate change, remains far smaller than that for mitigation, which is driving communities to find their own homegrown solutions. Richer nations, which contribute the majority of emissions, must be held accountable.
This week, Felicia talks to Ashfaq Zaman, strategic communication advisor for Aspire to Innovate (a2i), the Bangladeshi government’s innovation agency, about resilience, vulnerability and reorganising the way we understand value.
We dive into climate resilience, climate justice, and the role of frugal solutions in tackling climate change, especially in the Global South. Our discussion explores how communities historically adapted to climate challenges and how innovation – both technological and mindset-driven – can drive sustainable change, highlighting the urgent need for sustainable innovation, policy reform, and equitable financial commitments to mitigate climate risks.
The key challenge today is to integrate natural, frugal, and homegrown solutions into modern climate strategies. While international climate initiatives and financial pledges have fallen short, local communities continue to innovate and adapt without external support. For example, farmers in Bangladesh are developing indigenous crops which can sustain high salinity by trial and error.
- Our episode on the just transition
- Frugal innovation as a source of entrepreneurship
- Climate change is a matter of justice: here’s why
- Climate change initiatives of Bangladesh
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In order to transition the global economy to a more sustainable basis, we have to reshape economic systems to balance growth with environmental protection and social equity – and that means putting people at the heart of that transformation.
The just transition is about ensuring that nobody is left behind; it's about upholding human rights, minimising negative impacts on workers, and boosting equality and opportunity.
In this week’s episode, Giulia interviews Gosbert Chagula MBE, co-founder and head of programmes at the Startup Discovery School. He also sits on the UK Department of Business and Industrial Strategy’s SME Engagement Group, which advises the government on issues and opportunities relating to entrepreneurship and small business.
Giulia and Gosbert discuss the role of entrepreneurship in driving the transition, the implications of climate justice, and the effectiveness of global events, such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, in fostering action and championing diversity.
Financial inclusion is going to be crucial if we’re going to successfully address global challenges, because it ensures that everyone – especially marginalised communities, small businesses, and workers in high-risk industries – has the financial resources and opportunities to adapt, innovate, and thrive in a more sustainable economy.
Gosbert provides examples of good practices in the private and public sector, concluding with his recommendations for governments looking to implement the just transition. Because not everyone holds the same power: those who do will need to lift the others up.
Reading materials:
- Definition, history, and principles of the just transition
- Gosbert’s opinion piece on the World Economic Forum’s diversity problem
- Startup Discovery School’s impact report
- UK climate tech investment surges almost 25%: PwC
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Multilateral treaties underpin so much of what's needed to achieve climate and sustainability goals, but few understand the complexities of international treaties or the real challenges of global cooperation.
Nearly 200 nations with different economic and geopolitical interests have to negotiate emissions cuts, financial responsibilities, commitments and strategies for how to achieve their goals. Is it any wonder that most of us look at the annual climate meetings and wonder why progress is so slow?
This week Felicia talks to Dr. Harald Heubaum, chair of the Centre for Energy and Climate Policy at SOAS, University of London about the Paris Agreement, the challenges it faces and the potential for change. Corporate and local action has a critical role to play, as these international treaties change the norms underpinning how we are expected to behave.
We unpack the obstacles businesses face in meeting climate goals and the solutions that can drive meaningful change. With the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement for the second time, we explore the role of local action, from states and cities, to corporations and citizens.
Reading materials:
Breaking Barriers Toward a Net-Zero Economy
5 Challenges the UNFCCC Must Overcome To Spur Climate Action
How Businesses Can Achieve Net-Zero Goals
Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures
30 Years of International Climate Negotiations: Are They Still Our Best Hope?
Corporations and Climate Change: An Overview
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Biodiversity is the foundation of nature’s ability to function, yet it’s vanishing at an alarming rate; so much so that experts call it the sixth mass extinction. With over half of the world’s GDP relying on nature, businesses ignoring this crisis risk major disruptions: biodiversity loss, largely driven by resource extraction and industrial activity, already has major effects on global supply chains and the economy.
