Resources

• Climate Rising episode: Supply Chain Decarbonization: Walmart’s Project Gigaton
• AAA Framework for Climate Policy Leadership
• Clean Energy Buyers Alliance (previously Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance)
• The GlobeScan / SustainAbility Institute by ERM Survey of Experts
• The 2014 Greenbiz NGO Report: How Companies Rate Activists as Partners
• Climate Business Network

Guests

Climate Rising Host: Professor Mike Toffel, Faculty Chair, Business & Environment Initiative

Guest: Carter Roberts, President and CEO, World Wildlife Fund-US

Transcript

Editor’s Note: The following was prepared by a machine algorithm, and may not perfectly reflect the audio file of the interview.

Mike Toffel:
Carter, thank you so much for joining us here on Climate Rising.

Carter Roberts:
Thanks for having me. It's a great pleasure.

Mike Toffel:
Why don't we start with just a brief introduction. Can you just describe your role at WWF?

Carter Roberts:
I'm the president and CEO of WWF US, which is the biggest part of a global network, and that is the largest conservation organization in the world. I would describe my role as all about hiring and keeping great talent, and then making sure they have the resources and the openings in the world to do great things

Mike Toffel:
Great. And a thumbnail sketch of the organization. It's a global network and it focuses on conservation. Can you say a bit more about what its span of activities includes?

Carter Roberts:
Sure. WWF, you may recognize us by our panda logo. We are about 60-years-old. We operate in 100 countries in the world. We have 8,800 employees. And our work spans policy, corporate engagement, communications, trade issues, the creation of parks, strengthening of communities. And at the end of the day, it's all centered on keeping the most important places in the world intact, places that are fundamental for life on earth and also fundamental for people. And so think the Amazon, the Mekong, the coral reefs of the Pacific and more.

Mike Toffel:
And you got to WWF by way of an MBA at HBS, and then through some private sector engagements at, I believe, Procter & Gamble and Gillette. Then you switch to the nonprofit sector to work at The Nature Conservancy, and then over to WWF. That's quite a journey. Can you say a little bit about that transition from the private sector to the nonprofit or NGO sector, non government organization sector?

Carter Roberts:
Sure. When I got out of HBS, I desperately wanted to work in the environmental field, and I interviewed with a number of organizations. And at that time, they were only hiring scientists and lawyers. Scientists to do research and lawyers to use the research to sue people or to enact policies. And as that field changed, it created more openings for corporate engagement, it created more openings for MBAs to be considered for leadership positions. When I got out of HBS, I was at one point working to create a new company in 1990, based in Boston that would use this new thing called the internet to deliver to mothers with newborn children, right to their front door products that were good for their kids and good for the environment. Think an early, green version of Amazon. It had several problems.

One was it was too early. The second one was we hadn't yet sorted out the supply chain. But the biggest issue was distribution, because we decided to partner with laundromats, who were already delivering cloth diapers and the like to mothers with newborn children. And in the middle of those partnership discussions, we realized that those laundromats were owned by Whitey Bulger, which was a fatal flaw in our plan. And at one point, my partner said to me, "Carter, this isn't going to work out. I've been interviewing for a job with The Nature Conservancy. I think you'd be better at that job than me. And you should take my place in the next interview." And so I did, and I got the job, and that was over 30 years ago. And I've been in the field since.

Mike Toffel:
And for our audience who might be unfamiliar with Whitey Bulger.

Carter Roberts:
Whitey Bulger is the quite infamous mafia gangster who was capable of great violence, and not the kind of person you want to build your career with.

Mike Toffel:
Infamous character in the Boston landscape to be sure. Wow, that's interesting. So you were ahead of your time with an internet idea, a distribution platform, a platform company all a little bit too early, but-

Carter Roberts:
Timing is everything.

Mike Toffel:
But we learn from our failures, and sometimes great things come out of them. So here you are. So the breadth of WWF internationally and their activities is quite enormous, but I think what would be most interesting for us to focus on is the collaborations that WWF is engaging in with companies on climate change. So I wonder if you can tell us a bit about what types of collaborations WWF is engaging in and how they arise.

Carter Roberts:
Sure. This has become a huge part of our work because in addition to our work on government policy, it's clear that if you want to succeed in our mission, you've got to engage the private sector and unleash the capital, the innovation, and the reaps that the private sector has.

