I’m taking some time to reflect on the challenges and priorities ahead. If you’re doing the same, I’d love to hear about it. When it comes to the environment, what’s on your mind? What should we be talking about — and taking action on — in 2021?
Climate adaptation. It is clear that climate change is happening faster than we had feared and yet we seem to continue to build infrastructure, grow food and invest as if our current BAU is infinite. How can we protect our communities and protect our investments better?
Thanks Britt - agree addressing adaptation needs is urgent. Stimulus plans and infrastructure plans both allow for big opportunities to do a lot. Huge opportunity for engagement by private sector. NGOs are focused on this.
Thanks for the inspiration. A big topic that needs talking about is the university education and future employment of environmentally inclined teenagers. The millions of high school students who marched in Friday's For Future assemblies these past years must now be thinking about getting prepared for an uncertain future, and unsure about how to balance their environmental inclinations with employability in tomorrow's world. "What is the upcoming generation's role in this (what kind of college-graduate environmentalists are needed), and how we get ready?" is an unspoken question on the lips of many students (and parents) that needs answering.
Great suggestion — I agree with you. Seems like such an opportune time to out together a “conservation corp” or something along those lines. I know some smart people are working on such plans. Meanwhile, many colleges are upping their game on this front. I’ll spend more time on this topic - thanks.
I would love to see a concise summary of a detailed economic analysis (or summaries of different analyses) demonstrating that individuals and businesses will benefit economically from massive green investments. Your book discussed this quite well, but I think we need more and more of it to convince the deniers and skeptics. We need a “Manhattan Project” mindset to help solve climate change.
A growing approach, not talked about enough imo, is integrated landscape management. From a financial sector perspective there is a need to coordinate investments which can increase collective impacts and develop nature positive portfolios at scale.
The recent "better finance, better food" report by the Blended Finance Taskforce (https://www.blendedfinance.earth/better-finance-better-food), along with their case study compilations is pretty comprehensive in terms of the financial obstacles, opportunities, needs and logic.
Currently, most publications are more methodological in regards to how to do ILM or what are some archetypes, but that's why I think it's important to talk about this with different audiences in a more direct way.
Agree. I think blended finance deals have a lot of promise. However, even though there have been a lot of good “white papers” written on this opportunity, there has been less action on the deal origination front. TNC is working on this via it’s NatureVest unit and of course there are other good initiatives underway. But I think would be great if some big private sector financial firms would step up and do more here.
Completely agree. Many BF transactions tend to focus mostly on RE and very few on AFOLU, with only Convergence playing a grant-funding origination role which is not enough.
Very familiar with NatureVest and they are doing some interesting initiatives. However, for the scale and risk levels that need to be managed are not nearly enough to cover landscape needs globally.
There is also been a concern from many in the financial sector and from conservation that there is a "communications" and "perceived risk" issue/barrier that needs to be handled to translate from financial jargon to environmental/conservation jargon which there tends to be no translator.
Promisingly, there is more alignment of ILM across FAO and UNDP which can begin to de-risk more projects, but the need for coordination in public and private investments across time-frames is essentially needed.
Yep, all sounds right. I’ll try to address some of these challenges. Agree that it’s too big of an ask for NGOs alone to make this happen. (I learned that first hand at atNav/NatureVest). We need multi-laterals, GOV aid, and private sector players. I had thought that Paris-accord aid grants would have gotten more underway by now than seems to be the case.
Thank you for putting out consistent, thought-provoking content. One area I'd love to discuss is the pioneering of new markets to drive environmental change. What are examples of market innovators who have proven, or are attempting to prove, the viability of new business models. (It would seem innovation runs along a "continuum of progress").
For those models proven successful, how did they inspire the emergence of new investment capital and competition? For those earlier on the continuum, what obstacles do they face in order to achieve their objectives?
(Full transparency: my startup is in the process of proving a new market.)
Hi Jeff. Thanks for this very good idea. Will do. In addition to your very cool a d very innovative business, who do you think are some of the other best ideas out there? MT
Hi Mark, I agree with so many here that we have to find ways to reduce friction and communicate incentives for more blended finance deals. I think *maybe* they are too hyper specific which is hard to scale and have no standardized rating/measurement framework. Maybe a SPAC (gasp) type model that would aggregate a pool of funds (specific to a sector) and then allow deal makers to aggressively source the projects. DAFs *kind of* do this but they don’t have a 24-month spending/acquisition requirement like their Wall Street cousin. I also think we need to take a hard and honest look at climate/environmental action that isn’t working or is stagnate and leave it behind to free up resources and talent to focus on new things. It’s always tough to come to grips with the sunk cost fallacy but we need to focus on what’s working now and make strategic investments in new ideas too. Happy to connect on any of this! Thanks for writing about this, Mark!
Hi Mark - I think your focus on how NGO's & the corporate world can best interact to solve this challenge is great. There's already quite a few climatetech, climate VC newsletters, you really fill a niche & this is what I'd love to hear more about :)
Climate adaptation. It is clear that climate change is happening faster than we had feared and yet we seem to continue to build infrastructure, grow food and invest as if our current BAU is infinite. How can we protect our communities and protect our investments better?
