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Green Fix
Health, Climate & the Power of Systems Change, with Dr. Sally Uren
Welcome to Episode 5 of the Positive Tipping Points Special! A 7-episode special series on the road to COP30 in Belem, with guest host Liz Courtney.
Systems don’t change neatly; they lurch, resist, and then tip. That turbulence can be terrifying or energising, and in this conversation we choose energy. With Dr Sally Uren of Forum for the Future, we trace a through-line from cleaning a polluted canal to steering global coalitions, showing how climate solutions and public health gains are two sides of the same coin. The energy transition is surging, regenerative agriculture is rewriting the goals of the food system, and health care is shifting from cure to prevention — fertile ground for positive tipping points if we design for co-benefits.
Sally unpacks resilience with a kayak metaphor that keeps leadership grounded in agency. We look at how cleaner air, active transport, and heat-resilient cities slash emissions while reducing mortality and chronic disease. We confront equity head-on: women and children bear outsized risks from heat, water stress, and shifting vector-borne diseases, while undercounted heat deaths hide the true burden. The answer isn’t more band-aids; it’s structural policy reform, smarter incentives for adaptation, and private sector strategies that treat climate and health as the same brief.
Collaboration is the engine. We examine why harmonising standards, as in Cotton 2040, unlocks scale; how systems evolve from startup to acceleration to stabilisation; and where leaders can pull real levers — financing, procurement, disclosure, and cross-sector coalitions. Along the way, Sally challenges outmoded leadership training and invites us to “compost” failing models so better ones can grow. If you want practical ways to align ethics and economics, to turn personal choices into system ripples, and to help your organisation multi-solve for climate, health, and equity, this episode is your map and paddle.
Your Hosts:
Dan Leverington
Loreto Gutierrez
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Welcome to the Green Fix, a positive tipping points special series, with guest host Liz Courtney, an award-winning film director and science communicator. This seven-episode weekly special is offering a fresh lens on the climate conversation that will explore the science of solutions, the many sparks of change already underway, and the moments when small shifts create a big impact. Expect good news stories, evidence of real progress, insights on the urgency of acceleration, and above all, a huge dose of optimism about the world we can build together. Enjoy the show. Welcome to the Green Fix Positive Tipping Points. I'm your host, Loretta Gutierrez.
Dan Leverington:I'm Dan Leverington.
Liz Courtney:And I'm Les Courtney. And in this episode on Green Fix's Positive Tipping Points series, we're going to unpack health and climate innovation. And we have the perfect person as our guide, Dr. Sally Urin from the UK. Sally has a doctorate in environmental science. She's the chief executive and the acceleration lead for Forum for the Future. She's a global expert and leader in sustainable development. She's been featured in Time Magazine, Forbes Green, Business, Reuters, Huffington Post, and she serves as a judge for the King's Award for Sustainable Development in the UK. And I'm sure so many more connections in the climate and health sector that's changing our world, which we're about to uncover. So a very big welcome to you, Sally. We're so thrilled to have you with us today. Thank you. It's great to be here. I was amazed when I had that privilege of meeting you in London about your personal journey and where you started. It'd be fantastic for you to take us back to where where that career in science first started, uh sustainability and it's taken you across to leadership, corporate transformation, and that systematic change that you're working on.
