Purpose of the articles posted in the blog is to share knowledge and occurring events for ecology and biodiversity conservation and protection whereas biology will be human’s security. Remember, these are meant to be conversation starters, not mere broadcasts :) so I kindly request and would vastly prefer that you share your comments and thoughts on the blog-version of this Focus on Arts and Ecology (all its past + present + future).
Conservationists confirmed that a Swinhoe’s softshell turtle found in Vietnam is female, reigniting hope for saving the species.
By Rachel Nuwer, January 25, 2021
Video by Wildlife Conservation Society
In 2019, the world’s rarest turtle suffered a staggering loss. The last known female of the species, Swinhoe’s softshell turtle, died after an artificial insemination procedure at the Chinese zoo where she and her mate lived. This left the confirmed tally for the species at just two individuals: the male in China, plus one individual of unknown sex in a lake in Vietnam.
There may still be hope for the species. Conservationists and veterinarians recently announced that the Vietnamese turtle is a female. At the same time, exhaustive hunts for other surviving Swinhoe’s softshell turtles in Vietnam have verified at least two other promising leads.
“This is very big news in Vietnam,” said Hoang Bich Thuy, the country director for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Even people who don’t work in conservation, my friends and family, saw it on national TV and were like, ‘Oh! There’s new hope!’”
Swinhoe’s softshell turtles, which can weigh more than 370 pounds, be more than 6-feet long and live for over 100 years, hold a special cultural significance in Vietnam, where they are known as Hoan Kiem — “returned sword” — turtles. In the 15th century, a well-known folk tale goes, Vietnam’s king, Le Loi, used a magical sword to defeat the Ming dynasty army. When the battle was over, the king gave the sword to a turtle god in Hoan Kiem lake in central Hanoi.
In recent decades as Vietnam urbanized, one Hoan Kiem turtle continued to live in the lake, despite high levels of pollution. But in 2016, this last individual — a revered male known as Great-Grandfather Turtle — died, likely of natural causes.
Workers capturing a female Rafetus swinhoei turtle for artificial insemination at the Suzhou Zoo in Jiangsu Province, China, in 2015.Credit...Visual China Group, via Getty Images
The sacred status of the Swinhoe’s softshell turtles living in Hoan Kiem lake did not extend to members of the same species living elsewhere in Vietnam, however. The species was heavily hunted for food and hammered by habitat destruction.
In 2003, Tim McCormack, director of the Asian Turtle Program, began surveying rivers where the species historically lived. He turned up a few shells in peoples’ homes, and most fishermen told him that the once-bountiful animal had disappeared. Searches in China, where the species is commonly known as the Yangtze giant softshell turtle, were also discouraging.
Mr. McCormack and his colleagues finally caught a break in 2007 when a team member managed to get a photo of a Swinhoe’s softshell turtle discovered in Dong Mo lake, in an area west of Hanoi. They hired fishermen to keep an eye on the turtle and continued work on habitat improvement, community awareness and further surveys to find additional Swinhoe’s softshell turtles. In 2014, they used genetic tools to confirm the turtle was a member of the species.
Five years after the discovery, the surveys delivered reports of another turtle in Xuan Khanh lake, just north of Dong Mo lake. In 2017, scientists from Washington State University used eDNA — a method that looks for a target species’ genetic material in environmental samples — to establish that the Xuan Khanh animal is most likely a Swinhoe’s softshell turtle.
Dong Mo Lake in Vietnam.Credit...Tim McCormack
In receiving this news of a probable second animal in Vietnam, “it’s hard to describe my overwhelmed feelings,” said Nguyen Tai Thang, project manager for the Swinhoe’s softshell turtle at the Asian Turtle Program. “It was like going on an endless expedition, and at some point, you wonder whether you are on the right track, and then you finally see a sign showing that just ahead, you’ll soon reach your destination.”
There have also been sightings of another giant turtle that lives in the same lake as the female Swinhoe’s softshell turtle. There have been no signs of reproduction, however, which could mean that the other turtle is also a female. On the other hand, it could also be that the animal is an exotic species that found its way into the lake.