Our partnerships with the private sector range from acts of pure creation, working with engineers at Google and the like in creating technology-based solutions to monitoring and evaluation ranging from forest to fish catch and the rest. And it goes all the way up to our partnerships with institutions around the world on setting science-based targets related to the Paris agreement for reducing their climate emissions, and then grinding through those with those companies.

And then finally, it takes form when our partnerships with Walmart, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and many others that reach across their supply chains to remove greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce water use, to reduce deforestation, and to do so literally with thousands of suppliers at the same time through the platform of their supply chains and their reach. And I think the one thing all of those have in common is they're science-based, they're solutions-oriented, and they take advantage of what I call the superpower of companies, their greatest influence and their greatest reach. And they're all different.

Mike Toffel:
And do these arise by you and your colleagues reaching out to these companies, or do they reach out to you, or some of each?

Carter Roberts:
It's a combination of both. Early on, we looked at the places that we cherished and did a systematic evaluation of the greatest threats to those places, like the Amazon, like the Congo, like the Mekong River. And believe it or not, the biggest issue with climate change, it was unsustainable food production. And then we systematically tracked the biggest commodities that were affecting those places. And then for each commodity, we looked at who were the most influential players, from producers to traders, to retailers, to manufacturers. And we put together a top 10 list for each commodity and systematically built relationships with each and every one of those top 10 companies.

Mike Toffel:
So land areas to commodities, to influential players. That sounds a lot like an MBA strategy that you might use.

Carter Roberts:
You might think that I learned something along the way, particularly in my two years in the halls of HBS. One thing I've learned is it's important to think hard about your points of intervention, and how do you make the best use of scarce resources, and how do you have as much economy emotion, and what you do so that you can have the greatest impact. And so it was a very systematic way of looking at things.

And in those cases, back to your question, we approached those companies proactively. In other cases, we've been approached. And more often than not, the companies that approach us approach us because of our expertise, but at the end of the day, truly because of our global reach and our brand, which is far and away, the biggest brand in the world of conservation. And that affiliation, if you will, that's kind of like the Intel inside, they have a partnership with us. And so we both proactively reach out to create partnerships, but we're also responding to opportunities as they arise.

Mike Toffel:
I imagine you must have more opportunities than you could possibly take on both generated by your staff and incoming inquiries from companies. How do you triage that and figure out which ones to focus on? What do you say no to?

Carter Roberts:
We respond to the groaning board of opportunities in two ways. One is we decide which companies to work with based on a number of factors, which I'll go into. The other thing that we do as much as any other environmental institution is we look at the big picture and try to create systemic approaches to issues that create rules of the road or guardrails for any company that wants to pursue greenhouse emission reductions and the rest. So we decide on individual partnerships, but then we look at how do you create a system that guides any company that's serious about this?

And so on the guardrails, we created 20 years ago certification programs for pay pulp and paper, like FSC, for seafood, the Marine Stewardship Council. We've done the same for a number of commodities, and encouraged any company to sell certified products. On the other hand, we also worked with World Resources Institute and Carbon Disclosure Project to create science-based targets for climate change, which they're now approaching 4,000 companies that have signed up to peer reviewed science-based targets to ensure that they're doing their part against the Paris agreement. We're not going to work with 4,000 companies, but we've helped create at least something that creates more integrity and more rigor for any company that wants to move in that direction.

And on the other end, the companies we work with and deeper partnerships are really those that are on among those top 10 by commodity, and also those who can bring to bear the kind of platform, the kind of reach. In our partnership with Walmart on Project Gigaton, we are systematically reaching 4,000 suppliers, and that number is growing and helping them understand how to get after greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and how to get after either stemming the loss of nature or restoring nature in the work that they do.

Mike Toffel:
So what I'm hearing from your description of the activities that you're engaging in is on the one hand, you want to stay in the lanes that you have expertise, and on the other, you want to be sure to focus on scalable impact. And you have two ways of achieving that. One way is creating schemes, like the Marine Stewardship Council scheme, or science-based targets, activities that lots and lots of companies can opt into, and it's sort of a brand unto itself. So those are scalable solutions in that way. And then the other is working with major companies in the commodity space or in the brand side that can scale impact. Is that right?