Sally Uren:Actually, yeah, it um I was doing a degree in biology at Manchester University because it was so long ago that environmental science wasn't even a thing. You had to do biology. And in my third year, I got involved in a project which was to clean up the Manchester ship canal and what was then the Manchester docks. And every Friday I'd go out on a little boat and take water samples and take samples of the benthic microvertebrates at the bottom of this sludgy, sludgy canal. And over the period of a year was involved in a project to really restore that ecosystem. And that's where it all started because we went from fishing out roach from the Manchester Ship Canal. Roach are the kind of the lowest of the food chain in fish. They literally eat rubbish. And then by the time we'd finished in the May of the next year, we were introducing salmon into what was then called the keys. The whole area had been gentrified. And that's where I just suddenly realized it's possible to regenerate these degraded ecosystems. And then I did a PhD looking at impacts of pollution on ecosystems, very unglamorous effects of emissions from pig farms on um lowland ecosystems, which led to changes in policy and emissions from pig farms. And then Borneo came next. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And so, if in doubt, go and do a postdoctoral research fellowship was my motto. So off I went to Borneo. I'd never left Europe before. It was quite something. My backpack contained a centrifuge. That was it. I didn't really have anything else. And I helped set up the lab that's now part of the Dannham Valley Field Station in Sabah in Borneo, worked out the optimal nitrogen loading regime for logged over rainforests. In other words, figured out how could we encourage the regeneration of diptrocarts in a way that really worked for biodiversity. And at the same time, noticed you couldn't help but miss it, vast tracts of the rainforests were being illegally deforested. So whilst I loved figuring stuff out and tinkering around with test tubes, it was then that I realized that the world probably didn't need any more of my scientific papers. They were really very dull. What I really wanted to do was to make more direct change. Came back to the UK and at that point there were two options. I could go into consultancy or go work for a campaigning NGO. I don't like conflict, so I decided that that wasn't for me. And so I started to work as an air quality consultant, broadened out to environmental management consultancy, then realised I was a really terrible, terrible consultant because I wasn't really in the end doing what anyone asked me to do because I didn't feel it was ambitious enough. And then happily was persuaded by Jonathan Parrett to join forum and really unleash my ambition for big systemic change.
Dan Leverington:That's amazing. From the docks of Manchester to Borneo and now to global climate action. One of the things that that we love about the work that you're currently doing is the fact that you have acceleration in your title. And I was just wondering why is that important to you and why is that so important for the times that we live in?
Sally Uren:Yeah, um, thank you for noticing that. When I um decided that I was going to have this title, it's safe to say that quite a few people internally were like, why? No one's going to understand that. Um and I said, Well, I think they will actually, because we are running out of time to solve for some of our big challenges, particularly climate. We know we're already seeing runaway climate impacts. And I decided that after leading the organization for 11 years, that I wanted to focus everything I've learned along the way and just accelerate external impact. I want my job title to speak to what I believe is needed, and it always fosters a conversation. There was an ad campaign in uh the UK many, many years ago. It does what it says on the tin. Um, and so that's what I wanted my job title to speak to. The real desire to accelerate challenges to these big systemic issues that we're confronted with.
Loreto Gutierrez:Sally, I want to keep on this theme of acceleration uh and start with the good. I'd love to hear where are you seeing accelerated change that leads to positive tipping points all around the world.
Sally Uren:Yeah, I mean, despite what you might see as you scroll through the news, there really are reasons to be cheerful. The energy transition is unstoppable. The momentum behind transitioning an economy that is accessing energy from oil and gas to an economy that's accessing energy from renewables, we're nearly there. And that's one of the reasons why it is so tough at the moment, because you close, the closer you get to a system shifting, the more momentum you get behind those tipping points, the harder the existing system fights back, which we're seeing that right now. And so the energy transition is honestly unstoppable. Yes, it's going to slow down in the US, but it will happen. Look at what's happening in China, in many, many other parts of the world. The food system transition isn't far behind. We look at the uptake of regenerative agricultural practices, which is really behind a shift in the food system. The goals of the food system were laid down after the Second World War. It was all about access to calories for a growing population, really without taking account of how that food is produced, its nutritional quality, certainly not taking account of livelihoods. Yet the goals of a regenerative food and ag system are equitable access to nutrition produced in a way that restores ecosystems, that puts farmer livelihoods at the heart. And that transition is well underway. And then I would say our health system is also rapidly transitioning from a system designed to fix as a sort of curative system to a preventative system. Everywhere you look, systems are in transition, which is again why it feels so turbulent right now, because systems change, it's not linear, it's not temporal, it isn't causal, it's messy.
