At the start of a new year it’s important to start strong.
So, we’re thrilled to announce the next series of deep dive masterclasses and webinars. This one is called Masterclasses for the New World. If you think there’s a ring of drama around the name, you’d be right. Because if 2023 felt like the start of a new era, 2024 looks set to prove it.
World events have already focused the mind and proved no-one is immune to the negative impacts of climate, a failing natural system, geopolitical tensions, technology and the globalisation of almost every known thing.
So too though are the responses. Australia as a rich and influential country has a massive responsibility to step up and lead the transition to net zero, sustainability and nature positive – as best we can.
In fact these are our biggest opportunities.
This means being open to the swathe of new obligations and expectations about to rock the capital markets, property investment, property management, urban planning and the many professionals and government agencies involved in delivering our built environment. Patience with voluntary transitions is wearing thin. The call is growing for performance, not promises or plans.
In London, where we recently attended a briefing by engineers ADP on the value and rollout of NABERS in the UK, it was refreshing and exciting to hear the stream of questions that followed founding director Laurent Deleu’s presentation. People there are keen to take up a rating tool that measures their performance. But the driver is not a nobles oblige thing, it’s a new set of regulations that will demand energy performance standards.
We’ll bring you more on the event soon.
In the meantime what’s clear is that the world is changing fast. The Paris Agreement in 2015 failed to deliver on expectations and now we’re facing catch up.
Our focus this year is going to swing more strongly on capturing the thinking from the leading experts in Australia and elsewhere who can shed light and the learnings from their experience on how they view the landscape and solve problems
We want to provide the space and time necessary to dig as deep as we can so you can find some practical answers and in turn spread them around to others because we need to work at the both the micro and macro level.
Because turning this industry around is hard – some might say almost impossible. But look at the talent it’s attracting. Once the preserve of developers and profit seekers it’s now the place where our clever young people aspire to work – as engineers, technology and analytics specialists and increasingly as politically aware change makers who want to see a sustainable world focused on environmental and human needs such affordable, accessible housing, alongside greater equity.
All these things feed into each other. They make change difficult but also exiting. Get the formula right and solutions can become exponential.
Heading the lineup in the first masterclass of the New World series, will be one of Australia’s most highly regarded experts in the nature positive and disclosure regime, Zoe Whitton of Pollination.
As managing director, Zoe leads one of the most remarkable companies to emerge in the wake of the complex demands now being placed on capital markets, investors and governments charged with managing our biggest and most important national assets.
In just four years the company, founded by Martijn Wilder, has grown to 300 staff and cemented a place as a leader in investment and advisory space for the net zero and nature positive transition we need.
In short shrift it’s grown to 300 people and attracting around two new staff a week, Zoe told us an interview late last year.
We gave Zoe one of the first five gongs in our new TFE Emerald Awards, our small way of acknowledging and celebrating some of the brilliant stars that are driving this industry forward at speed.
We wish we could have turned on the Ritz for our first crop of winners… maybe someone out there will step up!
See all our five winners here.
In the masterclass, Zoe will be joined by the highly regarded Estelle Parker, who was recently appointed co-chief executive of the Responsible Investment Association Australasia after less than three years with the association and a diplomatic background with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
We’ll bring you some insights into Estelle’s thinking soon.
And to ensure the session covers some of the trickier bases that only insiders might have an inkling about, we’ve asked Liam Timms to join as co-moderator. Liam is well known for his high-profile leadership of Lendlease’s International Towers over several years and for his lively participation at quite a few of our events.
A new column from Baker McKenzie
Another great kick into the year ahead is a new column from one of Australia’s leading legal experts, Baker McKenzie, to tackle the most significant law and policy issues that willaffect the regulatory and corporate landscape as we negotiate the big challenges ahead.
Think climate related financial and nature related disclosures coming to Australia soon, which, the authors say, are mainly in response to the perceived failures of the Paris Agreement 2015.
The column shines a much needed spotlight on the need for climate and nature to be taken as one. The series is called the “Whole of environment” report (WOE) to make clear that we need holistic action that tackles these highly intertwined strands to planetary outcomes.
The team from Baker McKenzie is again among the nation’s best.
You won’t want to miss this series. Check out the first article here.
Accountability
In this issue, too, Mike Brown, who knows how to stir the hornet’s nest when needed, has articulated a long held annoyance of ours when looking at the systemic failures of our system – whether it be housing or the quality of building. Or dumb, expensive projects like WestConnex. Accountability.
In this piece, he looks at the vast gap between intent and outcome and the failure of governments to take the action needed to bring about the desired outcomes.
Why?
That’s the big question. But the thing he flags is that maybe accountability will start to come from the electorate. We, too, keep electing people who don’t do the things we desperately need.
Greenies fighting greening
One of the most miserable issues to emerge last year was the spectre of self proclaimed greenies fighting to stop renewable energy plants and transmission lines.
Their argument is that these projects harm nature. We all harm nature, every breath we take. The point is to minimise it and learn to live within its confines. We also need to see the bigger picture – to consider the wider implications of stopping or delaying our transition by years. It’s a worldwide trend, unfortunately. Like everything else.
These anti renewable energy actions are examples of the purist thinking that Bob Brown used to stop the emissions trading scheme so long ago. It’s the antithesis of politics – weighing up the cost/benefits and opting for the greater good, even if it means getting your hands dirty (and why we pay politicians)
Alan Pears says there’s another way. Get more creative! Use electric trucks and trains to transport energy storage where needed. And use existing use rights to build transmission lines. Roads, for instance, or railway tracks.
But here’s a note to those virtuous greenies and nature loving farmers who are stopping the works – if you don’t help the net zero transition along, the nature you want to protect will be destroyed anyway. It’s just a matter of time.