Carter Roberts:
Yeah. That's exactly right. There are moments where our brand is extremely useful and what it stands for in terms of integrity and results and impact. And then there are other instances on certification programs and the like where our brand is invisible. You would have no idea we were a part of it, but it becomes a universal standard.

Mike Toffel:
So one of the critiques that companies and NGOs have gotten, or in particular NGOs, is that they're being used sometimes by companies to put a green veneer on some sets of activities of companies which doesn't represent the entire company's greenness. And so there's a form of sort of greenwashing. Even if what they're doing is honest, it may be a small part of the organization's footprint and doesn't that sell out in a way the brand. First of all, what do you think about that critique? And then secondly, how do you protect yourself against it?

Carter Roberts:
I remember doing an analysis of the importance of brands to companies and NGOs. And on the balance sheet of many companies, that one little item, goodwill, is huge for quite a number of companies, and it means a lot not just to the corporate sector, but it means everything to us. So the issue you raise about diminishing your brand accusations of greenwashing is very real. And for us, the first thing you need to do is to be clear why are you engaging a company. For some NGOs, it's all about money. For us, it's all about results, it's all about the footprint of that company. It's all about the difference that company makes in the world, and setting real science-based targets for results, and monitoring those over time, and working with them on achieving those.

And even if we sign non-disclosure agreements with companies, which we usually do, maintaining our ability to talk about the progress made or not made by that company against its targets, that's how we keep our brand intact. And if we sold out our brand, then it wouldn't be very useful to the companies with whom we partner, because it wouldn't represent the integrity that they seek. And interestingly, the best partnerships we have with companies, they want us to push them. They want us to be honest with them. They want us to hold a mirror up to areas where they need to be better, and that's just part of the value added that we bring.

I think the other thing is we do not approach companies for money, although the money a company will spend on achieving the results is part of the equation. And corporate income is a very, very small part of our financial model.

Mike Toffel:
So you don't take money in exchange for working with them on these collaborations?

Carter Roberts:
We don't take money in exchange for that, but if a company sets some huge goals on reducing their water use, and it involves acquiring capacity, hiring consultants, or if we're going to help them out to hire in all kinds of scientists and bring all kinds of groups together, we will take money to help us execute on those things, but it's a very small part of the equation.

Mike Toffel:
I see. So what is the funding model instead if you're not getting on a fee for service basis?

Carter Roberts:
The funding model is activity based. If a company is going to commit to a set of targets, then it commits to what I call the engineering of how they're going to accomplish those targets. More often than not the big money is what the company spends itself in its own operations, and those go into the billions and trillions of dollars when you add them all up. But beyond that, if there are things they need their partners to do, whether it's us or any other NGO, and there are costs associated with that, then typically, the corporate foundation may make some grants to support those activities. And typically, those are not in support of just that company's footprint, it's in support of those multi-stakeholder platforms that I was talking about. It's in support of moving whole industries in the right direction.

Mike Toffel:
I see. So one of the alternatives to having the firm pay for a fee for service model is having their philanthropies contribute to the set of NGOs who are helping to scale this impact.

Carter Roberts:
That's right.

Mike Toffel:
Are others subsidizing your work, like major foundations or things like that?

Carter Roberts:
Yeah. Well, if you look at our business model, we have globally, six million dues paying members, which I think gives us the largest membership of any environmental group. And then beyond that, lots of other individuals engaged in our work. That's the biggest source of revenue that we have. The second biggest source of revenue are big foundations. Think Packard, think Hewlett, think MacArthur, think the Moore Foundation and the Bezos Foundation. And then beyond that,we often receive funding through government institutions like USAID or their counterparts in other countries when there are big programs working with communities in the heart of the Congo or in the Amazon or elsewhere. And it's part of overseas development assistance. And then as you work your way down through all of that and bequests and everything else, probably the smallest financial source of revenue for us is corporate contributions.

Mike Toffel:
Do you get any pushback from your six million members about engaging with companies, where they're worried about the brand, they're like, "Actually, you should focus only on conservation and fighting companies. What is this working with companies stuff?"

