GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
No One Can Be Sustainable Alone, with Rikke Terkelsen
In this episode we talk to Rikke Terkelsen, Regional Sustainability Advisor at the Royal Danish Consulate General in Istanbul, whose global journey through countries like Australia, the US, and Dubai has shaped her unique approach to sustainable development. Rikke takes us inside her work on everything from sustainable office design through to the the complex intersection of geopolitics and sustainability.
And with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals looming, Rikke discusses the urgency of creating a unified sustainability language and bridging the gap between knowledge and action – by working together! Listen in for a compelling discussion on elevating climate change on global agendas and the strategies to engage future generations in this critical dialogue.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Reagency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Rike Terkelsen, the Regional Sustainability Advisor at the Royal Danish Consulate General in Istanbul, turkey. She is part of a Danish government initiative, sustainable Global Value Chains. They support responsible business conduct and due diligence initiatives around the world with advisors in Vietnam, bangladesh, brazil, africa and India, developing tools and workshops, as well as directly supporting the Trade Council advisors and Danish companies. Wow.
Speaker 3:I know and we're not done there, rikke, I'm going to carry on. So you're a dedicated supporter of UN Global Goals. And before the journey to Istanbul, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was heading up a unit looking at SMEs, weren't they, and how they integrated the SDGs into their business development. And before that, I'm quite excited, you had a consultancy OneGate, focused on sustainable office design, which I love to bits, which looked at both physical design and layout as well as mental impacts, which is work, culture, happiness, work. And I have to make sure I get the pronunciation right Who-gate at work, who-gate, yes, who-gate. I was almost there, rikki, wasn't I? Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Speaker 4:It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 3:I'm practicing it again now. Huguet, huguet, I must get that right.
Speaker 2:Huguet love that Anyway.
Speaker 3:so, rikki, we obviously have so much to talk about, but let's start with your journey. So, before we kicked off the recording, we talked about your degree in economics and minoring in Japanese. But how did you end up on this journey towards taking action on sustainability?
Speaker 4:Well, I think there are like three main points. So I've always been a global citizen. So I have studied in Australia, in my youth as an exchange student, I lived in the US and I also lived in Dubai from 15 to 20. So I've been always have a very global mindset and this is a global agenda right. And I think, from Denmark and the Nordic perspective, we've always had a tradition of sustainability of some sort, you know, with a lot of green energy, focus on wind and waste sorting. You know we've done that for many years, but I think it was mostly kicked off when I worked in the design business during my period in Dubai. I moved there the same year as the global goals were in effect from the UN and from there it just took off really fast, as I think it's been a point of competitive advantage for many Danish companies for many years and they wanted to be first movers, so it seemed very natural to jump on the train and for me, working with sustainability is just part of my DNA. I think now Wow.
Speaker 2:So let's go chronologically. Can you tell us about your experience in OneGate? What does sustainable office design entail? What is it?
Speaker 4:decoration and the buildings, healthy buildings. You know the air you breathe, you know that you sit with natural materials and good quality. But it's also about the mental aspect. So to have a sustainable workplace, it needs to be a nice place to be. It's about company values, it's about creativity, having space for headspace, you know, and combining those two I found was a very neat way to talk to big corporate clients.
Speaker 4:You know, how can you make, turn the workplace, the physical workplace, into your advantage with your employees and I think, moving a little bit on, you know, this is also how I think you should think about sustainability today. I mean, it's a whole lot of approach. You cannot just single out a single aspect, just single out a single aspect, and I think that frame of mind came about in my work in the design business and as a spinoff. Actually, design and fashion were the first ones to really see the advantage of sustainability. They saw it from a marketing point of view and today some of them will be in trouble for greenwashing. But this is why this industry especially were fast to sort of see oh, this is somewhere where we can. You know, this is a blue ocean. We can move somewhere that nobody else has gone. So I think naturally, that as I was part of this sector, I became a part of that as well. Today I focus a lot more on impact than words, but I guess that was the beginning.
Speaker 3:Well, and I'm tempted actually to completely derail Damla's plan for this interview and we could talk the whole podcast about workplace design. It would be amazing and we we are moving shortly onto global diplomacy and international goals, but I think workplace design is a fascinating space at the moment. I am carrying on with this down, I'm sorry, but the I think it's fascinating at the moment because post-covid and everybody's working in these sort of hybrid ways and everybody's redesigning their workplaces to become more like a cafe or home. It's fascinating, isn't it? How much design is changing at the moment.
