Harnessing the Fourth Wave of Environmentalism
What is the Fourth Wave and how can we promote the next generation of environmental innovation?
In a conversation with writer Eric Pooley, Environmental Defense Fund president Fred Krupp describes the power of the Fourth Wave of environmental innovation.
Q: What is The Fourth Wave of environmental innovation?
The Fourth Wave is how we’re describing a megatrend we’ve been seeing unfold all around us — in EDF’s work and across the environmental community. I just wrote about it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. It’s a revolution in environmental progress driven by innovation and technology that gives people the power to take action. It has the power to transform how we solve environmental problems, helping us scale the solutions we need to stabilize the climate, reverse overfishing, and protect public health and endangered species.
Q: So what makes a movement Fourth Wave?
There are three main ingredients: Innovation, People and Action.
Innovation means the new ideas, new policy approaches and new technologies that are helping us measure and reduce pollution, protect public health, and preserve endangered habitats. People means everyone — from business leaders and investors to politicians, and from farmers and fishermen to consumers and regular citizens. The Fourth Wave gives us new ways to communicate and work together, scaling partnerships like never before. And then there’s action. Whether it’s cost-effective rules to protect people and nature or better sustainability practices in a business setting, Fourth Wave environmentalism translates data and insight into concrete action and measurable results.
EDF is by no means the only group embracing these ideas. The Nature Conservancy, the World Resources Institute, and many other groups are doing this kind of work. We hope everyone will embrace the idea, because it has the potential to empower everyone.
Q: You mentioned innovation. Do you mean technology?
Yes, but not technology alone. The cost of pollution sensors, data analytics, and IT are all dropping fast, and that puts information in the hands of more people. It makes pollution not only visible but actionable. That action, however, depends on people. Technology won’t solve our problems by itself. That’s why EDF plays the role of catalyst, putting data and science in the hands of business leaders, government officials, citizens and activists who can drive progress on these issues.
For example, we partnered with Google Earth Outreach to put sensors on Google Street View cars to not only map but measure methane leaking from the natural gas lines under more than a dozen cities. Now gas companies, city officials and residents alike could see the leaks. We also worked with Google cars to map air pollution in West Oakland California, a low-income community hemmed in by highways and other big pollution sources, which helped local advocates make the case for better protection.
We’ve also seen great promise on the oceans where fishing boats can be coordinated and monitored remotely. Some fisheries are testing technology that will count and classify a boat’s catch with cameras tied to machine learning. All these actions can prevent overfishing and illegal fishing while protecting critical food sources.
The Fourth Wave is more than just new gadgets — it includes new ideas and new approaches.
For example, we’ve been working to develop new conservation approaches that reward landowners for preserving endangered species’ habitats. We’ve developed a Habitat Quantification Tool that measures not just quantity, but quality of habitat.
Our work to increase fish stocks around the world is based on a powerful economic tool that allows for a sustainable level of fishing, improves flexibility for fishermen and increases choices for customers. Technology will help scale this approach, but it’s a tool that supports a much more powerful idea.
The Fourth Wave is not pro-tech for technology’s sake. It’s pro-tech because we see incredible opportunity for people around the world to use technology to scale environmental solutions as never before.
Some have associated the Fourth Wave with the emergence of the environmental justice movement and an increasingly diverse and local activism powered by the grassroots. These are crucially important elements, but they do not tell the whole story, because they overlook dramatic changes in context — particularly the disruptive and accelerating changes triggered by the digital revolution.
Q: You were at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos where global leaders were talking about “the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Is that related to the Fourth Wave?
They are closely related concepts that developed independently as our organization observed the same trend. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the term Klaus Schwab and his team at the World Economic Forum use to describe the drastic changes that technology, AI, IoT and the like are having across the global economy. When we talk about The Fourth Wave of Environmental Innovation, we’re describing a subset of that — how those innovations are upending our assumptions about environmental progress.
Q: What is the role of corporations and industry and the Fourth Wave?
Many of our environmental challenges — especially climate change — are linked to the workings of our global economy. Businesses must therefore naturally play an integral role in solving them. What’s promising about The Fourth Wave is that it finds common ground between internal business drivers like profit and growth and external drivers like carbon emissions and clean air.
There’s a lot more common ground today than there was 20 years ago in part due to innovation. Clean, renewable energy is cost-competitive with fossil fuel in many places. Energy companies know their long-term performance will be tied to their action on carbon. Utilities and retailers know their customers now demand a stronger commitment to environmental performance than in the past.
Q: If this is the Fourth Wave, what were the first three?
The First Wave was the land conservation movement of President Teddy Roosevelt who built our National Park System. The Second Wave was using the force of law to address the ravages of mid-century industrial pollution. The Third Wave of the environmental movement, which I described 31 years ago in the Wall Street Journal, was when we really realized that we had to partner with corporations to drive environmental progress and forge market-based solutions that were flexible and least-cost. We’ve had great success with that model over three decades — and Fourth Wave innovation supercharges all of those approaches.
We’re still in the courts, working to protect our bedrock environmental safeguards like the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act. But we also make the business case for better air quality, lower carbon emissions and clean water. Low-cost technologies make that case stronger, because the solutions are more available and affordable than ever. Business leaders know their customers, staff and investors expect more of them than ever before. The tools now exist for all industries to raise the bar on sustainability. We’re also talking to change agents in university classrooms and engineering labs, parish halls and community centers, and inside committee rooms at City Hall and on Capitol Hill. That’s what makes the Fourth Wave so exciting.
Q: Many Americans don’t trust technology and their faith in government is wavering. They don’t know whether to believe what they’re reading online. How does the Fourth Wave deal with that?
It is a time of deep mistrust in America. Innovations that make problems visible — and that help rally action to deal with them — can begin to restore faith in collective action. The Trump Administration is attempting to roll back climate and clean air protections, but Fourth Wave tools help us fight back and win. For example, the administration and their Congressional allies have tried and failed three times to gut rules that reduce wasteful emissions of natural gas on federal and tribal lands. Fourth Wave tools helped EDF put that issue on the map and hold the Administration accountable.
Another advantage of the Fourth Wave is that it levels the playing field so different players — citizens, entrepreneurs, cities, universities, NGOs — can drive solutions when Washington doesn’t. As we are fighting for strong federal action, we need our other institutions — including industry, NGOs, universities, investors and consumers — to keep the momentum going.
In any era, solving environmental problems means making use of the best available tools. In this era, those tools include innovations that can help drive transparency, responsibility, and least-cost action. Though technology can obviously be used for good or ill, when sensors, machine learning, IT, and data analytics are used to shape smart policy, rein in free riders, and reward corporate responsibility, the result will be positive change that helps people and nature prosper.
That’s the Fourth Wave.
Environmental Defense Fund works with businesses, government & communities to create lasting solutions to the most serious enviro problems. #ActOnClimate
