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Just in to Oslo, after flight this morning from Seoul to Heathrow. And read this review of The Stretch Agenda by Joel Makower of GreenBiz. Heartwarming as we arrive in this still-light-at-22.00 city. We are getting a fair amount of interest from companies, among them extremely well-known names. More anon.

Waking up early in Seoul this morning, ahead of travelling back to London and Oslo, I was reading through Positive Luxury’s posting of an interview with me – marking both the launch of The Stretch Agenda and my joining their Sustainability Council. And it also occurred to me that I don’t think I have recorded here my recent appointment as Chairman of the Admissions Panel of the Social Stock Exchange. A privilege to be associated with both ventures.

Flew into Seoul yesterday, and helped kick off the UN Global Compact’s Korea Leaders Summit on the post-2015 agenda this morning. A slightly disrupted start to the proceedings, with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arriving perhaps an hour late, albeit apologetically. But that meant I had to go on before him, and was then slightly cut short when he arrived.

He was surrounded by press people in the same way a pot of honey might be by bees. With a buzz that numbs the senses. As someone deep inside the UN system commented to me afterwards, the “pomp and circumstance” isn’t always helpful when trying to communicate complex challenges.

Still, a welcome reminder of why I liked Korea so much when I came here 10 years ago (today I met again Dae-Woong Lim, now with UNEP Finance Initiative and Eco&Partners, who invited me last time). And a wonderful opportunity to meet range of interesting people from Asia and further afield. I got several invitations to come back – and to go to Peru. So something must have communicated.

Also a reminder of why I admire Georg so much – not just a UN functionary, but a truly deep thinker on a broad range of relevant issues. It will be fascinating to see what he does next, after stepping down from his Global Compact leadership role in September. His successor is still being chosen. A truly tough act to follow.

Very funny to watch the Lucky Draw at the end of the event, where scraps of paper with numbers were pulled out of a glass jar. Time after time, the potential winner wasn’t in the room. At what point, I even suggested that the one woman on the stage should have a go – she did, but with the same disappointing result. But then, finally there was a result – and the 2015 Seoul Declaration was also passed with something like acclamation.

Below is an image of a sculpture (very much in the spirit of Volans and Strange Attractors) in my sitting room at the Conrad Seoul, room 1705, so a spectacular view of the Han River, but wreathed much of the time in haze. I was told that much of the pollution comes in from China, as I have also been told in Hong Kong, and in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (but there in respect of Indonesian forest burning). And now London’s bad air is blamed on France and the rest of Europe.

Finally, on the subject of Volans (whose name I took from the Latin species name for the flying fish, Pisces volans), last night I managed to avoid meat, thanks to the UN’s corporate memory, but was served a dish which contained flying fish eggs. To eat or not to eat? I’m afraid I ate, since they were doomed anyway, but it did feel slightly like capitalism. (And interesting how many people today came up today to say that either Cannibals With Forks or The Power of Unreasonable People had helped steer them into, or guide them in, this field of ours.)

 

After a delightful dry-run at SustainAbility’s London offices, we proceeded with the launch of our new publication, The Stretch Agenda: Breakthrough in the Boardroom. I headed to Bonn to keynote the first Bonn Conference for Global Transformation. This was co-hosted by the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The theme: ‘From Politics to Implementation.’

The Stretch Agenda is one output of the Breakthrough program we have been working on since late last year. Originally, we were thinking of a short report, which then morphed into a White Paper and then, only 5-6 weeks back, into a ‘playper,’ a dramatisation of an extraordinary Board meeting at a fictional company, MN-Co.

After introductions at the Bonn conference by Angelica Schwall-Düren (Minister of Federal Affairs, Europe and the Media, North Rhine-Westphalia), Tanja Gönner (Chair of the Management Board, GIZ) and Friedrich Kitschelt (State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development), two of us kicked off the main event with TED-style presentations: Su Kahumbu Stephanou, Creative Director of Green Dreams TECH based in Nairobi, and myself – spotlighting the launch of The Stretch Agenda. Stacks of the publication were available throughout the reception area. Several people suggested staging the ‘play’ for their top teams, which was very encouraging.

Wonderful to be in cahoots over these several days with Tell Münzing, who I worked for 9 years ways back at SustainAbility, and later a co-founder of Impact Solutions, our strategic partner based in Berlin. We had several meetings outside the remit of the conference, including a Rhine-side lunch with Jeffrey Sachs (who I knew passingly via our joint work the Nestlé CSV Council) and various people from his Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and from companies, including Richard Northcote of Bayer MaterialScience.

Not quite sure why, but I left my camera behind several times, in taxis and similar places, but each time had them returned in the nick of time. Then the case went missing and failed to reappear, despite a judicious search. Happily, however, it was found and returned by Fiona Bywaters of the Global Policy Action Plan, part of the World Future Council, where she works with Jakob von Uexküll, someone I first met when a bunch of us were in the process of forming The Other Economic Summit (TOES).

The conference was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends like Bunker Roy of Barefoot College, Alejandro Litovsky of the Earth Security Group and Ed Gillespie of Futerra. And to meet new folk, including people like Su, and Guido Schmidt-Traube and Adolf Kloke-Lesch of SDSN. In addition, Tell and I had a wonderful session with Katharina Tomoff of Deutsche Post, high in their Bonn tower.

Then back to the Ristorante Forissimo, in Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse, for a coffee. We had had dinner there on the first evening with Birgit Klesper of Deutsche Telekom, where she is Senior Vice President for Transformational Change & Corporate Responsibility. (One of these days I must compile a list of all the job titles that have surfaced in this field over the years …)

I had been struck by the beauty of the horse chestnut that graces the Ristorante Forissimo garden. After the Deutsche Post session, Tell and I decided to turn our coffees into lunch – and had a very productive brainstorming session in the dappled sunlight.

The back to London, first leg on a very crowded ICE train to Frankfurt. The following day I went along in rain to the Aviva offices at One New Change, overlooking St Paul’s, for the first meeting of the Friends Life Stewardship Committee under its new Chair, now that Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has stood down: Julie McConnell. A time of change, which is always interesting.

Then back to 2 Bloomsbury Place to do conference calls with the likes of The B Team in the US, GlobeScan in Canada and Grupo Bimbo in Mexico.

Rain continued through the day, off and on. After a fairly intensive week, something in me longs to be alongside a river, watching the wildlife. So it was strange, as I walked back home past Barnes Pond, that my eye caught sight of a large dead carp floating in the water. It looked like the ghost of a carp, or perhaps a 3D-printed version of a carp.

In any event, we had been discussing only a few days before whether there were still large fish in the Pond? As I took the picture, waiting until the duck hove in view, I noticed at least one more large shape underwater, further out. This carp had not been alone.

No question that Dubai is minded to do so, as I note in my latest blog for GreenBiz. But, as a tweet in response asked earlier today, can a green capital be built on the back of virtual “slave labour”? Like it or not, I think the answer is potentially yes – though the contrast of values should invite derision over time.

And, as I noted in my TED-style keynote this morning here in Bonn, at the first Bonn Conference on Global Transformation, my hope is that there will be plenty of competition – with Bonn among the cities determined to have a go.

Good deal of interest in our new report, The Stretch Agenda, a dramatisation of a board meeting touching on a range of sustainability challenges and opportunities. Linked to our still-evolving online resource, The Breakthrough Challenge, also launched today. Wonderful walk with Tell (Muenzing) along the Rhine this afternoon, with a glass of white wine under a giant plane tree. Then back to the conference centre for a session with Jeff Sachs, who a number of us had had lunch with today alongside the Rhine.