Although the identities of the Xuan Khanh and the second Dong Mo turtles need to be confirmed, the hope of a second or even third Swinhoe’s softshell turtle is driving political and scientific interest. In 2019, the Vietnamese government released a turtle conservation action plan, developed with the Asian Turtle Program. Authorities in Hanoi announced an additional plan to protect members of the species found anywhere within the city’s jurisdiction — not just in Hoan Kiem lake.
“The confirmation of the female Hoan Kiem turtle brought us a new hope to restore the population of this most precious and endangered turtle species,” said Nguyen Huy Dang, deputy director of Hanoi’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The attempt to artificially inseminate the female Rafetus swinhoei at the Suzhou Zoo in 2015 failed. The turtle, known to her keepers as Xianxiang, died during another artificial insemination attempt in 2019.Credit...Visual China Group, via Getty Images
Last October, government officials, conservationists and fishermen trapped the Swinhoe’s softshell turtle that was first discovered in 2007 and used ultrasound to verify that she is a female. The next step, Mr. McCormack said, is to capture the other two individuals to identify them and determine their sex. This will likely happen in the spring, when water levels are lower and the reptiles become more active. If they find a male, the plan is to unite him with the female, likely in a semi-wild enclosure on Dong Mo lake.
Discussions are also underway about mating the Vietnamese female with the Chinese male, said Gerald Kuchling, a project leader for the Turtle Survival Alliance who helped with efforts to breed the species in China. Scientists previously learned that the Chinese male’s penis is heavily damaged, however, preventing him from being able to successfully deliver semen into a female. This means there is little point in bringing the two animals together — something that would be challenging, anyway, for political reasons, according to Dr. Kuchling. Instead, he said, semen could be collected from the male in China and transported to Vietnam for artificial insemination.
“Even if a male becomes available in Vietnam, involving the Chinese male through an artificial approach will still be significant to broaden the gene pool for the long term genetic health and survival of the species,” Dr. Kuchling said. “If no other male can be found, however, this approach will be the last chance, and imperative.”
From their surveys across northern Vietnam, Mr. McCormack, Mr. Nguyen and their colleagues have identified a handful of additional places that they believe other Swinhoe’s softshell turtles could still be living. “I was born in a small village next to the Red River where there used to be many individuals of this species,” Mr. Nguyen said. “My friends and I used to gather at the village temple to hear stories related to the species, told to us by elders.”
Finding more animals in the wild will ensure not only conservation of the species, he said, but that “the legend lives on.”
To describe Mark Carney as a member of the global financial elite would be an understatement. He spent 13 years working at Goldman Sachs. From 2008 to 2013, he was governor of the Bank of Canada, and from 2013 to 2020 he was governor of the Bank of England. From 2011 to 2018, he was chair of the Financial Stability Board.
As director of the Bank of England, Carney was a director at the Bank for International Settlements. He’s a member of the Group of Thirty and he’s on the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum.
Here’s a quick overview of Carney’s work over the past year relating to the climate crisis:
In December 2019, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Carney as UN special envoy for climate action and finance.
In January 2020, Boris Johnson, the UK’s prime minister, appointed Carney as finance advisor for COP 26, due to take place in Glasgow in November 2021.
In October 2020, he joined Brookfield Asset Management Inc., one of the world’s largest money managers with about US$550 billion in assets under management. Carney’s job is to “marry social and environmental outcomes with strong investment returns”. No doubt he will be investing in corporations that want to be seen as “climate-friendly”.
In November 2020, Carney’s Taskforce put out a “Consultation Document” on scaling voluntary carbon markets. The 98-page document doesn’t even go through the pretence of addressing the climate crisis – it’s just about promoting carbon trading. The consultation document mentions the word “offset” 238 times, but mentions “fossil-fuel energy” only once.
In December 2020, Carney was quoted in the Financial Times, calling for a “$50-100bn per annum market” in carbon offsets.
And here’s REDD-Monitor’s take on Carney’s Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets. Spoiler alert, the Taskforce is madness:
This week, the Green Finance Observatory sent an open letter to Mark Carney pointing out what’s wrong with carbon markets and why we need “environmental policies mandating a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a public debate on how to allocate carbon budgets and share costs fairly”. REDD-Monitor will post letter in full tomorrow.
This post looks at the conflicts of interest in Carney’s Taskforce, in both the funding and the membership.
