Journal

Quite a day, kicking off with a Megatrends session at the NEXUS Europe Youth Summit at One Whitehall Place, where I had come last night for an International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) event. I spoke alongside Anne Lise Kjaer and John Straw, and met some fascinating people, both known and new, including Benjamin Hennig of Worldmapper – who did the world map featured on the front cover of our new report, The Stretch Agenda: Breakthrough in the Boardroom. We owe him quite a debt of gratitude.

Then raced back to the office, at one stage literally running through the streets of Covent Garden after our taxi got stuck in solid state traffic, for a UN Global Compact webinar on ‘Board Adoption and Oversight of Corporate Sustainability.’ This was part of the Global Compact’s Board Programme, where I am now involved. The other speakers were Martin Reeves of the Boston Consulting Group and Dianne Dillon-Ridgley, former Board Director at Interface. A huge new agenda emerging here – and our Stretch Agenda seems well placed to be helpful.

Next, after some work on things like my latest round of columns/bolgs and my Tata presentation for Mumbai next week, I travelled across to the Royal Exchange for my first meeting as Chair of the Social Stock Exchange‘s Admissions Panel. Great people, fascinating discussion – and a reminder of some of the challenges that this field faces in reaching true scale, both in terms of revenues and social impact.

Then home for quiet dinner with Elaine and Jane Davenport, a friend from the early 1960s. As I walked back past Barnes Pond, a woman pointed me towards a pair of swans sitting on the Green, like bookends on either side of four fluffy cygnets. Delightful.

Flew in from Seoul to Heathrow, picked up Elaine, and thence more or less immediately on to Oslo, for one of the most glorious sojourns of my life. On the menu, a Festschrift conference to celebrate Jørgen Randers‘ 70th birthday, and his many contributions, kicking off with Limits to Growth back in 1972, and then a more personal trip out to Arøy, the island where he has a summer home. The conference picked up our Breakthrough Decade theme. But, first, some images, to give a flavour of the thing:

This was the first Festschrift I had taken part in, but if this is what we can expect from such things, I can’t wait for the next one. Several hundred people came together at the Oslo-based business school BI, where Jørgen was president from 1981 to 1989. Having contributed to both Jørgen’s amazing book 2052 (my essay was on the future of the military out to the 2050s) and to the Festschrift book, Science Based Activism (edited by Per Espen Stoknes, also author of What We Think Of When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, and Kjell Eliassen), I was asked to help kick off the event.

What a privilege to help celebrate someone who has been one of the great presences in this field of ours since I was beginning my M.Phil. at UCL back in 1972.

At the start of my presentation, I mentioned that Elaine and I had decided to give Jørgen 2,052 eels, to be released later in the year by the Sustainable Eel Group. Just as Jørgen has spread memes around the world, the idea is that the eels will go out into the wider world and proliferate – which, given the 99% collapse in European eel populations since I had my fateful encounter in the 1950s, is devoutly to be desired. Andrew Kerr had explored for us the possibility of taking eels to Norway for release, but EU regulations (no count sensibly) make that impossible. So the release will be here.

The themes and order of the day can be found here. It was fascinating to hear both people I already knew, among them Paul Gilding and Mathis Wackernagel, and people I hadn’t yet met – not least John Sterman, who is the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management, and current director of the MIT System Dynamics Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His presentation of their interactive online platform, Climate Interactive, blew my socks off.

Later in the day, there was a memorable dinner celebrating Jørgen’s 70th birthday, where it was wonderful to hear speeches from people who have known him for many decades – including our old friend Jan-Olaf Willums. Then, as the the carriages threatened to turn into pumpkins, we caught a coach back to the Radisson Blu across the road from BI. After a night of intense dreams, at least in my case, a smaller group of us (13 of us in total) took 3 cars several hours south to the small island of Arøy, to stay a couple of days with Jørgen and his wife Marie.

On the first full day, and I really can’t say why, particularly when I knew the water was somewhere around a bone-cracking 10-11 degrees, and when you could see a fair few jellyfish floating around, I decided to go for a swim.

The truth is that if Paul (Gilding) hadn’t been there with his camera egging me on, I might have thought better of it. As it was, I plunged in and instantaneously regretted it. Still, as my blood supply struggled to find any molecules with even a modicum of anti-freeze properties, I rolled on my back and swam a little way out, as if I knew what I was doing. Then, as soon as I decently could, I swam back to shore and hauled my way up the seaweed-coated steps.

Later in the day Per Espen went in, and the following day, claiming he couldn’t be left standing by a youngster like me, Jørgen went in too. I’m pleased to have taken the plunge, but secretly thrilled that I don’t have to do it every day. On balance, I preferred sitting on the dock and watching swallows, a heron, terns, geese, oystercatchers and eider ducks doing what they do.

 

The island sojourn was a wonderful chance to catch up with people like Mathis (Wackernagel) and Susan (Burns) of the Global Footprint Network, whose work I have long admired, Paul and Michelle Gilding, and Jørgen and his wife Marie, alongside people I hadn’t met met face-to-face, like Per Espen. A mix of fireside conversations, walks in a form of wilderness, and leisurely meals in the open, either in the sun or, at night, wrapped in blankets under the stars. As Mathis put it, “heaven on Earth.”

Then yesterday, Sunday, Per Espen drove Elaine, Nigel (Lake) and I back to the Randers home in Oslo. Later on, Jørgen arrived back with Mathis, Susan, John and Cindy – and, critically, several bowlsful of Greenland shrimp, plus mayonnaise and slices of a round loaf, on which concoctions of immeasurable delight (and no doubt massive ecological footprints) were duly assembled. I can’t remember when I have enjoyed myself so much, though by the time we got back home, a week after leaving for Seoul, I was ready to sleep forever.

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.)