January 24, 2023
Gabriel Thoumi moderating the Oceans Panel.
The news from Davos this past week was interesting. Speaking and moderating at four events, I observed extensive conversations about Planetary Boundaries.
Gabriel Thoumi speaking on the Future of Finance panel.
I frequently had lengthy discussions about how accurate and effective ESG integration within investment thesis will support addressing systemic risks facing our global economy as our economy exceeds planetary boundaries.
Gabriel Thoumi speaking at the Davos Green Accelerator.
According to the WEF’s Global Risks Report 2023, our decade has been disrupted by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic followed by both a global energy and food crisis, Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, supply chain disruptions, fears of inflation and increases in cost-of-living, emerging market capital outflows, and a stagnant economy. These factors are compounded by increasingly virulent planetary boundary risks from climate change, water scarcity, chemical dispersion and plastic pollution, along with biodiversity collapse, which all threaten our global sustainability.
Gabriel Thoumi at the Cooking up something new: Innovation to shape the future of food event.
The WEF says we now live in the polycrisis which they explain as how, “present and future risks can also interact with each other to form a ‘polycrisis’ – a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part”.
Yet this polycrisis is also compounded by our global economy crossing multiple planetary boundaries. While climate change and its negative feedback loops are most often discussed – such as chronic and acute risks including sea-level rise and extreme weather increasingly stressing our fragile global economic systems, similarly concerning is that we are in the midst of the 6th Great Extinction in geologic history while we face unprecedented pollution from chemical dispersion – nitrogen, phosphorous, and other molecules – and increasing plastic use globally while our planet’s lungs – its oceans and forests are being destroyed.
We now live in the Anthropocene – the epic during which humans have had a substantial impact on our planet – where economies globally face polycrisis.
Comments