51. 16-04-21 Seminar on UN Sustainable Development Goals

Tonight, I attended the second seminar about the livery companies’ involvement with the City Climate Action Strategy. In 2015 the United Nations published 17 Sustainable Development Goals including climate action and this seminar explained the range of goals concentrating on climate action.

The evening began with a welcome from Alderman Alison Gowman followed by an introduction by the Lord Mayor, the Rt Hon Alderman William Russell. He spoke about the importance of the City’s Climate Action Strategy and mentioned some of the good work already undertaken by some livery companies including the Wax Chandlers support for Pollinating London, and the Water Conservator’s support for the Plastic Free City Campaign.

This was followed by 2 presentations, the first by Professor David Viner FIEnvSci, a visiting professor at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. He has been involved with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1992, was a Lead Author on the IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land and is currently a Co-ordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’s Working Group 2 Sixth Assessment Report.

David began by speaking about the global reach of the Green Investment Group which has committed over £20 billon to support green energy projects. He gave a brief history of the planet’s journey in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, then explained the importance of restraining global warming to 2 degrees to avoid a global tipping point where many important eco systems could be lost.

The second speaker was David’s colleague, Raphaelle Vallet, the Sustainable Finance Manager at the Green Investment Group. She leads on Macquarie Group’s strategy for COP26 and is helping implement net zero policies in GIG. She explained that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees by 2100 means that carbon and Greenhouse Gas emissions need to reach net zero by 2050, and she warned that the world was currently not on track to meet these targets. Finally, she gave some background to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Conference of the Parties with the lead up to COP26 later this year, and how Climate Change was also vitally important to meeting many of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Following the presentations there was a short Question and Answer session followed by breakout groups where each group discussed key actions that their livery could take. I would like to offer my thanks to the speakers and to Alderman Alison Gowman and Dr Heather Barrett-Mold OBE for organising the event.