Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Green Shoots & Big Shifts is hosted by Reetu Gupta, who started the show to have open, hopeful conversations about what it really takes to make sustainability part of how we live, lead, and work.
Each week, she talks with people doing innovative, meaningful work, turning ideas into action. From startup founders and corporate change-makers to community leaders - reimagining how business, society, and the planet can thrive together.
These are stories about innovation, collaboration, possibility, and the everyday shifts that move us toward a more abundant and resilient future.
00;00;03;22 - 00;00;33;07
Reetu
You're listening to green shoots and big shifts. The show that spotlights the people and ideas, transforming a world for the better. I'm your host, Weta Gupta. In every episode, I'll be talking with innovators and trailblazers who are reimagining our relationship with our planet Earth. Whether it's a small spark of innovation or a sweeping shift in how we live and work, we'll explore the stories that give us hope and the actions making a difference.
00;00;33;09 - 00;00;41;11
Reetu
Together, we are planting seeds of change and driving big shifts for a healthier, abundant, sustainable future.
00;00;41;13 - 00;01;02;26
Reetu
Hi, this is Rita Gupta, the your host for our green shoots and big shift. And I would like to welcome all the listeners to this podcast with Alka Bean Day. I'll go. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today for the conversation. I would like to welcome you. And just for context, for our listeners. Would you share your background?
00;01;02;26 - 00;01;06;25
Reetu
What are you working on right now? Anything to set the context?
00;01;06;27 - 00;01;27;10
Alka
Yeah. It's a pleasure to meet all of you. I am the head of climate research at Glass Lewis, and we are a major player in the proxy voting and governments industry. I started my career more in the financial sphere, in mergers and acquisitions at TD Bank. And then because my undergraduate degree was in public policy as well as economics.
00;01;27;11 - 00;01;58;25
Alka
I wanted to move more into the realm of sustainable finance. So I went to go get my master's degree from Northwestern University in Energy and Sustainable Finance. Using this degree and my prior background in finance. I started to develop sustainability and ESG risk policies and helped them be incorporated in institutions like the Bank of Montreal. And I also led regulatory tracking and consulting efforts internationally, with CSR and, BSR at a few different campaigns.
00;01;59;02 - 00;02;18;01
Alka
And with this experience, I'm also teaching at, Seneca Polytechnic here in Toronto. And, and I'm excited to help more people learn about how sustainability can be both a part of their everyday corporate journey, as well as how large scale shifts can happen using the principles of sustainable finance.
00;02;18;04 - 00;02;42;14
Reetu
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for for sharing that. For people who are unfamiliar with glass Lewis. Can you go a little more into, like, you know what what you you particularly are excited about working on and how does what Glass Lewis does sets it apart from other agencies who are also doing perhaps like climate reading, etc., etc.?
00;02;42;17 - 00;03;22;19
Alka
Yeah, absolutely. So Glass Lewis is helps with proxy voting and has a few different types of solutions such as shareholder communications, executive compensation, corporate governance solutions. I'm specifically working on is our new climate research product. So we are helping companies understand their ESG rating in comparison to not just other countries, but within their sector. And how their business activities and their strategy and their execution are really lining up with their counterparts with their competitors and helping them understand that are the things that they are investing in to make their climate strategy move forward.
00;03;22;23 - 00;03;27;13
Alka
Are these the things that are actually generating a financial return for their business?
00;03;27;15 - 00;03;49;02
Reetu
Yeah, that's a such a good point. You you talked about financial return for the business question. How are companies using this climate reading or research that you are providing to them? And then how do how does that help them understand if there's a like, how does financial viability and sustainability fit into their climate strategy?
00;03;49;05 - 00;04;22;28
Alka
Yeah, absolutely. So companies are using this in a variety of ways. It really depends on, if there are investors, or asset managers. It depends if they, are more engaged in stewardship practices. But these, the products that we've created is actually multi-use. And it can be used in a variety of things, whether that is board decisions, whether that's at a, strategy, an innovation level of product design and management, whether that's at a financial level of asset allocation and management.
00;04;22;28 - 00;04;42;11
Alka
What we're hoping to do is create a product that really serves multiple parts of the different lines of business, because we know with companies and with fragmentation, not every part of the business is touching every part of the strategy or every part of the execution. So what we want to do is show our approach in that in the multiple operational parts of the business.