Conflict of interest number 1: The funding
The Consultation Document states that High Tide Foundation, The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and Quadrature Climate Foundation fund the Taskforce. Bloomberg Philanthropies and ClimateWorks Foundation coordinated the funding.
Carney sits on the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies. In January 2020, Curtis D. Ravenel, founder of the Sustainable Business & Finance Group at Bloomberg LP, joined ClimateWorks Foundation as a distinguished fellow.
In 2015, Carney set up the Financial Stability Board Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Revenel co-led the TCFD and Michael Bloomberg was chair. Bloomberg was then the UN special envoy for climate action.
Tim Stumhofer of the ClimateWorks Foundation is a member of the Consultative Group of the Taskforce on Scaling up Voluntary Carbon Markets.
Richard and Dee Lawrence founded High Tide Foundation. Richard Lawrence is the Executive Chairman of Overlook Investments Group, a Hong Kong-based fund management company. (Overlook manages two funds registered in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands: The Overlook Partners Fund, L.P.; and Overlook 3G Investments, L.P.) Lawrence is also the founder of Cool Effect, a company that sells carbon offsets. Richard and Dee Lawrence set up Proyecto Mirador, an efficient stove project in Honduras aimed at reducing the amount of wood being cut for fuel. Dee Lawrence is a member of the Consultative Group of the Taskforce on Scaling up Voluntary Carbon Markets.
Chris Hohn and his ex-wife Jamie Cooper set up The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. Hohn is the managing partner of the London-based hedge fund, The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI). (While the company TCI Fund Management Limited is registered in the UK, the corporate structure is complicated. TCI manages a series of funds in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands. The parent company is The Children’s Investment Fund Management (Cayman) Ltd.)
In November 2020, Carney backed Hohn’s campaign to force companies to submit their climate change strategies to annual shareholder votes. The first company to do so was Spanish airports operator Aena. Shareholders voted in favour of a plan to make Aena’s airports “carbon neutral” by 2026 with a target for “net-zero emissions” by 2040. Reuters reports that “the carbon compensation mechanisms [are] yet to be decided”.
Quadrature Capital Limited is a quant hedge fund. In 2019, Quadrature launched the Quadrature Climate Foundation. The Foundation funds Nature4Climate and Woods Hole Research Center, both of which support carbon trading and offsets.
Taskforce conflict of interest number 2: The corporate members
The Institute of International Finance (IIF) sponsors the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets. The Taskforce website is part of the IIF website. The IIF describes itself as “the leading voice for the financial services industry on global regulatory issues”. The Institute organises a series of meetings each year which are “considered the foremost gatherings of the international financial industry”.
The chair of the Taskforce is Bill Winters, Group Chief Executive at the banking and financial services company, Standard Chartered.
The Operating Lead for the Taskforce is Annette Nazareth, a partner at the international law firm Davis Polk.
McKinsey & Company is providing “knowledge and advisory support” for the Taskforce. A decade ago, McKinsey had a spectacularly incompetent role in promoting REDD. Greenpeace described its advice as “fundamentally flawed”. Simon Counsell, then-Executive Director of Rainforest Foundation UK called McKinsey’s REDD advice “junk economic theory”.
McKinsey is looking to repeat its REDD failure, by promoting carbon offsets on behalf of the Taskforce.
This week, McKinsey put out a report together with the World Economic Forum, titled, “Consultation: Nature and Net Zero”. Predictably, there’s nothing about the lessons learned from McKinsey’s previous involvement in REDD, just Panglossian optimism about the future of REDD.
Bill Winters of Standard Chartered, chair of Carney’s Taskforce, wrote the foreword. Winters tells us that,
Natural climate solutions are crucial tools in this transition process, provided they are underpinned by internationally accepted principles and rules to ensure that they genuinely deliver emission reductions/sequestration, and to increase public acceptance of carbon offsetting as a vital element of the climate transition.
CME Group is a member of the Taskforce Consultative Group. On its website, the company describes itself as, “The world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace”. On 26 January 2021, CME Group announced that it will launch a Global Emissions Offset (GEO) futures contract on 1 March 2021.
The GEO futures contract will use carbon offset standards developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and is based on the airline industry’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).
CME Group’s press release states that, “GEO futures will allow for delivery of CORSIA eligible voluntary offset credits from three ICAO approved registries”.
