The climate agenda is getting tired of its own audience
As the fourth Blue Earth Summit opens, we get the measure of an event that swerves environmental campaigns and echo chambers in favour of market-focused solutions and finance.
Numbers rarely lie. Especially when they look so convincing. 5,000 innovators, startups, corporations, academics, politicians, adventurers, conservationists, celebrities and campaigners. 10 stages. 300 speakers. And, crucially, access to a potential £10billion in capital for projects which could mitigate, slow and even reverse the climate crisis.
Now in its fourth year, the Blue Earth Summit runs from Wednesday 16th to Friday 18th October in Woolwich, London, and could be the UK’s most unique environmental event. Established with a clear agenda – avoid getting bogged down in conversations about how the emergency is unfolding, and why, instead focusing on what options are available to douse the flames, Will Hayler, the organisation’s CEO, puts it better than we ever could.
‘We’re not an awareness campaign, we’re a solutions platform. We all agree that fossil fuels can and should be sun-setted. But you won’t see me personally campaigning on that. I’m interested in finding the alternatives, looking at how we heat our homes and power cars, and fly around the world. We’re taking a different approach, I think,’ Hayler tells us. ‘We’re not saying don’t fly.
‘We are saying climate change is real and the tipping point for this being accepted has passed. People now see that the way we are living in the world is extractory and we’re taking out more than we’re putting in. I think the majority would say we need to be moving towards a regenerative system where we can exist and coexist on Earth,’ he continues. ‘Blue Earth is not about creating another echo chamber, where climate people work in silos, even the climate agenda is getting tired of its own audience. It’s about saying we need financial incentives for the changemakers out there.’
According to Hayes, Blue Earth Summit is about ‘inspiring, connecting and acting’. Or, to put that another way, it brings together those with knowledge and ideas, and those with the ability to fund them. ‘We get everyone in the same room, inspired by the outdoors, adventure, the environment. We have a different crowd to your standard climate event, and different to a normal corporate event,’ we’re told.
Since inception, representatives from cycling, active and sustainable transport have rubbed shoulders with members of the surfing community who had coffee with bosses of decarbonisation startups who just spoke with athletic activists raising money to cross Africa by going from marathon to marathon. A real cross section of climate aligned sectors, actors and opportunities.
Co-f0nder of the UK Environmental Funders Network, non-executive director at Defra (and a leading architect of the Agriculture Act 2020), Ben Goldsmith first attended Blue Earth Summit in 2023. Impressed by what he saw, this year he returns to speak on rewilding and ecosystem restoration having already been part of the event’s steering committee.
‘I was really sort of blow away by the scale of it,’ Goldsmith says of his first time at the Summit. ‘The number of people involved in all aspects of the transition to an environmentally sustainable economy and society. And lots of people working in nature. Often these green events and climate events and so on are very focused on decarbonisation of the built environment.
‘But when I walked into the Blue Earth Summit last year there were stalls talking about sea wilding, seagrass restoration, re-oystering, amazing things in nature restoration fields,’ he continues. ‘I think bringing all these people together into one place, the format of it is very valuable to everyone. Not just in terms of the more practical cooperation and collaboration opportunities that present themselves, but emotionally. Being an entrepreneur can be quite a lonely place really.’
Spanning three days, Blue Earth Summit’s programme is as unique as the audience. The first two days are dedicated to conference, exhibition and deals, with 7,000 delegates expected. Many will be involved in an estimated 20,000 one-to-one meetings. Most will hear from the 300 experts lined up to present, discuss, debate and speak over the course of the gathering.
Day three, meanwhile, moves beyond the financial and contractual to centre on celebrating the reasons many of us are so concerned with the environment. Closer than the existential threat to life on our planet, and more tangible. So Friday is all about celebrating the connections we have and share with the natural world, the ways we interact and engage with it honoured through a range of outdoor activities at Canary Wharf, including breathwork, urban runs, open water swimming and yoga.
Blue Earth Summit runs Wednesday 16th October to Friday 18th October at Woolwich Works, London, SE18 6HD. Tickets and more information can be found here.
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Image: Blue Earth Summit
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