Chef Clare Smyth at work in the kitchen of her London restaurant, Core by Clare Smyth

As the first British female chef to acquire three Michelin stars, Clare Smyth is demonstrating to women all round the world that it is indeed possible to be a leading chef in the 21st century. She’s fearless in the kitchen, having worked under the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Alain Ducasse, and is now not only sharing her talent in London, but in Sydney, too.

LUX: You have previously mentioned that if you weren’t a chef, you would have been a showjumper. So, what attracted you to the culinary world over the equestrian one?
Clare Smyth: I started cooking at a young age and loved it. I decided it was more attractive to me because I wanted to travel and see the world, rather than being a showjumper training in one place all the time.

LUX: Gordon Ramsay famously once said that he didn’t think you would last a week in his kitchen. What do you make of this? And what were the biggest challenges you faced early on in your career?
CS: That’s always misconstrued, because most people didn’t last a week in his kitchen! It was tough, but I chose to work at the most difficult places so I could challenge myself. I knew that if I wanted to be the best, I needed to work with the best. It was long, intense hours and a lot of pressure, but I thrived in that environment.

Scottish langoustine, served at Core by Clare Smyth

LUX: Is it true that sexism is still rife in the culinary industry?
CS: There is a lot of work to do everywhere you look, not just in our industry. It’s part of society and awareness of it is what will help change it. Going back 10 or 15 years, I would often be the only woman in the kitchen. Half of my team now, front of house and in the kitchen, is female. I’m hoping that in the next 10 years there’ll be plenty of women at the top level.

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LUX: You have noted before that it’s the punishing working hours of the culinary industry that accounts for so few women running the world’s best restaurants. Do you still believe this to be the case?
CS: Yes and no. It’s not that women can’t do it; a lot of women choose not to. The profession is generally not conducive to a work-life balance, especially right at the top level.

A view of the dining room at Core by Clare Smyth

LUX: What’s your take on British cuisine?
CS: British food is hearty and rustic, but I approach it in a very fine dining, skilful way. We are so lucky to have phenomenal produce here – the most incredible shellfish, game and beef. At Core, we take British ingredients and elevate them to a fine level.

LUX: You catered for the royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – what’s your favourite memory of this experience?
CS: The stealthiness of the project. It was going on for months and our team managed to keep it all quiet. They were great fun to work with and are brilliant people. They made it fun for all the team.

Potato and roe, served at Core by Clare Smyth

LUX: How do you approach sustainability at Core?

CS: We approach it more than just environmentally. We do it culturally, economically, paying fair prices, working with people who farm in ethical ways and being creative in limiting food waste.

LUX: How do you think the fine dining industry can, as a whole, be more sustainable?
CS: We can help educate people and our staff to be more aware of where the produce comes from and where you are buying it from.

Morel tarts, served at Core by Clare Smyth

LUX: Your new restaurant, Oncore, opened in Sydney in November last year. What led you to open a restaurant on the other side of the world?
CS: I lived in Sydney when I was younger and fell in love with the city. It was a fantastic opportunity to open a flagship restaurant in a new building overlooking one of the most incredible views of the harbour, near the Opera House.

Read more: Chef Ángel León: Ocean Sustainability Supremo

LUX: How did you tackle opening a new restaurant amid a pandemic?
CS: It was incredibly difficult – there were lots of challenges. I have a phenomenal team in Sydney who took, and still take, everything in their stride.

Clare Smyth is the owner and head chef at Core by Clare Smyth in London and Oncore in Sydney. Her debut cookbook, Core by Clare Smyth (Phaidon), is out this summer.

Corebyclaresmyth.com

This article appears in the Summer 2022 issue of LUX

Chloe Dewe Mathews, The Door to Hell, Turkmenistan 2012, from the series Caspian: the Elements

Our sister company, Quartet Consulting, has launched a new photography prize to highlight important issues in sustainability. We live in an era in which we are becoming increasingly aware that we can’t get something out of our planet without affecting something else – usually negatively. Farming is affected, as are many other sectors, and wine (and champagne) is a product of farming. Pesticides poison the ecosystem and threaten biodiversity, as does overcropping, exhausting the soil.

For more than 20 years the redoubtable Champagne house Louis Roederer has been engaged in a “renaissance viticulture’. This allows all the nuances of the Champagne terroir to be fully expressed, through massal selection, gentle pruning, and daily practices that respect the living environment. It also uses virtuous practices inspired by the permaculture model, which allow the ecosystem to self-regulate. These include the use of biodynamic composts, allowing the land to lie fallow for long periods, maintaining hedgerows and low stone walls, growing fruit trees and installing beehives.

Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, Point In Time [Santa Inés Glacier, Seno Ballena]

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Meanwhile, the family’s Louis Roederer Foundation in Paris has, since it was founded in 2003, supported emerging artistic photographers. So, it seems only natural that these two strands have come together in the inaugural Louis Roederer Photography Prize for Sustainability, launched in London this season by LUX’s sister company, Quartet Consulting. The prize brings together some of the most important art-world names. Among the judges are Azu Nwagbogu, the founder and director of both African Artists’ Foundation (AAF) and the Lagos Photo Festival; Maria Sukkar, an uber collector, whose ISelf Collection was on show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2017; Brandei Estes, the director and head of the Photographs Department at Sotheby’s; and Darius Sanai, the editor-in-chief of LUX.

Emergence (from Twilight Series)

The nominators, who selected the photographers for the judges, read like a hall of fame of the art and photography world, including the artist Shirin Neshat, Photo London founder Fariba Farshad, David Hill of David Hill Gallery in London, and the artist and photography curator Cheryl Newman.

Read more: Professor Nathalie Seddon On Biodiversity And Climate Resilience

The theme of the inaugural prize was Terroir, a French term used to describe how a region’s environmental conditions affect the production of wine – used here to showcase how photographers globally are using their art to capture issues relating to sustainability.