This week, Felicia chats with Nicole Sherwin, chief impact officer at sustainability intelligence company EcoVadis, about why biodiversity matters for businesses and how a rising tide raises all boats. There is extraordinary potential within nature to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss - and one thing that we can all do is start the conversation.
She highlights how biodiversity loss is deeply connected to climate change, supply chain resilience, and social issues such as fair wages. Addressing it requires a holistic approach that integrates environmental, social, and economic factors. Nicole encourages businesses and individuals alike to take action, whether by setting biodiversity policies, embracing sustainable practices, or investing in nature-based solutions.
The takeaway? Biodiversity isn’t just about compliance: it’s an opportunity. Companies that lead in conservation will be more resilient, earn consumer trust, and stay ahead of evolving regulations. While the challenge is huge, every effort, big or small, helps reverse biodiversity loss and build a more sustainable future.
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An effective sustainability strategy is now a necessity, but sometimes it can feel like yet another task to add to the pile. In times of uncertainty, however, sustainability isn’t just another chore – it’s the foundation for resilience, competitive advantage, and long-term survival.
In this episode, Giulia interviews Mike Penrose, co-founder of sustainability management and reporting ecosystem Sustainability Group and FuturePlus, who argues that sustainability needs to be integrated into core business, rather than being addressed as a standalone endeavour.
The conversation covers the role of chief sustainability officers, the impact of regulations, and why businesses should adopt proactive sustainability strategies.
Measuring data such as carbon emissions, natural resource consumption, and social impact can provide insights that can help plan for more efficient, future-proof and, ultimately, profitable, operations.
This data can prove pivotal in raising funding and complying with legislation, which is getting tighter in many jurisdictions. As Mike says, sustainability comes with upfront costs, but retrofitting the business later down the line may prove significantly more expensive.
Reading materials:
- ESG performance has positive impacts on its resilience in the form of stability and flexibility: study
- Guide on global sustainability reporting frameworks, standards, and protocols
- OECD’s Global Corporate Sustainability Report 2024, which analyses the evolving landscape of corporate sustainability practices worldwide
- Sustainability or profitability? Increasingly, you can have both: Boston Consulting Group
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Climate change is a super wicked problem: time is running out to address it; the same people who caused the problem are also the ones responsible for fixing it, from governments to the fossil fuel industry; and there's no central body or authority to turn to. On top of this, policymakers are in the habit of discounting the future, meaning they look at short-term wins rather than long-term solutions for which they may not be rewarded.
For example, if the UK had pushed heavily into renewables early enough, the current cost of living crisis, largely driven by expensive natural gas, would never have happened. We've got to broaden the conversation, ensuring that people understand what's at stake and what it's going to mean to them in the medium and long term.
In this week's episode of Shaken Not Burned,Felicia talks to one of the world’s leading climate scientists: Professor Mark Maslin, a professor in Earth System Science at University College London.
We explore why climate science is so critical to tackling the climate crisis and, perhaps more importantly, discuss what 1.6°C rise in global temperature really means for our future. And, as ever, we look at how we can accelerate the transition to a cleaner, more sustainable world.
Professor Maslin breaks down the science behind our changing planet, the urgent need for policy reform, and the role that businesses, governments, and individuals must play in addressing climate change. From the power of renewable energy to the influence of climate misinformation, this conversation highlights the barriers to action—and the solutions we already have at our fingertips.
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Sustainability has become a business imperative. What years ago may have been dismissed as “hippie, tree-hugging” talk in the boardroom is now being seriously demanded by investors, customers, and consumers.
But how did we get here?
In the first episode of the fourth season, Shaken Not Burned co-host and co-founder Felicia Jackson takes the guest seat, interviewed by fellow co-host and co-founder Giulia Bottaro. Felicia has over two decades of experience in the sustainability world as a lecturer, consultant, researcher, and journalist.
We cover the history of business sustainability, touching on the 1987 Brundtland Report, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and of course the 2015 Paris Agreement.
We explore what’s driving new business strategies and how our collective mentality has changed over the years, painting the picture of an ideal world economy that is rooted in nature. Everything is interconnected – companies, nature, individuals – and it’s crucial to understand the foundation of our systems to enact effective change.