Carter Roberts:
Not a lot, interestingly. I think when I first started in this field 30 years ago, there was more of a traditional suspicion of companies. And I think some of that, at least within the environmental community, has changed quite substantially as we've seen governments flip and flop on their own commitments. The corporate sector and the commitments they make has been seen as a source of continuity and stability, at least the best companies. And let's be clear, there are leading companies who are amazing in this work. And then there are other companies who not just because they don't set targets, but also because the worst companies are operating illegally in flagrant violation of environmental laws.

We get very few questions about the work we do with leading companies. And we put in real guardrails on how we engage those companies that are notorious. We engage, but it's somewhat at a distance. And we work really hard with governments to ensure that their laws are enforced and, or evolve to take into account illegal activities. If you look at greenhouse gas emissions, and you look at habitat destruction through unsustainable food production, it's illegal activities that have a disproportionate impact on the planet, and strengthening the role of governments is super important.

Mike Toffel:
Yeah. So with regard to strengthening the role of government, I'm wondering if you also engage with companies on lobbying or campaign contribution strategies or other ways to actually strengthen those policies.

Carter Roberts:
Absolutely. And I can tell you it's become increasingly clear that for all these companies who set targets on climate change or set targets on nature-positive business models, there is a moment where you will sit in a room with them and they will say, these are really important targets, but I cannot fully accomplish these without that guy. And they'll point across the room to a minister in a government where their products come from. And it is very clear that the ability of companies to make progress hinges in part on what they do themselves, but a lot of it hinges on governments putting in place the right regulatory framework, the right kind of enforcement.

So we are a partner and a signatory to something called the AAA framework, which there are a number of other leading NGOs who are part of that. And we ask companies to advocate for policies consistent with a net-zero future, align their trade associations, climate policy advocacy to be consistent with the net-zero future, and then allocate their advocacy spending accordingly.

Mike Toffel:
And is this AAA framework a condition of doing work with companies? Will you only work with companies who subscribe to the AAA framework?

Carter Roberts:
It is not a condition. Our conditions are they set targets and results based on their footprint, but we are increasingly pressing companies that in addition to that, it's not enough to write a nice letter. You and your trade organizations need to get in the game. And when you meet with senators or members of Congress, that on your short list of priorities for those meetings is the importance of climate legislation

Mike Toffel:
On occasion, we see companies dropping out of such trade associations sort of in protest for that gap between the company's posture and their trade association

Carter Roberts:
No. That's right. That's right. Let's be clear, you shouldn't paint all trade associations with the same brush.

Mike Toffel:
For sure.

Carter Roberts:
A trade association was hatched in the offices of WWF, the idea for it, which was to bring together all the biggest buyers of renewable energy in the country, and to use the scale of their businesses to influence policy at a state level, to remove barriers to scaling up renewable energy, and increasingly to do the same at a federal level. And it is the biggest buyers of renewable energy. It's something we did with Rocky Mountain Institute, World Resources Institute, and CDP. We merged all of our efforts with the biggest companies, and it's now one of the coolest trade associations on the hill.

Mike Toffel:
Wow. What's it called?

Carter Roberts:

The Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance.

Mike Toffel:
It's a refreshingly transparent title of a trade association. Let's dive into the corporate NGO collaborations in a little more depth. So can you give a couple of examples of some of these engagements that your organization has been involved in?

Carter Roberts:
I've already talked a bit about Walmart and Project Gigaton. That's been a labor of love for many, many, many years. They have milestone meetings every year, and it has evolved in a way with Walmart, also their biggest suppliers and also quite a number of NGOs, not just us. And that's taken on its own head and steam and has got quite a lot of momentum. Some of the other examples, when I first started in this job, it was a moment in time when a watershed in India went dry in a place called Kerala, and Coca-Cola company was blamed that their bottling plant had sucked the watershed dry depriving farmers of their livelihoods. And there was a call for the government of India to throw Coca-Cola out of the country, which let's just say is pretty existential threat to their business model.

At that time, we had done a number of small scale watershed-based projects with Coca-Cola. And why Coca-Cola? Because 98% of their ingredients in their product is water. And so they took that moment to work with us, to create a much more aggressive global initiative on water, and not just within their 1,500 bottling plants around the world, but with the surrounding communities, with the surrounding governments, and with us. It ended up spanning 49 countries. It moved from setting targets on water efficiency in their bottling plant, It ended up translating into how they source citrus, and using new approaches to agriculture to use less water in growing orange trees, for instance. And then ultimately also moving on certification programs for sugar, because sugar is what we call a very thirsty crop.

