The Weather is Getting Worse: the Price of Inaction

Originally published on www.inc.com on April 8, 2019.

It looks like we're in for more devastation. After an unprecedented "cyclone bomb" ravaged the Midwest and its farms in March, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting "historic, widespread flooding" in the United States through May.

"Nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 states face an elevated risk for flooding through May, with the potential for major or moderate flooding in 25 states," according to NOAA's US Spring Outlook. NOAA expects increased rainfall and melting snow, two consequences of a warmer average earth temperature due to the high concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The World Meteorological Organization recently released its 2018 State of the Global Climate report. In 2018, it said, 62 million people around the world were affected by extreme weather and climate events, including over 2 million people displaced from their homes and 37 million people affected by flooding. The US was hit by 14 "billion-dollar disasters" in 2018, including hurricanes Florence and Michael; intense heatwaves and fires caused more than 1600 deaths in Europe, Japan and the US, with the US facing record economic damage from fires. 2019 began badly, with massive destruction from Tropical Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi in addition to the cyclone bomb in the US.

The report noted that although world hunger had been on the decline, in 2017 the number of undernourished people in the world rose to 821 million, "partly due to severe droughts associated with the strong El Niño of 2015-2016."

NOAA estimates the cumulative cost of the 16 separate billion-dollar weather events in the U.S. in 2017 was $306 billion. But the fact that it took 18 months for Puerto Rico to fully regain electricity after Hurricane Maria, for example, illustrates that all kinds of other financial costs exist, such as the cost of lost tourism, that don't get counted.

The flooding in the US Midwest and its direct connection to our food supply is not getting the attention it deserves. Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush, and others, tried to sound the alarm with the publication of the "Heat in the Heartland" study in January 2015. The study highlighted the United States' dependency on Midwest agriculture and industry and its economic vulnerability due to climate change. The report predicted, among other things:

- "Precipitation will likely become more extreme. While it's difficult to predict future rain and snowfall, climate change is likely to increase the incidence of extreme rainfall events across the Midwest, leading to flooding and related property and crop losses."

- "The timing of rainfall across this region may also shift, affecting growing seasons for farmers and putting additional strain on already-taxed stormwater management and wastewater treatment infrastructure."

It isn't only farmers and other individuals who are at risk of damage from extreme weather, but companies as well. Insurance companies are at the top of the list, clearly. But companies with industrial operations in fragile climates are at risk too, and investors are demanding to be made aware of what those risks are. Many companies have committed to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and are calculating and reporting on their risks. 

Companies are also committing to "science-based targets," meaning they are aiming to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in line with decarbonization requirements under the Paris Agreement to keep the global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial temperatures.

Cutting CO2 emissions is crucial, because the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today has the effect of trapping heat, melting glaciers and warming the oceans. Warmer oceans change air circulation, exacerbating weather events like hurricanes, and creating the crazy weather we are starting to get used to, with both extreme cold and extreme heat, as well as droughts, fires, and floods.

As more and more people sound the alarm, climate leaders are stepping forward. Youth groups are demanding action and City and State governments and businesses are beginning to implement solutions. There are plenty of actions, small and large, that individuals and businesses can take. But we also need global leadership.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres accelerated the UN's call to action when he said world leaders should come to the UN General Assembly and climate summit in New York in September with a plan, not a speech. "The impact on public health is escalating," Guterres said. "The combination of extreme heat and air pollution is proving increasingly dangerous."

Let's brace ourselves for a turbulent Spring.

Investing in Low-Income Women Entrepreneurs is Good Business

Originally published on www.inc.com on March 8, 2019.

International Women's Day is a day to reflect on how far we have come toward equal opportunity for women, and how far we still have to go. Equal opportunity is critically important for women themselves - reason enough to aspire to it - but it is also important for our economic system, our environment, and for peace.

Bringing women around the globe out of poverty and into the economic system as earners means we bring them in as consumers too, expanding overall well-being. Muhammad Yunus made this clear when his Grameen Bank, focusing on micro-lending to women in Bangladesh, created a virtuous cycle, with the diligence of the female borrowers lifting their families' earnings and improving economic conditions all around them. Grameen's work was rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize; the Nobel Committee made a connection between bringing people out of poverty and peace. Peace doesn't come solely from the absence of poverty, but communities are more likely to live in peace when basic needs are met.

