Top Sustainability Speaker Matthew Griffin : Protecting the Planet for Future Generations

Looking to book a top keynote speaker who delivers real impact? Matthew Griffin is globally recognised award winning speaker who has inspired tens of millions worldwide. With powerful keynotes and executive masterclasses delivered in over 80 countries, he is trusted by governments and the world’s most respected brands to inspire action and help them build high performance organisations.

Bear with me on this one because my answer to this question isn’t what you might think. Sustainability, itself, at its heart is the careful and sustainable use of resources so we meet the needs of the present without compromising the future. This is, essentially, the foundation of the Circular Economy. But, in a world where we are degrading the natural environment faster than ever before, where the quality and disparities in our environment are harming and killing people, and where Humanity is using up the world's resources 1.7 times faster than the planet can regenerate them then, I argue, we shouldn’t just be embracing sustainability - we should be embracing the regeneration of our planet and its resources.

Human health and our economic health are both linked to the health of the natural environment. However, despite concerted global efforts the natural environment today is under more stress than ever and almost all of the key scientific data - which itself is under attack - points to a warming planet whose biosphere is in decline.

Whether it’s the surpassing of the 1.5C global warming limits, and new projections citing a 3C increase in the future, or the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events which is driving insurance payouts and projections to record levels, and even causing insurance companies to abandon regions, such as the Southern US, there are plenty of signs of stress. All of which is before we consider the numerous other global warning signs including the degradation of over 75% of the world's landmass, ocean acidification and heat waves which are at record levels, the collapse of wildlife populations and the loss of over 20% of the world's species, and the rise of the Sixth Extinction, increasing water scarcity, and the forecast rise in the number of human-animal interaction initiated pandemics. And, all of this is just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg.

Despite any best efforts, and no matter what metric we use our global environment - air, land, and sea - is being degraded and depleted faster than ever before, and our planet is under increasing levels of unimaginable stress as it edges towards the collapse of several key "Tipping Points." Furthermore, from a consumer perspective, despite decades of education by governments to improve recycling rates they still remain laughably low with just 312 Million tonnes of all hard waste being recycled with the remaining 2.4 Billion tonnes going straight to landfill where is pollutes precious ground water supplies and in some cases burns out of control choking entire megacities. And, it's not looking any rosier on the plastics front either with average recycling rates sitting at below 8% and the oceans get clogged with plastic.

When we consider everything we've discussed so far this must therefore bring us to conclude that sustainability is an out dated concept for the following reason. To use an analogy today we live in a burning house, sustainability puts that figure out, but at the end of the day we’re still left with a burned out house so, as I argued at COP we need to stop being sustainable and we need instead to regenerate - and this is a fundamentally different message with a fundamentally different set of actions and outcomes than we see today.

While nature is the perfect example of sustainability it’s clear that we humans still have a very long way to go before we realise our ambitions of sustainable living and the Circular Economy. And, while governments around the world have spent decades educating and encouraging individuals and businesses to adopt more sustainable behaviours and practices today we’re having to fight harder than ever before to keep nature, and the economic and societal importance of having a liveable environment, at the forefront of peoples minds. Which is ironic.

It is, however, due to a number of different factors.

Firstly, we have seen the politicisation of ESG especially in the US where on the one hand environmental regulations have been seen as an expensive and unwelcome burden on companies and a drag on GDP, then on the other hand we also have the weaponisation of ESG by activist shareholders who see it as an unnecessary drain on profits and returns with many of them suing companies for their pursuit of ESG agendas. And then, secondly, historically high rates of global inflation and high cost of living are now impairing people’s willingness to pay premium prices for sustainable products.

Extreme weather is not the only reason why there are dark clouds on the horizon.

LEADERSHIP IN FLUX

Over the past decade we have seen countless organisations pledge to protect the environment and talk up the importance of working together to protect it - for people and planet. However, as shareholder activism increases, and as politicians politicise the topic and pour gasoline on ESG initiatives, the rate at which we’ve seen the leaders of global companies abandon their pledges has been quite staggering. Not only has this led many to question whether or not the leaders of those companies were committed to ESG in the first place, and their moral compass, but it's also riling markets as more consumers feel duped and question whether they've been brainwashed by fake greenwashing.

All of which then leaves us asking the question: In a politicised and weaponised world what should leaders do?

BE BETTER PREPARED FOR CHANGE

COP28: SAVING THE PLANET

BIR: THE FUTURE OF RECYCLING

SUEZ: THE FUTURE OF WATER

Just as nature is unique so too are sustainability speakers who are all the sum of their individual experiences and relationships. However, they all have their domains and specialisms. Some are academic specialising in any and every kind of ecosystem, others specialize in biodiversity, Climate Change, the Circular Economy, and ESG, while others specialise in Green finance, agricultural, corporate, and social sustainability, and others focus on renewables and resource conservation - and everything in between. And then there are those rare speakers that can show audiences everything and pull it all together to show them the big picture.