Carter Roberts:
But then beyond that, they also worked really hard on creating a movement around water, and using what Coca-Cola superpower is their market. It's how they make different issues come alive. And so we worked with them on that as well.

Mike Toffel:
So Coca-Cola has a whole team dedicated to water and agriculture on their corporate staff and in country. Can you just say a little bit, what role do they play, versus what role does your team play? Just to give a little more color as to what the contribution of the WWF side is.

Carter Roberts:
Yeah. Well, early on, they didn't have such a big team. This is a 20-year-old partnership.

Mike Toffel:
I see.

Carter Roberts:
And so early on, we brought a lot of science on the flow of water and models for watersheds around the world to inform how do you keep those watersheds intact? What kind of interventions do you need? Where is the use by the local communities, or even that part of the government, how do you make changes to keep the watersheds intact and flowing in a normal way? We also created as a third-party reference point, what are the right targets for water efficiency for them based on best available practices in other industries. And then we independently monitored their progress against those targets. So it wasn't just Coca-Cola reporting on how they were doing, but we were monitoring how they were doing both on water, on energy use, and on some of the other areas of footprint they have in their business model.

Mike Toffel:
Got it. We've talked so far about Walmart and their Project Gigaton, their attempt through their supply chain to get rid of a gigaton of carbon, and Coca-Cola.

So these are pretty high profile, successful collaborations. I wonder if we can turn the tables and talk about some collaborations that didn't work out so well, and maybe what you've learned from it, and how you've changed either the selection of the partners or the type of work you do to safeguard, to minimize such challenges in the future.

Carter Roberts:
Without reference to a particular company's name, there is a rather large pulp and paper company that we've worked with in Southeast Asia for decades on reducing their impact on some of the world's richest rainforest and setting targets for changing their business practices. And systematically, it seems like most of those agreements have not been honored. And so we have stepwise taken a number of other steps. One was to engage all of their biggest customers to make them aware of the destruction of rainforest and what they've done. We have in subsequent financing rounds, engaged quietly those major investors in the company. And then at a certain moment, we, and this is not typical for us, but after so many broken agreements, we hired a lab to analyze their product to identify exactly what kind of rainforests were embedded in their products, which included toilet paper.

Mike Toffel:
Wow.

Carter Roberts:
We issued a report to all the major retailers in the United States. And we said to the retailers, we will issue a report three months from now that will include the names of retailers who carry toilet paper that is made of rainforest in Southeast Asia. And your name will not be included in this list if you remove that product from your shelves. And as a result of that, that company shut down that practice and removed that product from the market. But that is an extreme case of engagement where our usual practice of being collaborative and science based and constructive and solutions oriented was just so systematically broken by that companies that we took some additional steps.

Mike Toffel:
That's very interesting. So it's in a way, it's an enforcement mechanism to ensure that when companies collaborate with you and make agreements with you, that there's some legit follow through.

Carter Roberts:
Yeah. Look, there was one corporate engagement that we had that at the end of the big press release, a New York Times reporter came up to me and said, "That's great. It's great what they've done. Now, you need to help us hold them accountable."

Mike Toffel:
Yeah. It's easy to have a press release with intentions. The tricky part is follow up.

Carter Roberts:
And look, for the most part, the way we go about doing that is through science-based reporting, monitoring, because for the best company, it is in their best interest to have the integrity of their work being upheld and affirmed, and any shortcomings also being pointed out so the company can address the shortcomings. It hasn't been a big issue for us, but you asked for an example of a partnership that went wrong and that's a notable one.

Mike Toffel:
Yeah. That's interesting. That sounds to me a bit like hardball that you would expect from a Greenpeace, for example, which they sort of make their name for that type of activity. And so that brings up the broader question of in the landscape of environmental NGOs or E-NGOs or ENGOs as some call it, there's a wide array of tactics, right? On the one hand, there's the activist groups like Greenpeace. On the other, there's collaborative groups into which I would put WWF and Conservation International and Environmental Defense, and I'm sure there's others, Ceres, for example. Let's talk about the collaborators. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how do you view WWF collaborating similarly or differently from other ENGOs?