Andrea Jung, President and CEO of Grameen America, works to apply the Yunus model in low-income areas in the U.S. "By investing in women, we are investing in their families and communities," she says. "Research proves that investing in women has a multiplier effect. Women are an investment vehicle for their family and communities."

Grameen America has released the early results of a study of the impact of its micro-lending, compared with the finances of a control group that received no Grameen loans. More than 94 percent of loan recipients, women who borrow in groups and are accountable to their peers, reported that their financial situation was better than it was the previous year. This was 13% more than the control group. Women who have borrowed from Grameen both in the U.S. and in the developing world have been highly likely to pay back their loans, along with growing their local economies.

Women aren't just good at paying their debts. Project Drawdown, a comprehensive plan to reduce global warming, lists "Educating Girls" along with "Family Planning" among its top 10 solutions. Along with other benefits, educating girls "shores up resilience and equips girls and women to face the impacts of climate change," explains the project's website. Educated women "can be more effective stewards of food, soil, trees, and water, even as nature's cycles change. They have greater capacity to cope with shocks from natural disasters and extreme weather events." Climate degradation contributes to poverty and to conflict; the three are interwoven and therefore solutions can affect the whole system: environmental, economic and social.

Big businesses have taken note and are investing in women. Salesforce, AT&T and others have partnered with Girls Who Code, a nonprofit aiming to get more women into computer science. Intel has a program called "She Will Connect" to build digital literacy skills and help women get into the workplace, pursue further education, or become entrepreneurs.

Mastercard makes inclusive growth a cornerstone of its corporate citizenship. "Building a more inclusive and sustainable world is essential to the future success of our business," Shamina Singh, Mastercard's executive vice president of sustainability, recently said in an interview with womendeliver.org. "Closing the gender gap in women's workforce participation is one of the clearest paths to inclusive growth. If we closed the gap by 2025, we could add more than $12 billion to the global economy."

Goldman Sachs has recognized the importance of funding women's entrepreneurship. Its "10,000 Women" initiative offers business and management education, access to capital, mentoring, and networking to underserved women entrepreneurs in 56 countries. According to a 2018 press release, "Eighteen months after completing the program, nearly 70% of surveyed graduates increased their revenue and nearly 60% added new jobs. On average, graduates doubled the size of their workforces and revenues increased nearly fivefold, and nine out of ten participants pay it forward by mentoring other women."

A recent extension of this program is the Women Entrepreneurs Opportunity Facility. This is a partnership between the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program and International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. The facility has invested more than $1 billion in women entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

In the U.S. around 40% of businesses are owned by women, yet those businesses only account for 4.3 percent of total private sector revenue. Women-owned businesses notoriously attract less capital.

But in low income settings both here and abroad, women entrepreneurs are taken seriously, attract micro lenders and investors, and make those funders proud. MicroVest, an asset management firm with over $384 million assets under management, seeks out "good investments that generate solid returns and create deep social impact. It just so happens that a majority of those investments in emerging economies are led by women," according to a company statement. MicroVest has invested in over 9 million female businesses owners in 26 countries.

This year on International Women's Day, let's reflect on how to unleash the power of women's entrepreneurship to combat poverty, slow global warming, and reduce conflict. And in the process, deliver on equal opportunity for women.

9 Tools to Reduce Your Company's Carbon Impact

Originally published on www.inc.com on March 6, 2019.

Something has shifted in America. Kids are on strike, and a children's lawsuit on climate change is making its way through the court system. A Green New Deal is gaining traction. A candidate has stepped into the Democratic presidential primary lineup on a climate platform. 69% of Americans are concerned about climate change, according to a Yale University poll. Mayors and governors are stepping up to help the US try to keep its Paris commitment. Big banks are adjusting their investment strategies to look at climate risk. Companies are reporting on those risks and working to reduce emissions. Lyft offsets the carbon emissions caused by its rides, and now Etsy has announced it will offset emissions caused by shipping products sold on its e-commerce platform, by supporting forest conservation in Minnesota, and investing in renewable energy in India to replace coal, diesel, furnace oil and gas.

Everyone wants to do their part.

Here is a partial list of tools for entrepreneurs who want to act now on climate. Please add to this list in the comment section if you can suggest other tools.

