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Lindsey Hall: Hi. I'm Lindsey Hall, Head of Thought Leadership at S&P Global Sustainable1.

Esther Whieldon: And I'm Esther Whieldon, a Senior Writer on the Sustainable1 Thought Leadership team.

Lindsey Hall: Welcome to ESG Insider, an S&P Global podcast, where Esther and I take you inside the environmental, social and governance issues that are shaping the rapidly evolving sustainability landscape.

Climate Week is taking place in New York City from September 22-29. This annual event has taken place for more than a decade and a half and it's a big week for the sustainability world. Thousands of stakeholders come together for hundreds of events across the city.

Esther Whieldon: Lindsey and I are in New York this week covering many of these events. Today, I'm talking with Dr. Elizabeth Gray, CEO of the National Audubon Society. This is an environmental nonprofit dedicated to birds and their habitats. Dr. Gray sat down with me on the sidelines of Climate Week. Here's our interview.

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: Audubon's mission is to protect birds in the places they need today and tomorrow. You probably heard about the saying canary in the coal mine. Birds are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. They are basically telling us about the health of the planet. Audubon has been listening to birds for over a century and what birds are telling us right now is that the planet is really in crisis.

You may not know that since I was born, we have lost 3 billion birds in North America alone. We also know through science that about 2/3 of the birds that remain are at risk from climate change. So everything that we do at Audubon is based on this vision of halting and ultimately reversing this decline of birds across the Americas. That's why we're here because birds are basically indicating that the planet is in crisis, and that we need to take immediate action, and one of the most important threats that we're facing right now is climate change.

Esther Whieldon: So what are some of the things that you're doing to help both reverse biodiversity loss for birds and also ensure that they have a future?

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: Yes. This idea of looking at both biodiversity loss and climate change is a really, really important concept. Here at Audubon, we think of those as two sides of the same coin. You really cannot solve either of those crises without looking at them together. At Audubon, we have a strategic plan. We call it, of course, because we're Audubon, our flight plan.

It is basically really focused on this idea of bending the bird curve of halting and reversing this decline in birds across the Americas. We're looking at this doing -- tackling biodiversity loss and climate in multiple different ways. First of all, we're looking to connect a climate resilient connected landscape across the Americas from the boreal Forest of Canada down to Cauca Valley in Colombia and even further south.

In that way, we're protecting a lot of habitat. Now, one of the beautiful co-benefits of protecting habitat is that natural systems, our forest, our wetlands, our grasslands, they sequester and store carbon, so we're also looking to sequester and store about 30 billion tons of carbon in these natural systems.

That's about as much as emissions from 24 billion cars, so it's very significant. Finally, we're looking at renewable energy. How do you accelerate renewable energy across the landscape? What's been really interesting about that piece of it is that a lot of conservation groups, especially bird groups, they've really hesitated to get involved in renewables because there are trade-offs.

You can't really accelerate renewable energy without having some kind of environmental impact. At Audubon, we looked at the science and we said, look, birds are going to face many, many more impacts from the impacts of climate change versus renewable energy, so we're working with developers.

We're working with communities and policymakers to accelerate renewables across the landscape, so this focus on protecting habitat on sequestering and storing carbon in natural systems, something we call natural climate solutions and then accelerating renewable energy is what we're all focused about here at Audubon.

Esther Whieldon: When you're working with a developer, I saw you work with a grid operator in the Midwest as well. When you're working with them, what are some of the things you're asking them to think about or factor in or what are some of the conversations you're having with them?

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: Yes. So Audubon, I think the two most important roles we play here working with developers are, first of all, we bring our science. We're a science-based organization. We're nonpartisan. We can use our science to map out alternative routes for laying transmission lines or where they're going to site these projects.

We'll sit down with the data. We'll look at what they're proposing, what alternatives they have. Again, it's all about these trade-offs. It's all about looking back and forth. The second piece, which is really equally as critical, is playing this role of trusted convener. So because we're nonpartisan, because we are science-based, we have the ability to bring different groups to the table and talk to one another early in the project.

For example, this will be a place where we pull in folks from the local communities. We pull in developers, and we get folks to sit down at the table together and so the communities can voice their concerns. One of the things we found that is so important that I think Audubon excels at is bringing these communities in right at the front end of when these projects are being proposed.

So you can look at their concerns upfront, you start addressing them. Between both using science to look at alternatives and bringing in community concerns upfront at the beginning of a project, we often can help accelerate these projects moving through the permitting phase and the actual on-the-ground execution of these projects.

Esther Whieldon: There's that term -- Not in My Back Yard.

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: NIMBY - That's right. Exactly.

Esther Whieldon: Trying to avoid that local pushback.

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: Yes. Because it's fair, communities have real concerns, and Audubon also has concerns about the impact on birds and on wildlife and also on communities as well. Getting folks to the table, we often find you can make compromises that both parties feel comfortable moving forward.

In fact, we have this project out in Minnesota. We have our Prairie -- so we work through some of our local chapters as well when we do this. Our Prairie Lakes Audubon chapter is in Minnesota. We had a transmission project there, and they knew the community had some concerns.

They convened a public meeting, and we got a number of people sit up and talk to developers, stand up and talk about their concerns. They worked it out. The developers adjusted their plans. Now this project is moving forward, it's going to provide enough renewable energy to power about 800,000 homes in the area.

Esther Whieldon: To what extent is climate change a threat to birds and [ bird lots ] now versus other activities? Is it more of a long-term threat than an immediate threat or is it -- give me a sense of where it fits in the picture?

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: So birds do face a lot of threats, certainly the ones that you mentioned. I typically think of climate change as a magnifier or a force multiplier of the impacts that birds are facing. We know birds have been facing habitat loss and degradation for a couple of centuries, at least here in North America, across the world for centuries, right?