Speaker 4:Oh, yes, but I think there's also. I mean, covid opened the eyes to the possibilities of working at home and how much you could do online, but it also brought attention to what you could not have the reading of body language, the being in a new environment. You know going to work, going off work, you know taking time off, you know everything was blurred out. So I think it also proved or showed the importance of the workplace and and of course, you know, I feel it's it's so logical that if you're in a space you like to be in, that makes you feel good and you perform better.
Speaker 4:I mean, it's not rocket science, I mean I totally agree and also I mean that space as well.
Speaker 3:It's opened up. For those of us who have always blurred the lines between what is work and what is having fun which I know I suspect is you, and I know is Damla and myself Then it changed completely. Anyway, I am going to move on because I want to talk about UN17, which was this business center where you were looking at SMEs small and medium sized and how the sustainable development goals could be integrated in their business plans. I'm passionate about this. For three years, I've been running a program for Greater Manchester looking at how we can get SMEs on the journey to net zero. So what effect can SMEs have on things like climate change and how did you support them in navigating their way through this sort of work?
Speaker 4:So this was a public-private initiative. Somebody in the municipality in the centre of Denmark got this idea we need to help the SMEs. They don't know how to move forward with this, so we'll make a centre, we'll make a place that they can go and get help. And then they hired me and said make it happen. You know, that was basically the headline and it was really interesting.
Speaker 4:I mean, smes has a huge say in green transition and sustainable development. They persist. You know, 99% of the world's companies are SMEs. You know. So they're not. You know, they're an important part of business, even though the big ones often take the headlines. So, and also I connect them to what I do today, so the whole value chain perspective, so most value chains consist of SMEs, so, and they all need to do this together. So my mantra and I've been quoted about this many times is that nobody can be sustainable alone, and you're so depending on the ones before and the ones after, and everybody must live together and this is why we need the SMEs.
Speaker 4:So, even though all new legislation in Europe, for instance oh my God, yes, welcome to Istanbul. I don't know if you can hear them honking the horns out here, but all the new legislation is, of course, aimed at the big ones, but it says that they must take responsibility into their value chain. So indirectly it will affect all companies, also the smaller ones, and then to the other side of it. I'm really passionate about showing these smaller companies the business case of sustainability. Why is it really a good idea, regardless of what the lawmakers or anybody else says? This is good for your business. It's both good for your branding and for your relations to your customers. But a lot of sustainability things are bottom line. So save energy, save money, save resources, save money, you know, be more efficient, better for profits. So there's so much to gain, also on the economic side of sustainability. So we must not be afraid to say that it's also business, because if it isn't, it isn't sustainable anyway and it will not last.
Speaker 4:You know and I think this will be the key when you need to engage with the SMEs is because that they understand. So when you start to talk to their business, then you got their attention and I found you know it takes some time. They don't know the vocabulary, they struggle to understand what it is, so they need a few workshops in order to sort of understand the frameworks and the concepts chain, who were their key partners in any part of the chain. And just, you know, listen to them and find that place where you could hear, oh, they're passionate about this part, and then dig into that and then have them talk about that, and then they find solutions, sustainable solutions, for a small part, and then you get the ball rolling and they work with that a little while and then all of a sudden they come back and they say, oh my God, we could do this and this and this and this.
Speaker 4:And then you go, see you, that was when I would sort of let go, you know. Then I knew that it was mission completed, because they can do it. We just need them, you know, to push them up the hill and over the top. And then they go. And this is the beauty of SMEs, you know they can act like this.
Speaker 4:They're so agile and it's often the owner themselves that run the business right. So if they decide something, it happens the next day. And this is what the big companies struggle, right. They need to turn this huge ship, you know, and get thousands of people on board and to agree on everything. So, yeah, I really enjoyed the SME segment, even though they're a stubborn bunch at one time.
Speaker 2:My takeaway message from this is you have to cook change in a long period and step by step. That's how it's cooked. Yes, and you talked about agility, and when we say agility, we will just right jump to the startups, of course, because, along with the SMEs, you have also worked with startups, and while the big business is regarding startups as a source for innovation, how about climate action leadership? I mean, is there a real potential with the startups to enhance the climate action? How can their creative solutions be scaled to make real impact, besides having a good PR strategy, real impact, how can this be scaled?
