A sustainability expert yesterday urged a room full of vendors, partners and end users to “shift the narrative” in the wake of pushback from boards on net zero and decarbonisation.
Put on by n2s and compered by n2s Executive Director and former England rugby scrum-half Andy Gomarsall, the UK Technology Sustainability Forum event zoomed in on the barriers and opportunities around sustainability and the circular economy in the tech sector.
“What’s scary is we are creeping towards using two planets’ worth of materials in a given year,” Gomarsall said, before introducing the day’s keynote speaker, Dr Sally Uren OBE.
“Strip away the fancy language”
A high point of the day came when Uren gave a killer response when asked for advice in the subsequent panel discussion on how to keep sustainability on the board agenda in the current tough climate.
“What I’m noticing, particularly in the US, is that many boards are saying ‘it’s just too difficult; we’ll maybe pause our sustainability programme, or slow it down’,” Uren said.
“Be willing to shift the narrative slightly, and the narrative point is actually ‘this is just a way of reducing your risk and building resilience’.
“Strip away the fancy language and say ‘why wouldn’t you want to understand your environmental and social risk, because if you don’t it could undermine not just your short-term profitability today, but also your future resilience’?”
Uren, who is CEO of non-profit Forum for the Future, was joined on the panel by Dr. Lucia Corsini, Lecturer in Product Design Engineering at Brunel University London, Natalia Orrala, Circular Economy Lead, Sustainable Futures, Capgemini Invent UK, and Matt Manning Head of Circular Economy at BT.
Gomarsall also used the event to launch a ‘tech amnesty’, noting that the average Brit hoards 20-30 old gadgets in their cupboards or loft. “We would love to get you to pledge and for us to help and support you in a tech amnesty to bring this to life,” he told the audience, which included representatives from Westcoast and Daisy Corporate Services.
“We need to ensure the private sector doesn’t lose its nerve”
Uren also had a positive message for the private sector companies in the room worried that momentum is waning at a government level.
“I actually don’t see a softening on the actual commitments but there’s definitely a softening in language. I think that is partly in response to the fact that this year something like half the world’s population goes to the polls,” she said.
“So there’s a political dimension to this, particularly in the US where if you say the words ‘ESG’ or ‘climate’ it’s a very short conversation at the moment,” Uren said.
“What I would say is that in order to get to where we need to get to it’s never been just the role of government – the private sector in particular has an extremely positive role to play.
“What was really striking in the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai is that I’ve never seen such a strong showing of business. If we were totally reliant on government right now I might be more worried. But we’re not. Governments make policies but businesses allocate capital, so what we really need to be focusing on is ensuring the private sector doesn’t lose its nerve, and keeps banging on about the business case.”
Four trajectories
In her keynote, Uren stressed that “the future isn’t written” when it comes to how businesses approach the fight for a just and regenerative future, as she laid out four potential trajectories to the audience.
The first trajectory, ‘profit supreme’, sees companies continuing to focus purely on short-term profit maximisation, while the second, ‘shallow gestures’, sees companies embrace the rhetoric of change while maintaining the status quo.
Uren also cautioned against the third scenario, ‘tech optimism’, despite saying it had “validity”. “Technology has got a huge role to play – your technology has got a huge role to play. But without behaviour change it won’t do the trick,” she said.
Uren urged businesses to focus on the fourth possible trajectory, ‘courage to transform’.
“This is the trajectory where businesses are playing a much broader role in society and are working with government and civil society to drive the solutions we need at scale. It’s alive and well in the EU and nation states like Singapore,” she said.
“All four are bubbling away and so all four are possible. The more attention we pay to this trajectory the more likely it is to become the dominant trajectory of our future.”
In her keynote, Uren also stressed that the most powerful lever of change isn’t policy or capital allocation, but, rather, “us”, a point she admitted she herself had overlooked in the past.
“Have any of you developed a really ambitious sustainability strategy, and wondered why it wasn’t really taken up by the board?,” she asked.
“I have done [that] loads. And what I began to understand is that I hadn’t spent enough time speaking at a personal level and engaging at an emotional level. If people don’t feel the need to change, they’re not going to change, and that’s why policy interventions, without shifting social norms, don’t work.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
