Martin Koehring - Global Sustainability and Ocean Expert

Forum for the Future’s recent ‘Business Spotlight’ campaign explored four key unlocks to transformational business: inspiring visionary leadership, rethinking value chains, transforming consumption, and creating an enabling context.

Exciting opportunity to join my team at Forum for the Future as Global Strategic Lead - Food System Transition (UK-based; hybrid or remote). Application deadline: 21 May 2023

Thrilled to join the international sustainability non-profit Forum for the Future as its new Global Director of Impact. For 25 years Forum has been working in partnership with business, governments and civil society to accelerate transformation to a just and regenerative future. Forum is internationally recognised for its approach to driving systems change.

Did you know that the ocean flows through all 17 of the UN SDGs? I spoke with Tim Silverwood from the Ocean Impact Organisation on the Ocean Impact Podcast about how the ocean is a solution to solving global challenges.

After 11 and a half years I have decided to leave The Economist Group to pursue a new exciting adventure. It’s been an incredible journey! More about my new destination soon, but now is the time to reminisce about more than a decade at this great media company.

Proud to be part of the team behind The Sustainability Project by Economist Impact (and supported by Infosys), which has won a Webby Award for “Best Writing (Editorial)” in the People's Voice awards (Websites and Mobile Sites category). Dubbed “The Oscars of the Internet”, the Webby Awards honour the Best of the Internet each year.

This Saturday is Earth Day. To celebrate this occasion I will deliver the closing keynote on ocean sustainability at the 2023 Earth Day Symposium hosted by the World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF) Miami Office.

An estimated 150 million more people were suffering from hunger in 2021 than there had been in 2019. Reversing this worrying trend - and restoring progress towards zero hunger - will require a significant uplift in financing for agri-food systems. I was the project director of a new Economist Impact study on this topic.

My article on the "Three reasons why 2023 could be the year of blue carbon" has been published in UN Today, the official magazine of United Nations international civil servants in Geneva. The article explores how blue carbon is vital in addressing the three interconnected planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

I am at Economist Impact’s Sustainability Week in London to moderate exciting sessions in areas such as regenerative agriculture, circular construction, the future of aviation, and supply-chain decarbonisation.

Economist Impact’s tenth annual World Ocean Summit & Expo took place from February 27th to March 1st in Lisbon, Portugal. The summit featured 188 speakers in more than 50 sessions across the three days, attracting more than 1,500 registered attendees. The month of March also celebrated International Women's Day and Women's History Month.

Economist Impact’s 10th World Ocean Summit wrapped up successfully on March 1st, having convened more than 1,000 delegates and almost 200 high-level speakers in Lisbon to discuss how to build a sustainable ocean economy. My six key takeaways from the World Ocean Summit are summarised here.

Economist Impact's 10th annual World Ocean Summit and Expo in Lisbon in late February and early March will feature at least 180 speakers and 1,500 attendees with a focus on “Tackling the greatest challenges facing the ocean: climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution”. Ahead of the summit the World Ocean Initiative highlights blogs from some of the speakers.

Economist Impact's World Ocean Summit (February 27th-March 1st in Lisbon) celebrates its 10th anniversary this month. I am looking forward to moderating many exciting sessions at the summit, on diverse topics from closing the finance gap to meet SDG14 and scaling private-sector blue finance to harnessing “blue biotechnology” and developing blue carbon projects.

I recently spoke with Dieter Brockmeyer and Christian Salow for their "Two the power of MORE" podcast to explain how to unlock the power of the ocean to address the three major planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity, and pollution.

The World Ocean Summit in Lisbon at the end of February and early March will bring the ocean community together to inspire ocean solutions. This year will be vital in making progress on building a sustainable ocean economy in order to tackle the three interconnected planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

The ocean is the world’s largest carbon sink and our biggest hope in the fight against climate change. Tune in to the latest episode of Beyond Business with Wärtsilä as I talk with Atte Palomäki and Andrea Morgante about how to build a sustainable ocean economy.

A new year - a new opportunity to build momentum for a strong sustainability agenda. In a new blog post for Economist Impact's Sustainability Project, I highlight the top 5 sustainability and climate trends to watch in 2023, and why stronger collaboration will be required to accelerate progress this year.

As 2022 draws to a close, Economist Impact's World Ocean Initiative celebrates some of the key achievements of the year, including progress on a global plastics treaty and the acceleration of blue carbon markets.

The time to start building better is now. Population growth and rising demand for housing mean construction is expanding at a faster rate than efforts to reduce energy consumption. But only a tiny fraction of properties are carbon neutral. Next week I will be moderating a virtual panel discussion on “Constructing change".