Speaker 4:But this is really the big question, because all these innovations and technologies are only going to solve our problems if they can be scaled. And this, I think, is why it's so important to have this connection between the big companies and the innovation and startup environment. Today, I think, big companies they don't have R&D departments like they used to. They actually let the startup environment sort of pop up and then when they see a good idea or something they feel they have business potential, they snatch it, buy it, incorporate it and then they scale it. So it's actually a good way to scale. Of course, sometimes it kills the entrepreneurship, so it is a two-sworded sword, you know, or two-edged sword.
Speaker 4:It's difficult, but I think innovation is better and faster when it's done with passion and with people who has the, you know, the energy and the passion to go with it, and that's why startups is such a good force of that, and I know in Denmark we work a lot with doing setups and ecosystems to support the whole startup system, both in terms of how to get capital but also just supporting that.
Speaker 4:They have colleagues and they can get help and they can get guidance from, you know, professional advisors and all the things they don't know Accounting and marketing, and they may be engineers. You know who knows everything about, you know hydrogen or something you know. So we need to make them, allow them to focus on that and then make a support system for the rest. And then, yes, we probably need either the governments to run the big projects or the big companies, the corporates, to at least invest, if not buy, the ideas that are scalable but not all of them are. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have them anyways, because they're still an important source of inspiration, I feel, and we still need some of these inventions, even though they're not scalable, because they help us, you know, with the mindset change at least.
Speaker 3:I mean, this may sound a little bit niche, riké, but I'm finding this conversation, this podcast episode, challenging, not because you aren't a wonderful person because you are, but because with every answer, I want to go down a different track. And the more I work with people who work on sustainable innovation in particular, they keep telling me it's all about scale up, it's not about having the initial idea, or then everything happens in the scale up phase, doesn't it? So it's fascinating territory, but we're not going to go down that corridor this time. Just like we left workplace design behind us, rico, I wanted to go global and talk about 2025 and where we are today and the fact that, amongst your many hats, you kind of now wear a global diplomacy hat, and so Eurasia's 2025 risk report is just out and one headline coming through.
Speaker 3:That is that the political turmoil we're seeing across the world and with G20 and G7 countries still being the biggest economies, but where we're seeing these global leaders retracting a little bit from climate goals and objectives, from the SDGs, almost repolarizing on their own territories and stopping such international players. And you said you're a citizen of the world. How do you think that current trend is going to affect climate action and the global goals?
Speaker 4:um, on the short term, I'm afraid it's going to affect it negatively. I'm afraid, uh, there is a lot going on and, uh, a lot. I have many, many colleagues working on all these geopolitical agendas, so I am not going to put my hand in there. But I did a project last year with some colleagues of mine about geopolitics and sustainable development and actually, where does this overlap? And we found that actually it's more of a causal effect. So geopolitics can promote sustainable development sometimes and it can also hinder sustainable development.
Speaker 4:And right now, I feel just the fact that there are so many changes and so much conflict and so many things going on at the moment. It just takes away the focus. It's not even to pinpoint one specific thing that's occurring. There's just so much occurring that it's hard to get the climate change and sustainable development up on the agenda. And this is why I feel that we need to just keep pushing the private sector, because when politics is politics and the politicians are busy with something else, the private sector can still drive the change, and they have to do it anyway because it's them. A lot of the things that they're doing is the ones that are causing it, and we just need to tell them yes, sometimes legislation will make you comply, but you have to do this regardless.
Speaker 4:And I mean the 17 global goals were a compromise right, a political compromise. I'm sure many of the countries wanted them to be much more ambitious, but you needed 193 countries to sign them, so you couldn't talk a whole lot about democracy, or you know? I mean just the fact look at how much we talk about gender discrimination, democracy, institutions, justice in the global goals and we still had so many countries sign them. It's actually a miracle, if you ask me, and today it seems even more a miracle that it ever happened, and I will always already say now we're not going to meet the targets in 2030. We're not going to make it. I mean, most or a lot of the targets are moving in the wrong direction at the moment, but they're such an important framework and they contain everything that we need to do, so we just need to keep pushing them and we need to have the private sector engage in them and and support them in understanding that this is the only way to move forward and then hope that global trade will sort of infiltrate because, like you say, of course this is very different when you go to different continents and different countries.
