Is carbon neutral beef a thing (Part I)
With beef and dairy occupying the extreme left of charts showing the carbon intensity of our different protein sources, carbon-neutral beef – which is physically and financially viable – could change how we think about the connection between pastoral farming and soil carbon. Matthew Phan explores whether there is room to alleviate guilt over his next burger.
Accelerating Systemic Transformation - Wales case Study
North Star Transition has been invited to share its learnings from the Wales Transition Lab at a IIEP / ASU-Thunderbird webinar on Nov 10, 2021, entitled “Accelerating Systemic Transformation: A Case Study from Wales.”
Sam’s walk to COP26
Sam Baker, our friend and colleague, is en route to COP26 in Glasgow. As are many others. Some participants might get there by jet, even private jet. Others might take a train or car. Sam’s going to walk. We asked Sam to share the story of Walk2COP26, and what he hopes to achieve by it.
TCFD is A First Step. We must not stop here.
Jyoti Banerjee was invited to contribute an op-ed to a TCFD report from Newton, a long-term active manager owned by Bank of New York Mellon. Here’s the text of his article, as published in Newton’s 2020 report.
Finance Transition Dialogue #2: Exploring Regeneration
In the second of our three-part dialogue on moving beyond ESG, part of the Finance Transition Lab, our participants focused on what a truly regenerative financial system should achieve. We asked Jerome Tagger, CEO of Preventable Surprises, our partner in the Lab, to summarise the key ideas that emerged from our deliberations.
Finance Transition Dialogue #1: What’s the Problem here?
Risk pricing models, governance, culture, externalities, silos, regulatory capture, shareholder value, fear, need for empowerment, lack of diversity, limited supply of investable assets: these are just some of the concerns put forth at the first of North Star Transition’s series of Finance Transition Dialogues. Matthew Phan investigates.
Ambitions for a Nation: Wales Transition Lab
Since October 2020, a group of 35 thought leaders across Wales have listened to each other and imagined a country that future generations could thrive in. Victoria Topham reports back on the four founding ambitions of the Wales Transition Lab. Witness nation-scale change in action.
Finance Transition Lab - reshaping Finance beyond ESG
North Star Transition is launching Finance Transition Lab, an initiative aimed at reshaping finance to go beyond ESG. The Lab will start with a series of three Dialogues, the first of which will be held on June 10th, 2021. Jyoti Banerjee answers our questions.
Cause of death: Shareholder primacy
The European Super League died two days after it was born. The primary cause of death, to us at North Star Transition, was the disease of shareholder primacy. We asked guest author and corporate governance expert Philippe Joubert to carry out the post-mortem on football’s moneyed disaster.
The Climate of Folly
Last week, the World Meteorological Organisation published the State of the Global Climate 2020 report. What should we think of its findings? Who better to ask than Chris Rapley, a leading climate scientist, who leads the Climate Action Unit at University College London.
Financing biodiversity: What we Need to Do
Biodiversity deserves scrutiny. We are now losing species at 1000 times the natural rate. The financing of biodiversity is falling far behind. But the world is starting to recognize the value of nature, as reflected in a number of influential reports. Matthew Phan takes a closer look at the reports to pull together crucial takeaways we all have to pay attention to.
ESG is a dead end. Do we care?
ESG is a dead end. Yet, there is an increased demand for ESG investments as investors seek to incorporate socially conscious principles into their portfolios without sacrificing performance. Jyoti Banerjee investigates regenerative concepts as a better way of addressing our degenerative failures in investment and business.
Funding conservation without costing the Earth
The history of philanthropy is full of systemic disfunction. North Star Transition’s concern to accelerate systemic change immediately stumbles when the fundamental system, in this case wealth creation, militates against the secondary outcome, which is philanthropy. The system is quite simply broken. Peter Harris investigates.
Regenerative farming: Profits, people and Purpose
Modern agriculture evolved partly to meet challenges of food supply and affordability. Yet its use of chemicals has deplete the land and its biodiversity. Add in the growing challenges of climate change, as well as failing farms and sick farmers. Farming must change. One farm that has successfully transitioned from the methods of industrial agriculture is Bradwell Grove in southwest England. To understand this shift, Matthew Phan spoke to Charles Hunter-Smart, who manages the farm.
Negative Externalities: It’s time to change our viewpoint (Part II)
Negative externalities are mostly viewed as a macro-economic issue, but their poison percolates the entire economic system, including at micro-economic level, sending the wrong incentives to business executives and consumers. Olivier Boutellis argues that they are a fundamental flaw we have to fix now.
Negative externalities - It’s time to Change our Viewpoint (Part I)
Markets have been a fantastic driver of wealth and wellbeing... but for the small problem of negative externalities. Scientists worry that negative externalities threaten life on earth - yet we have not resolved the problem. In the first of a two part series, Olivier Boutellis asks why a hundred years of debate on externalities has not changed anything.
Wales Transition Lab: thinking differently holds the key
The Wales Transition Lab works cross-functionally with experts in a range of fields to reconnect food, health and nature across the entire region of Wales. Thomas Clegg interviews Andy Middleton, its leader, to find out whether the Transition Lab is meeting Andy’s expectations.
Partnering on systemic change: UCL and North Star Transition
UCL’s Prof. Chris Rapley was quite clear on his reason for collaborating with North Star Transition: he had spent thirty years trying to persuade policy-makers that scientific evidence required them to act on the emergent climate crisis, but with insufficient effect. He wanted to see a new approach taken in the push for climate action.
US agriculture: a case for systemic thinking
The US is regarded as the world’s bread basket. So are we acting on the systemic crisis afflicting US agriculture? Jyoti Banerjee explores an interesting example of the North Star Transition approach when applied to this situation.
Obstacles to change: why the system seems immovable
Why does the global human-economic system seem immovable, even when its participants face possible extinction through its working? Jyoti Banerjee explores tools that can help shift the system.