Thunderbird Convenes Global Leaders Across Sectors to Advance Climate Action

Davos, Switzerland –  The Thunderbird School of Global Management released a new report today projecting that the world can realize at least $1trillion – $3trillion dollars in market opportunities and $3trillion – $5trillion dollars in broader economic, social and environmental benefits per year by 2030.

Thunderbird’s Director-General and Dean, Dr. Sanjeev Khagram authored the new report and shared it at a cross-sectoral gathering hosted by Thunderbird with the Foundation for Climate Restoration in Davos during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.

“Together, we must rapidly deploy natural and technological solutions to remove gigatons of carbon dioxide from our air, restore ocean ecosystems, and preserve Arctic ice, while dramatically reducing emissions and adapting to climate change impacts,” said Dr. Khagram. “Climate restoration is the critical third pillar of climate action alongside climate mitigation and adaptation.”

Global Climate Restoration Task Force Launched to Drive Action

To catalyze and connect the mounting initiatives and reach the scale necessary for climate restoration efforts to realize their full potential, Thunderbird and The Foundation for Climate Restoration launched a new Global Climate Restoration Task Force at a high-level event at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, along with founding partners from the private sector, government, and civil society.

“Climate change and the devastating impacts of rising global temperatures are impossible to ignore. But I know we can not only achieve climate transformation, we can also do so in a way to advance inclusive and sustainable prosperity worldwide,” Khagram said. “That is the challenge of this new decade of action.”

Leaders in the global movement for climate restoration are demonstrating momentum including:

• This week Microsoft announced it will be carbon negative by 2030, and launched a $1 billion fund for carbon reduction, capture, and removal technologies over the next four years, committing to remove all carbon it has emitted since 1975.

• In August 2019, Stripe committed to pay, at any available price, for the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and its sequestration in secure, long-term storage.

• In December 2019, Goldman Sachs pledged to spend $750 billion on sustainable finance projects over the next decade.

• In December 2019, a record 631 investors managing over US$37 trillion signed the Global Investor Statement to Governments on Climate Change, which called for an acceleration of private sector investment into the low carbon transition and improving climate-related financial reporting.

• In December 2019, Blue Planet Ltd and KDC Announce A Global Partnership to scale carbon-negative concrete worldwide to the company making limestone aggregate to produce carbon-negative concrete that allows for carbon-negative building materials to be readily available for the global commercial market and will help remove the excess trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.  “There are over 5,000 identified sites for Blue Planet and KDC. If KDC and Blue Planet were to initially develop 100 of these in the US by 2025, it alone could equate to enough emission reductions of nearly 5% – 10% of the entire U.S.’s Paris Treaty obligations.” -Brent Constantz, CEO of Blue Planet

• In April 2019, Arizona State University and Silicon Kingdom Holdings (SKH) announced an agreement to deploy carbon-capture technology developed by Professor Klaus Lackner, director of ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions.

• At Davos, Ice911 Research announced that they will deploy testing of their climate restoration material on sea ice [In addition, Ice911 Research announced a new $50 million investment in the research of ice restoration technologies on Arctic sea-ice.]

• At Davos, Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge (CCRC) and the Foundation for Climate Restoration, announced a new partnership to expand research on the deployment of climate restoration solutions in oceans and the Arctic. “Working in partnership with the Foundation for Climate Restoration provides the needed research and solution testing structure in order for us to make effective evidence-based decisions and actions to tackle the climate emergency that threatens life on Earth as we know it.” -Sir David King, Founder and Honorary Executive Chair, CCRC, Fellow, Downing College, Cambridge and Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government

Climate Restoration is the global endeavor to return the Earth’s climate systems to the safe and healthy state in which humans evolved and thrived. This requires returning atmospheric CO2 to proven safe levels of less than 300 parts per million (PPM) and restoring sufficient Arctic ice to prevent permafrost melt and the resulting disastrous methane emissions.