Siddarth Shrikanth is looking for an angle to save the planet. He doesn’t think we need to give up on societal prosperity to do it. As Al Gore, former US Vice President, who also happens to be his boss, stated, “Shrikanth provides clear and tangible examples of how to not only safeguard humanity’s future, but fuel economic growth and prosperity.”
Shrikanth has set out his arguments in his book A Case for Nature. Irresistible Magazine caught up with Shrikanth at the Jaipur Literary Festival in India early 2024 while he was on a promotional tour.. He is well and truly on the circuit now, fitting in conferences in Singapore, the Hay Festival UK, JLF London, and a host of other talks, while still leaving time for the day job. And this is what sets Shrikanth apart from others who are writing on the environmental crisis- he has a proper day job, Shrikanth currently works as a Director on the Investment Team at Just Climate, which is a sustainability focused investment fund chaired by Al Gore, the man who is also the subject of the classic 2006 environmental movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and who has created The Climate Reality Project which aims for bring up the new generation of climate activists through networks, teaching and mentorship.
Shrikanth’s book, The Case for Nature: Pioneering Solutions for the Other Planetary Crisis (Duckworth Books Ltd., Spring 2023) brings to the attention of the general public themes which sometimes don’t cut through all the noise.
One of the main ideas is capital as a tangible, measurable benefit that can be viewed as a financial asset and therefore fed into markets through investment. This and similar ideas have been around for some time in academia and policy forums like think tanks, hitting barriers when the theory moved from the theoretical to the real world. But the concept has not been lost, and new energy has been focussed on it, best represented by the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University, where Shrikanth used to study. In this model, the world’s ecosystems can be seen as capital assets that can be assigned a real world value. We do already price nature in our markets, but in an extractive sense. A tree is currently worth more dead than alive, and whether it’s from fossil fuels or agriculture or fishing, nature’s goods are the engines behind our markets.
But the myriad intrinsic systems that we can’t live without, for example pollination, nutrient recycling, soil health, the air that we breathe, can also have a place in a nature-positive economy, and therefore the protection and growth of these assets can provide a steady return on investment. In other words we can use the economy we have, the one that created the problem, to the fix the problem.
The second idea in the book is that the crisis in the ecosystems is as important as, and interconnected with, the climate crisis. As stated by the United Nations, “with species biodiversity and nature declining at an unprecedented rate, extinction is a very real possibility for many life forms on our current track. This loss of biodiversity threatens every life on earth, not just those species which are close to extinction”. It seriously threatens humans too, by dramatically impacting the food we can eat, from fish to plants, to fruit and vegetables. In his book, Shrikanth talks us through the steps we could take to restore biodiversity, through a combination of clever new things like technology and financial instruments, and clever old things like indigenous wisdom which is key to getting us back where we need to be.
Most people have heard of the UN Conference COP, the last being COP28 in Dubai which hit the headlines.The next will be this year in Azerbaijan, followed by Brazil, and then Australia, together with our Pacific Island neighbours, is currently bidding to host COP31. But at the very least Shrikanth wants to remind us there is another COP that barely makes it onto most people’s radars, the UN Diversity Conference.
The last UN Diversity Conference was COP15 (don’t ask how they mix up the numbers!) In Montreal, Canada in 2022. The next one COP 16 will be later this year in Colombia. At COP15 there was a global agreement to halt the degradation of the world’s ecosystems with the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) outlining worldwide actions to be taken to secure our life support system. It’s crucial that we are all aware that these frameworks exist so we can hold governments accountable to them.
In his book, Shrikanth expands on the idea that great examples already exist of communities, organisations, and companies placing Nature and its restoration at the heart of their decision making process.
The Nature Positive pioneers at the vanguard of the revolution that Shrikanth talks about, show us how it can be done, and should inspire others to replicate their efforts or find their own, maybe even better versions. The stories are also easy vehicles for the media and other communication industries to run with, to spread the message far and wide.
Shrikanth grew up in India and studied conservation biology at Oxford, later joining McKinseys where he worked on sustainability strategies for corporates and governments. He had a stint as a journalist with the Financial Times, based in Hong Kong. He also picked up a joint MPA/MBA from Harvard/Stanford, and, as well as consulted in environmental policy for the World Bank. He credits his upbringing and his own deeply held sense of awe and wonder of nature as his driving force behind his work.
Creating real world solutions is as important to Shrikanth as the theory. He co-founded a natural carbon removal start-up called Working Trees while a student at Stanford. It allows landowners and farmers to get paid for storing carbon with trees on their property, using innovative data collection through smartphones and satellite imagery. However, the lure of academia still calls, and Shrikanth is starting a fellowship back at Oxford next year. Whichever environment Shrikanth finds himself in, in the future, we will all benefit if it is not the last we hear from him.
Shrikanth has been invited to be a delegate at the inaugural Global Nature Positive Summit in Sydney in October 2024. The Summit will bring nature positive practitioners and investors together to explore and progress credible, ambitious investment opportunities and pathways forward.
Shrikanth will then be speaking at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali also in October.
All author’s proceeds from his book are being donated to conservation.
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