Climate Resilience, AI & the Future of Global Investing

Hi and welcome to the Impact on FinTech TV.

I'm your host, Jeff Gitterman down on the floor of the iconic New York Stock Exchange.

I'm joined this morning by Jamil Wyne.

He is the director of the Hazelwood Network.

Jamil, thanks for joining me.

Thank you very much for having me, Jeff.

So, we're gonna talk about a lot of different things today, but one of the ways that we really like to start the show is really finding out what people's background is that drove them into a more impact focus in the world of finance and capital markets.

So give us a little bit of A history tour.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we start off with my family.

Um, both of my parents were medical professionals.

Dad was a doctor.

Mom was a nurse, big on thinking about contribution to society, um, thinking globally from day one.

My dad's from Pakistan, um, and so I have a lot of family from different cultures that lives basically all around the planet.

And so from day one.

Thinking about our role, not just in society that we lived in in our local community, but the global community was just a big theme in our house.

Um, my brother also, he's 4 years older than me, one of the smartest people I've ever met, very philanthropic, um.

Very committed to charity, philanthropy, etc. lifelong learning.

So a lot of those were just kind of instilled in me, and so when it came time to decide what I wanted to do with my career, in a lot of ways the direction was set, I just had to pick where I wanted to double down, and the way that I found climate actually was kind of stumbled into it.

One of my best friends in college was making a film on sustainable fisheries and the impact that climate change has on fishing communities in different parts of the world, specifically the Pacific Ocean.

And he asked me to write the soundtrack for it, and so I put the soundtrack together for him and I say that's how I kind of accidentally fell into working on climate and Fast forward a few years later, I was on a team that was advising the chief innovation officer at General Electric on their strategy in the Middle East to work with clean tech startups and being in a part of the world that is so climate vulnerable, but also very innovative and working at that level to advise people on how to engage with that innovation was really inspiring, and I've stayed on course ever since then, and that led led me to build Hazelwood Network, which we launched at COP just a couple of years ago.

Talk to me a little bit about the Middle East for a second, because I think people have this idea, and we have studios in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, so we know kind of a different view once you're in there.

I think people have this idea that it's oil, oil, oil there, and that there's no thought process around sustainability. or anything, but actually when you go there, you find out that they're actually hyper focused on sustainability.

Yeah, absolutely.

So in a lot of ways it's necessity becomes the mother of invention, I think.

A lot of people don't know that the Middle East is actually heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet, so.

It's very susceptible to extreme heat.

There's kind of natural properties in the, in the land that make it kind of a target or core location that's just getting warmer than the rest of the planet.

And so, water scarcity, droughts, climate migration, a lot of that is just kind of baked into the way that the region has had to operate for a while now, for sure.

And, and I started there back in 2009.

I was in Cairo, and then I did a Fulbright in Syria, and then moved over to Jordan, and so I got to work kind of all around the region, uh, for almost 7 years, um.

And some of the first climate funds I ever met were actually based there.

Um, some of the most innovative, forward-thinking renewable energy investors were that I've ever met are based there.

Um, a lot of innovations on water scarcity, irrigation, etc. kind of came from that region.

And so, yes, there is this narrative that There's a critical mass of oil being produced there, and that's abundantly true.

It's very clear, um, but we also forget that there's a lot of innovation that's happening there, and also there's a lot of kind of global pull that the region has, you know, for sure.

Multiple COPs have been hosted there in the past few years.

Cairo, Riyadh, uh, the UAE have all been hosted some way, and so it's also kind of staking a claim, and I think it's going to be huge when it comes to climate finance and climate innovation for many years to come.

When you think about adaptation and resilience, we're living in a country where we don't experience a lot of climate impacts yet.

Do you think that has, cause as you're talking, I'm thinking that must have a big impact in why it's so hard to get people on board in the US on climate adaptation, because people go to the faucet, they turn on their sink, they have Water, they go to the local store, they have food, it rains, they have shelter, it floods.

Someone comes and cleans everything up.

Do you, do you think that is a big disconnect of US citizens around adaptation and resilience?

I think that that's part of it, right?

Um, I think there's a few factors here.

One, you know, a lot of my work does focus on emerging markets, so.

Middle East, West Africa, Caribbean, etc. and these are in a lot of cases, you know, literally and figuratively hotspots for climate change.

And so people that live in these countries, no matter how well off they might be in certain areas, um, they have to contend with this reality that you mentioned on a much more frequent basis than we do, right?

So that, that's abundantly true.