Reading materials:
- Brundtland Report
- Rio Earth Summit
- Paris Agreement
- Shareholder vs stakeholder capitalism
- Systems change
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Season 4 of Shaken Not Burned is about to start!
Our new iteration is all about providing the tools to build sustainability literacy. Many professionals are being thrust into a world they are not familiar with, having to learn new jargon or come up with strategies to keep up with what's going on in their industry and beyond.
We have compiled a list of topics that are ever-present and ever-changing in sustainability debates, such as the history and outcomes of the Paris Agreement, the concept of degrowth, the practicalities of the G of ESG, what climate risk means in investment and insurance, and many more.
Co-hosts Felicia Jackson and Giulia Bottaro will be interviewing expert guests to cover all the bases of each topic. The episodes will be divided into clusters of big-picture topics and the specifics of how it might affect various industries, in a coherent approach that allows you to interact at your own level of interest.
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Eightmillion metric tons of plastic enter the ocean annually, averaging to about 22,000 metric tons per day – roughly equivalent to dumping one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute. That plastic ruins rivers and shorelines, affects fish, birds and corals, and harms ecosystems and communities.
We need both upstream (design, reduction) and downstream (collection, recycling) solutions. Felicia talks to Tom Peacock-Nazil, founder of Seven Clean Seas, an organisation with a dual approach: cleaning up plastic waste from the ocean while helping companies measure and reduce their plastic impact.
They discuss the importance of ocean conservation, the trouble with plastic and what we can do, as individuals and as companies, to address the challenge that it creates.
You can learn more about Seven Clean Seas and their work via Instagram or X; details of the HIPPO project and you can donate as well.
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Did you know that the Internet and communication technology (ICT) sector is estimated to account for 1.5% and 4% of the world’s carbon emissions? In comparison, aviation represented 2% of the global carbon footprint in 2022.
This figure doesn’t even take into account the use of water to cool down data centres, or the extraction and processing of materials to produce our devices, which have considerable impacts on climate and nature.
All data generated online (including this podcast) has its footprint, even if we can’t see it. The Internet’s emissions will continue to rise, especially as the use of artificial intelligence – which is extremely energy intensive – keeps skyrocketing. Considering that 90% of the world's data was generated in the last two years alone according to some estimates, it is not difficult to imagine that the Internet will soon become the largest-emitting sector of our economy.
But we all can take action, in some way. If you, or your company, have a website, you can design it to be as sustainable and accessible as possible.
In this week’s episode, Giulia talks to Sepas Seraj, founder of digital agency Pixeled Eggs, about sustainable web design and how the conversation has shifted in his industry. The attention is turning to lighter-weight websites, as they are increasingly being prioritised by SEO. Coincidentally, leaner websites also have a smaller footprint, proving that there are benefits in sustainability that go beyond doing the right thing.
Sepas shares tips on how to lower the impact of your website, make it more accessible and user-friendly without sacrificing aesthetics (sustainable design can be beautiful and impactful at the same time!), how to use AI mindfully, and how design trends have changed over the years.
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Businesses face challenges and opportunities in adapting to climate change regulations and sustainability reporting. Linking sustainability strategies to performance and progress is a crucial aspect of this journey.
In this episode, Felicia talks to Stuart McLachlan, chief executive of sustainability firm Anthesis, about the shift from traditional business models to sustainable practices, emphasising the need for organisations to take responsibility for their externalities and adopt circular economy principles.
Adaptability and collaboration are fundamental, as seen in sustainable agriculture and pre-competitive collaboration during the pandemic - in the end, so much of what we need to address comes down to the health of the soil. The conversation touches on the role of investors and regulators in driving sustainability, the urgency of transformation, and how we can shift to a low-carbon, nature-positive world through collective action.
Stuart's book, The Adventure of Sustainable Performance, is available on all major platforms.
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In this week's episode, Felicia talks to Pablo Fernandez, chief executive of global climate solutions company EcoSecurities.
