events
Business Declares Kx: Business Travel
The 2024 Climate Gap Report from Ethical Consumer has identified Transport as one of the four key impact areas of emissions, for which an average target of 44% CO2e reduction has been set across consumers, to be achieved between 2019-2030, based on the UK’s Committee on Climate Change ‘Balanced Pathway’.
In this Knowledge Xchange, we will be speaking to:
Dan Brown; Climate Entrepreneur, RouteZero
Anna Hughes; Director, Flight Free UK
on their insights into how businesses can evaluate and make transport choices which benefit their teams, the climate and their organisations, to tackle and reduce emissions from business travel.
About:
RouteZero - a climate-tech company and platform which uses digital tools to decarbonise business travel emissions, by providing transparent journey planning, including cost, duration and carbon intensity of different travel journeys. Through leveraging machine learning and behavioural psychology, RouteZero amplifies decarbonisation efforts across organisations and nudges traveller behaviour to boost decarbonisation of businesses’ travel emissions.
Flight Free UK challenges people to take a year off flying to reduce emissions and shift the norm away from aviation, as a great way to inspire long-term behaviour change, and show that individual consumer choices can lead to industry and system change. Their positive campaign empowers and inspires people to pursue flight-free travel, for both their own benefit as travellers and for the climate.
Register below
or alternatively, register directly via our Ticket Tailor events page.
Business Declares Kx: SMEs… Action for Impact
Looking for ways to contribute to reducing your business’ carbon footprint?
Join our 45-minute interactive walkthrough of the Small99 Action Box, a hands-on toolkit designed to empower SMEs with practical steps towards sustainability. Discover how to identify key emission sources, implement effective reduction strategies and enhance your brand’s reputation, all while connecting with like-minded professionals.
Join our Knowledge Xchange with Small99 and Decarboneaser on 20th March.
Small99 Action Box: Carbon Reduction Fundamentals - this hands-on, flexible and interactive workshop-in-a-box includes everything needed to run powerful workshops to empower businesses, teams, clients and supply chains, to get started, gather inspiration and take action with sustainability.
Decarboneaser - provide actionable, practical sustainability workshops and training to have thought-provoking conversations leading to impact, including Small99 Action Box - which in turn can fit within programmes including Carbon Literacy programme, Climate Fresk and Biodiversity Collage.
Register below
or alternatively, register directly via our Ticket Tailor events page.
Uncomfortable Conversations - Embracing Discomfort together
Join Business Declares in collaboration with Uncomfortable Conversations for a lunchtime session that will ask the hard questions and help us explore the discomfort that’s holding us back from shaking up business as usual.
We know that to unleash the changes we want to see, we need new ways and new spaces of being uncomfortable together. What feels counterintuitive now—what seems like the opposite of action— might be exactly what we need for moving forward together! We will focus on sensing, relating and healing.
What is ‘Uncomfortable Conversations'?:
We unleash radically caring collective potential of being uncomfortable together.
We are a pioneering, experimental ‘challenger space’ for the conversations we’re still not having, for the perspectives we might be ignoring and for the solutions we continue to discount.
The session will be cohosted by Charlotte Sewell and Tess Wehmeyer
Find out more/ follow us here:
NEWSLETTER: https://uncomfortableconversationslove.substack.com/
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uncomfortableconversations
WEBPAGE: https://www.uncomfortable.love/
Bios
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Charlotte Sewell (she/her) is a facilitator and convenor. She is passionate about what happens when people join intentional communities to learn together. In her work with Uncomfortable Conversations she enjoys creating environments where people with different approaches, practices and values, listen more deeply to learn together, to ask new questions and to broaden their thinking and approaches. As an independent strategic advisor and programme designer she works with networks and communities of businesses, philanthropic trusts, and board members.
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Tess Wehmeyer (she/they) is a non-binary intersex founder, leadership strategist and advisor. Wild-hearted, highly empathetic and not being afraid to be confrontational, Tess advises and supports pioneering economies to transform, transition and flourish in uncertainty. Coming from a global career in urbanism, design innovation and creative leadership, Tess bridges these intersections building infrastructures for life and embodying on-going change in this metacrisis. Tess has founded 3 companies: CTRL+N, UFƟ (Unidentified Facility Onsite) and Future Fluid. Currently co-founding Uncomfortable Conversations she enjoys prototyping Uncomfortable Spaces that exist on the threshold of change, offering both a sense of discomfort and the possibility for new beginnings.
Business Collaboration - accelerating businesses' contribution to addressing the worsening polycrisis
To kick off the new year, we have 2 speakers to lead a discussion, as part of our Knowledge Xchange series, on the contribution business is making to addressing the accelerating polycrisis, and whether business collaboration should be a greater focus.