I think in the US, you know, it's good to keep in mind that in the past couple of years we've had some of the highest economic fallout of climate change on just our infrastructure ever, right?

Uh, we've had over $20 billion in damage in, in, you know, in just, I think 2023 or 224 alone due to climate change.

That then becomes less about is it affecting us and more, how are we telling that story.

So some of our work at Hazelwood focuses on how do we develop climate communication strategies that really hit home.

With the people that are actually on the ground managing and working in these local communities, and it's, you know, there's data out there that proves that, you know, media doesn't necessarily do the best job sometimes of connecting the dots between climate change and what's happening on the ground, you know, it was so and we've seen that time and again.

Um, and so I think there's a big opportunity now, especially around adaptation and resilience, to tell a story that meets us where we are and galvanizes action, which I'm really excited about and working a lot on it.

Talk to me more about that and the Hazelwood Network and how it came about.

Sure, so we focus on a few different areas of, of climate innovation, and so some of it looks like setting up venture studios, accelerator programs, working with really amazing partners in.

Different parts of the world to support locally led solutions, right?

So we have a venture studio that we've helped set up in West Africa, accelerator programming that we're gonna be launching in the Caribbean.

We've done a lot of work actually here in the US as well, both in New York and down in the Southeast.

Um, we're gonna be launching something in Latin America soon as well.

And a lot of that is focused on the idea that there are local innovators that are building solutions and we need to support them to get this into the market faster.

The other side of our work, as I mentioned, is focusing on climate communications, right?

Which is in a lot of ways still a nascent field, right?

It gets to this kind of the heart of this issue of how do you convince somebody, not just that it's real, but we need to do something about it, uh, which is difficult.

Climate is, you know, you're a systems thinker, it's a system, right?

It's not confined to just one risk area.

It affects all of society and it can affect us in ways that we don't acknowledge a lot of the time.

And so how do you educate people on that?

And so we've incubated an initiative where we first did a really exhaustive study on the field of climate communications with the foundation.

And converted that into something where we're working with some really amazing partners to then collaborate with mayors and government officials to actually convey what certain climate adaptation and resilience imperatives look like to these leaders and help them then convey that to their constituents.

Um, and so it's a really exciting project that we're just getting off the ground.

And then the last thing.

We do is we do a lot of research, you know, climate is very well covered from a scientific and policy angle.

I think it's less well covered in research from an innovation and sometimes early stage investment angle, and we're trying to fill that gap with a lot of the work that we do.

And I, I do that also outside of Hazelwood, um, led a big study at Oxford focusing on the same topic as well.

And so I like to see this issue from a lot of different angles, and I'm lucky to do so.

Are you finding nuggets around these research and studies that you're doing that show when you can come in and communicate better?

Is it Sometimes more about what people have been through, or is it more about highlighting, like you said, the opportunities within adaptation resilience, because to your point, we see a lot of people talking about the risks.

There's very few funds out there that are singularly focused on the opportunities around adaptation resilience.

I could think of 3 off the top of my head out of, you know, thousands of startups, private equity venture funds, but one of the other things that we had read and we talked about on the show before is that people are most Adaptable to talking about and understanding the risks of climate change after heat waves, that heat stress is one of the single biggest factors in changing people's minds around this subject.

Any nuggets that have come out around communication goes, look, we're looking for all the help that we could get on this show too, and communicating to people.

So the research we're doing on it right now is still kind of forthcoming.

So I think these nuggets are probably going to be, you know, more.

Available in the next few months.

But what we did to help launch this was a study of about 50 plus kind of interviews with climate communications experts around the US and one of the more interesting findings, which one of the kind of leaders in this space has put together they're called the Potential Energy Coalition led by somebody named John Marshall, um, was that, you know, concepts like freedom, fairness, health, which weren't necessarily always associate with climate change, um.

Resonate very strongly with Depot, right?

So we're not talking about 1.5 °C, uh, we're not talking about net zero commitments any longer at that point.

Those don't necessarily have as much significance to people that are living in these communities that are actively concerned about the well-being of their families, um, and their businesses and their jobs.

They want to know that they can continue to live and operate as they were before.

And I think if you can talk to them in a language that they understand that that helps, but also it's the other, I think important finding is who is the messenger, right?

Um, depending on which political party you look at, you know, certain messengers can become much more impactful than others, so.

Depending on your political persuasion, you may not listen to a scientist at NASA, but you might listen to your doctor more, right?

You might listen to one of your children more if you have kids versus your local mayor or governor.

And so really understanding that nuance is important, and I think it's a testament to the fact that there's a lot of good people working on this issue right now that we're starting to understand this better.