On 27 January 2021, Mark Carney and Taskforce members Annette Nazareth and Bill Winters will take part in a conversation about carbon markets with Bill Gates as part of this year’s World Economic Forum. No one in that conversation is going to point out the spectacularfailure of carbonmarkets over the past decades in meaningfully addressing climate change.
The membership of Carney’s Taskforce include Big Oil, Big Finance, and Big Airlines, along with a generous sprinkling of carbon traders. Shell, BP, Total, Easyjet and Etihad all have a vested interest in appearing to address climate change, while continuing business as usual for as long as possible. And that is precisely why carbon offsetting exists.
Out with the old, in with the new! It’s time to cheer for New year of the Ox 2021 at The Summit Bar. Overlooking the cityscape, Glamour Countdown Night is set up in the fantastic and hypnotizing space of the iconic Summit bar. Especially, you will have an unforgettable countdown night featuring a meticulous selection of beverages paired with delectable delights while immersing in the Hanoi skyline and Westlake view.
Countdown tickets are available for purchase: VND980,000++ per adult including unlimited wonton soup and 03 drinks of your choice with selected drinks (soft drink, chilled juice, fresh juice, smoothie, beer, cocktail, wine, and sparkling wine) VND490,000++ per child including unlimited wonton soup and 02 drinks of your choice (soft drink, chilled juice, fresh juice, and smoothie)
When Mars Inc. announced in 2016 that it would remove all artificial colors from its human food products in the next five years, Leonard Lerer saw an opportunity.
Lerer, a medical doctor who had been an investor in food tech companies, had previously backed a startup that extracted a natural blue color from spirulina algae. And he had done the math: If Mars wanted to make its M&Ms a natural blue, Lerer estimated it would take five or six times all the spirulina in the world at that time.
The candy company immediately found the color change to be a big challenge. Almost five years later, M&Ms in the United States still don't use natural blue coloring, Mars Wrigley said.
"Not only couldn't they get enough, but the price which they could get [for] what they could get was too high," Lerer said. "And there were a lot of technical problems with the production."
However, Lerer was sold on algae's potential. In 2018, he founded Chicago-based Back of the Yards Algae Sciences to scale up the startup's way to extract blue from spirulina. The venture is paying off in terms of natural blue food coloring — Lerer plans to spin off a company this year that will be one of the three biggest producers of spirulina-based coloring in the world.
The venture is also paying off in very unexpected ways. While extracting the blue from spirulina, Lerer found the color was only 10% of the algae. The other 90% had value as a high-protein superfood — an ingredient that would be useful in plant-based meat, yogurt and cheese, as well as a culture medium for cell-based meat applications.
Permission granted by Back of the Yards Algae Sciences
While there are many things researchers are still studying about algae and its potential, it's not just an area of curiosity for food science. It's getting to be big business. Market Data Forecast projects that the global algae ingredients market will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 8.2% between 2020 and 2025. Global Market Insights predicts the global algae protein market will be worth $1 billion in 2026. Major manufacturers, including Unilever and Nestlé, have partnered with algae companies to develop new ingredients and applications for the one-celled organisms. Ingredients companies, including ADM and Bühler, are also working with algae.
Sabina Vyas, senior director of strategic initiatives and communications for the Plant Based Foods Association, sees more companies using algae ingredients now — both PBFA members and others. As an ingredient, algae checks off several boxes: It's sustainable, climate-friendly and full of nutrients, including the omega-3s that are easiest to get from seafood. And algae ingredient companies are listening to what the manufacturers want.
"From what I've seen, they really want to work with companies based on what their needs are and be able to have their algae adapt to those needs," Vyas said. "So we're probably going to see more of that in eggs and meat alternatives. Maybe it's going to become more of a protein add-on for foods, like spirulina or chlorella."
Why algae?
Algae are literally everywhere.
The single-celled organisms grow in freshwater, saltwater and wastewater. Algae can grow and flourish in the sun through photosynthesis, but it can also grow in the dark. And it can be cultivated without using land or a large amount of natural resources.
Alexander Mathys, the head of the Sustainable Food Processing Laboratory at Swiss research university ETH Zurich, estimated there are more than 200,000 species of microalgae — unicellular varieties of algae — in the world. Only a handful are currently cultivated for food ingredients, meaning there is exponential potential for algae in the future.