Loreto Gutierrez:And that's where we're at. One thing that resonates a lot from your work is that you've been able to maintain a lot of resilience and optimism whilst confronting very complex challenges. How do you maintain this resilience and optimism?
Sally Uren:In two ways. The first is recognizing that you are part of a set of messy, complicated systems. Donnella Meadows, who's one of the early practitioners in systems change, she talked about the fact you can't change systems because systems have got an inherent energy and inherent dynamism of their own, but you could dance with them, you can influence them by pulling levers, by allocating capital in different ways, by influencing. And so the first part of resilience is understanding that you are part of that system. I always use this metaphor of a kayak. So we like to think that we're in charge of super yachts. We can move the yacht one way, we can pull a gear, we can avoid turbulence. But reality is we're we're in a kayak. And knowing that we're in a kayak means right, what do I need? I need a map, I need a life jacket, I might need a nice little cheese sandwich. I can get really specific about what I need to navigate the turbulence and feel the turbulence more directly. And then the second reason why I am still optimistic, despite many, many reasons not to be optimistic, is I strongly believe that the future isn't written. There's a great quote from William Gibson back in the 1950s. He wrote, the future is all around us. It's just not evenly distributed. So the future is already here in pockets. And the decisions we make today will determine what happens tomorrow. Our society, our economy, our environment today is a function of the decisions we made yesterday. So, yes, while the room for maneuver is decreasing when it comes to climate, what we do today really matters. So you can't control something, but you can have influence and agency, and you can shape the future that you want. And that's why I hold on to in those darker moments.
Liz Courtney:Sally, one of the things that we're taking a dive into today also is looking at that intersection between climate and health. And I found it was really thought-provoking in a recent talk I heard you give that reviewing change not just as an environmental stroke climate crisis, but a profound public health challenge and health crisis. And I it'd be really great to expand with you this issue, and maybe you could share with us where some of those impacts are already being felt around the world.
Sally Uren:Yeah, climate and health. Um I first got interested in the intersectionality of climate health back in 2018. I was doing some work with the United Nations Global Compact. I was helping them set up an action platform on health. Um, thinking about the theory of change to get businesses to do more on health. Um, and it just dawned on me that everything you do to decarbonize has a health benefit. So improving air quality directly improves our health. Encouraging active transport is good for your health, it's good for the environment. Where and how you source food can impact carbon intensity, can also impact nutritional quality of food. And then equally, everything you do to build adaptation has got a health benefit. So if you're investing in community resist resilience, you're normally investing in access to healthcare. And so this kind of dawning realization came about, which change and health, they are the same thing. I started to um think about well, if climate and health are the same thing, then how do we design ways forward that accelerate positive impacts in climate and health by focusing on that intersection? And that's where it became really clear to me that there's an outsize role for the private sector. Because the private sector is busily investing a lot still, even despite what you might read in the pathways to net zero, investing huge amounts in adaptation because supply chains across the world are super vulnerable to extreme weather events. And so, how do we unlock the private sector to understand the links between climate and health and devise strategies that deliver co-benefits? And that's where the climate health coalition started. I was talking to lots of different organizations and realized that what was missing was the case for change, why climate and health are the same thing, and also the case for action and critically the guidance. And so when we think about climate impacts on health, there are acute impacts, extreme weather events lead to increased mortality. I mean, all the obvious impacts, but then there are chronic impacts, slight elevations in temperature, increase our susceptibility to chronic disease, and so on and so forth. Even medication, we're now seeing that really important medication like antidepressants don't work at elevated temperatures. There's this whole swathe of impacts on our health from acute to chronic that is caused by a changing climate. And one of the things we're focused on today is delivering guidance to the private sector, but also trying to foster connectivity across the private, the public sector, and also the sustainability medical communities. There are still medical professionals that I don't know how this is true, but they're unaware of the impacts of climate change on health and are not necessarily thinking through the activation of how they improve health by thinking through the lens of climate.