00;04;42;16 - 00;04;55;04
Alka
Here are the components that we think are really driving your climate change forward. And what are some things that you really could be doing that others in the industry are also doing to keep you up as a competitive leader?
00;04;55;06 - 00;05;28;17
Reetu
That's that's really helpful. One of the things that you talked about is, you know, the financial, the financial bottom line, my understanding is there's increasing pressure to tie sustainability investments to financial outcomes, especially. It could be our institutional clients or as you said, it could be operators. How do how does financial materiality interplay with sustainability? And why is it so important to show that bottom line benefit when implementing a climate strategy?
00;05;28;19 - 00;06;08;21
Alka
Absolutely. So in challenging financial times like this, I think a lot of industries are looking at like climate as something that's a negative cost center to them. And what we really want to show is that climate can be a positive opportunity if they invest in the right way and if they use their existing investments and really follow up on them and give them the appropriate talent and time and compensation to really make sure that they're engaging with other parts of the business to drive value from their past investments, as well as starting to look at their future investments with what was a proven, success and what needs to really move forward in order to
00;06;08;21 - 00;06;26;28
Alka
compete with other industry players. And I think so often of the time we're like seeing climate when it's looking at this negative risk side of things, we are looking at it, well, now I need to spend money on disclosure. Now I need to spend money on on these new initiatives. Now I need to create all of this branding in this marketing.
00;06;27;02 - 00;06;54;11
Alka
But what we are trying to push is that the things that really deliver positive financial materiality and positive value to the business when you are increasing disclosure, yes, that is a cost that you were doing, but you were increasing transparency in your business. You are making it clear to the stakeholders within and external to your business what you're doing and to providing this level of accountability that is incredibly critical to any business, regardless of if they're invested in or not.
00;06;54;16 - 00;07;13;19
Alka
And when you're thinking about things where you are looking at your external focus, no company should be greenwashing any the way. And just saying things for the sake of you want to say that we're doing climate friendly things. So we often feel that by looking at the financial materiality and how were you executing on the strategy that you've set out?
00;07;13;22 - 00;07;48;14
Alka
It really prevents companies from doing this greenwashing and prevents them from really saying things that they aren't actually following up on. And it gives businesses this, and institutional managers and asset managers an opportunity to look at which companies in their portfolio are really walking the walk, that they set out to do. And these are the companies who, you know, show an integrated business focus as well, because these are the ones who have centralized between these are what the communications and the marketing and sales side of our company are saying we're doing.
00;07;48;14 - 00;07;58;11
Alka
And this is where the also the business strategy of our company is coming from. And we are both doing the same thing. And I think that really shows a lot about the health of the business.
00;07;58;13 - 00;08;19;14
Reetu
Yeah, that's a great point. I want to touch up on something you said about greenwashing because in the interim it can seem like a great strategy, but it does carry a lot of risk, reputational risks, to name some. One question that came up as a follow up, who are your typical clients at glass? Lewis, you've mentioned institutional investors.
00;08;19;14 - 00;08;22;17
Reetu
Are they that your primary clients?
00;08;22;19 - 00;08;44;29
Alka
Yeah, absolutely. So our primary clients are institutional investors, as you mentioned, and asset managers. We are reporting on different corporate companies that are within their portfolio for them. And corporates, of course, have the opportunity to reach out to us, to ask us about the rating and what kind of information we're using, since we're all using public disclosures and information.
00;08;44;29 - 00;09;12;26
Alka
But those are our primary clients. And when you're talking about greenwashing, I know you brought that up. I know that that is a large concern of many businesses around the world, not just for the corporates themselves, but for, these companies who have the corporate shares in their portfolio just because of the fact that, you know, Canada, UK, Australia, all of these up, you're up as well have all greenwashing legislation that's a primary component in their regulatory landscape.
00;09;12;26 - 00;09;37;16
Alka
And companies are trying to become more aware of this and figuring out how much should they disclose, how much should they not disclose. And what we really want to push forward is this idea that if your strategy is matching your execution, when you talk about climate, that means that you're tracking how well your initiatives are succeeding or not succeeding, or what was the long term time horizons for your initiatives.