"I think algae can solve some of the problems which the planet has," Back of the Yards' Lerer said. "And the reason for that is fundamentally ... algae are at the bottom of the food chain. That means that algae and [basic fungus] mycelia are basically what everything on the planet needs to live."
That back-to-the-basics attitude about algae has launched businesses and research. British ingredients company Algenuity, which formally partnered with Unilever last year, got its start about 10 years ago, when a group of scientists and engineers in the U.K. started looking at the possibilities of using algae in applications like biofuels. This group devoted resources to studying algae's potential in energy and other areas.
"I think algae can solve some of the problems which the planet has. And the reason for that is fundamentally ... algae are at the bottom of the food chain. That means that algae and [basic fungus] mycelia are basically what everything on the planet needs to live."
Leonard Lerer
Founder and CEO, Back of the Yards Algae Sciences
Algenuity founder and CEO Andrew Spicer, a molecular and cell biologist, zeroed in on its potential in food. Spicer said that Algenuity essentially incubated in a larger company, and it had the funding and freedom to dive deep and build expertise in algae.
"As the whole plant-based ingredients trend truly exploded, we were really ready to go," Spicer said. "We knew which algae to go to. We knew a big opportunity that was waiting to be exploited."
But while algae is everywhere, it's not as cost-effective to use as an ingredient as it would seem — it takes a lot of energy and water to harvest. Today, microalgae is less cost-effective than soy, Mathys said. But soy cultivation is encroaching on habitats, including the rainforest, while microalgae can be cultivated almost anywhere.
At ETH Zurich's Sustainable Food Processing Laboratory, Mathys and other researchers are working on ways to make microalgae a more cost-effective and environmentally efficient protein. The team is developing a technology called nanosecond pulsed electric field processing, which uses alternating high electric fields to grow microalgae up to 17% more efficiently. The technology can also open up the microalgae while it's still in the water, letting growers extract some of the protein components without having to remove it and keeping it alive. Mathys described this process as "milking" the algae.
The researcher has also investigated potential applications for microalgae. In a paper published last year in the journal Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies, Mathys wrote about turning yellow bright microalgae protein into a meat analogue. He believes this kind of application can inspire more manufacturers to use the ingredient, bringing a greater scale and lower cost.
Permission granted by Back of the Yards Algae Sciences
"We have to optimize it, first of all," Mathys said. "Second, besides optimizing, we have to scale it to the economy of scale. For soy, that's millions of tons. It's amazing. Soy is delivering so much."
Spicer said Algenuity's partnership with Unilever has opened doors, both for the company and the entire algae business. Nestlé announced a similar partnership with Corbion, the owner of algae ingredients company AlgaVia, in 2019. These developments show that algae is finally gaining traction after so much speculation, Spicer said.
"I often quote the Elvis song: 'A little less conversation, a little more action,' " he said. "We have had so much conversation over the last 10, 20, 30 years, and not as much action. It's kind of fallen short in many cases. I think when you get companies like Unilever ... stepping out and saying, 'We're gonna actually make this happen,' it starts to make other smaller companies and opportunities arise."
Where can algae be used?
Algae not only grows everywhere, but it can also be used almost anywhere in cuisine, according to researchers and ingredients companies.
Much of the world has thought of algae as a green and slimy substance that could fit into a niche in the nutraceuticals market, but Algenuity's Spicer found it really shined as a nutritional component. Its high amino acid and fiber content are the types of things in demand by manufacturers and consumers. Chlorella vulgaris, the species that Algenuity's ingredients are built around, is also non-allergenic. What's holding it back, Spicer said, is its green color and bitter taste.
Spicer worked on formulating an ingredient that met all of those needs. The company created a strain of chlorella vulgaris that essentially has no chlorophyll, meaning it isn't green. In doing that, the resulting protein also lost the bitterness, making it a fairly neutral-tasting and nutritious ingredient. Spicer said it has several functional properties as well.
"We have had so much conversation over the last 10, 20, 30 years, and not as much action. It's kind of fallen short in many cases. I think when you get companies like Unilever ... stepping out and saying, 'We're gonna actually make this happen,' it starts to make other smaller companies and opportunities arise."
