2 May 2024 - CISL moderated key panels across the two days of the Innovation Zero conference in London, earlier this week.
James Cole, the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership’s Chief Innovation Officer, moderated a panel on living labs on day one of the conference. Discussing CISL's headquarters, the Entopia Building in Cambridge, Cole and the panel – Lucy Townsend, Head of Sustainability at Building Design Partnership Ltd; Hermione Crease, CEO at Purrmetrix and Martin Townsend, Growth Director at BSI – examined the need for data-driven, considered design with sustainability at its core. The panel concluded that the benefits of a living lab also go beyond those sustainability issues, including health and well-being standards.
Read more about CISL's Living Lab.
Dr Nina Seega, Director of CISL's Centre for Sustainable Finance (CSF), moderated a panel on biodiversity risk and the nature-positive transition on day two. Conversation focused on the important role the finance sector can play in stopping biodiversity loss; the collaboration needed to ultimately reduce risk, and what nature is worth to the economy.
Joined by Karen Ellis, Chief Economist at WWF-UK; Daniel Zarin, Executive Director, Forests & Climate Change, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Rob Wreglesworth, Associate Ecologist & Innovation Lead, The Environment Bank, Nina spoke of the opportunities that moving towards a nature-positive future unveils, and the bold, long-term leadership that's needed to do so. She concluded: "There's no investments on a dead planet."
Read more thought leadership pieces by CSF, such as Everything everywhere all at once.
The UK’s biggest net zero congress saw keynote addresses from UK Government ministers and MPs, Claire Coutinho and Liam Fox, and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. The Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, quoted Corporate Leaders Group UK Director, Beverley Cornaby, directly in his address.
During the busiest talk of the conference, Miliband read Cornaby’s reaction to the speech by Energy Secretary, Coutinho, on day one.
“As Beverley Cornaby, Director of the UK Corporate Leaders Group, said yesterday, ‘We know what businesses in fact need most of all is consistency. Growth is being hampered by constantly changing policy.’ And I agree with her,” announced Miliband. Read the full story.