As the spotlight on climate change intensifies, a host of awards have tackled the subject through photography, including the Italian Sustainability Photo Award, among others. In 2017 the Foundation launched its Louis Roederer Discovery Award in conjunction with the eminent Rencontres d’Arles, the first international festival of photography.

Sahab Zaribaf, superannuation

“The Louis Roederer Photography Prize for Sustainability has come at the time when ecology, sustainability and a reimagining of our life methods need further interrogation and investigation,” explains Nwagbogu. “Every aspect of our contemporary life is improved or illuminated through photography, and I was glad to see so many talented artists recognised for their contribution to humanity and sustainability through photography.”

Read more: Artist Precious Okoyomon on Nature & Creativity

Sanai says, “it was both wonderful and disconcerting to be chair of the judges and creator of this magnificent prize. Wonderful, because the breadth and depth of creativity and execution in the art of photography was astounding. Disconcerting, because it is impossible to make a quality of judgement around such different but brilliant interpretations of the theme.”

Sian Davey, Untitled/WIP

Of the 26 entrants, we present below the six shortlisted photographers. The winner and two runners-up were announced in late spring. The winner will have their works considered for the Foundation’s collection, alongside a cash prize of £5,000, an exhibition at the Nobu Hotel Portman Square, plus some rather special champagne.

Elizabeth Bick, Winter light

“The prize celebrates two of my favourite interests: the power of photography and a concern for our planet,” says Maryam Eisler, one of the judges.

Nominator Midge Palley on photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews

Chloe Dewe Mathews, Spread from the book In Search of Frankenstein 2018

I first met Chloe in a café in London, while trying to get her to take on a photographic project in Provence with me. She finally relented, despite her full schedule. Shoair Mavlian (a curator at Tate Modern) beautifully describes Chloe’s practice as exploring “ways in which photography can project the past onto the present, allowing for time to be expanded and contracted, and multiple narratives to be explored side by side.” I look at the images again and again to appreciate the beauty and intellectual depths of Chloe’s photography.

Judge Carrie Scott on photographer Elizabeth Bick

Elizaebth Bick, Wild Strawberries

It was the eerie familiarity, offset by a hyper-real aesthetic that drew me into Elizabeth’s compositions. Pair that with her mission to study the island of Fårö, and a people who live primarily off the natural resources of the land and sea, in a style that references Ingmar Bergman, and I was sold. Her style, in other words, is singularly cinematic and yet anchored in reality. That’s a place I want photography to take me to.

Nominator David Hill on photographer Jasper Goodall

Jasper Goodall, Cedars (from Twighlight Series)

Jasper Goodall’s work carries an elusive magic – his nocturnal images seeming to act like portals to another dimension. His is a very considered approach, not dissimilar to the work of the great American environmentalist photographers of the 20th century, but, here, viewed through the prism of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The resulting images are strikingly beautiful and utterly contemporary.

Nominator Cheryl Newman on photographer Siân Davey

Sian Davey, Untitled/WIP

At a time when our relationship with nature feels increasingly fragile, Siân Davey’s project, ‘The Garden’, offers a space for reconnection and healing. Her portraits are an invitation to share the garden, created with her son Luke, abundant with wildflowers and butterflies. Her series speaks to our humanity, joy and our inherent need to nurture ourselves and our planet.

Judge Maryam Eisler on photographer Sahab Zaribaf

Sahab Zaribaf, Inertia

I had never come across Sahab Zaribaf’s work prior to this prize. And I’m a great believer in first impressions when it comes to photography. Sahab’s work punched me to the core. It belongs to the language of visual poetry: ethereal and timeless, beautiful and painterly. It’s a language that seems to be memory-based, one where absence is more present than actual presence.

Nominator Adama Delphine Fawundu on photographer Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah

Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, macrocystis pyrifera [Patagonia]

By Rebecca Anne Proctor

This article appears in the Summer 2022 issue of LUX

Chef Ángel León

Ángel León is most famously known for his innovative use of seafood at his three Michelin-star restaurant, Aponiente, in his home province of Cádiz, Spain. He is an environmentally minded forager of the sea, leading him to find a quinoa-like grain in eelgrass, known as zostera marina. As well as being a superfood, seagrass is a natural solution for capturing carbon and a hotbed of biodiversity – meaning cultivated seagrass forests could benefit us and the planet

LUX: Why are you known as ‘The Chef of the Sea’?
Ángel León: Actually, the nickname was coined for the first time by the press. And later became the name of a television mini-series about our work. It defines me. My cuisine focuses on the sea, especially on products that others do not want or do not see. However, my kitchen has also opened up to my closest environment, the marsh and those intertidal zones with halophytic vegetation (saline plants), which fascinate me.

LUX: Where did your interest in ocean conservation come from?
AL: My passion for the sea was instilled in me by my father when I was little. My father loves sailing and fishing, and we always used to do it round the Bay of Cádiz. I was never a good student, and the sea was my escape route, where my diagnosed hyperactivity rests. When we went out fishing and came home with everything we had caught, it was my job to clean it up. I appreciated the smoothness of the fish scales and would cut their bellies to find out what they ate, and therefore know what bait to use.

LUX: What is more important to you, the innovation behind your cooking or the taste and presentation of your food?
AL: There was a turning point in my cooking career when I decided to cook only seafood. I never thought of it as a sacrifice to stop cooking other products from the land. Some predicted that our journey would be limited because we would run out of resources, the most apparent raw materials of the sea, but quite the opposite. Earth is covered by 75 per cent salt water, and we only know 40 per cent of the marine supply.