00;09;37;21 - 00;09;58;09
Alka
So we really believe that by aligning your practices and focusing on business strategy centric approaches, you can move forward and not greenwash and still have lots of great things to talk about, about the climate work that you're doing because you have real accountable data to show how your strategy is showing up for you financially.
00;09;58;11 - 00;10;24;21
Reetu
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One question that that comes to mind is obviously without sharing anything that might be proprietary or confidential in your research or as you're working with different corporations, are there certain models or examples that have stood out which are better investments, just generally speaking, worse models that are struggling? Yeah. So have you seen like good and bad?
00;10;24;23 - 00;10;49;10
Alka
Yes. I think across all of our sectors we have seen some fantastic examples and some not so great examples because I think within them there's also, you know, local contexts and like the approaches that they take in different geographies really impacts the overall company strategy and how integrated it can be. And I think with some of the ones that we've seen are the most forward looking.
00;10;49;12 - 00;11;15;26
Alka
I would say that one thing that may or may not surprise listeners is the fact that it's not always the biggest companies with the most money to spend. It's the companies who have the clearest transparency and accountability in what they're doing. So we even have some oil and gas companies who are doing very well in our model, because they are tracking what initiatives are doing well for them with the climate plan, and which ones they have a plan to retire eventually.
00;11;15;26 - 00;11;37;18
Alka
So what we believe it's not that you have to be, you know, the lowest emitter because by industry, it's not possible for every industry to become low carbon instantaneously. And each of them have to take a different approach that's appropriate for their industry, appropriate for their shareholders, appropriate for the local economies that this business is a key part of.
00;11;37;21 - 00;12;04;02
Alka
But even with accounting for all of those things, having this clear business transition plan, a climate transition plan, having these things in place and being able to disclose effectively not just that they've invested money, but where have they invested the money? Is it in new talent? Have they also brought on external resource managers? Have they brought on different types of management?
00;12;04;02 - 00;12;24;21
Alka
Who can really help them? Are the executives who are at that company? Are they paying attention to what all the middlemen want is doing? Are they paying attention to what these consultants that they brought in are doing? So for us, like, the biggest thing that we're looking at is what's the whole picture together and what kind of story is it saying?
00;12;24;21 - 00;12;51;11
Alka
So for us, climate ratings and who's doing the best, who's doing the worst? It's the ones who have the best story to tell. If you can convincingly show that you have made changes, you have follow through. Those are the ones we're the best performers and not some of the times we have companies who say that they've invested millions of dollars, like, you know, new solar approach or something like that, but I don't see any evidence of their past work.
00;12;51;15 - 00;13;22;09
Alka
They don't mention which they're using as models in their disclosure, and they don't seem to be bringing executives in to really buy into their approaches and be the sponsor and make sure that this idea is consistently brought forward at meetings, at management discussions. And these are the like give us a little bit more pause because obviously, you know, companies can be doing more internally that we may not know about, but shareholders, the public, all these interested parties, what we have to go on is external disclosures.
00;13;22;09 - 00;13;39;28
Alka
And that's entirely what our climate rating product is based off of. So if if you have a coherent company strategy and were doing the work and you've brought in the right teams and divisions are the ones that we're the most impressed by, are the ones who really showcase that in their disclosure.
00;13;40;00 - 00;14;19;02
Reetu
Yeah. And you bring up such an important point. It's just it just it just dawned on me that implementing climate strategy is like implementing any other strategy. It can be AI strategy. It can be, you know, your Sigma like operational strategy. It all comes down to like how important the executives are in alignment all across. So it's not different from implementing any of our business strategy and making sure that you're evaluating and learning from there and seeing what is not working and what's working and investing accordingly.
00;14;19;02 - 00;14;41;25
Alka
So yeah, the way that I couldn't have said it better myself, but that's exactly what we want to get across to our clients, and to the world at large, even that, like climate and sustainability and, all of this doesn't have to be a scary idea or a really hard idea. This is just part of business as normal and like it will deliver returns to your business the same way.
00;14;42;01 - 00;14;55;13
Alka
Adopting these other new business strategies will deliver returns to your business. It doesn't need to be its own separate unit outside. In fact, the ones who have it integrated are really the high performers that we see.