Liz Courtney:You've just kind of led into that about are we preparing for future scenarios? Sure.
Sally Uren:Um, yeah, how prepared are we very, very poorly is the truth. Partly because as humans, we're very short term. So we're just not good at thinking long term. Um but I do think that um the medical community in particular does really need to wrap its arms around the climate emergency. Even small things, so heat-related deaths aren't often recorded as heat-related deaths, they're recorded as heart attacks or asthma. Actually, these are all exacerbated by extreme heat. We're doing a lot of work right now on how we build resilience to extreme heat. Um, you know, in particular in parts of the US, um, in Europe, we've laid down our cities for a very different climate, and these cities are not resilient to extreme heat at all. Whereas in parts of Asia, the infrastructure's been laid down much more recently and actually is resilient to extreme heat. So we're not very prepared at all. And we need to think absolutely about climate adaptation through the lens of health.
Loreto Gutierrez:I would love to double-click on specifically women and children. I know that's something that you've um touched a lot on in the past. Why are you particularly worried about overlooked health impacts on women and children globally?
Sally Uren:Well, the first thing to say is that climate change is what I would call an inequality amplifier. It isn't just women and children, actually. It's a whole set of vulnerable, marginalized communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change. They tend to be the communities that already have poor access to social determinants of health. So climate change is not just a justice equity issue, it's a health equity issue. But turning back to women in particular, women's unique physiological characteristics means that they are particularly vulnerable to impacts of climate. We know that pregnant women, for example, are particularly vulnerable to the spread of infectious diseases. We're seeing the incident of vector-borne diseases changing as the temperature heats up. Um, we know that extreme heat means is disproportionately affecting pregnant women in particular. We also know that the indirect impacts of a changing climate disproportionately impact women. Women are often the people in the family that go out to collect water. Now, in areas where drought is really kicking in, then that means further to go and collect the water. We now also see data between the impacts of climate health and gender-based violence. Um, gender-based violence is increasing in areas with extreme heat, with volatile weather conditions. And clearly children are, we know that they're vulnerable. So climate change and health is fundamentally an equity issue, gender equity, but also broader equity. Even in parts of the UK and Europe, we know that historically disadvantaged black communities are experiencing way more impacts of, say, extreme heat. That's another reason to think about climate and health together, because if we can tackle it systemically and solve for some of the root causes, we will both improve health outcomes, deal with our climate emergency, but also address some structural inequalities.
Liz Courtney:You made me think about if we look at a map of the world and we see borders. If we look at those borders now from the perspective of climate and health, are you seeing more changes in those maps where we're actually getting expansion of insects and microbes that are traveling further and having an impact on health that may not have been a challenge prior?
Sally Uren:Absolutely. Yeah. So you've got pharmacists in the US in particular that are having to give advice on malaria because we're seeing the increase in vector-borne diseases in that way. Also, dengue fever. And one of the early supporters of our work in the Climate Health Coalition was malaria no more. Because malaria no more is a nonprofit focus on the elimination of malaria. Climate change couldn't do all of that. Um, we are seeing real impacts of particularly these infectious vector-borne diseases, um, totally linked to it's not just temperature-rise, but it's also shifts in weather patterns. Um, a lot of these vector-borne diseases are um associated with areas of high water. Flooding can really exacerbate those impacts. And um that's why we also need to check the systemic approach. We can't just pick off the issues, we need to look at it together. We're seeing diseases pop up in places that have never had those diseases simply because the climate is changing and all the associated impacts that are coming with that.
Liz Courtney:And do you think we're actually making progress in any new policy frameworks that are going to be critical to supporting the way we think and the way we we mitigate these issues in the future?