Speaker 4:I mean, in Denmark, we are sometimes saying that people are already tired of the global goals because they heard so much about them. I think awareness percentage in Denmark is above 80. 80% of the Danish population knows what the global goals are and it has been all over the media. You know, and we think that everybody knows and everybody is sick of hearing about it. You know, if only, yes, if only you know. And that's not the case. So we need to sort of ensure that we keep using this beautiful framework work with the SMEs.
Speaker 4:I used to make them go through every single target 169, and paint it green or yellow or red. Is this relevant for you or not? Or do you not know? And then you know they could always find something that was relevant. Every company can find at least one. Every company can find at least one. And then you say, fine, run with that. But you make them go through all of it and you make them understand that this is a big agenda and there are so many things to do. So I just, yes, I am a big fan of the SDGs. I think they're an amazing framework and I hope that we can keep promoting it and get as many as possible to use it, because we need a common language on this.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there are gaps between knowledge, attention and action, and we need to fill all of those gaps. So it's a big work, I know, but there is something you said was very important we have to push the climate agenda to higher ranks. And that's true because the report, steve, was talking about Eurasia's 2025 top risks while it was just stating that the leadership was retracting from its role. They listed out 10 biggest lists for the global trade and investors and everything, and climate wasn't one of them. That was hilarious because, at the same time, the report came up like four or five days ago and Los Angeles is burning to the ground and climate wasn't a risk for the business. So that's the question. It's a good report, by the way. It has very interesting notes in it, but still, I think we have to push climate climate more, and that makes me come to our kind of uh may I just say one thing, because world economic forum also does this uh risk report where they ask the companies what they perceive as the biggest risk.
Speaker 4:And their climate is moving up and and on a short span it's not their top, you know, geopolitics. Geopolitics is actually, I think, their top worry, but on the long run it goes all green. It's all about climate and sustainability that worries the companies. So at least some reports say that.
Speaker 2:At least some reports say that. Ok, and you are part of the diplomatic world. From a sustainability angle, how to navigate climate diplomacy in this geopolitically fractured and polarised world?
Speaker 4:then I mean there are many roles of being a diplomat, like you say. It can be to support a concrete company that wants you know, to find a partner in a certain part of the world. How can you do that? But a lot of the work we do is economic diplomacy and climate diplomacy as well. So it's about creating awareness. You know I go to every single conference I can. I never say no to keynotes or panels at universities or whatever, because to try and get the message out and really share. Especially, I love when I'm invited to universities or colleges because you know they are the ones who's going to have to do this in a few years when they graduate.
Speaker 4:So awareness creation, then sharing knowledge. So I think a very important part of this diplomatic work is to share what we have learned. I know that we say a lot that Denmark is on the forefront of a lot of things, but we're also one of the big consumers, so we're not all good. You know we also use a lot of resources in Denmark, but at least we have a lot of knowledge about green energy, for instance, and water, et cetera. So we need to share that with the world. And then, of course, just to motivate and inspire you know that's an important part of it as well and ensure that the people who are working on this agenda will keep doing it more and faster. So that's what we try to do.
Speaker 3:So, rike, I'm going to wrap this up with our final question in a moment, although I think when people scroll through the episodes on our podcast, they'll see that we've run over slightly with you because there's so much to talk about. I know. I like to think that when they go down and they go, that episode's 27 minutes, that episode's 29 minutes Not Smile, because we know that we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So our question is what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:Nature. It's easy Nature in any shape or form. If you are in doubt whether you should do anything on a sustainability agenda, go to a lake, walk in a forest, you know, go see animals or anything natural, and you'll know that we need to preserve this and we need to protect this because it's part of us. So nature always makes me smile I love it.
Speaker 3:I love it. Biophilia is the answer. That's what you're saying. Okay, amazing. So, uh, damla, what can I say? I mean this rick came as your guest and she's been amazing.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much over to you so thanks to everyone who has listened to our good guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes where we talk to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, Rike Damla, see you soon. See you soon. Thank you, Bye. Bye, good Guys, good Geist.
