Below is a transcript of prepared remarks from Linda Maepa, founder and executive director of Now and Then, For the Future, supporting individual and organizational action for climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation towards a more equitable, low carbon civilization. Maepa was a speaker at Innovate to Net Zero, a highlight of Global Entrepreneurship Week during COP26 (United Nations Climate Change Conference) in Glasgow, Scotland on November 9, 2021.
We tried. We really, really tried. We’ve had stock market crashes, oil crises, savings & loan crisis, bursting internet bubbles, bursting housing market bubbles, the Great Recession, the Flash Crash, and the thing is, those are signs and symptoms of a system that does not work.
We can’t keep ignoring the consequences of how we’ve been doing business and thinking that any problems are bumps on the road rather than wholesale systemic failures.
Over the past two decades, we have given a nod to global warming by throwing billions of dollars, euros, and yuan at promising new technologies. The time for climate action is now. In 2021, the heavy lifting begins.
This decade is our best chance for a hopeful future. To secure it, we need to treat each day like the emergency that it is. Rather than focusing on what we should have done or could have done, we need to remember this is an emergency and in an emergency we need to look at what immediate resources we have available and take decisive action.
Climate leadership for today and tomorrow means listening to Indigenous and Black people. We must be at the center of how humanity meets this moment because we have survived a system designed to eradicate and deprive us. The 99% of investment, time, effort, and attention that’s gone into where we are today is not going to get out of this problem. Let’s look at the knowledge capital, the ideas and solutions that Indigenous and Black people have been sharing for centuries.
Now, in a conventional talk about innovation, you will be used to hearing about how to create optimal market conditions for the introduction of new, low carbon technologies. But, in Indigenous and Black peoples’ spaces, what we discuss are how to take care of ourselves and one another. And those who come after us. It’s a conversation about And, With, and For.
How can we design a product that uses less energy AND puts more and cleaner water back into watersheds? Both as you’re building the technology and as you use it.
What are the incentives around wild waters running free and hyper-local distributed water resources? How might those distributed water resources be combined with distributed energy infrastructures?
The way we talk about problems and opportunities and the way we we make decisions around them is impacted by our systems of decision-making and collaboration.
When my team and I added five minute breaks into our meeting agendas, between any topic changes, the time we spent in meetings dropped by half. This hack not only increases the accessibility, inclusion, and belonging aspects of our cultures; we left our meetings with greater clarity and focus.
When we added time for personal check-ins to our meeting agendas, we still saw a 25% decrease in our meeting times.
The work begins with ourselves and our leadership. And as entrepreneurs, we are rewarded for putting profit over people, and penalized when we innovate to make the world better and keep it that way.
We can be vulnerable and courageous enough to lead with our whole selves. And you’ll notice this shift happening when you realize that the opportunities for collaboration with Indigenous and Black people are more about working WITH us than being inspired by our ideas.
When I look inward and ask my future self, 20 years from now, how I’ll get from today to that hoped-for future, where I am surrounded by my friends and family, my community, my future self tells me, “Make the hard decisions and keep going.” Let’s do that together.
Thank you.