Andrew Spicer
Founder and CEO, Algenuity
"We have emulsifying properties," he said. "We have enriching properties to go into foods to enrich the protein and the nutritional profile. We have a high fiber, so that contributes to being a functional ingredient. It has some binding activities that go into things like vegan meats and go into things like pastas. It's a really broad opportunity."
Algenuity's ingredients can also be used to add protein to other products, like soups, dressings and smoothies, Spicer said. And he's had success using it as an egg replacer, as well as in baked goods, including vegan brownies.
Spicer couldn't talk about specific projects Algenuity is doing with Unilever, but he said the company has been working with the food giant's main innovation center, The Hive. Work is focused on savory snacking applications, as well as plant-based meat, but Spicer pointed out the agreement covers every aspect of Unilever's business. Algenuity's ingredients could end up in all sorts of products.
Back of the Yards Algae Sciences has been doing R&D work on several different applications for algae ingredients, then beta-testing them with Brytlife Foods, a small New York City vegan food maker. Lerer said Back of the Yards is not looking to be a CPG company in its own right. Instead, it is trying to show the possibilities of the algae ingredient — something that is more easily done when it's in a full product.
"The problem is that the big food companies have never really been able to formulate it into their food. So therefore, it's not been widely used," Lerer said.
Permission granted by Algenuity
Most recently, Back of the Yards developed an algae-based heme — the iron-containing molecule that makes meat taste like meat. Impossible Foods has derived heme for its products from genetically modified soy. The algae company has also tested products including a blue dairy-free yogurt and a yellow vegan cheese.
But Lerer believes algae can reach its greatest potential as a medium for cultured cell growth. Cultured meat, which is developing as a way to produce meat without raising or killing animals, has long been expensive because of the need for fetal bovine serum to create a cell growth medium. Cultured meat developers are working with agricultural and nutritional companies to create less expensive plant-based alternatives, and Lerer thinks algae could effectively be used for this purpose.
Back of the Yards has cultured pork, shrimp and poultry cells using an algae-based growth medium, Lerer said. It's an interesting development, considering that Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood was once the heart of the city's stockyards and meatpacking industry, immortalized in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." The building Lerer's company uses was once a pork processing facility, he said.
"The future of food is cruelty free, so the first thing we did when we set up this lab is we grew pork, sort of as a way to exorcise the building from all the bad things that happened to pigs," he said with a laugh.
But will people eat it?
As an ingredient, Algenuity's Spicer said algae has a ways to go to be desirable to consumers. But with the right messaging, it can get there.
"There's a fantastic sustainability story that's going to come out," Spicer said. "It's a whole source of protein. It's a wholesale ingredient, so there's zero waste. So in terms of what consumers are looking for ... it satisfies a lot of those trends. The name algae ... that's where we have to engage with the consumer about what that looks like, because I think a lot of people have preconceived notions about what it means."
While algae has been used in food for decades, the Plant Based Foods Association's Vyas said that public education campaigns that are likely to accompany greater product rollouts could make it desirable. When consumers are taught about the sustainability and nutritional benefits of algae, they will be more likely to look for products that contain it — especially millennials and Gen Zers, who have been shown to be more interested in food that promotes these qualities.
"In terms of what consumers are looking for ... it satisfies a lot of those trends. The name algae ... that's where we have to engage with the consumer about what that looks like, because I think a lot of people have preconceived notions about what it means."
Andrew Spicer
Founder and CEO, Algenuity
Spicer believes that through the partnerships with major manufacturers and renewed interest in healthy ingredients, not only will consumers want products containing algae, but they will also want to add algae protein to their home-cooked meals. Spicer said Algenuity hopes to offer some direct-to-consumer ingredients for home cooks later this year. The company would start out with some protein powders or blends of algae protein and other common ingredients.
Algenuity is also helping to spread the word about algae through social media. The company's Twitter feed is full of photos of food made with its ingredients, ranging from soups to pasta to ice cream to a vegan chocolate torte.
And Spicer said there are more opportunities in store. Algenuity is a sponsor of London's Future Food Tech conference this September, and has been challenged to cater an entire lunch for attendees. He's already working on conceptualizing the menu, which could include pasta, soups and decadent desserts.
