CEO Blueprint Institute. Pragmatic, rigorous and collaborative approach to solving complex issues. Experienced Board chair, former Deputy Secretary, McKinsey, Stanford MBA
🌍 Protecting Australia's Future: climate and energy priorities, one key idea from our recent paper At Blueprint Institute, we think the need for long-term thinking, innovative solutions and collaboration is more important than ever. Here's one solution that's high on our wish list: 🛠️Set clear, technology-agnostic biodiversity and environmental standards now. Why do we need clear standards? 1. Technology is changing rapidly. We're living in an incredibly exciting period of technological innovation and development. 2. Our current systems don't yet solve for the long-term, so we have to. Unfortunately, we're also learning that it's foolhardy to treat nature as a limitless resources, rather than a complex system. Deep down, we all get that. We know when you chuck cane toads onto an island, it doesn't go well. So we have to start to change our approach, and put some sensible guidelines in place for all technologies about what our no-go biodiversity hotspots are, what our expectations are for end-of-life recycling, what is and isn't acceptable in terms of waste and pollution. Why now? 3. It's cheaper to do it now. Putting standards in place after technologies are already rolling out is not only difficult, it's costly and inefficient. But doing it now, means we, as tax payers, won't have to pay cascading costs of downstream impacts on our biodiversity, water, soil, food-supply and health. Doing it early means avoiding companies having to retrospectively redesign their approach to meet standards that should have been clearly articulated in the first place. Businesses craves structure–setting clear, predictable rules of the game that don't chop and change boosts investment in long-term infrastructure. 4. It's easier to do it now. Getting started without clear standards, sets up the wrong incentives for governments who are reluctant to turn off sources of revenue, and for companies, who may lobby to keep standards low. I can think of at least one state government who was just going to do a 'little trial' of fracking and see what the impacts were before setting clear standards, but many billions of revenue later, they're strangely reluctant to do so. That's very human. With a 3 year term, and a tight budget, most governments struggle to really behave with the long-term view in mind. But it doesn't make it smart long-term policy. The time is now to put robust, clear standards in place and stick to them. Terence Jeyaretnam Jae Lubberink Ian Hancock Lachlan Crombie Sophie Black Claire Poulton Harry Guinness Josh Steinert BA MSc Sam Mellett Grant Rule Andrew Muston Blueprint Institute
Strategy | Future of Energy | Sustainable Finance
4moLiana, another great report. As an aside, key to achieving biodiversity aims will be the effectiveness of credits. It will be interesting to see how international bio-diversity credit markets develop over the next couple of years. The clear standards you advocate for will underpin credits - potentially unlocking a big opportunity for Australia!