The Sustainability Agenda

William McDonough is a globally recognised leader in sustainable development. His books Cradle to Cradle: Rethinking the Way we Make Things, co-authored with chemist Michael Braungart and followed up in 2013 by The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance, are seminal texts in the circular economy movement. Originally trained as an architect, McDonough firmly...

Jay Coen Gilbert is co-founder of B Lab, the non-profit organisation that serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good. B Lab certifies B Corporations, companies that meet the highest standards of verified, overall social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability.Since its inception in 2006, the B Corp...

David Blood is co-founder and Senior Partner of Generation Investment Management. Previously, he spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs including serving as co-CEO and CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management from 1999-2003. David received a B.A. from Hamilton College and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business. He is on the board of...

Sam Fankhauser is Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. He has been at the institute since its inception a decade ago, where he initially joined as a Principal Research Fellow. He also holds positions as Deputy Director of the Centre for Climate Change...

Dr Sabina Alkire is the director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), an economic research centre within the Oxford Department of International Development. She is a professor in International Affairs at the George Washington University and is a fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association. With fellow economist James Foster, she...

Leo Hickman is director and editor of Carbon Brief, a leading UK based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy, and energy policy. Carbon Brief specialises in clear data-driven articles and graphics to communicate complex and fast-moving developments in climate science to improve the understanding of climate change both in terms of...

Dr. Andy Price is head of politics at Sheffield Hallam University. His primary research area lies in political theory; particularly in ecology, environmentalism and new social movements, such as the Occupy movement. He has taught and researched in higher education for over fifteen years and previously held positions at Saint Louis University in Madrid, Liverpool...

Annemieke Tsike-Sossah de Jong is Head of Portfolio at the IKEA Foundation, the independent charitable foundation that overseas IKEA’s global philanthropy. First established in 1982 with the main goal of preventing child labour, the foundation’s operations expanded considerably in 2009 so that today it administers an annual budget of 140 million euros. Its efforts are...

Scott Tew is the executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency & Sustainability (CEES) at Ingersoll Rand, a global diversified industrial company with over 40,000 employees and annual revenues of over 13 billion dollars. Ingersoll Rand is involved in numerous operations including connected heating, ventilation and air conditioning solutions, air compression technologies, electrical vehicles...

Dr. Per Espen Stoknes is a distinguished psychologist and economist and chair of the Centre for Green Growth at the Norwegian Business School.  He is a pioneer in the field of climate change psychology, which he has studied for twenty years–and the author of numerous books including the acclaimed What We Think About When We...

Barry Parkin is the Chief Sustainability Officer at Mars, Inc. The family run confectionary giant has over 33 billion dollars in annual sales and is ranked by Forbes as the 6th largest privately held company in the United States, with over 80,000 employees, 150 factories and a million small-scale suppliers around the world. As Chief...

Michael Mann is a distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Centre at Pennsylvania State University. A climatologist and geophysicist, he is a leading contributor to the IPCC and is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading climate scientists. His work has been pivotal in advancing our understanding of...

Dr. Richard Norgaard is Professor Emeritus of Ecological Economics in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, environmental pioneer, and founding member and former president of the International Society for Ecological Economics. After receiving his PhD at the University of Chicago, where he studied with numerous economists who would later be awarded the...

In this thought provoking and insightful interview, Tony Juniper provides a timely assessment of the state of sustainability agenda and the relative importance of key sustainability drivers, highlighting how corporations are taking the lead driving the sustainability agenda, the growing influence of investors on sustainability and the role of technology. Tony highlights the scale of...

In this interview, Lynelle Cameron talks about the work of the Autodesk Foundation-and the relationship between sustainability, CSR and corporate philanthropy at Autodesk. She highlights the growing importance of sustainability in design and the company’s commitment to bringing sustainability thinking into all its design work, and the development of Sustainability Workshop, an online learning platform...

David Biello is the science curator at TED Talks as well as a contributing editor for Scientific American.  He recently published “The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth’s Newest Age,” in which he explores the emergence of the “Anthropocene,” the period during which human activity has become the dominant influence on planet-sized systems...

In recent years, sustainable procurement has become an increasingly important issue for customers and stakeholders in large companies around the world. Yet assessing levels of sustainability across supply chains remains a tremendous challenge for many companies. In this interview, Pierre-Francois Thaler, co-founder, and co-CEO of EcoVadis, talks about the key drivers of sustainable procurement and...

How well are companies doing when it comes to sustainability? This is a key question that Corporate Knights assesses in its annual Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations—based on publicly available information provided by companies around the world. In this interview, Toby explains how Corporate Knights assess companies’ sustainability credentials –and the different ways in which...

In this interview, Jean Bennington Sweeney, Chief Sustainability Officer at 3M, gives an overview of the company’s sustainability journey as a purpose-driven organisation. She points to three main ways in which sustainability helps 3M –compliance, risk management, and growth—and how this resonates with investors. Jean emphasizes the crucial importance of setting bold sustainability goals-how that...

In this interview, Professor Giorgos Kallis, a leading degrowth thinker, provides an overview of evolving theories of degrowth. Degrowth theorists argue for a reduction in production and consumption, arguing that overconsumption is at the root of many of the long term environmental issues and social inequalities facing the world today. Professor Kallis highlights the importance...