We still are seeing habitat loss and fragmentation. Climate is magnifying that, but when you think about different climate impacts, for example, you see sea-level rise, you see increased storms. We have beach nesting birds. These birds, their nesting sites will get wiped out. We have seafaring birds that build their nesting colonies on islands that may be sinking into the ocean. There's all kinds of impacts.

Those would be direct impacts, and then you have the indirect impacts, for example, with habitat loss. Then, of course, collisions with buildings are another one. We're trying to get people to have more lights out programs in cities when massive migrations. One of the really neat things about what Audubon is doing is we have put up these things called Motus Towers.

These are towers where you can tag birds with a little radio tag, and then as the birds fly overhead, these towers pick these signals up so we can actually track birds' migrations across the hemisphere, and we're doing that. That gives us an advanced warning signal that we can then let people know a mass migration event is headed your way. Can you turn off the lights or can you take mitigating factors so that we can protect the birds on their migratory journeys?

Esther Whieldon: Why would turning off the lights be important?

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: Because birds are attracted to reflective surfaces, and so if you have your light on, they can easily fly into a window.

Esther Whieldon: So our main listeners, our main audience is business side, right? Companies and investors, what message do you want them to take away? What message do you want to give them?

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: I'd like to give them a couple of messages, Esther. The first is that partnership between environmental groups and business is essential. We have to collaborate together. I believe winning and we at Audubon believe that winning on climate means collaborating together or working together.

The business community and the environmental community have a lot of opportunity to work together to combat climate change to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and to help protect and build additional climate resiliency. That's one. First, partnership is key. Think of the environmental organizations like Audubon when you are thinking about how to set your ESG goals. More generally, the biggest challenge is urgency. Like I said, birds are telling us, the world is in crisis. The planet is in crisis. We need immediate action.

Business community is great, I think, at taking immediate action and moving very fast on things. That's really, really important, but the second thing is something we already touched on, which is this idea of how to scale the work. There are a lot of great on-the-ground projects. We have the Inflation Reduction Act that's pouring millions, billions of dollars into these projects. How do we scale these projects?

Again, I think it takes collaboration. It takes the ability like Audubon is doing to bring together developers, industry, scientists, government, policymakers and local community members to talk about how to accelerate these projects in a way that benefits both the climate and the planet as well as the communities and the folks that are worried about these ideas of these projects going on in their backyard.

And then finally, I would say, flipping that on its head, we have a really great opportunity, which is all around us, nature. We know nature can solve about 1/3 of the problem. Protecting and restoring natural systems, we have so many benefits. We will get clean, cleaner water. We will have cleaner air. We will have a healthier climate. We will have healthier food systems. So looking at nature as part of the solution to how we tackle climate change is a really important part of the puzzle and something that I hope the business community looks at and takes seriously.

Esther Whieldon: So on the podcast, we often hear about the importance of thinking both of climate and nature and how they need to be solved together. How aware do you think people are of that? Has awareness grown there or is it still really early discussions on combining the two?

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: So I've been working on climate for about 20 years, long before it was mainstream, long before I could have a dinner party conversation about climate change, people wouldn't know what I was talking about. When I first started going to the UN meetings, the COP meetings, nobody was speaking about nature.

Now, if you go to these meetings, there are always special sessions and days, in fact, devoted to nature. So I think there's a growing consensus that nature is a big part of this solution and that we need to take it seriously in terms of how to invest in natural climate solutions. That being said, there's still a long way to go.

I think the climate community now is buying into the fact that natural climate solutions are a very important solution. When you ask the general public, I think we still have some work to do. Again, I would say that's what's so great about Audubon. We have over 1 million, almost 2 million supporters of our work.

And so being able to get out in these local communities across the United States and now increasingly up in Canada and down in Latin America and talking about the benefits of nature, not just for the benefits of having green space and healthy climate and a wonderful place to have, for example, ecotourism, but also the fact that they can sequester and store carbon and help us mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and also mitigate, as I was talking before, about extreme weather, coastal surges, things like that with mangroves and wetlands, I think the knowledge of this is growing in the public, but we still have a ways to go.

Esther Whieldon: I know we're still at, what, day 1.5, I guess, of Climate Week, so probably not a huge amount of takeaways for you but I'm just curious, has there been any interesting things you've heard or conversations you've had that you think are worth mentioning?

Dr. Elizabeth Gray: Well, I've only been on the ground for a couple of hours, but what I will say that was really obvious to me for the little bit that I've been here, there's such an incredible mix of people here right now. I'm seeing people from industry. I just ran into someone from the renewable industry that I met at DC Climate Week.

There's industry, there are government officials, there are nonprofit leaders, there are media such as yourself, there's tech and many, many other groups. You have leaders from all sectors of society that are here this week talking about the importance of taking climate action. What I'm really excited about is that everybody is here committed to this and hopefully, that people are also committed to working together because as I said before, I think winning a climate will require collaboration, multi-sector collaboration.

This is something that we're increasingly becoming more and more vocal about at Audubon about the importance of that, and so I'm excited to see not just how each sector is tackling the climate crisis, but how they're starting to work together across industry, government and nonprofit space to really essentially address the largest existential crisis of our time.

Esther Whieldon: So as you can hear, there's a lot to look forward to in the days ahead.

Lindsey Hall: Please stay tuned as we bring you more special coverage from Climate Week NYC.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ESG Insider. If you like what you heard today, please subscribe, share and leave us a review wherever you get your podcast.

Esther Whieldon: And a special thanks to our agency partner, The 199. See you next time.

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