Sally Uren:Honestly, at the moment, no. What I see are sticking plaster solutions. I see philanthropy going in, which is good to help vulnerable communities deal with extreme heat, but that's like disaster recovery relief. It doesn't get to the root cause and it doesn't get to an enabling policy environment where we are systematically allocating capital to climate adaptation, where we're building awareness of the impacts of extreme weather events. We're just putting sticking plaster on this. Um, we need whole-scale structural policy reform. We need the private sector to really step up and lead. We need the right market incentives. This is a massive systemic challenge, and just funneling grants to deal with disasters as they happen isn't the solution. It is needed, but it's not going to solve anything.
Dan Leverington:I mean, well one of the one of the things that we love talking about the most uh on this podcast is is uh systems change, systems thinking. Like we we we are firm believers that it can't all happen in vacuums. But from from your experience, what is the benefit of approaching this from a systems thinking perspective?
Sally Uren:The conversation around the need for systems thinking and system change starts with the conversation that shines a light on the fact that the world is a set of messy interconnected systems. Um we've been hardwired in Newtonian physics that, you know, cause and effect, linear pathways. The world just doesn't operate like that. Nothing operates like that. Even if you try and set the temperature in a room, if someone opens the window, the temperature will shift. So we need to see the world as a set of systems. And a system can be a really simple system like a bicycle. A system is effectively a configuration of parts with a function. So a bike is a really simple system. Two wheels, handlebar, pedals, function is to get you from A to B. A mobility system in a city is a more complicated system with an interplay of private transport, public transport, people, but it still has a function, which is to enable people to get from A to B. And so a system has a clear function, it has a clear set of parts, and it's all interconnected. And yes, that often then draws a response of that's really complicated. Yes and no. Because actually, as soon as you start to see the world as a set of systems, you see the interconnections, you see that climate change actually is the number one public health challenge of our time. If we can start to see the interconnections, we can start to understand root causes and we can start to design to shift systems. A classic example is soil health. Um we know that if we can improve soil health, then we improve the ability of the soil to sequester carbon. Great. That helps with climate mitigation. We also know that if we improve soil health, it improves the nutrient density of crops. Great, that improves nutritional outcomes. And if you build nutritional density of crops, you might get a better price for the crop. That's really great for farmer livelihoods. Just by understanding those interconnections, you can find that one action that drives multiple benefits. And I think some people call it multi-solving. I really like that. It's, you know, you do one thing that drives all these cascading impacts. And suddenly the possibilities are endless. So rather than thinking this is too hard, we flip to there's so much potential here to do things that create all of this amazing change. And so systems change is absolutely needed. Systems thinking isn't that difficult. What people find hard is about it is quite uncertain, and you have to be quite adaptive. And I know this through hard experience, it's hard to get funded to do because funders like to know. So if I give you this money, then tell me the exact KPIs of what you're going to do. And systems change is shifting mindsets, it's shifting allocation of flows of capital, it's creating new business models, some of which you can put a number on, a lot of which you can't, and you definitely can't guarantee the time frame. There's all sorts of reasons why it's hard, but it is necessary and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing once you start to play with it.
Loreto Gutierrez:Sally, I really want to keep on this theme of interconnectivity, and it feeds really well from what you've just said, uh, talking about the practical aspects of interconnectivity. What are some effective ways that you can bring together business, government, civil society to accelerate solutions for, again, health, but also the related outcomes, including climate change solutions?
Sally Uren:A key strategy for delivering systemic change is collaboration. Very few organizations or individuals can change systems on their own, one or two notable exceptions. Apple did a really good job of shifting the system towards the use of digital handsets. Um and that was one organization, but it's very rare. Normally, systems change because you have an innovation that's scaled and it's reached the right price point in the market. You've got what we call landscape pressures being felt in everyday life. So the data, the science, in this case around climate, is being well understood. The third critical ingredient, alongside with the innovation scaling, those landscape pressures being felt is people willing to do things differently. We've known the data around our shifting climate for many, many years. It's really only in the last five to seven to eight that business leaders are willing to do something, that politicians are willing to do something. So that willingness to change is super important. And so where you have an issue that you can see the case for change and you can see that something needs to shift. And that innovation that was once really expensive, renewable energy was for a long time way more expensive than fossil fuel energy, you create that sort of readiness in the system to move. And that's where you bring policymakers together with business, with civil society, because in order for a system to tip into a new way of operating, shift towards new goals, you need the system to move with it. A lot of my work at Forum is identifying those issues. So climate and health is a classic issue. We do work in regenerative agriculture, we do work in renewable energy. These are all issues that are reaching a tipping point in order to flip to a new operating model. We need the system to come together. The critical ingredient is that shared ambition. Everybody wants something to shift. Everybody can see themselves in a different system, can see that it's going to work for them. And so creating that shared vision, shared ambition, where each part of the system understands what it can bring to the shift, what it's going to gain from the shift. That is the fertile ground of any collaboration. And then you just design the process and you make it all happen. Easier said than done, but it's possible.