The carbon markets are a contentious, but effective, tool for leveraging finance for action on climate change. Carbon offsets, an important tool within these markets, allow companies to invest in emissions reduction projects, often in developing countries, as a cost-effective way to meet climate goals. However, issues such as weak demand, inconsistent pricing, and trust in project quality have challenged the effectiveness of carbon markets.
What matters is understanding which credits are appropriate for your industry and business, and the pathway you're choosing to cut emissions and transition towards a net zero world - demonstrating a transparent and robust strategy for action on climate change.
In this episode, we discuss the history of the climate negotiations, how the carbon markets developed and why offsetting has an important role to play in transforming the world.
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This week, Giulia interviews Helen Clements, director, innovation & behaviour change lead at GoUnpackaged, a UK-based consultancy that helps retailers switch to refill systems. It’s not just about the individual piece of packaging that ends in the hands of the consumer: there is a whole supply chain behind it to revolutionise.
GoUnpackaged is behind the Refill Coalition, an initiative to create a standardised solution for supermarkets. Its current members are Aldi and Ocado, which are both undergoing trials that Helen says are very successful. However, there are challenges in encouraging other retailers to take part: Waitrose, which was a founding member, left the coalition last year.
In the podcast episode, we discuss GoUnpackaged’s “charmingly ugly” containers and how its system differs from the traditional bulk refills, how consumers can be encouraged to change their habits, the challenges retailers are facing, and the need for stronger policies to enforce a truly circular economy. With powerful lobbying groups pushing the government to keep the status quo, we need every actor in the economy to play their part – especially retailers.
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The world is grappling with numerous environmental challenges and, while COP29 (the world’s most important gathering on the environment) is expected to focus on climate finance, we need solutions that benefit everyone – especially the most vulnerable. We need to revolutionise agriculture, including how we use soil. Indeed, soil plays a crucial role in combating climate change, ensuring food security, and maintaining biodiversity.
This week’s guest is Praveena Sridhar, chief science and technology officer at the Save Soil movement run by the Conscious Planet initiative, set up by internationally-renowned yogi Sadhguru.Through working with over 220,000 farmers in India and advocating for ecological restoration, Conscious Planet's wide network of volunteers have also raised global awareness of the soil crisis, through community events, social media campaigns and in mass media.
Soil health could serve as a critical link between addressing climate change and protecting nature. 12 inches of topsoil supports 95% of global food production, and provides the potential for sequestering nearly a third of all GHG emissions. Yet today over half of all global soils are degraded, a number that could rise to 90% by 2050.
Praveena talks to Felicia about the role of soil in addressing climate change, the critical need to improve the organic content of soil to 3-6% of matter and the importance of supporting farmers in changing their approach to farming, as well as what needs to be done to increase access to finance. The future of the climate - and the food system - could depend on it.
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Giulia speaks to Alisa Murphy, a coach helping purpose-driven professionals build careers rooted in nature, climate, and community.
They talk about her journey to regenerative work, what regenerative means, and what questions people should ask themselves when they feel ready to change their work lives – or to spot corporate greenwashing. It can be scary to leave the corporate world, but we need everyone, whatever their skills and experience, to enact systemic change.
Find Alisa on LinkedIn and on her website. Her podcast, Regenerative Worklife, is on all major platforms.
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Felicia interviews Chris Hocknell, founder of sustainability consultancy Eight Versa on the complex and evolving topic of carbon neutrality and its significance for businesses in the context of climate change.
We explore the difference between carbon neutral and net zero, and why Chris is advocating for the use of the term "carbon neutral" as a pragmatic step for business today. Join us to uncover the nuances of sustainable business practices and understand what it really means to build towards a greener future.
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This week Giulia interviews Patrick Donati, co-founder and managing director of solar power producer Terrawatt. Founded in 2021, the startup is developing a portfolio of solar farms in Italy.
In a wide-ranging chat, they discuss the EU’s renewable energy targets and the challenges of building a solar industry in sunny Italy, which should be a no-brainer but is being hindered by complicated bureaucracy and unsupportive policies. Still, Patrick says there are plenty of opportunities in the sector, which promises to revive areas marred by poverty and brain drain.
