Martin Koehring - Global Sustainability and Ocean Expert | Charity Board Member | TEDx Speaker | I help create multi-stakeholder partnerships & impactful research on 🌏 Climate 🌏 Nature 🌏 Blue Economy

Publications

Sustainability, climate change and the ocean economy

Editor (selected publications)
• World Ocean Outlook 2023: Building on the ocean momentum, a report written by Economist Impact’s World Ocean Initiative. The report focuses on solutions and opportunities for action to address the three planetary crises: climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
• The Sustainability Project by Economist Impact, combining insights, innovation and influence to convene and actively engage global stakeholders with the power to effect real change. It 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.
• Food Sustainability Index, examining how food systems are performing across three pillars: food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture, and nutritional challenges.
• Ending hunger: the role of agri-food financing, which identifies strategies to increase the volume and impact of financing for agri-food systems, with the goal of accelerating progress towards zero hunger.
• Pushing back, moving forward, which aims to understand the criticisms of the concept of ESG and use them to improve and strengthen it and its application.
• Progress and profit: How consumer companies will scale sustainability through collaboration, a survey-based study that explores the extent of collaboration among companies in the retail and consumer-products industries on collective challenges they face in implementing sustainability measures.
• Reimagining economics for a carbon-constrained world, a series of articles and op-eds bringing the biggest debates on the role of sustainability in business and economic growth to life.
• Mobilising the global investment chain for social impact, exploring the progress being made through corporate-investor collaboration, as well as revealing the challenges that remain and the other stakeholders whose participation is essential.
• The ESG conundrum: How investors and companies can find common purpose in ESG, based on two global surveys—one of asset owners and one of companies—to examine how they can find common purpose in ESG.
• Getting to Net-Zero, a research programme that assesses the progress of companies towards net-zero, and to understand how they are tackling roadblocks along the way, based on a survey of 500 global business leaders.
• 12 decarbonising technologies for cities, a research programme identifying technologies that can help cities achieve their carbon-emission targets while also creating jobs, lowering energy costs for residents, and improving overall quality of life.
• Rethinking plastics in a circular economy, a research programme assessing advanced plastic recycling technologies.
• Resetting the agenda: How ESG is shaping our future, a survey-based research programme produced by Economist Impact and sponsored by UBS that aims to understand how ESG could be both a new performance marker and a growth driver for institutional investors.
• The critical role of infrastructure for the Sustainable Development Goals, which assesses the economic, environmental and social dimensions of infrastructure.
• A sustainable ocean economy in 2030: Opportunities and challenges.
• Accelerating Energy Innovation for the Blue Economy.
• Accelerating a Sustainable Ocean Economy.
• December 2019 ocean supplement in The Economist newspaper.

Author (selected publications)
• How could ocean innovation accelerate sustainable development by 2030?, in: Horizon 2030, Springwise, January 2024, pp. 12/13.
• The maturing CSO: How CSOs should engage with other key business functions, The Sustainability Project (Economist Impact), 30 October 2023.
• Accelerating the SDGs through Investments in Marine Natural Capital, essay as part of the official T20 compendium for India’s G20 presidency entitled ”Think20 India 2023: Critical, Constructive, Conclusive”, August 2023, pp. 78-85.
• Demystifying impact: Five things business leaders need to know to drive positive change, BusinessGreen, 3 August 2023.
• Three reasons why 2023 could be the year of blue carbon, UN Today, April 2023, pp. 20/21.
• The Post-COVID-19 Ocean Economy: Building Back Bluer, with Karin Kemper and Ambassador Peter Thomson; in: Ocean Yearbook, Volume 35 (2021): Issue 1 (Jul 2021); pp. 1–17; Publisher: Brill | Nijhoff.
• Foreword of a book, Preparing a Workforce for the New Blue Economy: People, Products and Policies, edited by Liesl Hotaling and Richard W. Spinrad, Elsevier, 2021.
• A sustainable ocean economy in 2030: Opportunities and challenges, World Ocean Initiative, 2020.
• Why fixing food systems is crucial for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, Thomson Reuters Foundation, April 2019.
• Food sustainability, pollution and child mortality, HuffPost, April 2017.
• Rapid urbanisation, climate change and resource scarcity, Economist Impact Perspectives, September 2014.
• Reconciling economic growth and environmental protection, Green Economics Institute, August 2014.
• The EU’s 2030 climate package, HuffPost, March 2014.

Podcasts (selected publications)
• Host: Inside the Circle, a podcast series supported by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, covering the transition to circular plastics, food, fashion and cities, May 2022.
• Interviewee: Ocean Impact Podcast, How the Ocean Flows Through the UN SDGs with Martin Koehring, May 2023.
• Interviewee: Two the power of MORE, The Ocean – Big Business Tackling Climate Change, February 2023.
• Interviewee: Beyond Business with Wärtsilä, Why should we invest in the blue economy?, January 2023.
• Interviewee: IUCN’s Investing For Ocean Impact, Season 1, Episode 8: How banks and insurance companies can help Nature-based Solutions, February 2022.
• Interviewee: Therma’s Point 01 podcast, Martin Koehring of The Economist’s World Ocean Initiative, October 2020.
• Interviewee: The Peggy Smedley Show: Sustainability in the Seas, August 2020.

Editorial advisor
• Protectors Oceans Series, a series of films that examine the cutting edge of science and radical thinking at work in tackling the crisis facing the world’s seas.
• Back to Blue, a multi-year initiative on pollution and ocean health by Economist Impact and The Nippon Foundation.

Global health

Editor (selected publications)
• Global Access to Healthcare: Building sustainable health systems
• Modernising health systems in the Balkan
• Global cancer preparedness
• Addressing non-communicable diseases in adolescence
• The next pandemic? Non-communicable diseases in developing countries
• Value-based healthcare in Sweden: Reaching the next level
• Value-based healthcare in Europe: Laying the foundation

I’m a global ocean, climate and sustainability expert with 20+ years of experience, including progressively more strategic and leadership responsibilities. My most recent roles include Global Director of Impact at the international sustainability non-profit Forum for the Future, Board Member at the New Economics Foundation (a think tank focusing on social, economic and environmental justice), Head of the World Ocean Initiative and Practice Lead (EMEA) for Sustainability, Climate Change and Natural Resources at Economist Impact (part of The Economist Group). My previous roles at The Economist Group include managing editor, global health lead and Europe editor at The Economist Intelligence Unit. I love to work with organisations that build a just, resilient and regenerative future for people and planet.

Over the years I have directed many sustainability-related research and thought-leadership projects with partners in business, government, academia and civil society, in areas such as food sustainability, a just energy transition and the role of business in society. I was also the editorial lead of the award-winning Sustainability Project.

As part of my wider engagement on sustainability, I am a trustee of the New Economics Foundation (a think tank focusing on social, economic and environmental justice). I sit on the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Inclusive Economies Advisory Group and the Sustainable Brands Turkey Global Advisory Board. I have also been a member of the Advisory Committee for the UN Environment Programme’s Global Environment Outlook for Business, a senior rapporteur at World Water Week, a faculty member in the Food & Sustainability Certificate Program provided by the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability and a judge at the Reuters Events Responsible Business Awards.

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