00;14;55;15 - 00;15;13;18
Reetu
What are you talking about? Integration. Have you seen like when you say integrated word models or business models or structural org structure models? Have you seen where this integration, you know, they're integrating like and it does working.
00;15;13;21 - 00;15;35;04
Alka
Yeah. So I would say again like back to the idea about executive leadership and their buy in. But also the ones that have like councils that are having roadmap meetings for all of their different teams and divisions. Like one thing that we've noticed works the least well to give it a comparative example is the ones that are like a very siloed approach.
00;15;35;10 - 00;16;08;02
Alka
So if there's too much fragmented business lines and too many fragmented strategies, and, you know, one part of the business is doing these amazing, innovative things, but the other part of the business is not catching this at all. The ones that we see are the ones that have like these regular like, AGM meetings that always like incorporate feedback from these multiple lines of business and seeing what are working well and what they can bring across and have shared learnings, which again, is one of the ideas of good business practice across the board and shared business practice across the board.
00;16;08;02 - 00;16;09;19
Alka
Not specific to climate.
00;16;09;26 - 00;16;37;26
Reetu
Yeah, I love that and I love that. What you said and it's it's like it's not a scary thing. It's just business as usual. Use your business skills and you know, it just part and that's what it is. So that that that's really helpful to hear it that way. Because usually when people think about like we have to implement, you know, a climate or a sustainability strategy, it seems like this big onerous thing.
00;16;37;26 - 00;16;44;13
Reetu
Yes, it will take time. It might be complicated, but it's like like implementing any new strategy.
00;16;44;15 - 00;17;05;02
Alka
Once and for all. Yeah, sorry, I was just going to say also as well for for all the listeners who studied business or economics, like a topic that's very often brought up is like the tragedy of the commons. And the idea that, you know, there's all these public goods that if as long as everyone uses them equally, we all have access to.
00;17;05;05 - 00;17;14;11
Alka
But if some people start to exploit these goods, then not everyone has access to it, and it can degrade the quality of the good for other people.
00;17;14;13 - 00;17;15;00
Reetu
00;17;15;02 - 00;17;50;03
Alka
When companies are starting to think about like, oh, there's all these additional business costs. I think for years we were taking for granted a lot of resources that companies had, whether that's about using local, advantages in local communities, whether that's clean water or clean land, all of these principles that are really important across the board, and this is just incorporating climate back into when they're doing their risk modeling, when they're doing their cost calculation, because when they were doing these things originally, climate was not always a part of the discussion.
00;17;50;03 - 00;18;23;00
Alka
So while this might feel like we're adding something new to the things you have to consider for healthy business practices, this is more of trying to consider things that should have been there all along, and really including that cost in there, and then working on the idea that, well, if this is the landscape that we're in now, post the tragedy of the Commons for so many years, what are the new opportunities we have to reinvest in our environments, reinvest in our communities and deliver growth for everyone as well, not just for our business.
00;18;23;07 - 00;18;33;00
Alka
Which, you know, for people who are familiar with EU legislation is a very critical part of our society. And the double materiality, that's such a critical focus there.
00;18;33;02 - 00;18;58;27
Reetu
Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit more about the regulatory environment and trends. But what do you just want to highlight. What you just said is the landscape. The risk landscape has changed. There's a new risk factor that needs to be taken into consideration, which is the impact of climate change. And if you're not taking that into consideration, you're not doing rigorous risk planning.
00;18;58;27 - 00;19;31;22
Reetu
So again, going back to basics, basics of running a business. So such a such a great point talking about the regulatory trends. You know, you've worked closely with evolving ESG regulations in different markets. How do global trends as you mentioned in EU, the Dublin materiality is is shaping, shaping, business shaping, product development. And how would you compare, for example, a just say two markets like the EU and the UK.
00;19;31;24 - 00;19;35;22
Reetu
Are there different trends and how do they shape businesses?