When we did some of our first conferences on climate change and sustainable development goals in Republican states, we actually brought Ron Garin, the astronaut, with us as our keynote speaker, and ended every conference.

And no matter where we went, in the middle of the Rust Belt, in the middle of the Corn Belt, he got a standing ovation at the end of his presentation around climate, where if that had been You know, anyone else, Al Gore or anyone speaking there, that would have had tomatoes thrown at them.

So we, we went back to this thing that, you know, everyone's childhood hero, every baby boomer's childhood hero is an astronaut, a fireman.

How do we use those kinds of archetypes to communicate?

So little Hint of our some of our successes that we've had, but that really, really helped.

And in a day and age where we just went to the moon and back again, I think astronauts hold the real key to getting more and more people to open up and bypass their rigidity about maybe a democratic idea versus a Republican idea.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think for the longest time we've had a really discreet number and small number of messengers that we've relied on, right?

And I think it's good to, you know, credit the, the work that they've done, right?

They've gotten people like me excited about it.

I'm sure they've had an impact on you as well.

Um, but we have to think about, well, how do you address in the US 300+ million.

In the globe, 8 billion and, and, you know, and, and counting, right?

We all don't speak the same language literally and figuratively.

Um, we respond to different incentives, we care about different things, um, and so because of that, just, it's not just the message, but as we said, who is talking to you, right?

And what's the level of credibility and importance the whole no life really counts for a lot.

Talk to me about the innovation lab that you guys are working on.

Sure, so really fortunate to have a good group of partners that have helped us launch this pilot that we call the Adaptation Innovation Lab.

As I said, a lot of my work does focus on emerging markets where the risks around climate change are, are quite severe, but also the opportunities for innovation, I think, are equally high.

So we launched this back earlier this year with a few different partners, and, and what we're doing is we're helping accelerate a small group of 5 companies that we've kind of handpicked from 5 different countries in the, in the globe.

So we have a Nigerian company, we have a South African, a Bolivian, an Argentinian, and a Costa Rican company, all focusing in some shape or form on adaptation and resilience, uh, which for, you know, the listeners who may not be familiar with it, basically means that rather than think about greenhouse gas. reduction in removal.

They're thinking about, well, how do we respond right now to the risks that climate change poses us, and you see that in their business models, right?

They're thinking about soil health regeneration, they're thinking about wildfire forecasting, climate insurance, and they're using advanced tools like AI and machine learning to actually help prepare society better to adjust.

So it's this really interesting intersection of local needs, needing advanced technology and really inspiring people building.

So, where do you think the AIR world is headed?

Where, where are we going in the next couple of years?

Certainly in the US we have a tough administration and pushing it, but we found that, you know, talking about clean, affordable, reliable energy is the way to speak too.

People on the right about climate change, and, and certainly resilience, even more than adaptation, resilience is an easy word to talk to people about, you know, you want your home surviving a wildfire or a hurricane.

How do you build resilience to that home?

Where do you think the future looks like over the next 5 years?

Yeah, look, it's anybody's guess is as good as the other, I think, when it comes to AI, but the way I think about it is there's actually a lot of parallels between climate and AI and how we think about them.

I think both are systems that cat's out of the bag, genie's out of the bottle, they're here to stay.

They're only going to grow more significant in our life.

And so it's less about how do we stop them and how do we control them and how do we navigate them.

And so when it comes to AI and climate, you have to, as you, as you said, kind of start with energy and water consumption.

Um, we know that these data centers are getting built, you know, in my home state of Virginia, it's a hub for data center instruction right now.

And so we're going to have to figure out how do we power these, how do we keep them cool, right?

That's gonna, that's gonna obviously draw down on scant resources.

We're no time soon, I think, are we going to solve this tension of, is it going to be fossil fuel generated?

Is it going to be renewable energy generated?

Is it going to be a mix?

What's the ideal mix?

So, a lot of questions still remain.

But as you know, because of the work that you and I do, I think we also are very interested in, well, how can AI be used as a tool to enhance adaptation and resilience capabilities.

And so we're seeing that across the board right now, nascent use cases, but everything from, you know, utility sector using it to manage and and identify weaknesses in critical infrastructure, to manage and monitor supply chain performance, to think about, as, you know, in our adaptation innovation lab, companies like Satellites on Fire that are doing really amazing work on wildfire forecasting.

And helping communities prepare, sign a climate insurance from Bolivia, which is also in our cohort, thinking about using AI to help build parametric insurance products.

