This post was written by Faith Vasko ’20
Greta Thunberg. The face of climate resilience. Notice how I didn’t say change? Because that’s what Greta is trying to stop. Change means an ending, resilience is the ability to recover. Words are important. Greta recently released a preview for the film Nature Now in coalition with several climate organizations, such as Conservation International, exposing the solution to climate breakdown. The proposed solution from the Queen of climate resilience? Trees.
Her partner in the film, writer and climate activist George Monbiot, further elaborated that trees are “natural climate solutions,” saying, “nature is a tool we can use to repair our broken climate.” This type of language, framing nature as a “tool,” has been an influential concept in my time as a MBA candidate in The Sustainable Innovation MBA program. In our first week of classes, Taylor Ricketts, the Director of the Gund Institute at the University of Vermont, presented on Ecosystem Services.
Through the business lens, the concept of value is important. The value of ecosystem services is that they provide benefits to society. There are several ways in which to classify these services as well as how they can be applied. In framing ecosystem services as valuable natural capital for business opportunities, ecosystems and biodiversity is then quantified. This allows ecological economies to be emphasized.
This ideology, similar to biomimicry — in looking to how mimic natural processes in design and production — was new territory to me just like the University of Vermont this past August. Taking these concepts I learned in class, with the access to the campus experience, I was able to further my curiosity by beginning work under a Gund Faculty Fellow and Doctoral Candidate researching the non-material relationships and benefits from cultural ecosystem services in the face of scientific uncertainty.
I am grateful and excited by the expansion of opportunities learning fosters and the rabbit holes they can lead you to. Greta has exemplified this notion of expansion in spreading the message of climate activism. Nature is a tool, and with the right language applied —such as ecosystem services and ecological economies— its value can be communicated to transform and create sustainable business ventures while supporting the environment.