00;19;35;24 - 00;20;20;03
Alka
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say that the regulatory trends really there's a confluence of factors. And I think it also has to do with how historically companies have done business in that area, if they had enough primary consumers in that market or they've had to go to external markets. But I would say that across the board, one of the things we're seeing is a greater consolidation of standards across not just UK specific or EU specific, across all markets, like so many countries are all signing on to the ISS a B standards and but the which has now integrated sasb and Tcfd standards and just today actually there was a publication saying that Europe is
00;20;20;03 - 00;20;50;19
Alka
considering integrating at the ISS, integrating the ISS B standards into CSD to make it easier for companies to disclose. And I think the large trend that all of this regulation really tells us is that what people want to see, what governments want to see, is more transparency around how companies do business, not less. It's not necessarily about they want to see so many like there's the specifics differ a little bit legislation country to country.
00;20;50;24 - 00;21;16;12
Alka
But the trends across the board is that they want to see the same things that we're really showing in our climate product. And where's the transparency? Where's the accountability to who's the responsible for what's, what are the changes that you're making? Have you done an accounting of, you know, your resource use? Have you done an accounting of what parts of your business either rely on the changing climate or might you be changing climate?
00;21;16;12 - 00;22;00;04
Alka
It's one of those things that, you know, we've weathered such big financial shocks in the last even 20 years, like this past century has been one of incredible economic change and growth. And what we want to make sure of and what governments really want to make sure of, is that companies can continue to weather those changes. So I think when companies are really looking at what are the regulatory impacts on their business, I think it's important to see this as improving your business practices and improving your business principles overall, because it's clearly showing that there is a focus on climate again, as an important business principle, not just from from a private sector standpoint of
00;22;00;04 - 00;22;16;20
Alka
like, I need it for listing in the stock exchanges or I need it for raising capital or any of these things, but that there's public demand for it as well, and that there is welfare for countries and the global economy is at large. By talking about your climate business strategy.
00;22;16;23 - 00;22;45;26
Reetu
Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. As, as you talked about like there's this whole alphabet soup of, like, different reporting requirements. How does like, do you think, you know, do you think it's going to it looks like it's being simplified and it looks like some progress is being made on that. And one of the things that I hear or the pushback is like the like people spend a lot of time just reporting or it is very time consuming.
00;22;45;26 - 00;22;56;11
Reetu
Are you seeing any trends, maybe the use of technology, etc. that is making it easier to do the reporting?
00;22;56;14 - 00;23;20;25
Alka
Yeah. So I think that one thing that yes, no one can deny, of course it takes time to report all these things. And I think all of us have had the experience of being overworked and understaffed on a team before. And I think sustainability teams across the globe are really fueling this push, especially I think that with what we were talking about, about developing better business strategies.
00;23;20;25 - 00;23;40;00
Alka
Right. A lot less is coming down to data collection. And I really, you know, when I came to my previous experiences, where I've worked with the consulting or at the banks, one of the things that was really critical to put in place are these data pipelines, so that you're getting a regular stream of updated data from the different teams who are collecting the relevant data.
00;23;40;00 - 00;24;01;18
Alka
So are you collecting the emission and energy numbers from the real estate team? Are you collecting the finance numbers from the team that's doing the lending? Are you collecting the numbers from the team that's doing like social outreach, like there's a lot of different compilation of data that has to happen. And obviously setting up a new process, setting up the new collection.
00;24;01;19 - 00;24;41;17
Alka
Data collection is painful when you're first starting out, but the idea behind investing in these practices and really setting them up for long term success means that they hopefully won't be painful in the future. So I think if I could give like advice to companies and this is just coming from me, as I see, like the different reports that I'm reading, I think my biggest thing would be invest from the beginning on setting up good reporting and good data collection practices, and invest from the beginning of tying your actual data numbers to your strategy and kind of make it for where, hey, we don't have data and we need this as part of our strategy,
00;24;41;23 - 00;25;05;05
Alka
setting up a team to do that. Because while these are definitely more expensive upfront initial investments for a company to make, these are the ones that have the longest term returns because you will continuously need this data to report year after year after year. And the hope is that once you've established these pipelines and you've established these processes, it's not going to be so difficult.
00;25;05;05 - 00;25;31;20
Alka
And, you know, you'll have people who, if you've invested in talent correctly, who will develop the expertise and help your business grow and think ahead and figure out what kinds of other strategies do we need or what other types of data are missing. And so I think, you know, we've also made that mistake of late, you know, if for personal finance, if you're going shopping, it's a lot easier to just buy something cheap now and then replace it later.