Dan Leverington:And Millie Bandit caught last year. He was on stage with the Outrage and Optimism team. And he said for the first time in his career that ethics and economics are now one. And I think that's such an insightful point about where we are in human history and that we no longer need to be at loggerheads. Like that finance versus environment, environment versus finance. It's actually now all making sense for everyone to get on the same page.
Sally Uren:Yes. And that's another little unhelpful we trait we have as humans is we love false choices. We love the either or. So we can tackle climate change or we can be profitable. It's a false choice, actually. And that's where systems thinking comes in because it enables you to step over false choices and to see the and and.
Loreto Gutierrez:Another thing that um we have a lot of questions and discussions around the grassroots movements. So we've touched on government, business, but a lot of our listeners are also wanting to hear more about the individual actions that they can take that will impact these systems. And specifically, a lot of it is relating to personal investment, the power of the wallet, you know, the consumer side. I would love for you to unpack that for our listeners.
Sally Uren:It is phenomenal what individual action can do because we operate in a set of nested systems. So every decision you make about how you spend your dollar impacts what a brand does. So every purchasing decision counts. Where you have your savings, be that your pension or any broader investment or a mortgage on a flat, makes a massive, massive difference. And the actions you take as an individual, switching your energy use in your home, because we are part of these nested systems, what you do as an individual impacts what happens at a community level, which impacts what happens at a state level, which impacts what happened at a national level, and so on, so so and so forth. What you do as an individual creates these cascading impacts in the system around you. And it's back to where I started. We can influence anything if we really want to. And systems change happens when we solve those actions and enable them to scale, create those tipping points, and then that's when a system moves. So essentially, every choice we make as an individual, everything we do matters because the future isn't written.
Liz Courtney:I'd be really interested by Forum for the Future projects, some of the projects that you've worked on, and where you've been helping business or industry, and it's created like that domino effect that's tipped an entire system towards a more sustainable model. I'd love you to share that work with us.
Sally Uren:I guess um in the early days, a lot of my work forum was persuading boards of you know, FSE 100 organizations. Where we started was first of all trying to get sustainability on the board agenda. And you know, I have a personal KPI there, which is I was talking to a very well-known now international uh supermarket retailer. And when I first started to trot over and have meetings with them, it was probably 20 years ago. Um, I wasn't even given a seat because the expectation was I wouldn't be staying for very long because actually they really weren't that interested, and they were only seeing me because I was from a noisy non-profit. And then, you know, fast forward another five years, I was at the board, and not only did I have a seat, I was given a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit because sustainability had mainstreamed. Forum played a really important role in getting sustainability from the edges into the boardroom. It wasn't just us, but we really talked about the business case for sustainability, the moral case for sustainability. That was the first big shift that we had a role in. But that was, you know, a while ago now. More recently, um, we can point to projects where we have shifted the norm in a system, and probably one of my favourite is the project that I was really involved with for many. Many years and it sounds small, but we learned a lot. It was called Cotton 2040. And so we got involved in this project because we could see that cotton production has all sorts of negative environmental and societal impacts, really high rates of suicide amongst cotton farmers in parts of the world such as India, because the cotton crop itself is so vulnerable to weather and unreliable, lots of issues and the cost of production isn't covered. And we noticed that there were lots of sustainable cotton standards in the market. But if you were a retailer and you wanted to sort of source sustainable cotton rather than conventional cotton, it was just too complicated because what was the difference between organic cotton and fair trade cotton and BCI cotton and GOTS cotton and blah, blah, blah, blah. It was just too confusing. But what we did is we bought the system together. So we bought the sustainable cotton standards along with the brands, the retailers, the cotton producers, and said, right, if the cotton system was truly sustainable, what does that look like? And we created a vision of a sustainable cotton system and then created work streams to deliver that. And one of the work streams was harmonization of standards. So instead of having this, you know, schmoggersborg of different standards all requiring different things from the farmers, which of course meant that they weren't going to convert, which is too complicated. We worked together to harmonize those standards. And the original intent of Cotton 24 was to help the system to get to over 30% sustainable cotton, and it's way over that now. And so again, we didn't do that on our own. We could never ever claim that, and nor should we. But what we did do was harness the energy in the system, harmonize standards, create this vision of what could be where all boats rose and the system moved.
