In the face of the Covid-19 Pandemic we’re facing the biggest global recession in living memory. At the same time the pressure to decarbonise is growing ever more urgent. How can measures to respond to one crisis be aligned with dealing with the other and are business and governments following through?

Accelerating climate action amid Covid-19 for the Future we Want

Three-minute read of the discussion

How crises can offer opportunities for intervention and innovation
How policy action can help incentivise investment in green technologies and solutions
The broader issues for business to reflect on during the economic recovery
The need for renewed investment in skills and education

“Our response to Covid has been both philanthropic and business testing, and we look at it to see if we can calculate our net zero contribution from some of these innovations that we have put out there.”

Karen Basiye, Senior Manager, Sustainability and Social Policy, Safaricom

Speakers

Karen Basiye, Senior Manager, Sustainability and Social Policy, Safaricom

Karen is a keen Sustainability Practitioner and a Corporate Environment Manager with 15 years’ experience. Over the years she has worked at the National Environment Management Authority and Safaricom where she developed competencies in Leadership, Governance, Strategic Thinking, Sustainability Reporting (both Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), Social Policy, Corporate Environmental Management, Environmental Management Systems. Energy and Climate change policies, Strategies for Sustainable Development, Integrated Product Policies, Sustainable Consumption and Production and integration of Sustainable Development Goals into company strategies.

Hector Pollitt, Director and Head of Modelling, Cambridge Econometrics

Hector is also a research fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (CEENRG) at the University of Cambridge. Hector is a post-Keynesian economist and has worked with Cambridge Econometrics’ global E3ME macro-econometric model for more than 17 years. Using E3ME, he has contributed to numerous high-level climate policy assessments, including the recent analysis of the EU’s proposed 55% GHG reduction target for 2030.

Dr Emily Shuckburgh, Director, Cambridge Zero

Emily is a mathematician and climate scientist and a Fellow of Darwin College, a Fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, an Associate Fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy and a Fellow of the British Antarctic Survey. She leads the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER). Until April 2019 she led a UK national research programme on the Southern Ocean and its role in climate (ORCHESTRA), and was deputy head of the Polar Oceans Team and head of the Data Science Group at British Antarctic Survey. In the past she has worked at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and at MIT.

James Wilde, Group Head of Sustainability, Lloyds Banking Group

James joined the Group in 2018 to help develop a sustainability strategy focused on supporting and financing the transition to a sustainable, low carbon economy. Prior to joining Lloyds Banking Group, James was Managing Director at the Carbon Trust, where he worked for 15 years with business and governments around the world on climate change related issues. His work there informed the introduction of a number of new policies and finance mechanisms and spanned a wide range of topics in the UK and abroad - from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, energy efficiency financing, low carbon buildings design through to renewable energy finance and low carbon technology innovation programmes & policy.

Chair: Eliot Whittington, Director of Policy; Director of The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group

Eliot leads CISL’s team that bridges between business and policy makers to bring about a more sustainable economy. He is the current Director of The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group, which brings together businesses to work towards a step change in policy and action on climate change, and of the EU Green Growth Platform, which creates a common space for governments, businesses and parliamentarians to collaborate in support of a greener EU economy.

Find out more about how CISL's Centre for Policy and Industrial Transformation is helping companies play a transformative role towards a sustainable economy.

Accelerating climate action amid Covid-19 for the Future we Want

Accelerating climate action amid Covid-19 for the Future we Want

Three-minute read of the discussion

“Our response to Covid has been both philanthropic and business testing, and we look at it to see if we can calculate our net zero contribution from some of these innovations that we have put out there.”

Karen Basiye, Senior Manager, Sustainability and Social Policy, Safaricom

Speakers

Karen Basiye, Senior Manager, Sustainability and Social Policy, Safaricom

Hector Pollitt, Director and Head of Modelling, Cambridge Econometrics

Dr Emily Shuckburgh, Director, Cambridge Zero

James Wilde, Group Head of Sustainability, Lloyds Banking Group

Chair: Eliot Whittington, Director of Policy; Director of The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group

Find out more about how CISL's Centre for Policy and Industrial Transformation is helping companies play a transformative role towards a sustainable economy.

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