Advocating for Small Urban Spaces and New Global Corporate Sustainability Standards
I've backlogged a staggering number of emails over the last 2 weeks to incorporate into a future blog post, but it's become overwhelmingly difficult to thread common talking points because each is so individually insightful. Generally, they touch on the same topics I've become interested in — carbon accounting and reporting and urban redevelopment as a catalyst for climate action.
Here are some readings that I found particularly useful:
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
I subscribe to the Project for Public Spaces — I stumbled upon the organization during a wide search of urban planning best practices and a recent discovery called placemaking. A recent PPS promotion highlighted an urban planning book called The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces that I now have in an Indiebound cart.
As I've learned over the course of the past year — from interviewing folks from Copenhagen think tank Space10, watching videos, and reading about projects conducted by Gehl, amongst other resources — policy, practice, and blind repetition has created a serious amount of "technical debt" in our cities and infrastructure over the last century. Despite major waves of US population migration to suburbs between the 1940s and 1960s, cities have continued to grow, yielding a staggering US urbanization rate of ~81% with no sign of slowing and rapidly decaying urban infrastructure that has resulted in increased traffic, motor vehicle fatalities, and severe public transit delays — glaring symptoms of a system in duress.
As more suburban regions scale to serve a growing population of city workers, it will become increasingly important for states and cities to pass policy to electrify our buildings and our infrastructure, simplifying sustainability and resiliency programs in neighborhoods. Until that day comes, local advocacy groups and city council members should emphasize better urban (re)development practices, with an emphasis on creating small urban spaces that decrease the use of personal vehicles, decrease the distance to travel to critical resources, and encourage a stronger walking culture.
Where can I learn more: 7 Rules for Creating "15-Minute Neighborhoods" • Welcome to the ×-Minute City
What can I do: Get involved with your local city council or local government to see what's on their meeting schedule, agendas, etc. Join a local coalition, non-profit, or a national group to put join likeminded individuals looking to turn ideas into action. Remember that your city council advocates for you — make sure they hear you.
Watershed's moment on climate #46
I recently became a subscriber to the Climate Tech VC Substack — if you haven't joined yet, this is your sign. CTVC has been an incredibly valuable resource when I was looking for a job in impact and reading on new technological perspectives on climate action earlier this year. They recently did a deep dive into Watershed, a Silicon Valley darling trying to solve the problem of corporate climate action through carbon footprint tracking, reporting, and CSR programs.
Watershed has multi-decade ambitions to become the go-to corporate decarbonization platform.
In this interview with Watershed CEO Taylor Francis, Taylor defines the goals of Watershed, identifies the opportunities, and describes the mission-driving principles. As I've mentioned in past writings, the Watershed product is comprised of recognizable suite of features including — measure, offset, and report.
Here is the takeaway:
Corporations (large and small) have a hard time measuring their impact on the environment
Corporations have an even harder time trying to reduce their emissions
US corporations make annual (voluntary) sustainability reports, but the majority do not
"Every ton of carbon that goes into the atmosphere can be traced back to a business making a decision"
Watershed is trying to make critical decarbonization programs possible for corporations of any size, combining corporate emissions footprint data with actionable carbon decision making plans
I'm excited to see where Watershed takes their business. Where many CMAPs fall short, Watershed seems to have a plan. Where offset programs fail, reduction programs should take its place to drive real, leveraged programs to reduce carbon emissions along global value chains.
Where can I learn more: Climate Change with Scott Amyx: Interview with Taylor Francis, Co-founder at Watershed
What can I do: If your employers don't already have a sustainability program, urge them to create one. If you have a staff sustainability manager, encourage the use of a CMAP like Watershed to create public accountability and general sustainability transparency for your colleagues, your customers, and the general public.
Inside ISSB and the future of reporting
I subscribe to GreenFin through the GreenBiz newsletter to keep abreast of ESG reporting. In a recent newsletter, they discuss the formation of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) at COP26. The formation of the ISSB is meant to bring a global standard to corporate sustainability. And while this is an exciting prospect for those in the sustainability finance world, the discussion surrounding United States SEC enforcement is a matter of rationality vs. ideology.
Some counterpoints to the global standard setting is that:
global standards are a myth and misses the advantage of an organization like the ISSB which is to align global markets around an approach to sustainability standards through core principles, which allow jurisdictional differences to form in implementation
unlike the CSRD in the EU, the ISSB is not enforcing global mandates for reporting, but instead continues to offer voluntary standards
moreover, while the ISSB may be consolidating several pre-existing organizations into a single entity, it is still one of many organizations that represent a "soup of letters," that are convoluted enough to ease corporations into inaction
competing jurisdictional oversight or political posturing between organizations may cause more inaction, when in reality the standard setters aren't competing between each other, but with technology, namely the ability for AI programs that can create standards with more precision and speed than the typical human-powered standards-setting process
Ultimately, after reading the transcript from the interview, several things are clear to me. The consolidation of standard setters is an attempt to achieve a global standard. However, despite the promise of standard setting, specific market differences position the ISSB to be a better mediator that establishes a principles-based framework that best serve varying jurisdictions.
Lastly, and as a matter of contention, while the EU leads the charge on mandatory reporting and sustainability, the US still relies on good natured, leading corporations to make the necessary changes to become more sustainable. An ISSB could help lead the US towards critical changes in ESG programming that would de-politicize the practice of standards setting, and focus more of the reporting efforts across social and governance, not just environmental reporting, taking the emphasis off of profits first, and on general progress of the nation.
Where can I learn more: An update on the ISSB at COP26 | Bob Eccles and Jean Rogers on ISSB and the future of ESG reporting
What can I do: Support better carbon accounting practices at your companies. Encourage your employers to voluntarily enroll in programs or with CMAPs to drive sustainability from the bottom up. With more corporations on board, setting standards in the US and with the SEC will be less of political commentary, but more about public health and environmental resilience.