Dan Leverington:It's a small minority of players that are actually bad faith actors. I think often it's the heaviness of requirements is actually what stops it. So the the ability to harmonize, like you said, is so important because we also know the flow and effects that it has to employee engagement, customer attention, etc., by being able to say this is what we've done and this is what we're doing to make the world a better place. Beyond that, I I'd love to know more from a mechanics perspective, how have you seen successful shifts, both of behavior and policy towards climate and health policy take place across the journey of your time at the forum and engaging with other NGOs?
Sally Uren:It goes back to first of all understanding, you know, how do systems change. There are generally three phases to how a system changes. A system begins to shift and where we start to feel those big landscape pressures. You know, we see data, we see a case for change, we see innovation bubbling away at the edges, and that's the startup phase of systemic change. We then have accelerator systems change, which is where we are with energy, with food, with health, with the economy. Look at what's happening in terms of allocation of billions into nature-based solutions, into community resilience. The economy is shifting as well. And then that third phase is that stabilization of a new norm, new rules of the game, new standards. Understanding how systems change means that you can understand the strategies you need to deploy at those different stages. So where we see a systemic challenge, for example, we will create the case for change and we will enable access to information in different ways. So, for example, back to Cotton 2040, we created a guide for brands and retailers to help them specify sustainable cotton. That was missing. We had another project called the Protein Challenge, looking at how we might play a role in enabling equitable access to sustainable protein. And as part of that, we began to understand the carbon intensity of animal protein. And that in turn was linked to the carbon intensity of animal feed. And so we created guidance to shift animal feed specification. So at that startup phase, you're creating the case for change, you're creating guidance, you're enabling information flows to move around in different ways. And that's where you see a lot of activity. But where we've moved to is in that accelerated phase of systemic change, that's where we need new business models, that's where we need collaboration, that's where we need overt influencing of the goals of the system, which is why the COP process is so important. And then once the system begins to shift, that's where we need new legislation, new policy, new rules, new metrics, new disclosure requirements. What you see in the whole sustainability ecosystem is some actors focus on the case for change, information, some like forum focus on both that and the collaboration, the new business models. We're not policy experts, but there are other organizations that are policy experts. So we take our work and give it to the policymakers. And so when it comes to climate, it's really understanding how do all those things fit together, who's doing what, and how can we act as an orchestra rather than instruments that are just off-tune in different parts of the system? And that's the vision.
Liz Courtney:That's such a great example of the orchestra and the conductor. And this changing landscape and ecosystems and change, headwinds, everything that's sort of coming with this change. Do you think that our current leaders in different countries around the world had any training to be able to stand up to work with change? And what does it take for them to be more innovative, courageous, and to make those hard decisions?