1. Use video conferencing and virtual meeting options when possible. If you must travel, purchase carbon offsets to offset your emissions. Many major airlines allow you to purchase offsets when you purchase a ticket on their website.

2. Purchase offsets for company cars. Calculate your footprint and work to reduce it while purchasing carbon offsets that support actual emission reduction projects with an offsetter such as South Pole Group, Carbon Credit Capital, 3Degrees, or the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

3. Use Kickstarter's Environmental Resources Center, a first-of-its-kind guide aimed at people and teams in the early stages of creating a new product. It provides production-specific environmental tips and helps you consider the impact your products have, and will continue to have, on the environment.

4. Utilize the Environmental Defense Fund's Supply Chain Solutions Center. This online center provides a roadmap to help you work toward aligning your business and environmental goals. It helps you find sustainability resources to assist you in solving your specific challenges. The goal is "to make finding sustainability solutions as easy as finding a movie on Netflix or a song on Spotify" -Elizabeth Sturcken, managing director of EDF+Business.

5. Hire an EDF Climate Corps fellow. Using a fellow for a short-term project can help you achieve your sustainability goals. These trained young people are equipped with a fresh perspective and knowledge of best practices. They are prepared to support your organization on a variety of sustainability projects, including supply chain sustainability, renewable energy, setting greenhouse gas targets, and scaling energy efficiency.

6. Understand your supply chain. Look beyond simply the financial costs in your supply chain and understand the environmental impacts as well. Aim to reduce emissions in your supply chain.

7. Adopt an internal carbon price. Putting a price on carbon is becoming the new normal for many companies and is an essential part of a climate change or risk mitigation strategy. It also helps to ensure sustained economic competitiveness by preparing for a low-carbon economy.

8. Apply for a green office certification. In the process, you will guide your office towards healthier, more sustainable practices. If you work in or use buildings, you might want to look into the requirements for a LEED green building certification, WELL Certification, or Living Building Challenge.

9. Consider a 401K plan that includes an "ESG" (Environmental, Social and Governance") option. Surveys show growing millennial interest in aligning their investments with their values.

These are a few of the tools available to busy professionals wanting to green up. Remember that it's much more important to actually take these steps than to communicate about them too early on; critics will be quick to accuse you of "green washing" if there isn't strong substance underlying what you communicate.

But don't let fears of being criticized stop you from taking a step forward. Sustainability is a journey, and now might be a good time to start.

Alexandra Criscuolo, a former EDF Climate Corps fellow who developed Kickstarter's Environmental Resources Center, contributed to this post.

How Blockchain Can Make the World a Better Place

Originally published on www.inc.com on February 7, 2019.

Blockchain enthusiasts expect that this new technology, which makes transactions traceable and safe, will disrupt the world as we know it, empowering people to bypass banks and other centralized institutions. And social entrepreneurs are looking to blockchain for solutions to societal ills, from poverty to health risks to climate change. How much positive impact can blockchain bring? How realistic is it to scale the technology? Stanford's Graduate School of Business published a study digging into blockchain's impact, and potential, in different sectors.

The researchers analyzed 193 blockchain projects that aim to drive social impact, in the areas of agriculture, democracy and governance, digital identity, energy, climate and environment, financial inclusion, health, land rights, philanthropy, education, human rights and water. They found that while most of the initiatives are early stage and need time before they have significant impact, there is potential. "It may be too early to tell how prolific the growth and adoption of blockchain applications for social impact will be," concludes the study, completed in April 2018, "but our initial catalog and analysis showed that beyond the hype, potentially transformative blockchain applications for social impact are already emerging."

One company the report cites is SOLshare, a company working in Bangladesh to bring solar energy to remote regions. SOLshare "creates a small local energy grid that allows these households to produce and trade electricity with each other, without having to rely on local utility companies," says the report. "Their product, SOLBox, is a device that enables homeowners to buy electricity as needed by paying for tokens via mobile phone SMS. Customers can finance this investment through micro-credits, with repayments of 24- to 36-months. Blockchain technology allows the decentralized trade of energy and payments, shifting power to local households, which are getting affordable access to clean energy, with the increased benefit of becoming micro-producers and potentially having a new source of income."

Another example is BanQu, an app being used by farmers, workers and micro businesses without bank accounts in poor regions, to record financial transactions and "prove their existence in global supply chains." Blockchain can help make transactions secure, give users control over who can access their data, and provide a digital identity to people that don't have one, such as refugees or migrant workers. This can bring new financial players into the global economy.