The discussion also touches upon differences and similarities across the various countries in the bloc, using green hydrogen as storage, and the economics of installing batteries.
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One of the ways in which we can drive growth in climate tech is through events, learning, pitching and networking. Blue Earth Summit is a 3-day event being held in London in October 2024, focused on sustainability and innovation, bringing together innovators, investors, activists and policymakers.
In this episode Felicia speaks to founder Guy Hayler, about the events and its purpose, the BE100 competition, where 1,000 climate-positive startups pitch their innovative solutions to hundreds of investors, with a goal of raising £100 million to accelerate climate action as well as Blue Earth’s impact investor events and Futures series. Overall his goal is to drive actionable change in climate technology, clean energy, conservation, and sustainable business and Blue Earth Summit is one way he's hoping to achieve that goal.
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This week Felicia talks to Dr Tamara Kneese, a senior researcher and project director at Data & Society's Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab about the questions that need to be asked about the use of AI, its impact on the tech industry and how to use it mindfully.
While there are huge opportunities to address climate and sustainability challenges (in terms of circularity, monitoring and managing the grid, carbon management, efficiency, new materials creation and more) challenges lie in the impact on labour, energy demand, and the acceleration of extractive industries.
The discussion highlights the complex challenges in realising AI's potential benefits while addressing its significant downsides, especially when it comes to environmental sustainability. We tackle questions on efficiency, increased resource demand, the need to differentiate between use cases, the challenges in incorporating user feedback into meaningful product changes or the role of regulation.
Tamara was the author of the Green Software Foundation's first State of Green Software Report and, prior to that, she was director of developer engagement on the green software team at Intel. Her first book, Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond, was published by Yale University Press in August 2023.
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Don't forget to subscribe for future episodes, sign up to receive our weekly newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn.
This week Giulia interviews Paul Finch, co-founder at Growth Studio. The London-based accelerator helps early-stage startups focusing on solutions to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
They discuss the overlooked issue of low air quality, the need for systematic change, and the challenges of raising investment for early-stage companies in the climate and sustainability space.
Growth Studio runs theBreathable CitiesandGS Select programmes,which are both open for applications. You can find more details at https://www.growthstudio.com/programmes/
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We are shaking things up (pun intended) at Shaken Not Burned!
We are launching a new format in this new season, where the entire episode will be dedicated to our guests to give them more space to platform their solutions.
Once a month, Felicia and Giulia will be joined by a panel of guests to delve into the hottest themes in the world of sustainability.
We are here to chat and listen to our audience. Don't be shy, get in touch with us on our socials or at info@shakennotburned.com.
This week we discuss the need to update meteorological models, fashion’s dependency on fossil fuels and the latest Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) controversy.
We kick off the episode with the worrying news that temperatures in Antarctica climbed up to 50°F last month. We are basing our weather predictions on models from a decade ago and we need to update them as the climate changes to ensure we are prepared for extreme weather events.
Equally startling news was the extent to which the fashion industry is still extremely dependent on fossil fuels, even for energy use, suggesting that all the talk about making the sector more sustainable is indeed just talk.
Then we explore the SBTi's announcement regarding the risk of carbon offsets, and its reiteration that the priority remains direct decarbonisation of Scope 3 emissions. This is in contrast with the idea floated in April to allow the purchase of carbon credits to offset a company's supply chain footprint. The organisation will take a final decision in 2025, suggesting internal conflict on the matter, however this creates further confusion for companies that need leadership in the middle of a crucial decade to mitigate climate change.
Finally, Felicia talks to Max Schmidt at Perspectives Climate Group about Export Credit Agencies, their role in financing fossil fuels and how they could be a tool for supporting a shift towards green industry, green growth and green export markets.
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On this week’s episode, the team kicks off with a discussion of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).Next, we delve into the latest innovation in the construction sector. C-Crete’s basalt-based concrete has garnered widespread attention for its exclusion of Portland cement, the component typically associated with the brunt of concrete’s emissions. And finally, we explore the steady growth of the cultured meat market. Cultured meat requires a fraction of the resources used by conventional farms, but strict regulations have slowed its widespread introduction. Now, Gourmey has become the first company to apply for market access in the EU.