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However, on a menu where there are only products from the sea, we like to include trompe-l’oeil ‘meat’ options for our customers. We must open our minds – we are very selective and limited to unknown flavours. That is why we ‘dress up’ meat dishes with marine products. A perfect example of this idea is our marine charcuterie. Everyone is used to pork charcuterie, so what we do is make those same sausages, but with fish. We give it the same shape, the same colour, but we use fish. Sea bass mortadella, mullet chorizo…

LUX: What are the benefits of using your sea grain in your dishes?
AL: We’re not cooking with it yet – this project is still in the research and development (R&D) phase. But I did have the opportunity to cook it in the limited harvest that we achieved. Gastronomically speaking, it is very similar to a grain of quinoa in the mouth. After more than three years developing this project and analysing the seeds, we can affirm that the nutritional qualities of the zostera marina are superior to those of rice or wheat. It has glucose. It has more dietary fibre than pasta. It contains protein, carbohydrates and fats that are assimilated more slowly than those in rice, wheat or semolina. It’s also high in fibre and complex carbohydrates.

LUX: Having worked in various regions of Spain and also in France, which area has had the greatest impact on your cooking and why?
AL: Certainly France. My character as a cook was forged there, and I was able to understand the reality, the discipline and the sacrifice of this profession.

LUX: How has your culinary approach changed since you studied at the Taberna del Alabardero?
AL: My approach from then until now has nothing to do with it. Actually, at that time, aspiring to have three Michelin stars did not even cross my mind, and I had already mentally defined what I wanted my philosophy to be. I am grateful for all the stages that I have had and for forging ahead to make the Aponiente project a reality. Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine having a restaurant with a crew as committed as we have. Everything has fallen into place little by little. We have certainly been through challenging times. Many years of swimming against the current, because the client did not understand our concept, but now we see how the client has grasped it.

LUX: With regards to sustainability and saving the planet, what is the biggest change the hospitality industry needs to make in the next 10 years?
AL: Dependence, in all senses, on products that are not from our environment. We must look at our local environment with hunger and take advantage of the resources that we have closest to hand. From the farm to the fork, from the sea to the plate. We must be less erratic. We must be less selective.

Read more: Kishwar Chowdhury On The Bengali Influences Within Her Cuisine

LUX: If you weren’t a chef, what would you be?
AL: A marine biologist.

LUX: If you could choose any chef to prepare a meal for you, who would it be and why?
AL: I am a man of simple tastes. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a restaurant on my favourite beach in Cádiz, Bolonia. There is a restaurant there called Las Rejas, where I am happy eating whole fried fish, and happy spending time with the owners. I love going out fishing with them and then cooking. Nobody fries fish like them.

LUX: Have you got any exciting projects
or discoveries coming up?
AL: I am restless, and Aponiente develops many research projects. But, today, our main effort is focused on the research and development of our marine cereal.

Ángel León is the owner and head chef of Aponiente in El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz, in southern Spain. Since 2016 he has also been the gastronomic director of the nearby Alevante restaurant.

aponiente.com

This article appears in the Summer 2022 issue of LUX

Ronna Chao is Chairman of Novetex Textiles Limited, CEO of Novel Investment Partners Limited, Director of Novelpark Investments Limited, and has taken on various advisory and leading roles in foundations.  Here she speaks to Samantha Welsh about leadership, particularly at Novetex

1. How much is good leadership about effective communication?

Often as CEO, you find colleagues look up to you as the leader of the pack. Leadership is as much about offering a show of strength as it is about allowing the members of your team to feel that they are truly a part of something. During meetings, I regularly say: “What do YOU think?” This is because I want to promote an atmosphere in which everyone, regardless of rank, feels safe and free to speak and voice their opinions and recommendations. There is so much we can learn from each other and I really believe that mentoring is not one-way. Communication is a skill that requires constant practice and honing.

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2. What is it about this collaborative style of leadership that you are passionate to share with next gen through Bai Xian Asia Institute?

Bai Xian Asia Institute is the brainchild of my dad, who had the opportunity to study overseas and believed in the importance of fostering friendship and understanding in young people across different cultures. We focus on supporting Asian students to study abroad within the region because we believe that one needs to understand and appreciate one’s own home region and culture before becoming good ambassadors elsewhere. We provide our scholarship recipients a secure space where they can exchange views, and this environment enables them to grow as individuals and as part of a community. As they become leaders in the various fields of their choosing, our hope at Bai Xian is that they extend their circles of influence and propagate their perspectives and experiences with the wider community. Having studied abroad for extensive periods of time myself, I too see the necessity and the advantages that come with intercultural and interdisciplinary education. The world is getting smaller and smaller, and the need for collaboration across borders, across industries, is so apparent.

3. At a personal level, how do you manage challenges in, or to, your leadership?

Things always evolve, and one way to maintain an open mind and curious mindset is to accept and embrace the fluidity of circumstances and situations. One thing I strive to keep in mind in my leadership is that I do not and cannot know everything. My liberal arts education at Brown allowed me to explore interests in different subjects and topics as an undergraduate. These experiences trained me to keep an open mind and have broader perspectives. My three children are growing into adults themselves, and I am constantly in awe of their wisdom and ability to absorb everything around them. At their age, it’s natural that they begin questioning me – but they know that questions, criticism are always welcome to me and the communication lines remain open. These days, the roles are reversed in many instances as there is so much that they teach me and I look forward to considering their experiences and perspectives, especially as they come into their own and forge their own paths.

4. What compelled you to return from US back to Hong Kong to lead Novetex, a pioneer in the global textile industry?

Returning to Hong Kong and working with Novetex was a wonderful opportunity and an enormous honour for me that our family trusted me to let me try and helm the company. Ron’s heavy investment in research and development (R&D) proved fundamental to modernising our business practices. We initially created The Billie System, an innovative upcycling process that reduces environmental impact, to address the textile waste that our company was producing on an internal level. Over the past decade, we’ve identified new ways to minimise our environmental impact, even down to our supply chain. We arrived at the idea of The Billie together with Hong Kong Research Institute for Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA). Because of how we began this venture, the focus has been on preventing materials from entering landfills and recapturing the value of these fibres.