"I would hope that we can really deliver something good in people's eyes," he said.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the purpose of the company Algenuity spun out of.
ESG measurement is an increasingly popular way of holding companies accountable when it comes to sustainability efforts, and of giving companies an incentive to improve them. But measurement, no matter how sophisticated, is much better at capturing easily quantifiable inputs than complex and messy outcomes and impacts. Companies need to do everything they can to understand those outcomes and impacts — and that requires doing more than just measurement. In particular, companies need to do three things: (1) zoom in to develop insights on processes, (2) zoom out to see broader systems, and (3) value curiosity and learning.
Around the globe, a third of all professionally managed assets, or roughly $30 trillion, are now subject to ESG criteria. That’s a remarkable sum, one that represents an increase of more than 30% since 2016. Between April and June of 2020 alone, investors poured more than $70 billion into ESG equity funds, vastly exceeding recent annual flows.
These numbers reflect a growing awareness — among companies, investors, and shareholders alike — that to remain viable, businesses must think about and manage their impact on the planet in new ways. Sustainability is the new aspiration, and the key to achieving it, according to a rapidly emerging consensus, is the development of sophisticated ways of measuring ESG activities and impact. Make those measurements known using a robust scoring system, the theory goes, and companies will find themselves compelled to improve.
But our current focus on ESG measurement is dangerously narrow. It fails to capture the complex, systemic nature of social and environmental systems, and indeed that of business organizations themselves. In this article, recognizing that measurement is both necessary and inevitable, I will offer precautions on its use and interpretation, and guidance on what businesses must do to act effectively on issues threatening our planet and societies.
How Measures Mislead
Measuring signals, missing processes “What gets measured gets managed” — that old mantra rings true for most businesses. But measurement often fails to provide insight into messy underlying processes, which is where important and actionable information can be found.
To do better, we can’t just develop increasingly precise measures. Many ESG measures already very effectively capture inputs, but they presume causality — that adding women to top management teams, say, will produce better outcomes. But measures that capture inputs (such as the numbers of women on those teams) don’t capture outcomes (such as decision-making that reflects diverse perspectives) and impacts (such as the social value created by such decisions).Research shows, for example, that top management teams make complex decisions better when not dominated by either gender. The underlying processes that lead to that kind of outcome are what we need to pay attention to — which means that we have to look behind the numbers and ask how, why, and under what conditions they came about.
Measuring the apparent, missing the system When seeking to capture causality, we often draw the wrong boundaries around the problems we seek to address. When this happens, measurement can easily lead us astray — and make us collectively less capable of undertaking bigger and bolder actions.
Consider what happened in the United States in the 1970s, after the government required that car companies produce passenger-car fleets with a higher average fuel economy. The idea seemed smart: To reduce consumption and emissions, first you set fuel-economy standards for the companies, then you measure how well their fleets meet those standards, and finally you ratchet up the standards over time to compel those companies to improve. But things didn’t work out that way. That’s because the government had created fuel-economy standards that were more stringent for cars than light trucks. Not surprisingly, the companies began shifting their production from cars to SUVs and trucks — in an extremely significant manner. In the 1970s, SUVs and trucks accounted for 3% of all U.S. new automobile sales, but by the early 2000s the number had risen above 50%.
All of this created unintended consequences. Emissions didn’t drop as much as they were supposed to. Traffic fatalities increased, because more heavy vehicles were colliding with lighter ones. More broadly, by demanding measurable improvements to fuel economy at the fleet level, the government encouraged car companies to devote themselves narrowly to solving (or skirting) that problem rather than developing broader, more-sustainable innovations and solutions. The latter, like electric vehicles or reimagined models for mobility, required fundamentally different capabilities. Without incentives to develop them, U.S. manufacturers fell behind relative to their foreign counterparts.
Similar examples — in which we fixate on one small part of a complex system, and in so doing come up with solutions to the wrong problem — abound. ESG measures can perpetuate this behavior, especially when the measures and investor rewards remain tied to individual firms. At an individual level, for example, BP can take credit for reducing its emissions by selling its petrochemicals business. But that business and its emissions, of course, have not gone away.
Measuring the monetizable, missing the valued Some things are inherently easier to measure than others. But that doesn’t mean they’re more valuable.