In this week's interview, Felicia talks to Nicki Harrison, director sustainable finance at the Environmental Defense Fund Europe about sustainable finance, its implications for business and what the new government needs to do to drive green growth.
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On this week's episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia and Giulia discuss the latest twist in the US presidential race, KPMG's latest research on sustainable investment trends, and London's groundbreaking Climate Review.
Next, Felicia speaks with Deborah Johnson, Head of ESG and Helen Boggs, Head of Marketing at Agilitas IT Solutions about their 'repair, rework and reuse' model. Their conversation covers the impact of sustainability reporting and the importance of data accessibility before delving into how ESG affects their business and can lead to long-term client solutions.
Don't forget to subscribe for future episodes, check out our weekly newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn. Connect with Agilitas IT Solutions on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.
The team reunites with a discussion on the latest turmoil of carbon markets, the development of a new sustainable strategy and Norway's new measures to promote sustainable tourism.
In this week's interview, Giulia talks to Lucy Brooks, a sustainable finance advisor at The Future in Our Hands (Framtiden i våre hender) about how Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) engages with its investees on climate action. As the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, NBIM could be an influential driver of change. Instead, it has been voting against climate resolutions at the AGM's od several oil and gas firms.
For more information on the research discussed by Lucy Brooks, please see the following links:
- "Norges Bank Investment Management voting on Climate Resolutions in 2023" Report by Framtiden i våre hender.
- Framtiden i våre hender mailing list.
Don't forget to subscribe for future episodes, check out our weekly newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn. Connect with The Future in Our Hands on Facebook and Instagram.
We're back from our break with a timely episode on the recent elections in the UK and France. Giulia and Felicia discuss what the results could mean for the climate and the public sentiment they appear to reflect.
In this week's interview, Felicia speaks to Carsten Brinkschulte, co-founder and CEO of Dryad Networks - an environmental IoT startup that helps landowners to monitor, analyze and protect the world’s largest and most remote forests.
Don't forget to subscribe for future episodes, check out our weekly newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn. Learn more about Dryad Networks on Youtube, LinkedIn, Facebook or X.
In this week's episode, Felicia and Heather discuss the G7's meeting on cutting fossil fuel subsidies, the EU's right-wing surge and how it may impact climate policies, and the integration of nature considerations into business practices.
Next up, Felicia chats with Johannes Tiefenthaler, co-founder and co-CEO of carbon capture and storage company Neustark.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter. For further information on Neustark's activities, follow their journey on Medium and LinkedIn.
With Felicia away on holiday, Heather and Giulia discuss the falling value of carbon offsets before delving into a groundbreaking 'polluter pays' bill passed by the State of Vermont.
Next, Giulia speaks with Filippo Addarii, co-founder and chief executive of social innovation agency PlusValue, about how to invest private capital to help people's lives while generating financial returns. One instrument is the social impact bond, a tool first launched in the UK and now rolled out globally across 251 initiatives to reduce homelessness and help convicts build a livelihood outside of prison, among other things.
Don't forget to like and subscribe for future episodes and follow Shaken Not Burned on LinkedIn. Connect with PlusValue on LinkedIn and X, and see the links below for further information on the research cited by Filippo Addarii:
- Social Impact Bond figures – Oxford Government Outcomes Lab
- Social Infrastructures market value - Boosting Investment in Social Infrastructure in Europe
- Impact market in the UK – 2022 data by Big Society Capital
- European impact investment market – 2022 data by EVPA
In this week's episode, Giulia, Felicia and Heather discuss the failure of climate finance to help the most vulnerable countries, new hope for textiles recycling on the back of a $100 million fundraising for Swedish company Syre and news that the Nature for Business campaign, It’s Now for Nature, has approved its first five company strategies – providing leadership for companies attempting to integrate nature into their strategic approach. For those interested in learning how to develop a nature strategy you can find The Nature Strategy Handbook here.