Thanks Britt - agree addressing adaptation needs is urgent. Stimulus plans and infrastructure plans both allow for big opportunities to do a lot. Huge opportunity for engagement by private sector. NGOs are focused on this.
Hi Mr. Tercek
Thanks for the inspiration. A big topic that needs talking about is the university education and future employment of environmentally inclined teenagers. The millions of high school students who marched in Friday's For Future assemblies these past years must now be thinking about getting prepared for an uncertain future, and unsure about how to balance their environmental inclinations with employability in tomorrow's world. "What is the upcoming generation's role in this (what kind of college-graduate environmentalists are needed), and how we get ready?" is an unspoken question on the lips of many students (and parents) that needs answering.
Great suggestion — I agree with you. Seems like such an opportune time to out together a “conservation corp” or something along those lines. I know some smart people are working on such plans. Meanwhile, many colleges are upping their game on this front. I’ll spend more time on this topic - thanks.
I would love to see a concise summary of a detailed economic analysis (or summaries of different analyses) demonstrating that individuals and businesses will benefit economically from massive green investments. Your book discussed this quite well, but I think we need more and more of it to convince the deniers and skeptics. We need a “Manhattan Project” mindset to help solve climate change.
Thanks Marc - great idea. Will do. All best, MT
Hi Mark,
A growing approach, not talked about enough imo, is integrated landscape management. From a financial sector perspective there is a need to coordinate investments which can increase collective impacts and develop nature positive portfolios at scale.
Agree, this deserves more attention. Anything you would recommend I read to learn more Juan? Thanks for the input, Mark
The recent "better finance, better food" report by the Blended Finance Taskforce (https://www.blendedfinance.earth/better-finance-better-food), along with their case study compilations is pretty comprehensive in terms of the financial obstacles, opportunities, needs and logic.
Currently, most publications are more methodological in regards to how to do ILM or what are some archetypes, but that's why I think it's important to talk about this with different audiences in a more direct way.
Agree. I think blended finance deals have a lot of promise. However, even though there have been a lot of good “white papers” written on this opportunity, there has been less action on the deal origination front. TNC is working on this via it’s NatureVest unit and of course there are other good initiatives underway. But I think would be great if some big private sector financial firms would step up and do more here.
Completely agree. Many BF transactions tend to focus mostly on RE and very few on AFOLU, with only Convergence playing a grant-funding origination role which is not enough.
Very familiar with NatureVest and they are doing some interesting initiatives. However, for the scale and risk levels that need to be managed are not nearly enough to cover landscape needs globally.
There is also been a concern from many in the financial sector and from conservation that there is a "communications" and "perceived risk" issue/barrier that needs to be handled to translate from financial jargon to environmental/conservation jargon which there tends to be no translator.
Promisingly, there is more alignment of ILM across FAO and UNDP which can begin to de-risk more projects, but the need for coordination in public and private investments across time-frames is essentially needed.
Yep, all sounds right. I’ll try to address some of these challenges. Agree that it’s too big of an ask for NGOs alone to make this happen. (I learned that first hand at atNav/NatureVest). We need multi-laterals, GOV aid, and private sector players. I had thought that Paris-accord aid grants would have gotten more underway by now than seems to be the case.
Hi Mark,
Thank you for putting out consistent, thought-provoking content. One area I'd love to discuss is the pioneering of new markets to drive environmental change. What are examples of market innovators who have proven, or are attempting to prove, the viability of new business models. (It would seem innovation runs along a "continuum of progress").
For those models proven successful, how did they inspire the emergence of new investment capital and competition? For those earlier on the continuum, what obstacles do they face in order to achieve their objectives?
(Full transparency: my startup is in the process of proving a new market.)
Hi Jeff. Thanks for this very good idea. Will do. In addition to your very cool a d very innovative business, who do you think are some of the other best ideas out there? MT
Two companies come to mind:
1. Saildrone - https://www.saildrone.com/ who have a global fleet of wind and solar-powered ocean drones that are collecting ocean data.
2. Aclima - https://www.aclima.io/ who are mapping hyperlocal air quality.
Good suggestions Jeff - thanks.
Hi Mark, I agree with so many here that we have to find ways to reduce friction and communicate incentives for more blended finance deals. I think *maybe* they are too hyper specific which is hard to scale and have no standardized rating/measurement framework. Maybe a SPAC (gasp) type model that would aggregate a pool of funds (specific to a sector) and then allow deal makers to aggressively source the projects. DAFs *kind of* do this but they don’t have a 24-month spending/acquisition requirement like their Wall Street cousin. I also think we need to take a hard and honest look at climate/environmental action that isn’t working or is stagnate and leave it behind to free up resources and talent to focus on new things. It’s always tough to come to grips with the sunk cost fallacy but we need to focus on what’s working now and make strategic investments in new ideas too. Happy to connect on any of this! Thanks for writing about this, Mark!
Hi Mark - I think your focus on how NGO's & the corporate world can best interact to solve this challenge is great. There's already quite a few climatetech, climate VC newsletters, you really fill a niche & this is what I'd love to hear more about :)
Thanks Henry - I appreciate your encouragement very much. Please let me know if there are any issues or questions you think I should address. Best, MT