And that’s what Matthew Griffin, one of the world’s most in demand Sustainability speakers does daily.

MATTHEW GRIFFIN SUSTAINABILITY SPEAKER

SUSTAINABILITY ADVISOR . AUTHOR . LEADER . LECTURER . THOUGHT LEADER .

With an environmental and scientific background, having taken a double Marine Biology and Oceanography Masters degree and managed several UK SSSI National Parks, Matthew has been prioritising the protection of nature and our planets resources his entire life. It’s this experience and passion, along with his world renowned expertise in other domains, such as geopolitics, innovation, leadership, and technology, that has led to him becoming a regular headline speaker at the COP, UNGA, and WEF summits alongside world leaders where he challenges the global status quo, changes mindsets, and highlights the latest cutting edge solutions to many of the world's problems. And it is this blend of experience, expertise, and foresight, that makes him a truly unique sustainability speaker.

AWARD WINNING 15 TIMES AUTHOR

12,000 PAGES . 600,000 INSIGHTS

1.4 MILLION DOWNLOADS

"A WALKING ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE FUTURE!"

NASA, KYLE E., SPECIAL PROJECTS DIRECTOR

Matthew Griffin, is a multi-award winning geopolitical advisor, leadership coach, and Futurist who NASA have described as a "Walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "Futurist polymath." One of the world's most renowned Futurists and strategic foresight experts Matthew is the 15 times author of the best selling "Codex of the Future" series, and is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working across the next 50 years whose mission it is to democratise access to the future for everyone, irrespective of their abilities or background. An in demand international keynote speaker, university lecturer, and mentor he is also the only Futurist to have been invited to speak alongside world leaders at both the UN COP and WEF Davos, and his two multi-award winning YouTube channels put him in the top 0.1% of YouTubers worldwide.

A rare talent in his past Matthew helped build and lead several multi-billion dollar business units for Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, and his ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77+ governments, and many of the world's most respected brands including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Disney, Dow, EY, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, and many others.

Regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, Matthews mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.

MATTHEW'S KEYNOTE REEL

RE: THE FUTURE OF LEADERSHIP

VODAFONE: DISRUPTION AND OPPORTUNITY

PARTNERS GROUP: EMERGING TECHNOLOGY PANEL

In the most simplistic of terms our present day happens when different events converge - whatever those events are.

Some of these events are the result of things that were set in motion many years, decades, or even Millenia ago, such as the development of intrinsic human behaviours, others happen spontaneously, and the remainder fall somewhere in between. Unsurprisingly, the theory goes that the more of these events, or Signals, that we can catch early, the better able we are to model the impacts when they converge, then the better we should be able to forecast the Preferred, Plausible, Probable, and Preposterous futures. And this has been my personal mission for the past two decades, at Dell-EMC, IBM, and now at the 311 Institute - to identify as many Signals as possible, intensively research them all, including their behaviours and the forces driving them, and then work to develop the most accurate version of the future that we can.

One of the oddest comments I hear from Futurists, even some of the most renown, is that it's impossible to predict the future, and that we aren't here to predict anyway. But, I dismiss that point of view, because even with limited data we can predict things such as the continuance of Electric Vehicles, the continuous development of AI, and so forth. I also believe that the more Signals we can see, and the better able we are to understand their behaviours and impact, that the breadth of futures that we can predict can be increased. And, for those occasions when we don't have data and or are working with imperfect data I developed the Anchoring Constants Foresight Model which so far has played a pivotal role of keeping my own predictions on track. Predictions, as you can see below, such as the emergence of Generative AI and autonomous AI companies, the democratisation of skills, and many others.

However, while envisioning the near and even medium term future is difficult, the further out we go the fuzzier the future gets.

WE ARE THE FUTURE

SEE EVERYTHING AND SUCEED

MENTORING THE NEXT GENERATION

RAISING EVERYONE UP

SEE EVERYTHING . EXPLORE EVERYTHING . SUCCEED .

The reason to book me as your next keynote speaker is simple: I can help you see EVERY FUTURE and SUCCEED.

Unlike other speakers I can show you the whole future, not just the 30% of it that others will show you. And then I can share the tools and thinking you and your audiences need to explore it, understand it, and lead it. I understand though that you may think of this as so much marketing hype, so to prove that it isn't I encourage you to test me, and if you can find a topic that I can't discuss at an expert level, and in greater depth than others, then I'll DONATE $10,000 TO CHARITY.

Are you ready to take the challenge!?