CUSP/CES Seminar with Duncan Austin
Online | 11 May 2023, 1pm (BST)
The Limits of Win-Win: Is sustainability a market opportunity or a moral obligation?
For the last two decades, a ‘win-win’ sustainable investment paradigm, reflected by the rapid rise of ESG and impact investing, has offered the promise that we might solve global ecological challenges in ways that lead to market-beating financial returns.
But twenty years after this strategy first took hold, progress on climate and ecological challenges is proving painfully slow, the financial performance of sustainability efforts is being questioned, and biophysical tipping points are approaching fast. Is ‘win-win’ sustainability working? And if not, what to do?
About
Duncan Austin has had a 28-year career in the fields of environmental economics and sustainable finance spanning academic, non-profit and for-profit positions. From 2004 to 2018, he was a partner at Generation Investment Management, a sustainable investment firm chaired by Vice-President Al Gore. Prior to Generation, he spent 8 years working at World Resources Institute in Washington D.C., as a Senior Economist conducting research for policy, corporate and investment audiences. He has degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford (BA) and in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from University College, London (MSc). Since 2019, Duncan has been researching, writing and speaking independently on sustainability issues.
WHERE
Online
WHEN
Monday, 11 May 2023
1pm (BST)
CONTACT
The event is part of a teaching module at the University of Surrey. The video recording of the event is embedded above, and can be found on the CUSP Youtube Channel. For enquiries, please email events@cusp.ac.uk.