5. Novetex is also a first mover in textile R&D and you are invested in a sustainable future.  Where have you found innovation to be most impactful under your leadership?

Novetex has been in business for five decades. We began this journey toward sustainability almost fifteen years ago when the topic was not popular as it is now. At Novetex, we pride ourselves on being our customers’ “Complete Yarn Resource,” which means we strive always to be creative and innovative in offering a wide variety of qualities, colours, custom-designed and specialty yarns.

Read more: Lazard’s Jennifer Anderson on the Evolution of ESG Investing

In a self-reflection process, we audited our environmental impact, and reviewed processes from our operations down to our supply chain. Textile waste was identified as one of our pain points and we started having conversations with stakeholders and other parties to address the issue. Rather than worry about whether the timing was right, we went full steam ahead – and incorporating sustainability into our mission and vision is paying off, slowly but surely.

6. What was the take-away in your speech to other leaders at Hong Kong’s Business of Design Week?

Prior to joining Novetex in 2010, I had little to no hands-on experience in factory operations, textile R&D, sales and marketing, and brand management. Having to assume a leadership role with such “limitations” was a challenge. Nobody knows everything, and humility, curiosity, open-mindedness, and the attitude for life-long learning are key drivers that can help us as we journey in uncharted waters. Innovation and change require not only vision and courage but also patience and persistence. It is a marathon, not a sprint; setting goals, constant reviewing, keeping the balance between reaching for stars and keeping your feet on the ground enable us to cover the distance bit by bit.

Find out more: www.novetex.com

Kishwar Chowdhury’s Bengali heritage is a crucial part of her approach to cuisine

Australia based Bengali chef Kishwar Chowdhury was a finalist in the 2021 series of Masterchef Australia. Here she speaks to LUX Contributing Editor, Samantha Welsh about the ways her heritage influences her cooking

LUX: Dhaka, London, Heidelberg, Las Vegas, how has living in all these very different locations shaped your outlook?
Kishwar Chowdhury: Having lived on a few different continents and constantly traveling through my work has definitely shaped who I am. When I finish my kitchen projects in a city, I’m often roaming the markets, finding where the locals eat and befriending anyone who’s love language is food! I find that you can get to know people and learn about cultures very intimately, in a very short space of time by immersing yourself in their food. I carry these encounters with me and it definitely shapes my creative process.

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LUX: You had several career options but you seem drawn to something beyond personal ambition. How did you find this back home?
KC: Before moving into the world of food I was happily immersed in the printing, packaging and design industry. But food allowed me to express the deeper inquisitions and thoughts I had about the world. I feel very fortunate that I have an audience that is interested in that voice, whether it’s about ethnicity and ownership or ecology and waste. I feel I can wholly express myself through this medium and in doing so, found a collective global audience that resonated with me. I can see the impact that this has on the next generation, including my children and that to me is reason enough to be here.

Chowdhury takes pride in using techniques from many different cultures in her cuisine

LUX: Congratulations on having the drive and talent to make it to the final of Australian Masterchef! What made you do it and what have you learned along the way?
KC: The short answer to that is my son, Mika, made me do it. During the lockdown, we were living on a farm outside of my hometown of Melbourne. Like many others, it was a time that made me reflect on what I really wanted to do with myself and what it was I would be leaving behind. It became integral to me to pass down to my children all the things my parents had spent a lifetime teaching me. I spent a lot of that time cooking, writing and drawing. My son was the one who urged me to apply for Masterchef after seeing an ad on TV and the rest is history.

Kishwar Chowdhury came third place in the 2021 series of Masterchef Australia

My biggest takeaway from the Masterchef experience was finding who I am as an Australian-Bengali. I think many of us around the world who belong to minority cultural diasporas live with their feet planted in two boats. Masterchef gave me an opportunity to express who I am through my dishes and represent both the Australian and Bengali sides of my identity.

LUX: Your recipes have reached an international platform and you champion your Bengali culture, as distinct from ethnicity or religion; is that important to you?
KC: Being born and bought up in Australia to Bengali migrants from both India and Bangladesh meant that I grew up identifying with Bengali food and culture beyond national borders. My food reflects the history and cross cultural influences that landed in the Bay of Bengal. Being a major trade port for the British East India Company, Mughals who bought their Persian cuisine and sharing porous borders with South East Asia, the layered food tapestry in this region is incredibly diverse, delicious and largely undiscovered. It’s impossible to write about Bengali cuisine and confine it to a certain ethnic group or religion.

Kishwar Chowdhury has worked closely with the UN World Food Programme and ASCR to combat issues of hunger and food distribution

LUX: You could be said to subvert tropes about women’s work and women’s place in South East Asian society. How has this been received?
KC: I always say cooking has been a privilege for me. I get to approach it from a creative space and head kitchens, which is still, across the world, an anomaly. I do find frustrations in breaking stereotypes when people think cooking is a natural skillset for women or something that should be imparted on girls. I grew up in a household where both my mother and father cooked and believe that cooking is a basic life skill that every person should acquire. The burden of cooking still predominantly rests on South Asian women and women across all cultures in general. It is twice as difficult in that space to break that mould and to be seen as a chef rather than a cook.

LUX: How do you deal with preconceptions about how and where it is appropriate to serve South East Asian food?
KC: There has definitely been a hierarchy of cuisines that have been considered worthy of fine dining spaces. I do think that mould is being broken and we see a rise of restaurants showcasing heritage cuisines taking out Michelin stars and getting global accolades.