Blockchain is often suggested as a way of tracing supply chains. Grassroots, an Arkansas food cooperative, uses blockchain to help farmers and customers. "Now, when consumers are making their purchasing choices at the grocery store, they can simply scan the barcode with their phones to learn the full journey of the chicken they're buying from Grassroots, with the assurance that nothing has been fabricated or tampered with," says the Stanford report.

Walmart made headlines when it announced it would require farmers to input data on romaine lettuce, spinach and other leafy greens into an IBM blockchain database. This will be particularly useful to isolate, for example, an e-coli outbreak, limiting financial damage to the retailer. And the World Wildlife Fund's Australian arm has announced it is developing a blockchain platform, called OpenSC, to track the environmental and social sustainability of food.

In 2018 Coca-Cola and the US State Department announced that they were collaborating to set up a blockchain registry for workers to help fight forced labor. Levi Strauss has announced an initiative to survey workers on labor conditions in factories, using blockchain to secure the results from any data manipulation.

Tracing the sources of products and their materials is one of the most important challenges today. Companies want to know that the products moving through their supply chains were not fabricated using slave labor, do not bring health hazards, and have not contributed to deforestation or other environmental harm. As companies struggle to map supply chains of enormous complexity, smartphone technology and ultimately blockchain will be useful tools.

The Stanford report also notes that blockchain can help distribute aid and track impacts of philanthopic giving.

To accelerate the use of blockchain for social good, an organization called the Blockchain Trust Accelerator, with a grant from philanthropist Social Alpha Foundation, is building the Impact Ledger, an online registry to track projects and their impact. I spoke with Nydia Zhang, a Hong Kong-based founder of the Social Alpha Foundation, and got a taste of the passion that is igniting some of the pioneers in blockchain technology who want to change the world. Zhang looks at big systems and their impacts, such as whether the crops in a country are diversified enough to provide a healthy diet to citizens, and thinks about how governments could incentivize new crops through token rewards distributed on a blockchain. To explain what she means, she says we might one day be earning tokens for healthy or good behavior, such as running a 10k or recycling plastic, and we'd be able to spend our tokens on, say, a cup of coffee, or travel.

The way Zhang sees the world, we all share a common resource pool, and it's finite. Blockchains can help us navigate the complexity of that by directing incentives and making human behavior more efficient. At the same time, as in the case of digital identity, blockchain technology can empower people who were previously outcasts, unbanked and unrepresented. It's about, says Zhang, "how to design an ecosystem where everyone is treated fairly." It's about creating a more just and inclusive world.

How to Reset Your Business to Last 100 Years

Originally published on www.inc.com on January 11, 2019.

These are turbulent times. The news cycle is too fast. Climate change is wreaking havoc with fires, floods, and droughts. Rising inequality and political unrest have brought polarization and violence. Technology is disruptive and markets are volatile. How do you lead through such acceleration and uncertainty?

Chris Coulter, CEO of insights and strategy consultancy Globescan, has an idea of how to give your company a "fighting chance." It is laid out in a book he recently co-authored with David Grayson and Mark Lee, called "All In: the Future of Business Leadership."

"The metrics show that the average tenure on any index for a company is much shorter than it was 50 years ago and much shorter than it was 100 years ago," says Coulter, "and CEO tenures are also shrinking. The world is going through all kinds of change; so much is happening. If a company is truly committed to being around for the next 100 years then it has to think differently and act differently. To do that strategically, sustainability becomes the ideal framework."

Sustainability is a relatively new approach to business that encompasses environmental, social and economic governance for the long term, and emphasizes value creation for all a company's stakeholders.

"The 'All In' part of the book's title means that because of all kinds of challenges and opportunities, it becomes irresistible to not take a half-hearted approach to sustainability but to dive in with both feet - because this is how you can future-fit your business," says Coulter. "When you're sort of a little bit in, you don't catalyze your employees well enough, you don't get the attraction of talent, you don't become more influential in regulatory circles or the ideal partner of choice; you also don't get any sort of halo related to market share of customers - because you're just status quo and you're not purposeful."

