August 2023 Community Meeting
To create the change needed to ensure a livable climate, we need to understand how pathways within complex systems interrelate to work for and against transformation.
In a special session at Project Frame’s community meeting on August 3, 2023, Kelly Levin of the Bezos Earth Fund, Tappan Parker of Systems Change Lab, and Alexander Frantzen of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol shared how they and other climate programs work independently and collaboratively to promote a better understanding of the actions that can lead towards the system changes we need to see.
Bezos Earth Fund
“It's just remarkable what we're experiencing right now,” said Kelly Levin, Chief of Science, Data and Systems Change for the Bezos Earth Fund, remarking on the current season of record-breaking heat, rainfall and wildfires.
This crisis, she said, “really calls for transformational investments to be able to come up with new solutions and rapidly scale existing solutions.”
Where the Bezos Earth Fund comes in, Levin said, is in enabling or accelerating transformational changes by applying a systems approach. The Fund is monitoring the transitions required this decade and next to address climate change, from phasing out the internal combustion engine, to raising crop yields. Systems Change Lab (more below) has played a key role in this process.
For each, they work to identify positive tipping points, and who and how climate change makers can remove barriers. She explained, “we can help de-risk. We fund actors and actions that governments private sector won't likely do.”
For example, they are a co-convener of the Systems Change Lab, alongside the World Resources Institute, as well as a partner in the GHG Protocol. Their efforts with both of these projects, Levin explained, allows them to help “develop these foundational tools for the community.”
In doing so, they hope to scale solutions that might seem unlikely to scale today and “ratchet up away from a niche community into diffusion, and then take off [to a point] where change is kind of irresistible and unstoppable.”
“It takes a huge amount of investments and policy signals and concerted action to be able to move up this S-curve,” she said. “But it is encouraging that we know that it is possible and we've seen it time and time again.”
Systems Change Lab
To further enable large-scale transformations needed to curb climate change, the Systems Change Lab works to “identify over 70 transformational shifts that we need to protect both people and planet,” explained Outreach and Engagement Manager Tappan Parker.
By monitoring these shifts and better understanding “what’s driving change in specific sectors,” said Parker, the lab aims to spur action at a pace and scale needed to limit global warming, halt loss of biodiversity, and more. Users can compare current action against targets.
The Systems Change Lab produces two products that answer questions around the 15 systems they track: an annual report and data dashboard.
The latter, Parker said, is “more like a living, breathing report where we provide data along with much, much more in terms of research and analysis.” However, he said, not all data is the same quality.
“We don't want to just publish anything. We want to make sure it's good data and that it tells the right story.” For example, they know how much capital is going towards climate issues, “but not as much on how much of that is going towards electricity or to transport or to industry.”
Having a clearer picture, he said, would help increase understanding of potential investment opportunities but also where investments could drive change.
“It can be really challenging to understand the value or the impact of any given option,” he said. “We're hoping that [you] can use this to understand the state of play across each system, determine which challenges require the greatest attention, and also discover which actions might accelerate change in that direction at a pace and scale that gets us to our 2030 and 2050 targets.”
While the Systems Change Labs works to complete their data dashboard in 2024, Parker said they “want to hear from you, and we want to understand what provides value for you.”
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol
Also essential to creating transformational change is improving standards of monitoring and managing one’s efforts.
The GHG Protocol, from the World Resources Institute, is “the carbon accounting standard and reporting framework that informs other climate programs,” explained Alexander Frantzen, Scope 3 Senior Associate. The Protocol provides standards, guidance, tools and training for business and government to effectively measure and manage emissions.
With more organizations placing a greater focus on environmental impact and setting Net Zero commitments, there is a clear need for revisiting and keeping standards up to date.
As such, the GHG protocol is “currently in the process of reviewing additional guidance and revisions to the Scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG accounting and reporting standards.” These updates will be accompanied by a new market-based accounting standard, which is expected to be released in 2025, Frantzen shared.
“The reason why we're integrating [market-based accounting] is to facilitate adoption and integration in the market, and also to harmonize and align with other climate programs … and support the passing of legislation that might help investors or might provide clarity and signaling in the market,” he said.
Why update now?
Frantzen said that in 2021, there were “around 13,000 companies reported to CDP,” a nonprofit that runs global environmental impact disclosures. That number, he explained, “was a 40 percent increase from previous year,” and it continues to rise year after year.
Because of the ways in which Scope 3 emissions “speak to projected downstream emissions,” Frantzen said they “are going to look to align with investors and with companies that are looking to be able to use the Scope 3 standard to make better decisions that affect forward or future looking emissions.”
With the update process in full swing, Frantzen said the GHG Protocol will share updates via their blog and newsletter, but that drafts of the updated standards can be expected by 2024.
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