Durjoy Rahman with Kishwar Chowdhury

I find that the hardest preconceptions to break are within one’s own cultural confines. Often, I recreate dishes that are historically peasant dishes or “Andarkhanna” food that is served at home. People who have never come across these dishes are receptive to the incredible techniques and subtle flavours that exist in heritage Bengali cuisine. But often the beauty and rarity of these dishes are overlooked when they’re cooked at home.

LUX: How did you come up with the controversial concept to repurpose leftovers to haute cuisine?
KC: Some of the greatest restaurants in the world, notably the famous René Redzepi’s Noma, have been exploring this concept for years and shed a global light on the importance of sustainability in this industry. This, together with the cultural significance of eating nose to tail, repurposing food scraps and using every part of an ingredient, whether it be a fruit, vegetable or a whole animal, led me to carry that ethos into my kitchens.

LUX: Tell us about your activism, particularly the UN World Food Programme and Feast for Freedom.
KC: I’ve never considered myself an activist, but feel a deep sense of responsibility to do something about the disparity in food distribution. Whilst one side of my work is about creating magical experiences, there is also a very real side of the food industry that entails waste, hunger and lack of access to basic nutrition for millions. Through working with the UN WFP and ASRC and having the platform and the ability to shed light on these matters is how I push for change.

Preservation and legacy are at the core of Kishwar Chowdhury’s cuisine

LUX: How can you capture a cultural legacy and preserve it for the next generation?
KC: It starts with preservation through practice and the written word. In my case, recipes, particularly from this part of the world, are difficult to preserve, as they are not scientific, like baking. They require a tactile understanding of spices and ingredients, seasonality and also locality. I’m currently writing my book on recipes from the Bay of Bengal and trying to pass on more than just recipes, but a way of life. As for the next generation, I think immersing my children, as I was, in art, cultural experiences, rituals and festivals, creates a muscle memory so that they too will want to recreate all this as they get older.

Read more: Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation: Bridging Global South And North

LUX: What would you tell a young chef embarking on their career?
KC: I would say find your voice in food. What is it you want to share with the world through your food, find the people and kitchens that will help you attain the skill set you need and always follow your stomach!

Find out more: @kishwar_chowdhury

This interview was conducted in association with the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation

Jennifer Anderson, Co-Head of Sustainable Investment & ESG at Lazard Asset Management, speaks to LUX Contributing Editor, Samantha Welsh, about the history of her career, the changes in the ESG investment landscape over that time, and offers an insight into why she thinks the industry is at an important inflection point

LUX: What inspired you to pursue a career in sustainable investing?
Jennifer Anderson: My grandmother was a visionary, in my eyes. She was an early campaigner with Greenpeace in the 70s and 80s and often spoke about her work. I remember her talking about her involvement with the Chernobyl Children’s Project, activities to protect the ozone layer and cleaning up local beaches. That certainly sparked my passion for environmental issues. As I continued my education, I sought study options that helped me explore the intersection between business and the environment. At university, I studied environmental economics and development economics. The lightbulb moment was during my work experience with an asset manager, where I first learnt about socially responsible investing (SRI). I remember thinking “Wow, you can have a career in investment focused on understanding how social and environmental issues relate to that”.

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My career continued in asset management in the then ‘niche’ area of SRI, with focus on an ecology fund that was the first authorised green unit trust launched in the UK. I then joined an ESG Equity Research team on the sell side, authoring research on BP’s Macondo disaster. I built on this experience at an asset owner, where I spearheaded ESG and climate integration for pension funds. Since 2019 I have focused on the expansion of sustainable investment and ESG integration at Lazard Asset Management.

Jennifer Anderson, Co-Head of Sustainable Investment & ESG at Lazard Asset Management

LUX: There has been a bit of an ESG backlash recently. Is this the beginning of the end for ESG?
JA: Far from it. In some ways the public’s growing scepticism was to be expected, and so one could argue the industry needed to go through this, have healthy debate, and adjust approaches to arrive at a better place. The frequency and severity of extreme weather events is increasing, and income inequality continues to widen. The momentum to correct these imbalances is building, but to many it remains slow. So, it is easy to understand the growing ire. There is also a great deal of noise that investors must cut through in this growing space. News headlines about greenwashing create doubt, the current “one size fits all” corporate scoring approaches create confusion. Recently, the S&P 500 ESG Index dropped Tesla, while keeping Exxon. How are investors meant to make sense of all of this?

A dichotomy has also emerged following the war in Ukraine. The situation makes commitments to reduce the use of fossil fuel, challenging in the near term. Longer term, it could accelerate renewables adoption to help achieve energy independence, but it shows the road ahead could be rocky. Spikes in commodity prices tend to disproportionately affect those on lower incomes as food and fuel costs make up a larger proportion of their overall expenditure.

So, who ultimately pays for the energy transition and how will the effects be managed? These are some of the questions that the concept of a just transition seeks to address. How does the transition out of high-carbon activities into greener ones happen in a way that workers, communities, and countries are protected while also maximising the benefits of climate action? The focus on real-world outcomes is certainly growing. ESG strategies have migrated from approaches largely focused on negative screening and exclusions to those centred on ESG integration. The next stage for the relevant industry participants will be evidencing outcomes and impact, which has traditionally been easier to do in private markets. The industry needs to demonstrate value to break through the scepticism.

LUX: How important is the role of governments and international frameworks such as the United Nations COP meetings in channelling capital to more sustainable activities?
JA: A global challenge requires a globally coordinated response. It is easy to view climate summits in isolation, but having closely followed their progress over several years, I would say the fundamental shifts are clear. I attended COP26—the climate change conference in Glasgow—in November last year. It was the most widely publicised climate conference ever. The scaled-up presence from the private sector was also noticeable. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero—comprising 450 financial institutions—have pledged an eye-catching $130 trillion in capital to fight climate change. Investors, companies, and countries are now making net-zero targets the norm. So, if we look back to where we were at COP21 in 2015—where 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal—it is fair to say a lot of progress has been made since, but there is still a long way to go.