Experienced sustainability journalist Lizzie Rivera will be presenting her recent research investigating the disconnect between the sustainability intentions of businesses/ professionals and the impacts of their actions, examining how we can increase that impact through enhanced alignment between our work and our values, and reflecting on the balance of internal vs external focus.
Corporate partnering expert and sustainability champion Stephanie Lambert will also draw on recent research to explores how the FMCG industry is collaborating through the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty to advocate for an ambitious plastics treaty globally, and why this is so important, highlighting the coalition’s pooled resources and strategic approaches for effective advocacy.
Sam Baker will then host a discussion/ Q and A about the importance of stepping up business collaboration more broadly.
Bios:
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Lizzie Rivera is a journalist with a decade of expertise in sustainability. As the founder of sustainability platform Live Frankly, Lizzie works to amplify meaningful change. She also runs a candid networking group for sustainability professionals wanting to explore whether their actions may be contributing to the problem rather than driving the solution – and what to do about it. Lizzie has just completed a Master's in MBA Leadership at the University of Brighton, investigating the sustainability goals of business and the real world impact of their actions.
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Stephanie has over 20 years of experience in the corporate world, working for large multinational companies like Meta and Nielsen, primarily partnering with the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and retail sectors. She’s a Board Trustee at Hubbub, an award-winning environmental charity and has served on the steering committee of the Ad Net Zero Coalition. Recently, she completed a Master’s in Business and Sustainability at UCL, where she explored the role of industry collaboration in driving the sustainability transition—a topic she is deeply passionate about. See recent blogs: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniehlambert/recent-activity/articles/
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Sam Baker is a Director at Business Declares.
Business Declares Kx: Business Structures - Fit for the future we need?
Join Business Declares for an inspiring panel discussion on the future of business structures. We'll explore whether current models are suitable for the challenges ahead and what alternatives could be put in place.
Today’s business structures mainly prioritize financial returns and shareholder interests, which have pushed climate and nature to the brink. We've exceeded six of the nine planetary boundaries which are essential for humanity to develop and thrive for generations to come. Trends such as rising carbon emissions and ecosystem destruction continue to worsen.
Business Declares believes that businesses can still be a force for good, but our current systems often hinder the radical changes we need.
We’ll discuss innovative governance models, stakeholder capitalism, the triple bottom line approach, Impact Performance Indicators (IPIs) instead of traditional KPIs, B Corps, new financial frameworks, and the importance of integrating nature into our business strategies, even putting nature on the Board.
The speakers are:
Philip Corsano - a barrister and Independent Mediator, specialising in Climate Conflict Resolution, deep governance expertise and a belief that current ‘stakeholder capitalism’ isn’t working. He has worked as a multi-lateral banker within existing environmental and social frameworks. He supports the changes in governance recommended by the OECD and the development of specialised skills training.
Donna Okell - a B Leader and founder & CEO of UK for Good, a B Corp Certified business, committed to working with businesses to improve impact on people and our planet
Annika Schneider - the Lead for International Partnerships at Purpose Economy. At the centre of her work is the belief in ‘steward-ownership’ – an alternative to conventional corporate ownership models and shareholder value primacy.
Brontie Ansell - is a lawyer founder and co-director of Lawyers for Nature who act to represent the natural world and provide legal assistance and research for those doing this vital work. She was the lead lawyer on the project 'Nature on the Board' which gave Nature a voice and a vote on a corporate board.
Business Declares Kx: Tickling Sharks + A discussion with John Elkington
John Elkington, Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volans, is one of the founders of the global sustainability movement, and has been a strategic partner of Business Declares since the network was first established in 2019.
In this Knowledge Xchange, we will be discussing John Elkington’s new book, “Tickling Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability”, explaining how a series of societal pressure waves have instigated change in business, markets and ultimately, capitalism.
We will also have the opportunity for a wider discussion with John Elkington about his journey in sustainability and corporate social and environmental responsibility.
Watch a trailer of the new book, “Tickling Sharks”, here.
Business Declares Kx: Business Declares: 5 Years On
It has been 5 years since Business Declares was launched, during the growing wave of climate awareness and climate strikes during September 2019.
Five years on, it is clear that the combined efforts of businesses, governments and citizens have fallen well short of delivering a tangible transition to address the climate, nature and social crises.
Business Declares has felt that it is critically important to acknowledge this, by issuing a new position statement, and a renewed set of commitments which we would like our members network to take on, as we near the midpoint towards the next decade in addressing key climate-nature targets.
Come along to our Knowledge Xchange with our Director, Ben Tolhurst, as we discuss our fundamental beliefs, best practice principles which we would like to see businesses adopt in their transitions, and our renewed commitments, upon our reflection of the polycrisis thus far.