00;25;31;23 - 00;26;01;17
Alka
But you'd save more money if you bought the good quality item from the beginning. So I think businesses need to take a little bit of the goods approach of invest from the beginning, because these are critical pieces of what good business is going to be in the next coming decades and in the next century. So start from the beginning and start from developing a strategy that you can really sustain as a business and is not just a short term scramble when disclosure to season comes around.
00;26;01;19 - 00;26;23;12
Reetu
Yeah, that's such a great point. And again, as I think about it, this is across your whole business again, not just across climate because I've seen companies not struggle, you know, not just struggle with climate data but all kinds of data. Right? You're trying to write a business case, and then you're like reaching out to ten people to collect the data to be able to justify your business case.
00;26;23;12 - 00;26;53;04
Reetu
So having those investments made in right data structures and talent is so, so, so important for businesses and especially, I think with new technology and AI, if we are looking to leverage that garbage in is going to be garbage out. So you can we can create more garbage information at greater speed. So again, even more important to to invest in collecting accurate data and making sure that it is clean.
00;26;53;04 - 00;27;17;20
Reetu
And it is it is representing the ground too. So such a such a great point. Anything else you want to share? Anything from your experience that you want to share with listeners? Like as corporations think about establishing their climate disclosure and boarding functions, any advice or any advice that you would share? Any learnings?
00;27;17;22 - 00;27;38;23
Alka
Yeah, I think my biggest thing would be that sustainability strategy has to be something that needs to be championed consistently and over and over throughout the business. And I think that when companies really start to take the mindset of this is not just one initiative or one measure, and we can now do it and check it off our list.
00;27;39;01 - 00;28;07;26
Alka
And this is part of just our business as usual approach. Those are the companies that are really successful that realize that, you know, I think there's been some famous case studies especially I know, that are staples. For example, one of the ones I like to share, especially with my clients, my students, and as well, like some clients as well, is that we've discussed the fact that they to make their warehouses more sustainable and more efficient.
00;28;07;29 - 00;28;34;07
Alka
One thing that they've done is they've updated the how much money they spend, and they've integrated smart energy systems in their warehouses. So the lights only turn on when there's like a truck driving through or when there's people on the floor. And when this cost was added, like cumulatively across all of their many warehouses, they discovered that we actually saved a lot of money by not having lights, running consistently, not having all of these locks and doors.
00;28;34;07 - 00;28;54;24
Alka
And like all of these things that were managed on a time and motion detected system with security mechanisms set in place, they discovered that this was actually a more efficient use of their energy and gave them better accountability of who was entering the warehouse at different times, who what were the most common times? When was their traffic building up?
00;28;54;27 - 00;29;24;25
Alka
Where was their inefficiencies in their flow and their organization management processes? There's so many positive externalities that can happen when you take in a mindset of like, I want to invest in sustainability, in a climate initiative to make my business better, you will find that the dividends are not just in the money that you make back, but also in the time spent and the other organizational processes that you improve for your business overall.
00;29;24;28 - 00;29;46;01
Reetu
Yeah. So just such a great case study. It's so many, as you mentioned, so many different, you know, gains that they had. They learned more about the operations by implementing this strategy. So I know we're coming towards the end of our time. So I want to ask you, what are you most excited about right now within your work at Glass Louis?
00;29;46;01 - 00;29;50;27
Reetu
Or you know, in your teaching role, what excites you most?
00;29;50;29 - 00;30;30;03
Alka
Yeah, I would say that, there's a lot that excites me. I think, you know, especially with this job environment and like the financial environment in general, it's very easy to become pessimistic about, like, these companies are pulling back and so on and so forth. But I think the ones that I see who aren't pulling back, who are investing in new innovation, those ones are incredibly cool, like the things where they found from the way that you can track carbon below cement or a lot of the changes in the blue carbon economy and all of these other things that have new and interesting innovation, like innovation that's been made to clothing and fabric to
00;30;30;03 - 00;31;00;16
Alka
make it more biodegradable, and so that we have less waste that's generated like there's so much scientific innovation that is going on, and that's being funded by a lot of corporations, some of it that's being funded by a lot of academic institutions and universities. And I think the biggest thing that I tell people when they ask what it's like to work in climate or sustainability is that it's not that we we don't have the tools or we don't have the science or the knowledge to solve the climate transition.