In this week’s interview Felicia spoke to Harriet Kingaby, founder of the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN) about the health of the information environment, how to be an ethical advertiser and just why it’s important to clean up your digital supply chain.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.
In this week's episode, Giulia, Felicia and Heather discuss the challenge facing tech companies as they grapple with the AI emissions, the shifting attitudes of consumers and employees, and Marks & Spencer's new partnership to trace the journey of its product packaging.
Next up, Giulia chats with Dr Wren Montgomery, Associate Professor of Sustainability at Ivey Business School in London, Ontario, faculty affiliate of University of Michigan and co-founder of Greenwash Action Lab, about the damages done by greenwashing and what people can do as consumers and employees.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.
In this week's episode, Heather and Felicia delve into the sheer desperation of recent Just Stop Oil protests before exploring the possibilities of two emerging technologies: direct air capture and green hydrogen.
Next up, Felicia speaks with Johan du Plessis, founder and CEO of zero emissions boiler company Tepeo, about the future of low-carbon heating.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter. Learn more about Tepeo by connecting on X, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
In this week’s podcast, Felicia, Giulia and Heather discuss attacks against environmental journalists, the UK Government's climate plan being found unlawful, again, and the seemingly unfillable green skills gap.
In this week’s interview Felicia talks to Neil D’Souza, chief executive of data and software tech company Makersite, about the role of product intelligence in sustainability, cost efficiency, reporting and product design.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.
With negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty underway, Giulia, Heather and Felicia discuss research showing that 60 companies are responsible for more than half of global plastics pollution, Canada's new requirements for transparent data on the production and use of plastics, and US rules on coal-fired power stations.
In this week's interview, Giulia speaks to Yoni Pasternak, chief commercial officer at Nala Earth, about the fact that greenhouse gas emissions are only a small part of a company's environmental footprint. Indeed, businesses have various impacts and dependencies on nature, and developing corporate nature strategies can help them become more resilient.
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With Heather on holiday, Giulia and Felicia talk about Scotland scrapping its 2030 emissions reduction goal, Unilever paring down some of its environmental and social commitments, and a new KPMG study finding that US CEOs expect to see significant returns from their companies’ sustainability investments in three to five years.
In this week's interview, Giulia speaks to James Sterling, head of communications and social value at Bristol City Leap, about Bristol's £1 billion decarbonisation strategy and the many co-benefits that residents are already experiencing.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.
With Heather on holiday, Giulia and Felicia dive into the scandal at the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the EU’s approval of a voluntary certification scheme for carbon removals, and how poo could be powering Wizz Air’s planes.
In this week's interview, Giulia speaks to Callum Laing, the founder of Veblen Director Program and author of 'Boardroom Blueprint', about taking sustainability strategies to the top level by involving companies' boards and ensuring that directors represent a diverse mix of backgrounds and experience.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.
You can find a full document of Bill Baue's criticism of the SBTi here.
Giulia, Felicia and Heather talk about the impact of the SEC’s pause on US climate disclosures, the growing focus on emissions from industrial meat and dairy and how an innovative US operation has developed a vaccine for honey bees.
This week's guest is Harry Marshall, co-founder of Open Atlas, about the upcoming EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and how it will impact businesses and their value chains. This directive is already having massive implications on global commodity demand and will require companies to revolutionise their sourcing and traceability mechanisms.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.
You can find Open Atlas on its website and LinkedIn.
Join Heather and Felicia as they discuss recent research on the accessibility of natural spaces, Larry Fink's latest letter to Blackrock's shareholders and the importance of involving procurement teams in sustainability goals and decisions. In this week's interview, Felicia chats with Ben Kite, Group Strategy Director at EPR at EPR about the opportunities presented by the UK's Biodiversity Net Gain requirements.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our newsletter.
Connect with EPR on LinkedIn or Facebook.