CO2 equivalent emissions are a case in point. They’re easy to measure, and in a single number they convey the impact created by a range of greenhouse gases, whose cause-effect relationship between emission and climate change is well established. Further, CO2eq emissions, once measured, can be monetized, in the form of a carbon price, which enables comparison across companies and activities.
Much harder to capture and compare are impacts on biodiversity and habitat, where cause-and-effect relationships are devilishly more complex. But those impacts can be hugely consequential.
Consider crop production. Much of the industry, worth hundreds of billions annually, relies on pollinating insects—and those insects are in serious decline. But it’s almost impossible to measure what different companies have done to contribute to this decline. A variety of important factors are involved: land-use change, intensive agriculture, pesticide use, climate change, disease, and more. But even if such measurements were possible, would they add up to the value of nature?
Even with clear and comparable ESG measures, there is considerable hubris in allowing today’s investors, asset managers, and business managers to decide what will constitute and enable a good life for our children. Shifts in underlying values and preferences could fundamentally alter the relevance of even the best current ESG measures. Will our children thank us for enabling asset managers to reward the airlines that most effectively shift to biofuels or aggressively offset their carbon emissions? Or will our children measure the value of their investments and their lives in a different way — say, through the quality of relationships they sustain or the time they have for leisure?
Beyond Measures: Keys to Effective Action
These concerns — that ESG measures can obscure important insight into processes, misdirect our attention away from systems, and dangerously misrepresent broader values — don’t mean that companies shouldn’t measure. They should. But they need to do more. Here are three ways they can widen their focus to capture information not just about inputs but also about the processes and systems governing outcomes and impacts.
1. Zoom in to develop insights on processes To grasp underlying processes, companies should focus on deeply understanding a handful of issues most germane to their core activities. Through this, they stand a greater chance of deeply understanding the causal threads that enable improved impact, and ultimately directing sufficient resources to act on these.
When Nike was critiqued for its suppliers’ labor practices in the 1990s, for example, it took the time to interview 67,000 workers to explore the issues through their experiences, enabled by board member Jill Ker Conway’s network of researchers and women’s organizations. From this, the company was able to create a longer-term strategy involving disclosure, partnering with other brands to improve working conditions, and mobilizing community support.
2. Zoom out to see broader systems Zooming out brings a longer term and broader perspective on issues that demand deep insight. Beginning with the end state and soliciting diverse stakeholder inputs are two approaches to understanding systems and one’s role within them.
Consider climate change. Carbon emissions dominate the headlines, of course, but zoom out and you’ll start to see the extent to which water stress is a problem that we are going have to confront: By 2030, the world will require 40% more water than it does today. Some companies with agricultural supply chains, like Cargill, Diageo, and Unilever, have acknowledged a future of shared responsibility for watersheds at the catchment level, leading them to develop approaches to regenerative agriculture and watershed restoration that involve local populations and are tailored to local conditions.
Zooming out demands significant engagement beyond organizational boundaries, which should also tap diverse perspectives, enabling a company to learn from and with others on collaborative approaches to systemic issues.
3. Value curiosity and learning Many people are calling for firms to articulate a purpose beyond profit maximization, so that they can better serve societal values. But purpose is empty without the capacity to execute on it. Getting started with focused “doing” is a more grounded — and potentially complementary — approach that can leverage existing capabilities and talent.
For all the promise of the circular economy to reimagine how we think about waste, some entirely unglamorous possibilities have been unlocked by companies that are doggedly learning from what their people on the front lines do. Years ago, Xerox repair technicians and engineers worked out that simple parts on its leased photocopiers — plastic roller wheels or metal brackets — could be redesigned to make them fail less often, and reusable even after they had failed. Similarly, Patagonia knows that zippers give out far sooner than fabric wears out. Tapping the wisdom of its repair team helps the company rethink product construction so zippers can be replaced without destroying a down sleeping bag or jacket.
The commonality in the above is an emphasis on doing and learning — that is, on not being driven by measures alone. Robust ESG and impact measures can help us keep score, and, when necessary, make course corrections. Ultimately, however, no matter how and what we measure, we need to act our way into greater understanding, insight, and even purpose.
Jennifer Howard-Grenville is the Diageo Professor of Organization Studies, at the Cambridge Judge Business School.