The book uses information from extensive company surveys over more than 20 years to draw conclusions about how best to lead for the long term health of an organization. The authors came up with 5 attributes of highly successful companies:

1. Purpose

Your company's purpose is its orientation, its north star. It is how you define what your business does and its societal impact. Coulter says: "you know that's no small thing, to do that really effectively. It takes time to be strategic, and then to make the purpose catalytic, people have to understand its power over decision-making. There are some things you won't do, and some things you'll do differently; that foundational orientation is really critical."

2. Plan

Your company's plan is the 5-10 year strategy that will give meat to the company's purpose. Following the sustainability framework, the company should set ambitious goals, including science-based targets* on the environmental side where possible, put in place risk management tools, and introduce metrics that help the company keep building toward its targets and creating value for stakeholders.

3. Culture

A company's culture is harder to define and depends quite a bit on human elements: what values did the founders and leaders bring to the company, how do people knit together, what is the human context, and so on. Coulter and his co-authors weren't expecting this aspect to come through so strongly in their surveys, nor its relative importance. "You could have all these things, a good purpose, and a good plan, but without the culture the operating system doesn't allow the purpose to drive some of the most important elements that we all know: innovation, transparency, engagement. And all those things are connected. The culture allows those aspects to really come to fruition for the organization.," says Coulter.

4. Collaboration

While purpose, plan and culture are foundational aspects of a successful company, collaboration and advocacy are means to bringing leadership to the next level. Collaboration means partnering with different types of organizations, such as governments or nonprofits, suppliers, customers or even competitors, to effect change. Today there are large-scale collaborative projects that help solve societal problems such as deforestation or human trafficking, while bringing bottom-line benefits to the collaborators. Collaboration can also accelerate change in companies as they begin sharing best practices.

5. Advocacy

More CEOs are speaking out on societal issues, associating their brands with values such as tolerance, diversity and inclusion, and environmental and human rights issues. "Advocacy has to align with the purpose, with the plan and what you're trying to achieve, so that it's strategic, not just the latest thing you think is important," says Coulter. "It really has to be in line with the systemic change taking place around sustainable development."

The implication is that we will be governing our planet, in the future, in ways that ensure that humans thrive in an ecologically balanced environment. 

But looking into that future from here isn't easy. "A lot of the recent scientific reports are disturbing," says Coulter. "We're going in absolutely the wrong directions to have a stable, secure, let alone thriving society and planet. That is the context and that's why we thought the core of this conversation is really about leadership, and how do we help stoke and manifest and define what good leadership looks like going forward."

He is hopeful that a growing wave of sustainability leadership can guide us safely forward. "Historically, we went from a 'do no harm' era 20 years ago, to an era of strategic integration of sustainability about 10 years ago, and then now I think we're in a purpose-driven era. Our hope is to move into a regenerative era in the next 5 or 6 years." 

What exactly does that look like? "There's a lot of uncharted territory that needs to be thought through," admits Coulter. But that makes this time all the more exciting. Sustainability, after all, is a journey.

* According to sciencebasedtargets.org, "Targets adopted by companies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are considered "science-based" if they are in line with the level of decarbonization required to keep global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre- industrial temperatures, as described in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5)."

Why California Is Right to Require Boards to Include Women

Originally published on www.inc.com on October 1, 2018.

California became the first U.S. state to mandate that boards of publicly listed companies include women. India, Germany, Australia, Norway, Spain, France, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Israel had already instituted similar rules or guidelines, following heated debates on the merits of this type of affirmative action.

Here are five reasons California made the right move:

1. Women have plenty of intellectual talent and leadership skills, by any measure, yet are under-represented on corporate boards. Boards are recruiting from only half the talent pool; clearly companies can benefit from recruitment that takes into account a wider pool. Better talent on the board can translate into better decisions for the company and better performance. A 2015 study by Grant Thornton estimated that the U.S. could increase GDP by 3.5 percent with more women on boards.
2. Women can provide new and important perspectives about a type of business, particularly in consumer goods, given that men are not the only ones out shopping. Studies also show that having women on boards helps protect companies against risk.
3. The experiences of other countries have shown that a requirement to recruit women makes everyone stop and think about what qualities are best to recruit, forcing a review of existing board members and often an improvement in the overall skill set on the board.
4. Numerous studies have shown positive correlations between board gender diversity and indicators like earnings per share, return on equity, return on sales, and return on invested capital. This is why investment companies have set up portfolios based on gender-balanced boards. The California law cites studies by MSCI, Credit Suisse and the University of California, Berkeley. Other studies have been published by McKinsey and Catalyst.
5. Even though there are plenty of qualified women in the U.S., they don't seem to make it onto corporate boards very often. It takes legislation to shake up old habits and encourage boards to actively seek diversity. Maybe one day habits will have changed so much that the legislation won't be needed.