With Giulia away on her holidays, Felicia and Heather discuss Nestle's latest plans to reduce its supply chain emissions, the recent launch of the BSI's initial standards for investing in nature and the worrying lack of corporate engagement with water-related risks. In this week's interview, Felicia chats with Dax Lovegrove, head of sustainability at Salterbaxter, about how companies can prepare for forthcoming reporting requirements.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our newsletter.
Connect with Salterbaxter on LinkedIn or Instagram.
Giulia, Felicia and Heather discuss the EU's watered down Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, the launch of a new tool for monitoring land disturbance and the rise of industrial artificial intelligence. In this week's interview, Giulia chats with Ed Gemmell, leader of the Climate Party about how the green transition can become an electoral priority.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our newsletter.
Connect with the Climate Party on Facebook, X, Instagram or LinkedIn.
Heather, Felicia and Giulia discuss the vicious cycle of 'last chance' Arctic tourism, the US SEC's final ruling on the reporting of climate risk, and Aldi's introduction of wine bottles made from recycled paper. In this week's interview, Heather chats with Claire Gleeson-Landry, Good-Loop's head of investment and sustainable media.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our newsletter.
Connect with Good-Loop on LinkedIn.
Our discussion of recent news is followed by this week’s interview with Shashin Mishra, vice president of EMEA for AiDash. Mishra tells us how the AI-first SaaS company uses its collaborative AI approach to measure biodiversity and discusses the implications of the Biodiversity Net Gain directive. You can find AiDash on its website and LinkedIn.
Giulia, Felicia and Heather discuss how Shein and Temu are disrupting air freight, new lawsuits against the UK Government, and China's plan to introduce mandatory ESG reporting. In this week's interview, Felicia talks to Rumbi Pfende, co-founder of Mama Codes.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our newsletter.
Connect with Mama Codes on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
With Giulia away on her holidays, Heather and Felicia discuss Sysco's introduction of a carbon labelling system for foods, AXA IM's decision to vote against companies that lobby against climate goals and Microsoft's investment in Neustark. In this week's interview, Heather chat's with Leonardo Marcovitz, founder and CEO of More Foods.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow our channel for all future episodes. You can also find us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our newsletter.
Connect with More Foods on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
In this episode, Felicia, Giulia and Heather discuss three of the most significant stories from the week, and Felicia talks about green politics with Bronwen Smith-Thomas from the Climate Coalition.
More glue people, Finance, Trade, Capacity building, Mutli-Partner Stakeholders, Data analysis and monitoring and much much more...!
The foundations, the glue that holds it all together, without these no sustainable development is possible, we try and untangle how we get these ducks in a line and much much more...!
The unsustainable destruction of natural ecosystems and biodiversity, what can we do about it. Aligning capital markets with nature, turning around deforestation and the big problem with agriculture as well as the solutions to these massive issues and much much more...!
The state of the oceans, what to do about them and the systems-based approach to solving this big blue problem and much much more...!
The climate crisis, global shifts, how to take action, the economics of acting yesterday, now and tomorrow, how to create systemic change and much much more...!
Reassessing how we make and use things, and how we manage waste. The pros of the circular economy, companies doing good and companies doing bad, who's going to come out the winner? and much much more...!
What is a sustainable city? why a systems-based approach is needed to achieve them and how we can affect positive change in cities and much much more...
How do we reduce inequalities? code bias, system break down and the fraying of the social contract, how can we build towards a cleaner, fairer, more equal world for all and much much more...
The greening/decarbonisation of industry, the need for more green innovation and the importance of public and private infrastructure and much much more...
What is decent work? Is it time for new growth metrics? Different types of capital and the future of work and much much more...
What is clean energy? The future of energy systems, market shifts and the road map to sustainable development and much much more...
Water scarcity, basic sanitation for all, how much should water really cost? Poor use of water, solutions and innovations in the space and much much more...
Powerful women, powerful men, toxic masculinity, levelling up, the economics of inequality and what has, is and will change and much much more...
What is education? Covid, Access, innovation in learning, different forms of education and much much more...
Physical health, mental health, unfair access to health care, the global health care dilemma, the work-life balance, WFH and much much more...
Access, nutrition and climate, global supply chains, unsustainable agriculture, food waste and much much more...