Blogs

15 November 2021 - Eliot Whittington, Director of the Corporate Leaders Groups, argues COP26 was not the failure some have accused it of being - but now the onus is on businesses to prove their critics wrongI don’t know if COP26 was a success, but I would argue that it wasn’t a failure. Of course, there are deep failures at the heart of the COP pr…

October 2021 - Catherine Weller, from CISL’s Centre for Business Transformation, explains that, when it comes to going ahead with nature-based solution projects, company decision-making processes need to be fit for purpose.Nature-based solutions (NbS) is a hot topic in the climate action debate. There is growing acknowledgement that the nature and …

11 October 2021 - Catherine Weller, from CISL’s Business & Nature team, explores expectations as the first part of the Kunming Nature COP gets underway and explains why business should be active in demanding clear and ambitious targets.In the preface to his recent landmark review of “The Economics of Biodiversity” Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta note…

30 September 2021 - Dame Polly Courtice, Emeritus Founder Director of the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership and Clare Shine, current Director and CEO reflect on CISL’s journey so far, and what the future holds as we move to our innovative new HQ, Entopia.    Dame Polly Courtice CISL’s move to the Entopia Building in early 2022 will b…

30 September 2021 - Our new Course Director for CISL’s Master’s in Sustainability Leadership, Emre Usenmez, reflects on how the programme is preparing future leaders to tackle global challenges in a post-covid world. We, as the current custodians of our planet, are at a crossroads where we can change our grim trajectory. On 9 August 2021 the Interg…

27 September 2021 - Munish Datta is director at UK Green Building Council where he is responsible for leading the organisations membership strategy and enabling the delivery of its mission to radically improve the sustainability of the built environment. As a Fellow at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, he also emp…

27 August 2021 - In the third of our quarterly blogs, Alice Spencer, Programme Director and Global Lead for HRH The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme (BSP), explores the significance of the international focus of our programmes to start a conversation about why now, more than ever, global action must occur.In February 2020 I a…

July 2021 - After three months as Director and CEO of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), Clare Shine shares her thoughts on what's next for the sustainability agenda, and the need for a collective focus on people, nature and climate.How do you view the next 10 years of ‘sustainability’? It’s urgent to make this a true ‘de…

29 June 2021 – Anna Barford, CISL Research Fellow, reflects on why it is critical to engage diverse young people in decision making to find successful pathways to respond to climate change. Young people are the least to blame for climate change – and the most vulnerable to its effects.Meaningful collaboration with young people on this issue is abso…

19 May 2021 – Farad.ai's vision is to enable the current electrical infrastructure to run on 100% low carbon energy. To achieve this, they are developing an AI-powered digital twin of the power system (Farad.ai Sabre) and related site selection products (Farad.ai Compass) that will support energy stakeholders in their move towards a zero-carbon fut…

5 May 2021 – Hide Biotech develops sustainable and high-quality biomaterials for the fashion industry and provides a technology platform for creating highly customisable materials for other sectors. Last year, their co-founder and CEO, Yudi Ding, joined our Innovators for sustainable fashion Accelerator. In this interview, Yudi tells us more about …

5 May 2021 – Tim Forman, Course Director for the Sustainability Leadership for the Built Environment (IDBE) Master’s and Postgraduate Certificate, discusses the need for a radical shift in thinking and in preparedness to invest in the energy efficiency of buildings and built environments in order to achieve real impact.While growing numbers of orga…

5 May 2021 – Banks will play a central role in supporting clients on their net zero transition journey. CISL’s latest guide is a practical resource designed to activate bank-client dialogue on climate change, writes Peter Kanning, Global Head of Business Development, Sustainable Finance, HSBC. The importance of finance is widely recognised as esse…

29 April 2021 – In the second of our quarterly blogs, Alice Spencer, Programme Director and Global Lead for HRH The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, explores the concept of systems thinking that is foundational to CISL’s education programmes, posing the challenge of how we encourage senior leaders to embrace complexity to in…

15 April 2021 – Award-winning social enterprise Ideabatic develops innovations that help to improve people's lives in underserved communities. Their Founder and CEO Kitty Liao joined our Innovators for change Accelerator last year. In this interview, she shares her journey building an impact-driven start-up and what is to come for Ideabatic in 2021…