LUX: Is there sufficient data to quantify and price environmental and social issues?
JA: Third party tools and data help with benchmarking or as a starting point, but they can be unreliable in isolation, backward looking, or incomplete. Add to that the fact that ESG and sustainability issues are not uniform in scope, scale, or duration across industries and geographies. Ratings agencies combine data from different sources and condense that information into a score. This is a highly subjective process. What sources of information are used and why? How is the information sourced and “cleaned”? How are information gaps bridged? The methodologies and qualitative analysis used vary significantly between ratings agencies, so the scores produced tend to have a low correlation. As an investor you look at this and wonder which is closer to the truth.

Sure, clarity from standard setters and accounting bodies will help, but this does not replace the expertise that investment professionals offer. They have a deep knowledge of how governments, regulators, companies, and industries operate. At Lazard Asset Management, our investment professionals are responsible for incorporating ESG and sustainability-related risk and opportunity assessments into their relevant analysis and are supported by in-house expertise in ESG and sustainability—including in climate science, the energy transition, stewardship, and net zero—to help them contextualise and size issues when incorporating them into their applicable financial models.

Financial materiality is dynamic. Governance and human and natural capital issues that are material today may not be material in the future. Investors need a forward-looking, active approach.

Read more: Octopus Energy Founder Greg Jackson On The Green Revolution

LUX: What role does engagement play in making sustainable investments?
JA: I believe engagement is everything. Lazard Asset Management recognises that a company’s governance policies and board structure, environmental practices, labour policies etc, can materially affect a company’s long-term financial performance and therefore a security’s valuation. The firm’s fundamental analysts work together to understand issues that follow supply chains or impact certain geographies, and this is what gives our research depth. With this depth of knowledge, the professionals on our fundamental research platform can interact with management in a meaningful way to understand how this relates to corporate strategy and achieving better real-world outcomes.

LUX: What messages do you have for investors starting on their journey on sustainable investment?
JA: Firstly, I would say sustainable investing is no longer seen to be predicated on a trade-off between enhancing returns and having a positive real-world impact. Inadequate governance practices and poor stakeholder management can undermine a company—or even a country’s—long-term prospects, and this can later become negatively priced by capital markets. Secondly, investors need to be very clear on their objectives. Are they ESG-aware and seeking to incorporate financially material ESG issues into their investments and wanting company managements to be challenged on ESG issues that are a cause for concern? Are they sustainability focused—i.e., believe the world is transitioning to a greener, fairer, healthier, and safer place –and wanting to capitalise on this as a structural theme? If so, bottom-up, fundamental strategies can identify the winners and losers from the transition to a more sustainable economy. Beyond this is impact investing, which has a much higher threshold again, and is about evidencing both intentionality and additionally. Every type of investment has different risk-reward profiles. It’s about identifying which ones align with your investment beliefs and objectives.

Find out more: lazardassetmanagement.com/sustainable-investment

Nature provides services worth over $125 trillion per year globally

The planet’s species population sizes have decreased by 70% since the 1970s. Yet while scientists have proven that biodiversity loss is intimately linked with climate change, it continues to be kept in the shadows of the climate agenda

As the Nature-based Solutions Conference kicks off at Oxford University this week, we speak to Professor Nathalie Seddon about why boosting biodiversity is essential to building the resilience of our ecosystems in a warming world – and why planting trees is not the catch-all solution some think it is.

LUX: The mass of living creatures in the world is undergoing a dramatic diminution. What are the effects of this?

Professor Nathalie Seddon

Nathalie Seddon: The statistics are startling. We have lost about 80% of wild fish from the oceans and 82% of wild mammals on land, so our habitats and natural ecosystems are basically empty. 97% of vertebrates on the planet are people and their livestock; only 3% are wild creatures that we share the planet with. 9 million hectares of tropical forest are cut down a year; and we’ve modified over 50% of land use.

Biodiversity is important for multiple reasons – material, cultural and spiritual. Our health is intimately linked to the health of all these ecosystems that we are currently destroying. Our nature systems support us in countless ways, providing clean air, water, food, and genetic resources. Over half of GDP depends on natural ecosystems, which generate over $125 trillion worth of ecosystem services each year – from reducing the impacts of droughts and protecting coastlines from flooding or forests from wildfires. These services are dependent on the species and the diversity of the species within them, and are incredibly important to our resilience in a warming world.

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LUX: Why is there so little awareness around biodiversity loss?

NS: Climate still doesn’t get enough attention or funding, but it is considerably more prominent in discourse than biodiversity is. Our economy has also been developed on the assumption that nature’s resources are infinite. People assume that, with enough money, technology will come to the rescue. I think there is a fundamental reason to explain all of these: the age-old idea that humans are not part of nature but rather separate from it; that we must conquer nature rather than flourish as a part of it. This disconnect between humans and nature is the root cause, and therefore also part of the solution to the trouble we face.

Deforestation contributes to increases in temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns across the world

LUX: Are we at a turning point of the understanding of the importance of biodiversity – not just as a desirable end in itself but as an essential part of combating climate change?

NS: In principle, yes. In the international policy and business community, there’s a lot more talk about biodiversity and climate change as two sides of the same coin. But a lot more work is needed to make sure that there is a robust understanding of what that means in practice and how that translates on the ground. For instance, agriculture or commodity production are the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss and also the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Protecting and restoring our biodiversity can help reduce emissions, but about 23% of our emissions come from changes in the land use sector in agricultural and forestry and other land use, so improving what happens in those landscapes can also have important impacts on warming. It’s only still quite a small part of the solution.