Sally Uren:You raise a really good point. You can go through business school and you will leave without any idea about systemic change, and you will not be qualified to understand the world as a set of systems, and it's a massive, massive gap. What our current education trains us for is certainty, linear pathways, cause and effect, and the world just doesn't work like that. So it starts with how do we incorporate systems thinking into all executive training modules? I mean, it really needs to be there, but it's really not in any substantive way. And then there's been a lot of work on this. We need to redefine leadership for the world in which we live in, a world that's experiencing huge systems transitions, shocks to the system, a world dealing with a collapsing climate, with collapsing biodiversity. That's different leadership. There are some leaders that are more comfortable with ambiguity, more comfortable with uncertainty. What they all have is passion, um, because shifting systems requires passion and persistence. But we've got a mismatch at the moment between the mainstream and conventional definition of leadership and actually what we really need in terms of leadership right now. And that's not a good thing. And so then what do we do about that? Well, what we shouldn't do is invoke that whole negative critique because telling someone off means that they're literally never going to do what you want them to do. And so, how do we then present systemic leadership, for want of a better word, as something that could deliver all sorts of potential, economic potential, societal potential, environmental potential? How do we make something attractive and doable and make it something that everybody wants to do? That's a challenge that we have. And it's happening in places, but in any systems transition, we have to let go of the old. You know, systems thinking is also about mirroring living systems. And in living systems, you have compost. Things die, they become compost from which new systems emerge. And people get scared when you say that. It's like, oh my God, things are dying. So yeah, but there are cycles in the natural world. If we're smart about this, then we can understand where our compost is going to come from. And we can harness that compost and use it really thoughtfully rather than standing by and letting a system collapse. And that's kind of where we are at the moment. So let's not stand by. Let's just put our arms around these systems and dance with them and enable them to thrive. I love that.
Liz Courtney:And I think it should become a motto on every leader's wall if we have the opportunity to do it. With the work that you're doing now, what projects are really exciting you that Forum for the Future are doing that are really exciting?
Sally Uren:Yeah. Well, personally, I'm very excited about the Climate and Health Coalition. I'm excited about unlocking private sector action within the private sector, but across the private and public sector to drive accelerated solutions for climate and health and nature. That is super exciting. I'm excited by all the work we're doing in regenerative agriculture and regenerative agriculture. There's nothing not to like about it. It delivers on all fronts, societal, economic, um, and environmental. I love hearing about the work we're doing in renewable energy in India and in the Philippines. And I'm also constantly buoyed up by the conversations that I have with senior leaders in the private sector who have recognized the need for systemic change and are actively trying to understand what that might mean for them as leaders, for their organization, and their organization's role in creating something better. So, yeah, I mean, I'm really privileged actually, really hugely lucky. I feel enormously privileged, actually, and I don't take that lightly.
Loreto Gutierrez:Thank you for sharing that, Sally. That's incredibly inspiring. Um, just want to finish with two um, we'll call them rapid fire questions. The first one being, um, you obviously work in very complex and very challenging environments. What gives you the hope to get out of bed each day? Change is possible. I love that. And last one, we have the green fix magic wand. If you could fast forward to 2035, how would you use this green fix magic wand for climate action, for women's health, and for global equity?
Sally Uren:That's easy. I would use the magic wand to ensure that everybody thinks and acts with system change at their heart.
Loreto Gutierrez:I love that. Great use of the magic wand. Sally, today's uh interview has been one of the most inspiring, exciting, also fun that we've had here on the podcast. We're really grateful that you joined us and you shared all of these insights. Are there any final thoughts that you would like to share with our listeners?
Sally Uren:I'd love to share what came into my head. So this is completely literally came into my head as you were talking. A quote that I think is really powerful from the architecture bookminster Fuller. And he said again like decades ago, we're called to be architects of the future, not victims of the past. We can all be architects of the future that we want, and it's in our gift.
Loreto Gutierrez:What a wonderful way to finish the episode. Uh, thank you so much, Sally. This has been wonderful. Thank you for joining us, and we hope to get to speak to you some other time. Thank you very much. Lovely to meet you all.
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