John Elkington

Cutting at CDP Eye Catcher CDP offices 40 Bowling Green Lane

Truly weird moment when I was about to walk across to the Carbon Disclosure Project – and asked Sam where it was.  She said Bowling Green Lane, to which I replied, “Not No. 40?”  And so it proved to be.  Which is the building a long-time-ago friend, Mike Franks, was instrumental in turning into what it is today.  We moved Environmental Data Services (ENDS) in there, having previously been based on Great Orchard Street, Westminster, in the early 1980s.  It was very strange coming back – and the CDP office was exactly like the ENDS one, which may have been on the floor below.  Did an ‘Influential Person’ lunch for the CDP team, though quite what influence on them I may have had I don’t know.  

CDP is an independent not-for-profit organisation which holds the largest database of corporate climate change information in the world. The data are obtained from responses to CDP’s annual Information Requests, issued on behalf of institutional investors, purchasing organisations and government bodies. Since its formation in 2000, CDP claims to have become “the gold standard for carbon disclosure methodology and process, providing primary climate change data to the global market place.”

Afterwards, CDP CEO Paul Dickinson showed me a technology he is invested in, Eye Catcher, a video-conference technology which means that you see eye-to-eye with the person or people you are talking to.  Quite impressive.

 

Spent most of today writing central chapter of the latest report for the Skoll Foundation, apart from a quick excursion to Richmond Park this afternoon.  Then, as I worked away this evening I also kept a weather eye on the BAFTA Award ceremony, where Gaia was taking part for the first time, and where Slumdog Millionaire came away with a barrow-load of trophies.

Preparing Leaving

Spent the day at Volans, doing the first round of the selection process of the Phoenix 50 organisations for our third report for the Skoll Foundation.  In addition to Alejandro, Charmian (and her partner Sam, a venture capitalist in the health sector), Smita and I, we pulled in Alexa Clay and Patrin Watanatada from SustainAbility and Molly Webb from The Climate Group.  Really demanding process, particularly on a Saturday when the sun was shining wonderfully outside, but we made a huge amount of progress – and reached consensus on pretty much everything.  Still lots of work to do, though, with several rounds of assessment still to do, but we had previously managed to get 422 nominations down to around 160, with Smita’s help, then today’s session worked on those to get the number down to around 60.  In the evening, JP Renaut (of SustainAbility) and his wife Caroline came to Barnes for supper.

SA team shot 1 SA team shot 2

Went across this afternoon to SustainAbility for a leaving session for Kavita (Prakash-Mani). Extraordinary gathering of some of the people who have been – and still are – involved, though photos show only part of the overall team.  Yasmin (Crowther) showed around a set of pen-and-ink portraits that were done of the team at an away-day some years ago.  Then I managed to catch most people for a group shot in the conference room.

My portrait Elaine’s portrait – she thinks she looks like Hilary Clinton!

Just back from the Responsible Leadership Summit at IMD, Lausanne, where I spoke yesterday.  Very impressed by three presentations at the event: Raji Paway of NIIT, who talked about their ‘Hole in the Wall‘ initiative in India; Kamal Qadir of CELLBAZAAR, with whom I had dinner last night; and Peter Bakker, CEO of TNT  – whose presentation was a quite remarkable example of what big companies can do when they really engage.  Somewhat challenging trip back, though.  Plane from Lausanne cancelled because of snow at Heathrow, so driven to Geneva and then took train to Lyon to catch another plane, which was also then cancelled.  So flew to Paris and thence to London.