Carter Roberts:
That's a great question. Interestingly, there are two surveys I would point out to you that might be useful. One is one that GlobeScan does on a biannual basis of perceptions of importance and integrity and trustworthiness of different sectors and driving sustainability. They do that on a global basis. They do it for companies. Globe Scan does it for NGOs as well. And I would draw your attention to that and what it says about different companies and also about different NGOs.

And the other one is a study done a number of years ago by GreenBiz, where they interviewed chief sustainability officers across companies in the United States. And they asked them to provide ratings of NGOs on two metrics, influence and trustworthiness or something like that. And GreenBiz, when they did that survey, there were three NGOs all the way in the far upper right hand corner. And it was The Nature Conservancy, EDF, and WWF. And they classified that as trusted partners. And we were the strongest on influence. TNC was a little bit stronger on trustworthiness, but we were all clustered there together, the three of us. Then there was another category of great resources all the way down to several categories, all the way down to they classified one group as the unwanted. And those were the campaigners, if you will. And we are definitely in that upper right hand corner as an influential, trusted partner. And we are most definitely, I would say, I think we are in good company with EDF and TNC in that respect.

We are not earning our keep though if all we are is a shield for companies. We're earning our keep if we work closely with them, if we challenge them, and then beyond challenging them, we also work right next to them and understanding the engineering of what needs to happen, the ongoing feedback and expertise on how it's going. And then to be there when you need to solve problems, when there are inevitable bumps on the road. And our best partnerships do all of that. And I would say we could use more of them where it's that close, it's that collaborative, and it's that honest.

Mike Toffel:
You've mentioned a few times about pushing companies, and how their best partners actually want you to push them. So I wonder how do you describe corporate sustainability leadership to them when you say, "Here's what it looks like, and you're falling short in some areas. Let's help you bridge those gaps." What's the vision?

Carter Roberts:
Well, we form partnerships with companies that are dead serious about addressing their footprint, whether it's climate change or whether it's the destruction of nature. And increasingly, companies are also very concerned about human rights, the treatment of both their employees, but also their role within the communities from which they source their products or the communities that they serve. When we create those partnerships with companies, it usually starts at a middle management level, usually in the sustainability office. If it is deep and abiding concern, then rapidly, the line management of a company is brought into the discussion, like the head of sourcing, the head of manufacturing, the chief buyer, the CFO. And at some point early on though, there is always a top to top conversation with the CEO and sometimes even with the board of an organization.

And so for us, almost always it involves signing a nondisclosure agreement so that we can have access to all the information on sourcing, financials, and the rest. But it really means working with them, not just on the outside science, but it means working internally to create the right set of incentives in terms of performance reviews, merit increases, bonuses, how sustainability and sustainability targets work into that. It involves working at higher levels of the organization and looking at risk management. And then eventually it means looking at different ways that in that set of that web of relationships between buyers, suppliers, investors, that you create a common set of targets and reporting that both upstream and downstream, that satisfies all those different partners that are part of the corporate structure, but also satisfies what is increasing calls for accountability. And so we do all of that.

I think you know that accountability is evolving for companies. A lot of leaders that I talk to talk about the next phase of capitalism is going to be stakeholder capitalism, and it's going to be accountability not just to investors, but to governments, to communities, to environmental communities and the like, and getting much, much smarter about how do you think about your accountability beyond your return to investors, but accountability to society writ large. The best companies are doing that now.

The other thing that we do is help companies create bridges to other institutions with whom maybe they don't normally work, and to bring in best practices from other companies like a bee spreading pollen and spreading good practices. But we also do the same with communities and with governments, and play the role of convener, and bringing all kinds of stakeholders together to keep a place intact.

Mike Toffel:
The idea of stakeholder capitalism is certainly rising in the discussions at business schools, especially in Europe, but also really in the halls of HBS as well, there's a lot of interest in that among our faculty, among our students. And our alumni.

