Love this Ariana! I wondered if there are any gender components in the project? E.g. upskilling women as ‘green engineers’, considering women headed households and access to finance etc.
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Let’s Build for Humanity Initiative.
Lets Build for Humanity | LinkedIn
This youth-led nonprofit focuses on reducing inequalities by providing social impact infrastructure (housing, sanitation facilities, climate education, ) for all, regardless of race, tribe, religion, or social status. Their projects emphasize sustainable development goals, particularly benefiting displaced and vulnerable groups. By constructing eco-friendly social infrastructure, they address both social and environmental challenges, promoting strength, stability, and self-reliance through social impact infrastructure. -
Dangote Group’s Environmental Initiatives
In Gombe State, the Dangote Group has implemented tree-planting programs and invested in renewable energy projects. These initiatives involve local communities, combining environmental restoration with job creation, thereby addressing climate change while supporting economic development.
Hi Ariana,
Super interesting! We have been thinking about ways to integrate the ‘build back better’ approach in insurance, with payouts at least being partially used for reconstruction in climate resilient infrastructure following natural hazard events- there is good example of this in the UK following flooding events with Flood Re.
Is this something you have also explored?
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Greetings to everyone! This is Evgenia Kyanova dialing in from Forum for the Future, an international sustianability non-profit with offices in the US, UK, India and Singapore, working to accelerate the shift towards a just and regenerative future. Since 2022, one of our critical projects in the US geo specifically has been American Climate Futures - a national programme to support businesses committed to a ‘just transition’ by ensuring community needs as part of climate action plans and providing tangible guidance on how to take concrete action in a way that fosters trust and partnership with vulnerable communities. An important output of this project was a report developed jointly with B-Lab US and Canada - Business Guide to Advancing Climate Justice (https://www.forumforthefuture.org/business-guide-to-advancing-climate-justice). I believe that this is an excellent example of a collaboration with wide benefits across the full ecosystem, also being fully capable of being scaled / expanded across other geos for broader impact.
thankyou @johnwakima - does Wildlife Works operate in Malawi? And do you work with smallholder farmers
We have inherited an economic structure that prioritises extraction, profit maximisation and continuous growth over human wellbeing and the survival of living systems on our planet. Growth for growth’s sake is not sustainable and continues to stretch the economic gap between the rich and poor and we are all readily aware that the least responsible for climate change are those most affected.
Those at the frontline of the climate crisis are those whose livelihoods often depend on a resilient natural environment and who are also those who illustrate some of the best innovations of harnessing nature-based solutions. Maximising nature-people-climate synergies for sustained human wellbeing, critically diversifying communities’ livelihoods and building resilience to future shocks and stresses are all important.
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i still owe you an email! We must share ideas. I will action
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Humanity Insured is also private sector backed initiative backed by the insurance industry. We support people on the climate frontline access insurance by providing them with grants to purchase insurance and also build climate resilience through added services. We work with local organisation and organisation working on countries that eligible to ODA. The communities we focus on are small holder farmers, coastal communities, urban informal workers and displaced people.
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Our second question today:
Ensuring marginalised voices, especially youth and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP & LCs), are integrated into decision making and acknowledging the inherent climate anxiety felt by many who are flip-flopping between hope and hopelessness for our future.
Additionally ensuring we shift our thinking from sustainability to regeneration as just sustaining is no longer enough and embedding purpose in all aspects of your life to future-proof both our wellbeing and economic resilience are needed.
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Hello my name is Jen Faucon and I an Program Team Lead at The USCIB Foundation.
The next wave of consumers/buyers are prioritising purpose in their decision making, elevating the power of purpose-driven purchasing, be it B2C, B2B or B2G. But for the big long-term win, assuming that purpose equals profit, is not enough. Fundamentally our whole relationship with commerce needs revolutionising, investing finance and energy into a purist view of purpose-driven companies drives monetary returns and actually ends up hindering our ability to drive real change. It doesn’t question or challenge underlying assumptions about finance and growth. People and Planet First focuses on verifying and uniting businesses that exist to solve societal and planetary issues along with self-sustaining business models first and foremost.
Q2 Climate adaptation, resilience and mitigation isn’t a singular crop or product supply chain issue. It needs a wholescale approach to engage with communities at a landscape level to understand what are the risks they are facing, what are the coping and adaptation strategies already in place, how do these differ across different vulnerable groups (e.g. women, youth, others) and how do you build diverse livelihoods resilience within each unique context. Individual teams or businesses cannot do this alone. Genuine collaboration is needed across supply chain teams, between industry players and with diverse stakeholders, with an emphasis on co-design with communities and vulnerable groups. Collaboration is something that is spoken about a lot, but at The Partnership Collective, we see the need for stronger commitments and facilitated partnership frameworks to put it into genuine action.
