Industry has come together to tackle the environment, biodiversity and climate crisis.

The Environmental Industries Commission (EIC) held its One Crisis: A One Solution Approach seminar in London yesterday (September 17).

The United Nations says humanity is facing a triple planetary crisis – of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.

Industry leaders, environmental supply chain experts, government decision-makers and infrastructure and built environment companies joined forces yesterday to tackle these three key challenges currently facing industry and society.

Philippa Spence, managing director of Ramboll’s 3,000-strong global Environment & Health (E&H) Division – and chair of the EIC – was keynote speaker and called on the sector for “unity”.

She said: “Fragmented strategies are not just ineffective; they are counterproductive.

“We need a ‘One Solution Approach’. A holistic approach to infrastructure development—one that draws upon your wealth of expertise and best practices to create systems that support both people and our planet.

“We need to anticipate the future and build for whole life value and climate resilience.

“Our goal is to encourage open dialogue and spark opportunities to develop more and better integrated solutions that address the UN’s three planetary crises message head-on.”

The event showed how communication is key to tackling One Crisis - championing best practice and project successes to move industry in the right direction and encourage a behavioural shift.

Other issues raised included the circular economy and the transformative shift needed to view and manage resources in a different way.

Regulation, measuring biodiversity benefits rather than just the GDP win, the need to work more closely with local authorities and changes in the tax system were all tackled at the event.

Among the panellists speaking were Julia Baker, technical director – nature services at Mott Macdonald; Pheobe Tucker, nature associate at the Green Finance Institute, Sam Bower, head of sustainability, ecology, biodiversity and arboriculture at Balfour Beatty; Matt Prescott, head of carbon strategy at Heathrow and James Harris, senior policy adviser at the National Infrastructure Commission.

Spence said: “This topic is probably the most important thing I’m talking to any clients or colleagues about right now – it is One Crisis and everything is interconnected.

“Because we started as an industry responding to the climate crisis, we started by looking at little parts of it and not the whole of it.”

She said she hoped the event would encourage people to “take action but collaborate while they’re doing it”.

“This issue is too big to try and solve it in multiple pockets and I really think we need to be working together as an industry,” she added. “We need to share best practice and get to a better place faster.”

In its manifesto the EIC has already championed faster planning systems, Biodiversity Net Gain legislation, a firm commitment to stability with long term funding for infrastructure and a strategic collaborative approach.

It will now publish the findings of the One Crisis event in a report.

Kate Jennings, CEO of EIC and the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE), said the event was “just the beginning of the conversation” to tackle the One Crisis issue.

“Let’s use our experiences from this event, along with the report, as a catalyst to strengthen our resolve to address the One Crisis together and turning our dialogue into tangible outcomes to take us out of crisis into a truly sustainable future.”