00;31;00;20 - 00;31;34;09
Alka
I think that we have so many of the right building blocks that if we were able to apply them together, we really could make a big, mark in moving forward the climate transition and meeting our Paris Agreement goals. But I think the biggest thing that I'm failing to see sometimes is the business willingness to commit to this innovation, to commit to these investments long term, because unfortunately, a lot of these incredibly cool scientific discoveries, that pay in the long run are expensive in the short term.
00;31;34;09 - 00;31;54;15
Alka
And therefore a lot of businesses don't feel like they can be investing in them. So I think what I see that companies do make the investments to see the long term value, it can provide their business that, you know, we can have more valuable and in general, better quality products for our consumers by investing in some of these new technologies.
00;31;54;15 - 00;32;33;13
Alka
That makes me incredibly excited to read about to, you know, see them in the climate report's doing very well. Yeah, I think that it's one of those things that while there's plenty of, you know, bad actors or companies who are not necessarily leading in the space, there are plenty who are and who are paving the way for more money to be fueled into scientific innovation and more money to be fueled in better resource management with clean water and usage and biodiversity, and really improving the world and making it a little bit better than we found it, or at least starting to repair some of the damages that we've done.
00;32;33;15 - 00;32;54;11
Reetu
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That's, that's the goal of this podcast as well is because as you said, you hear so much of the about the bad actors and the not so good news and not the good, the good that is being done and the innovation that's being happened. It's it's not often you don't see that much of that in media.
00;32;54;11 - 00;33;25;15
Reetu
So that was one of the reasons for, for this podcast. Another externality that comes to mind is with better product and using cleaner resources to build those products is help, because one of the things that's not talked about a lot, again, is the impact of climate change, impact of explosions on a health. So as you talked about materials and clothing, as they become cleaner materials, it has positive externalities for health as well for example.
00;33;25;17 - 00;33;44;01
Alka
There are absolutely positive externalities for human health. Like I'm I have friends who are studying public health. And they were saying that like, you know, climate change is becoming one of the key topics that they talk about. Like, you know, in a lot of like public policy or government courses, climate change is being one of the things they talk about.
00;33;44;01 - 00;34;15;01
Alka
And pharmaceuticals like mining, all of these industries are ones that are now really beginning to consider climate change, not as just something like a nice to have, but a need to have because it's changing how they can do business as usual, access the resources that they need to make their business possible. And I, I think that it's it's really critical as we move forward to see it as like integrated with the rest of the sectors, with the rest of the economy, because that's how we can actually move forward with the climate transition.
00;34;15;04 - 00;34;34;28
Reetu
Yeah. Thank you so much. I've learned so much from you. The final question I like to ask all my guess is if you could think of one word. So what would that word would be that you want to leave the listeners with? After today's conversation? Oh, know no, I.
00;34;35;00 - 00;34;59;10
Alka
I think this it would probably be. It's a very good question. I feel like the word would be integration. But, as long as we are focused on the idea, I mean, you've you've heard me say 10,000 times on this podcast already, but as long as we're focused on the idea that everything is integrated and together as part of the business, I think that's how we succeed.
00;34;59;10 - 00;35;24;07
Alka
Whether that's, you know, succeeding by sharing company ideas together across a sector, whether that's sharing, best practices within regulations, across governments, whether that's even just sharing, you know, different shared learnings between two different lines of business in a corporate company. I think that there's so much that we college that we have and innovation that we can do together.
00;35;24;07 - 00;35;38;21
Alka
But it's a question of how to really leverage this knowledge wisely and invest in it to make sure that it's being utilized to its fullest capacity. So I think if you have all of those components together, you you can't lose.
00;35;38;23 - 00;35;50;19
Reetu
Yeah, I love that. I love that integration. So I want to thank you, Olga, for being on the podcast. I learned a lot from you today. And then also thanking our listeners for joining us today. Thank you.
00;35;50;25 - 00;35;51;23
Alka
Thank you for having me.