There has been a step up in terms of the prominence and emphasis on nature as part of the negotiations on nature-based solutions. But there are huge misunderstandings, including a big conflation of commercial forestry with nature-based solutions. You can’t just plant trees and then delay decarbonisation and transition to renewables.

The Glasgow Science Centre played a key role in last year’s COP26 discussions

LUX: What are the most important steps leaders in business and wealthy individuals can take to combating this?

NS: A lot of businesses and governments are making net zero pledges, covering 90% of the global economy. But you look under the bonnet, and most of them are not underpinned by a really robust science based plan or any funding to enact it.

Talking about how nature, biodiversity and climate are connected is good, but we need to ensure that decision makers who are acting on that basis understand what that actually means in practice.That doesn’t mean offsetting carbon emissions by investing in cheap forestry plantations. It means doing everything they possibly can to reduce those emissions and reduce the damage that they’re doing to ecosystems within their supply chains whilst also investing in projects that are biodiversity based and community led and ideally doing that within their supply chains, which is a process that’s called insetting rather than offsetting.

Read more: Cary Fowler on Protecting the Biodiversity of our Planet

Offsetting is when a company will calculate its impact on climate or emissions so it will invest in probably some trees somewhere that probably shouldn’t be there and feel like it is addressing the problem. Insetting is looking within your own supply chain and investing in high quality, valuable projects within that supply chain, so insetting your damage to the biosphere and the climate within your supply chain. In doing so, you are not only meeting your ESG requirements but also increasing the value in resilience of the supply chain itself. It’s about investing in nature in your supply chains to reduce risk, operational risk, supply chain risks as well as reputational risk.

There is a real need to engage fully with the research community to ensure that those pledges can be met in a sustainable, ethical, biodiversity community-based way and so that’s where the work is. Public-private partnerships between researchers and businesses are really important. Companies in general should adopt a generative, circular economy model and then embed proper robust accounting on natural and social capital in their accounting procedures.

Humans have identified just 3 million of over 12 million complex life forms on the planet

LUX: Is it true that we are still discovering exactly how different species, seemingly unrelated, can have a dramatic impact on the health of the planet and the human race?

NS: There’s upwards of about 12 million complex life forms on the planet, and we have only named around 3 million of them. We don’t know what functions all those species play in the ecosystem, we just know that all species matter and that we can’t afford to lose the predicted 1 million species by the end of the century.

That diversity gives ecosystems the resilience they need in a warming world. It’s like having a diverse investment portfolio – the more different sorts of investments you have, the more likely it is to be able to weather the storm, in that case, a financial storm. In a natural world, the more species you have, the more likely it is that that ecosystem can deal with whatever is coming.

LUX: Are there any causes for hope, or is your feeling that we are doing too little too late?

NS: On one hand it’s all very frustrating because we’ve known for a very long time what causes climate change and what drives biodiversity loss, yet very little has been achieved. Put it into perspective: we have lost about 70% of species populations since the 1970s, despite a huge increase in the coverage of protecting it.

But there are lots of countries that are pledging to do the right thing: community and biodiversity based investments and nature-based solutions, at the same time as big commitments to renewables and reducing emissions. Costa Rica is leading on climate policy and the practice of renewables, plus large areas of land are under recovery and protection. [The same goes for] Moldova, Brazil, Chile and Cape Verde, at least on paper, in terms of how they’re incorporating nature into their climate change pledges.

There are also various companies that are taking a high integrity approach to tackling net zero. Netflix is an example of that: they are reducing emissions across all of their operations as fast as they can, as well as investing in projects that are truly verified in terms of their carbon, biodiversity and social benefits. That’s the real point. You can’t invest in nature if you’re not also doing everything you possibly can to reduce emissions.

Nature-based solutions involve the sustainable management and use of natural resources to tackle socio-environmental challenges

LUX: Who are the laggards?

NS: Most of the main fossil fuel companies are talking about decarbonisation but they’re not making enough progress. We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and we need to invest in nature. It’s not ‘either or’, and some of those big fossil fuel companies are just greenwashing their operations by claiming to invest in so called nature-based solutions which often just turn out to be short rotation commercial forestry plantations. That’s a live issue that needs to be fully addressed.

At the government level, many countries are investing in tree planting, while not ensuring that their existing biodiversity and intact ecosystems are protected properly, and in fact actively opening them up. Decisionmakers seem to think that growing a tree is the same as a tree which is in an intact ecosystem, yet science is really clear that there is no equivalent: you can’t recapture the carbon lost through destroying our intact ecosystem in a timely or sensible way through planting trees. .

Read more: Julie Packard: All In Together

LUX: How would you explain to an intelligent but distracted business leader that the loss of a seemingly trivial habitat in one part of the world can have a fundamental effect on people in the other?

NS: The earth is a big, interconnected system. Deforestation rates in the Amazon are increasing to meet global demand for beef and soya, but because Amazonia is a big water pump, this can cause changes in global patterns of rainfall, therefore compromising food security and causing supply chain issues. For the intelligent but distracted business leader who thinks that it doesn’t really matter if we lose all the monkeys or toucans from a forest, it does, because those species play a critical role in the ecosystems and we need to extract carbon from the atmosphere to keep all of us safe.

Ultimately, we need systemic change in how we run our economies. Our economic system prioritises material wealth and infinite growth on finite resources. Unless that changes, we won’t avert climate change and biodiversity. We need to think about circular and regenerative economies, and we as individuals need to enact big behavioural change as part of that. Otherwise, you’re just rearranging chairs on the Titanic.

Nathalie Seddon is Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford.

