Opening Address of Executive Leadership Seminar: “Scaling New Heights” (21st June 2024)

The following was my opening address as event chair of the Executive Leadership Seminar 2024, held on the 21^st June 2024. 

Our Guest of Honour, Ms. Yeo Wan Ling; Chief Executive Officer of AIA Singapore, Ms. Wong Sze Keed; Keynote Speaker, Dr. Roslina Chai; our eminent Speakers, distinguished guests; dear friends from Singapore and around the region.  A very good morning to all of you.  Welcome to the Executive Leadership Seminar: “Scaling New Heights”. 

Thank you for gathering here today.  It humbles me to see all of you here.  Leadership is not just a term we throw around.  It is the foundation of all that we build.  It shapes our reality.  It realises our ambitions.  It drives us to 1% better than yesterday. 

As we peer into the horizon of leadership, we find ourselves at a critical juncture.  The landscape is shifting, and the compass points toward new challenges and opportunities.  Strategic leaders must cultivate strategic fitness.  This involves setting clear direction, while remaining agile enough to recalibrate when necessary.  To paraphrase André Paul Guillaume Gide, we cannot discover new lands unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore. 

When I spoke at COP28, in Dubai last year, I said that carbon credits is the new oil.  I said that we are entering the fifth industrial revolution.  Artificial Intelligence was the fourth industrial revolution.  We are still grappling with it, and its ramifications on society.  But we are facing a climate crisis, an existential threat to our way of life.  That strategic equation is going to change.  What does that mean? 

Consider this: as of 2022, the carbon credit voluntary market is valued at around just over US$2 billion.  According to carboncredit.com, the global compliance market for carbon credits was US$850 billion in 2021.  If we fail to meet our sustainability targets, damage to farming, infrastructure, productivity, and health from climate change will cost an estimated US$38 trillion per year by 2050.  At COP28, the pledges to the Loss & Damage Fund for climate change is only US$700 million.  That is about 0.2% of what we need to address this climate crisis. 

After flying all over the region, meeting governments, sovereign wealth funds, investors, partners, stakeholder; I have concluded that not enough of us realise what is at stake.  After sitting in on dozens of meetings and private discussions at COP28, I have seen that after all that is said and done, a lot was said, but not enough is done.  We can change that. 

I believe that the voluntary market, with its credibility issues, will eventually be folded into the compliance market.  I believe that the next step for carbon credits is to have a rated carbon credit that will be recognised as a financial instrument.  This is inevitable.  Carbon credits are not bonds.  They are not commodities.  They are a means of addressing the cost of preparing for climate change, not a fee to pollute.  A rated carbon credit, traded across exchanges, is fungible.  This opens up a vast secondary market.  We need that, because we need a means to raise the capital to fund the cost of climate change. 

This is my strategic vision, as President of Red Sycamore.  Each and every one of us, we are leaders.  We must lead.  We must shape the conversation.  We must fight for our seat at that table.  We must seize for our right to that blue ocean and grey market.  This is our planet.  This is our world.  We are not islands of misery, in an ocean of humanity.  We are here to be examples, stalwarts in the march of civilisation.  We want to be a voice in that vision of being something greater than ourselves.  I urge you to pin me in this, and make our work, our striving, our time matter. 

Thank you.