So I, I think we're just scratching the surface on all the ways it can be used to actually help us build resilience, um, and we're seeing it also happening in the US right now.

Those are kind of foreign examples that I've used here, but even in the US you're seeing.

You know, mayors, governors, etc. use it to monitor pockets of extreme heat at the neighborhood level to understand where vulnerabilities lie.

And so we're again just starting to understand how these two worlds intersect, and I think it's important that we don't write it off as a binary because it certainly isn't.

And I think we're just getting started and figuring out what we can do with it.

Yeah, it's interesting, I mean, you look at skiing, for instance, as an idea, Colorado, Utah, worst ski season in multi-decades, probably worst on record.

And you look at the tail-on effect of that, you know, what happened to all the restaurants that couldn't stay open because of that, all the employees that worked there, what happens to housing values there, insurance rates.

But not only that, what is the fall-on effect of having no snowpack going into the summer, where the Colorado River is already drying up, now all of a sudden you don't have water coming in when you need it.

7 states have been fighting about water there for the past couple of years and can't come to an agreement.

So, I think, you know, especially with they're predicting one of the strongest El Ninos on record hitting the US, we're going to be having conversations going into the summer that we really haven't haven't had to have yet in the US and hopefully that wakes up more people to these, not just risks, but as you say, opportunities in getting ahead of this.

There were a lot of studies.

That came out last year, around $1 invested in climate adaptation and resilience actually saves up to $40 in follow-on costs to not doing that work up front.

So I think there's finally a lot of momentum.

We saw last climate week that there were a lot of adaptation resilience conferences.

So I think you're finally starting to get some wind in your sails on.

And momentum on this, but as you said, when you're in other countries who have been dealing with this for years, it's a totally different conversation.

It's just how do we get the money flowing to support all of these companies that are really doing great work.

I think we talked about this, as Thomas Friedman said.

The two things that can end civilization are AI and climate change.

We just have to hope that AI can solve climate change before either of those things happen.

No, no, absolutely, and I think, I think you're touching on another important issue that a lot of us in the space of climate as well as that subset of adaptation, resilience practitioners are thinking about that right now, particularly in the past 12 to 18 months, I think we've See this really interesting convergence.

Um, you know, Mother Nature is the forcing function, right?

Rising temperatures, you mentioned the case study in Colorado.

We're seeing it everywhere.

As I said, you know, half my families Pakistani, you know, massive floods several years ago, certainly woke up that part of the world.

I think LA wildfires have also, um, that really, you know, kind of helped us get up to speed a lot faster on what like really visceral fallout can look like.

And in parallel, you've seen this really interesting influx of You know, major management consulting firms, cause you mentioned these studies, you know, major management consulting firms like Bain, McKinsey, BCG, not just talk about what the economic fallout, but what the investment opportunity around A&R looks like.

Yeah.

And we haven't seen that before.

I know Bill Gates in his October letter was talking about we need to consider humanitarian welfare when assessing climate impact and success metrics, which was kind of unprecedented, I think, for, for somebody of his stature to talk about.

Um, you know, typically we associate him breakthrough energy and high, you know, high impact decarbonization and deep tech, and we need more of that in spades, but talking about the humanitarian angle is one that definitely touches on A&R, um, as we said too, with AI coming into the picture.

We're starting to think a lot more critically about how we use it to monitor the welfare and well-being of infrastructure in the natural world, um, and we're seeing a lot more people try to build solutions.

And as you said earlier too, you know, we haven't really seen a lot of funds up until recently getting launched in this space, right?

And which means that investors aren't thinking about this just philanthropically any longer.

There's still a huge role for philanthropy and public finance, um, because a lot of this is heavy infrastructure that the VCs and PE shops of the world can't necessarily fund.

But there's a lot of room for them to play a role, and people are waking up to that now.

If people want to support the work you're doing or follow what we're doing, where do they go?

Sure, so you can obviously follow me, Jamil Wine on LinkedIn.

Um, I publish a lot through Forbes as well.

So a lot of what we've talked about today is of all already showing up in the form of an article or will very soon.

Um, you can look at my LinkedIn learning course which focuses on climate technology for adaptation and resilience.

Um, and if they want to collaborate and find ways, we're always looking for ways to put to work with, you know, philanthropies, family offices, these types of groups that we've been fortunate enough to, to collaborate with to date and hope to keep doing so.

Awesome.

Jamil, thanks for being on the show today.

Thanks so much, Jeff.

Good luck with the work you're doing.

Thank you.

Great too.

That's it for the impact on FinTech TV.

I'm your host, Jeff Guderman.

Until next time.