A typical concern is that there may not be enough qualified women, but organizations such as the Thirty Percent Coalition and the Boardlist refute that notion. "It's not a pipeline issue, it's a demand issue," says Shannon Gordon, CEO of the Boardlist, which collects referrals and vets eligible female board candidates.
Gordon adds that she expects an upgrade in board quality in California following passage of the law. "It's good hygiene for a board to have an open conversation about how to be effective," she says. "'Where is our company headed? Do we have all the right skills in the room to navigate the challenges?'" These conversations will occur more frequently as companies in California work to comply with the new law.
Perhaps even more importantly, as cultural norms continue to evolve, we need more women in leadership positions acting as role models. Young women need to know there is a place for them at the top. California will lead the way.
At Inc.'s GrowCo conference, Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary explains the two major advantages he's seen in women-run businesses when it comes to getting results.
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Climate Change Is a $26 Trillion Growth Opportunity. 5 Business Models to Consider

Originally published on www.inc.com on September 14, 2018.

Governor Jerry Brown welcomed delegates to the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this week with some strong announcements, including that 100% of California's electricity will come from clean sources by 2045 and that the US is on track to meet approximately two thirds of its carbon goal under the Paris agreement.

Against a backdrop of fires on the west coast and hurricane weather on the east coast, the summit hosted many more announcements, particularly on the intersection of tech and climate, or how innovation can help humanity reach the coveted goal of keeping the globe from warming more than two degrees over pre-industrial levels.

The summit preceded Climate Week in New York, also in September, the UN's COP24 Climate Change Conference to be held in Poland in December, and the start of negotiations for a proposed UN Global Pact for Environment.

Global warming is a hot topic.

The conversation could be about fear, or denial, but it's changing. It's about using tools we have, or that can be imagined, to create the future we want.

There is increasing global consensus that we must shift from a carbon economy to a renewable, or even regenerative one. That means massive disruption, which translates to massive opportunity.

According to a report by the New Climate Economy, if we make the right choices over the next 2-3 years we could unlock benefits worth $26 trillion from here to 2030, create 65 million new low-carbon jobs, and avoid over 700,000 premature deaths from air pollution.

The report points out that we have a planetary window of opportunity created by other transitions taking place, such as urbanization and automation, that need to be managed in any case and could be managed with a low-carbon approach. We should make the shift in 5 key economic systems: energy, cities, food and land use, water and industry.

We could start with putting a price on carbon, which even in the US has broad bipartisan support, and requiring disclosure of climate-related financial risks (guidance on such disclosure has been drawn up by a high-profile global task force).

Governments will need to accelerate sustainable infrastructure investment, and the private sector will need to take the lead with innovation and supply chain transparency. The process will require large-scale collaboration and an inclusive, equitable approach focusing on people.

A new model for sustainable economic growth, according to the report, can come through:

1. Clean energy systems. By continuing the transition already underway from fossil fuels to renewable energy, decentralizing and using digital technology, we can put in place more resilient, cleaner, cheaper systems and provide energy to more people around the globe.
2. Smarter urban development. The report calculates that through good urban planning and infrastructure investment, "More compact, connected, and coordinated cities are worth up to $17 trillion in economic savings by 2050 and will stimulate economic growth by improving access to jobs and housing."
3. Sustainable land use. More sustainable agriculture and forest protection can improve food security including by reducing food loss and waste, and deliver climate solutions.
4. Wise water management. New technology and better management can help allocate resources, improve sanitation and address the "water-energy-food nexus."
5. A circular industrial economy. We need to move away from a take - make - waste economy to one that reuses, repurposes and recycles. "Shifting to a circular industrial economy, combined with increasing efficiency and electrification," says the report, "could decouple economic growth from material use and drive decarbonisation of industrial activities."


The report, entitled "Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century," isn't just a roadmap for tackling the problem of man-made global warming; it's a blueprint for a new, more sustainable and enlightened capitalism. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to it.