Ciara Shannon heads up Eden Ventures advising business on sustainability and climate change strategy, policy and risk management issues. Eden Ventures also does bespoke sustainability leadership training, stakeholder engagement / envisioning and communications. Prior to this, she initiated and ran the Climate Change Business Forum for the Business Environment Council and for her work in motivating business on climate change issues she was named an Outstanding Earth Champion. Hong Kong born, Ciara has worked for more than 12 years on environmental sustainability working with government, business, NGOs and academia, as well as six years on the 'social' side of sustainability via working with various development charities.
Tropical forests cover about 15 percent of the world’s land surface but every year around 13 million hectares of forest are cleared for crop cultivation, cattle, logging and mining (FAO 2010). Forests are both carbon guzzlers (sinks) and emitters (sources) and deforestation and forest degradation accounts for a whopping 15-17 percent of man-made GHG emissions each year.
In the context of climate change, a 50 percent reduction in GHG emissions is needed by 2030 to prevent global temperature rising above 2 degrees Celsius (IPCC 2007, AR4) but the positive news is that reducing deforestation is the “single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions.”
Despite the collective groan over Rio+20’s lack of political leadership and a global process that is failing to urgently address our planetary challenges; the contrast between Rio’s Earth Summit 20 years ago and now, could hardly be greater.
Back then, the spirit of sustainability was idealistic, not entirely understood and it then took some time for people to put it into practice and get fuddled by its complexity. Compare this to the current polarized ‘sustainability everything’ and surely we should be applauding Brazil’s canny negotiators for getting to any agreement at all - even if it is a hortatory, non-binding statement called “The Future We Want”.
Today you’ll hear sustainable development mentioned everywhere from promoting the latest app, at a shoe launch or painted in bold across bill boards (add to this list every time you hear the word “sustainable”).
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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