After the Sustainable Finance Forum

Yesterday I had the chance to facilitate one of the four workshops at the Sustainable Finance Forum, hosted by UKFin+ Network, BISCA, IDAI and the University of Birmingham: Data, Tech and AI for Sustainability Solutions.

One of the attendees, Rizwana Saqib, wrote up a recap already, and put it better than I could: the future isn't about having more data or more AI. It's about having better data, better questions, and the right human judgement to turn technology into responsible decisions. That's exactly the conversation we had.

The Issues in the Room

Five issues kept resurfacing, in one form or another, across the whole session: data quality and reliability, data confidentiality and access, data literacy and interpretation, connecting data across disciplines and organisations, and using AI responsibly, not just efficiently.

The Skills Question

On skills, the same pattern held. Not just technical capability: critical thinking, analytical reasoning, responsibility, human oversight, data literacy, and the ability to work across disciplines. A room full of academics, technologists and private-sector practitioners kept landing on the same answer, whether the question was about data or about people.

Should sustainability solutions stop calling themselves sustainability solutions, and start calling themselves sustainability risk instead?

Two questions from the room stuck with me more than any framework did. Many asked how sustainability solutions break out of the reporting-cycle bubble and become central to how a business actually operates. And whether sustainability solutions should stop calling themselves sustainability solutions, and start calling themselves sustainability risk instead. Neither question has an easy answer. Both are the right ones to be asking.

What Happens Next

We've already agreed follow-on sessions to keep this going, and we're waiting on UKFin+'s full summary of the day before drawing firmer conclusions.

Data, tech and AI can't fix a sustainability problem on their own. They can only make the judgement behind a decision defensible, if the data underneath it is something anyone would actually trust.

Thank you to the attendees from Durham, Liverpool and Birmingham Universities, and to everyone from the private sector who spent the day in the room: Andrew Tucker, Simon Badman, Dr Bimal Roy Bhanu, and everyone from UKFin+ Network, BISCA, IDAI and the University of Birmingham who made the day possible. Well done to Sarah Sinclair and Karen Elliott for pulling it all together. I'm sure we'll be having collaborative conversations soon.