Find out more: naturebasedsolutionsoxford.org

Octopus is one of the largest owners and managers of renewable energy assets in Europe

As the International Energy Agency warns that the worst of the energy crisis may be yet to come, governments around the world are stressing the importance of accelerating the move to renewable energy. We speak to Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy Group, the technology-to-investment energy platform, about the importance of government intervention in energy policy, the role of technology, and how a greener future could be nearer than we think

Greg Jackson founded Octopus Energy in 2015 with a view to using technology to make the green energy revolution faster and cheaper for consumers. Now worth approximately $5bn, the privately held company supplies renewable energy to three million households worldwide. It is also one of the largest owners and managers of renewable energy assets in Europe, with more than £4bn under management. Jackson credits the company’s success to what he calls the “en-tech” model whereby proprietary technology plays a leading role in the company’s value offering. Here, he speaks to Ella Johnson about why there can be no alternative to radically updating the power grid and large-scale investment in renewable energy.

LUX: How will Octopus innovate the energy sector in the long term?

Greg Jackson: Octopus’ long-term goal is to generate roughly as much as its users use, with Kraken, our proprietary technology platform, matching generation and consumption at any time and location to make the most efficient renewable energy company possible.

A decentralised workforce allows us to greatly increase the pace of innovation and learn from many people with many different perspectives. We are a cloud-native company and have had a very successful remote customer operations team for over four years now. This allowed us to ensure we had processes and communication platforms in place when lockdown hit, and it has been absolutely vital as we’ve grown internationally, building successful Octopus Energy hubs in several countries around the globe.

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So far, we deliberately haven’t made a profit. Instead, we’ve focused on scaling the business, investing in new green technologies and making sure there is enough support available to our customers who are struggling. We are lucky to have investors that believe in our long-term goal and are absolutely committed to help us achieve this, so we don’t have to worry about short term profits to achieve our number one purpose, making green energy cheap energy around the world.

Octopus is working to digitalise the power grid through its proprietary Kraken technology

LUX: When did you realise the energy sector was ripe for a tech revolution?

GJ: I had built digital platforms for e-commerce and other sectors before to digitise and increase efficiency, and I quickly realised that applying the same technology to energy would greatly improve the way things are done in the sector.

LUX: What makes Octopus’ operating business model unique?

GJ: Our operating model is unique thanks to Kraken, our technology platform which we built from scratch. Where other suppliers rely on convoluted solutions for different functions, Kraken integrates them all into one giant robot, offering efficiency, better customer service and end-to-end management of the whole supply chain to allow us and our licensees to save costs, take better care of customers and drive the green energy revolution.

But we know we can’t drive change quickly enough if we’re on our own. So we’re licensing Kraken to other large energy companies across the globe who share our vision of a cleaner, better energy future, including E.ON, EDF and Origin Energy.

Octopus has licensed its Kraken technology to support over 20 million customer accounts worldwide

LUX: How must existing infrastructure be adapted to accelerate this shift?

GJ: We need to digitise the power grid so that we can use it more efficiently, cutting bills and making the most of green electrons when they are abundant. The current grid was built to manage a few hundred fossil fuel power plants. We need to make it fit for a decentralised energy world in which millions of electric cars, rooftop solar panels and home batteries will be connected to it, importing and exporting energy from the grid.

LUX: How does Octopus overcome the unreliability of wind and solar sources?

GJ: The key to unlocking a cheap green energy future is to build a digital system that is interconnected and flexible. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow where we are – but they always do somewhere in the world.

Read more: Dimitri Zenghelis on Investing in the Green Transition

Working with other countries and layering different sources of green energy and ways of storing it (like batteries) will allow us to create a system in which we can make the most of solar and wind energy where they are abundant. For example, we invested in Xlinks, the company building the world’s largest subsea power cable. Once built, it will deliver 3.6 GW of green power from Morocco to the UK for an average of 20 hours a day – enough energy to power about 7 million homes. We need more large-scale renewables projects like this.

Renewable energy is the only way to increase our energy security and stop climate change, says Jackson

LUX: One of your tariffs provides carbon neutral gas. What do you say to those who argue carbon offsets are not a real substitute for climate action?

GJ: We have carbon offset our Super Green customers’ gas usage in a few different ways over the years: helping reforest and conserve vast areas of the Amazon, and working with our main offsetting partner, Renewable World, to bring innovative renewable energy technology to fuel-poor communities worldwide.

But while it has very worthwhile applications and can help a lot of people, carbon offsetting is only part of the puzzle in helping fight climate change. It cannot decarbonise the whole energy system and move us away from fossil fuels. For that we need more innovative technology to make energy greener and cheaper for everyone.

LUX: Is natural gas an adequate transition fuel?

GJ: In the short and mid-term, we still need natural gas as a backup energy source for renewables. But in the long term, we will have to wean ourselves off gas completely if we want to increase our energy security and stop climate change – and we can only do that if we go hell for leather for renewables now.

Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO of Octopus Energy Group

LUX: How can policy speed up the mass uptake of renewable energy?

GJ: Historically, the creation, testing and licensing of a vaccine took around 15 years. With Covid, we managed to get the 15-year process of developing a vaccine down to one year. We need to do the same with wind energy. Due to planning approvals and grid connections, it currently takes on average 5-7 years to build and connect a wind farm. This could be done in one year. Do that now and we will literally start seeing bills come down next winter.

Read more: Inside Konstantin Sidorov’s London Technology Club

LUX: What role can renewable energy procurements play in corporations’ broader net zero goals?

GJ: Through our Renewables investment arm, we sign a number of agreements with large energy users to switch to green energy. Those making the choice to go green are taking massive steps forward for decarbonisation agendas across Europe – they are the trailblazers of their industries, and soon the rest will follow their lead.

Greg Jackson is founder and CEO of Octopus Energy Group

Find out more: octopusenergy.group