Part 2 Q2
On the ground, livelihoods and climate are entirely interlinked - one is not possible without the other; putting people into climate action isn’t new for those on the frontlines of climate change. However, at a brand and retailer level, we have historically been treating environmental sustainability and social impact or human rights as separate strategies, managed through different departments and with different project solutions. By genuinely listening to the voices of communities and vulnerable groups, businesses have the opportunity to learn from the people who have been managing integrated environmental and social strategies, often for their whole lives. At The Partnership Collective, we facilitate business model change which is co-designed and guided by the needs and voices of those communities and vulnerable groups who are being hardest hit by climate change and who often have the most transformative solutions to offer.
Purchasing is one of the most significant leverage points in a transition to regenerative business modelling. Choosing to purchase products and services from verifiable social enterprises have direct social and environmental benefits from addressing homelessness, supporting refugees, empowering women and providing clean water to recovering plastic waste, accelerating the renewable energy transition and restoring ecosystems. It provides revenue that is reinvested to ensure authentic sustainability and expand impact.
Corporate philanthropy gives around $20 billion annually to nonprofit organisations that rely on their good will, yet global purchasing is around $105 trillion per year. If we shifted even 1% of purchasing to enterprises that put people and planet first, it would shift a trillion dollars in social and environmental solutions, and significantly contribute to addressing the inequalities created in the climate crisis globally.
Additionally, since these enterprises tend to collaborate with and source from others with shared values, purchasing also has systemic effects. Each purchase channels funds into the emerging new economy where it continues to circulate. It supports the development of new value chains, creates opportunities for new initiatives, strengthens support networks and builds a community committed to collective action. Research shows that when you spend $1 with one of these enterprises you create $4.25 in local impact and benefit. If you spent that same dollar with a big corporation you would create $0.70 of local benefit.
A2 – Part 1: A key challenge for businesses is that they may design climate adaptation and mitigation strategies in silos. It is no longer about consultation but rather co-creation with the stakeholder –“Nothing about us, without us” (borrowed from the UN-International Day of Disabled Persons). Co-creation begins with identifying the common goal and values – it will be an iterative process and require time to navigate complex contexts, technical features, communications, discussions, negotiations, etc. Many frameworks can be used, beginning with human-centered design and co-developing the theory of change not only as your measurement foundation but as a communication tool to improve design and unlock innovation in operations/activities. (There are already many tools and frameworks, and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel). What drives this challenge is a lack of resources – money, of course, but also local staff time for the necessary deep engagement activities; lack of incentives for the local community members to participate in the activities; limited communication and negotiation skills among all the stakeholders leading to a breakdown in conversations; lack of technical skills in the functional or sectoral details; lack of impact measurement resources and technical skills within company staff.
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- Many businesses face difficulties in securing funding for adaptation measures, especially for communities in developing countries. The upfront costs of building climate resilience, such as infrastructure upgrades or disaster risk management, can be significant. Also resilience cannot always be measured so organisation need to trust the process
@evgenia - this is a great resource, have you had much uptake with companies using it?
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As insurers, we help build resilience to climate change through our key business functions: 1. financial protection in risk transfer against climate/ extreme weather events and reducing income volatility for households and business, 2. risk understanding and analysis of the impacts of climate events through advisory, and 3. investments in climate adaptation and resilient infrastructure.
Some challenges that we have in implementing solutions are:
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Affordability and accessibility of insurance– no one wakes up in the morning looking to buy insurance and we often face barriers in explaining products and building trust, particularly in underserved regions.
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Lack of good on the ground knowledge for our risk models to accurately price risk and create a product that is fit for purpose- for a product which fits the needs of the market we are looking to serve, we need on the ground insights and local knowledge, which can take time and resource to gather.
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This has already been mentioned, but coordination with stakeholders and interconnected/ cascading risks. For many of these solutions, we need a coordinated working group of stakeholders to effectively design, develop and implement the programme. Promoting an enabling environment for these solutions and creating pathways for collaboration is key.
Many businesses are unfortunately hurdled by the need for shareholder returns / short-termism… In a period of economic hardship, most are in survival mode, which does little to support strategic / trailblazing thinking. We see multiple examples of this happening around us across media… I wish there was a way to keep a high-level focus on what’s to come as no one is immune to negative climate impacts, with some suffering more than others…
Still, there’s so much potential from tackling climate as part of an organisational strategy - it would be the right and clever thing to do, allowing to mitigate risk, comply with regulations, do good for the local community and engage with it, thus winning over staff, customers, suppliers, etc.