Alice Sharp at DAVOS 2020: Art and Private Investment in the fight for Climate and SDG’s

‘Ocean’ Room, Davos, Wednesday 22 January 2020, 10am-11.30am

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters from 21st – 24th Jan 2020 is a leading creative force for engaging the world’s top leaders in collaborative activities to shape the global, regional and industry agendas at the beginning of each year. The Forum’s mission – improving the state of the world – guides the design and development of the Annual Meeting objectives. Participants come together at the Annual Meeting to address the most pressing issues on the global agenda –  featuring interdisciplinary, informal and direct interaction among peers.

On Wednesday 22nd Jan Invisible Dust Director Alice Sharp will be moderating a panel alongside Professor Albert Bressand of the Bartlett School Env, Energy & Resources, UCL exploring the role of private companies and investors in protecting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) whilst fighting climate change, and the role of artists and culture in supporting private and public climate awareness and initiatives.

Climate change is a major disrupter in the achievement of most SDG’s Europe and some pioneering countries are committed to ‘net-zero-emissions’ through renewables, efficiency and afforestation. Yet, this will only offset a year or two of the current (and disturbingly stubborn) global increase in emission rates.

Projecting to the year 2030, the panel explores how private and public sectors should cooperate in a scenario (plausible under model-based analysis as conducted for instance by BCG) where Europe’s intensified efforts as well as significant additional efforts by China and the US in the 2020s have failed to deliver a ‘Paris’-compatible below-2C path. The challenge as seen in 2030 in this scenario is to combine bold remediation with continued mitigation.

This panel will ask:

– Is the enthusiastic activism of the youth and now of much of the European political class failing to lead global change in the prevention of nefarious climate change?

– What are the obstacles to achieving key SDGs if global CO2 concentration, instead of plateauing, tops 430ppm in 2030?

– Is afforestation (the process of planting trees, or sowing seeds, in a barren land devoid of any trees to create a forest) up to scale when it comes to ‘negative emissions’ or should we also embrace carbon removal through other means such as Direct Air Capture (DAC) and capture in soils?

– Is climate change a matter of technology or moral improvement? What is the role of artists and culture in helping society set the direction? 

Moderators:

Prof Albert BRESSAND, UCL, introducing the post-2030 political-economic scenario informing the event

Alice SHARP, Founder and Director, Invisible Dust, on the role of artists in promoting a climate- SDG-aware culture. 

Panelists:

Paul EKINS, UCL, co-chair of UNEP’s latest Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-6

Michel FRÉDEAU, Managing Director & Senior Partner BCG Paris, global leader BCG Center for Climate Action

– Aldyen DONNELLY, Co-Founder & Director of Carbon Economics Nori LLC

– Dr. Jan WURZBACHER, Director & Founder Climeworks, Zurich

– Dame Elizabeth CORLEY, Chair, Impact Investing Institute Board of Directors

– Andris PIEBALGS, Florence School of Regulation (EUI) and Chair, former EU Commissioner for Energy (2006-2010) and for International Cooperation and Development (2010-2014), member UN High-Level Group on post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (2014-2015).