Carter Roberts:
That requires a different skillset on the part of CEOs and chief sustainability officers. It means embracing scrutiny. It means listening more than you talk. It means setting aside the kind of command and control approach to business that you might have. It's a different culture. And I can tell you, when you walk into a board room or you walk into the C-suite of a company, you know it. You know when a company embraces that mindset and when they don't.

Mike Toffel:
I think to your point about different skillset, really different demeanor. And a lot of times, I think what we're seeing are senior leaders who have made their way up to the top based on the skills that have traditionally been successful, all of a sudden are being asked to exhibit some very different behaviors. And I think there's definitely a learning curve that they are all of a sudden facing. We're seeing that.

Carter Roberts:
And I would say, one of the things that I encourage all the corporate leaders to do that we work with is to not just think about their own company, to not just think about their own footprint, but to embrace both the promise and the expectation that they be a force for good in the world that goes way beyond their business. That they actually own the issues of how communities recover from disasters. They own the broader issues of climate change, or the destruction of the planet. And they go beyond their four walls, and they engage their partners, they engage government, they engage communities, and they engage others to not just measure their own footprint, but to have among their list of measures, how the world is doing in addressing those bigger causes, and to own the great influence in the world that they can play in helping the world move faster.

Mike Toffel:
Your earlier comments about creating these certification schemes, for example, is an example of a corporate/NGO partnership that seeks to move the needle not just for them, but for the world, for their supply chain and beyond.

Carter Roberts:
Yeah. That's the prize. And every company, they have the usual expected stuff that they do, but then the best companies go beyond that and they use their greatest assets for the good of the whole sector, or they use their greatest assets for the good of society.

Mike Toffel:
So what is the Climate Business Network? And what's WWF's role in that?

Carter Roberts:
The Climate Business Network or CBN is an outgrowth of a former program we had that brought together companies who were making commitments on reducing their emissions. We currently have 24 partners at some of the biggest companies in the US, but it's basically a platform for collaboration and peer learning. It's at a bigger scale than the renewable energy platform that we created for collaboration and for learning. And we see it as a learning lab to create new impact initiatives like we did with science-based targets, or the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance. And now we're creating a renewable thermal collaborative as well.

The bottom line is if you want to engage with communities and government and society, and you want to move quickly and you want to move quickly as a whole sector or as a whole industry, then you need to find ways to collaborate and move together in moving the needle, because often, some companies are reluctant to do that because that puts them at a competitive disadvantage in a marketplace. But when you move together, that goes away. And so we're working very hard on that front avoiding the plague, the third rail of price fixing, or the third rail of collusion. But the world needs companies to work together and to work together on sustainability and moving these industries as a sector, as a whole in moving them together.

Mike Toffel:
So one of the final question, so a final question that I'd like to ask on Climate Rising is to note that some of our listeners are considering dedicating their careers to businesses that focus somehow on climate change. I wonder if you can share your perspectives on where the opportunities are and what advice you might have for those folks.

Carter Roberts:
You can make a difference as long as you acquire the ability to connect the dots between sectors, because it is when you collaborate between scientists, government, the corporate sector, and with communities, that's where the good stuff happens. That's where the answer lies at that intersection. And we need more people who can do that and do that well.

One of my role models in my work is a fellow HBS grad named Hank Paulson, who started off his career at Goldman Sachs, joined the board of The Nature Conservancy, became chair of TNC. And then ultimately, as we all know, became secretary of treasury at a unique moment in time, and now engages with governments throughout Latin America and China on sustainability issues. Hank has that ability to know exactly how to connect the dots between regulators, between companies, with nonprofits and the like. I have other role models who have done the same.

And so I would say to anyone who wants to go into this field, acquire the ability to connect the dots between sectors through the coursework you take at Harvard, through the types of roles you take on in your career. And then as you put it, the demeanor you carry, that you need all of the above to succeed in moving the needle, and to let that guide how you spend your time, the partnerships you build, and all the rest. It is that ability to see the whole, and then figure out just the right interventions to make things move faster and bigger is what we desperately need in the next generation of leadership in our space.

Mike Toffel:
Terrific. Well, Carter, thank you so much for spending time with us here on Climate Rising. It's been a really interesting, wide-ranging conversation. I really appreciate it.

Carter Roberts:
It is my great pleasure. Thank you for all the good work you do at HBS.

Mike Toffel:
Thanks.