Speaker 0:
Welcome to the Wanda Space Podcast, it's great to have you on board. My name is Steve Cole and over the past 73 episodes I have been asking the same 6 questions to amazing people from around the world. People from around the world. The questions orbit around wonder and stories of hopefulness and the setting for each journey is a shared window on the space station from where we see everything from a different perspective. Before we introduce our guests this week our friends at AskNature.org are going to help us to re-wonder.

Speaker 1:
It's a calm sea in the early morning as a flock of pelicans dips low and glides just above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The appearance may be graceful, but the real grace is efficiency. These birds are using tricks of physics to catch a nearly free ride over the deep. By gliding close to the surface, pelicans compress the air below them, giving them a denser cushion to float upon. This lets them hold their wings flatter, which disturbs the air less as they move through it.

Speaker 1:
That minimizes the swirling vortices that cause a drop in air pressure and essentially drag the birds backward in flight. Saving energy by skimming this way helps the flock live to dive another day.

Speaker 0:
Our orbit this week will take us from Alaska to Florida and to experience these views with us in this ultimate window seat we welcome Gavin Starks. Gavin is an entrepreneur who has spent over 20 years helping to make data infrastructure useful to everyone. This has led to the creation of dozens of companies that are tackling complex challenges ranging from climate change to government transparency, digital supply chains to open banking. With this panoramic view above earth, I start by asking Gavin if we could do a flypast on any part of the world that is significant to you, which place, city or country would it be and why?

Speaker 2:
Well I'm going to start by taking some liberty with your question there. I'd love to do a flyby of a double quasar so I could witness 1 of the most powerful objects in the universe. But on Earth, I'd have to say Antarctica, partly to witness the scale of it firsthand and sort of see what we're destroying in the process and get a sense of just the sheer scale of it. When you read the news and read the headlines on some of the science, you say, well, an area the size of Manhattan is about to drop off. What does that look like in person?

Speaker 2:
I think experiencing that in person is quite a significant, would be quite a significant thing.

Speaker 0:
Gavin, give us a glimpse into your life story so far with an emphasis on what you were doing currently.

Speaker 2:
Yeah, sure. So I started, I studied astrophysics and worked at George Robank radio telescope helping to map out bits of the universe and exploring things like quasars and then I got sucked into the web in the mid 90s helped set up a little company called Virgin Net, which is now Virgin Media, so it's the fifth person in there. And that really sort of got me thinking about how do we bring together this sort of fantastic new technology in the web and the internet with data and all the other areas of interest that the web has enabled us to connect. So since then, I've created over a dozen companies that have all been data enabled in some way. And that's included looking at climate change, looking at open data.

Speaker 2:
I created the Open Data Institute with Tim Berners-Lee, co-chaired the development of the open banking standard, which has now opened up access and to financial data across the banking sector. So I've been involved really in the web since the early 90s, and I feel like I've been working at the intersection of business and government and science for most of my career. I'm trying to bring all these things together now with Icebreaker 1, which is a nonprofit. So we're trying to make data work harder to deliver net 0. And that's looking at policy instruments, dealing with government, dealing with regulators, dealing with industry, working with universities on the science.

Speaker 2:
So it's really that kind of systems view that we're trying to bring to this and what's enabled by having this incredible technology underneath it all with the web and the internet that can connect data in a way that connects information the way we've never been able to. There's a billion websites now. It's only taken us 30 years to get there. But if you take that as version 1, What are we going to build in the next 20 years? 1 of the things we're working on with the Icebreaker project is called Open Energy.

Speaker 2:
And that's built on the principles and the architecture of open banking. The ambition is to open up access to all of the energy data in the country. It's not a free-for-all, but if you like a web of energy data, it's something that's very possible. We've built the foundations of. And 1 of the impacts of that is we could automate environmental reporting as part of that.

Speaker 2:
So when you look at greenhouse gas reporting, there's a framework called We look at scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which are what emissions are your, what's your organization creating as an impact. There's no reason why we can't automate that using some of these tools, but we wouldn't have been able to do it 10 years ago. I did try actually, 1 of the companies I set up was venture backed and we had a bash but the market wasn't ready. Now it's very different. I'd say the technology has been democratised, some of the policy instruments, the blueprints exist now and there's a legally binding target in the UK, a hint net 0 by 2050, which means we've got to get a move on.

Speaker 2:
So it does feel like all of these elements are coming together.

Speaker 0:
Where on earth is your place of reset or recharge?

Speaker 2:
That's a great question. I grew up in a village of 700 people in Whiting Bay on the Isle of Arran. So that's my place of reset. And to me, island culture carries with it a sense of really direct agency with the environment in which you live. You know, you're beholden to the sea, the weather and the land, but if something needs done, it's either going to be done by you or someone you know.

Speaker 2:
So those are the only people around that are going to get anything done. So I think that sense of direct agency of like it's not up to anybody else. You know, you've got to get on with whatever needs to be addressed in the community in which you live. But I also think it's really grounding to be somewhere where you can stand in the same place over decades and see the same outlines, even the same rocks and the same trees as I saw when I was a child. And that's got a real sort of grounding sense to it.

Speaker 2:
The geology just sits there and you know we're just transitory on the way.

Speaker 0:
What wonder of the natural world excites you the most?

Speaker 2:
That's an easy 1, so it would be the aurora borealis. So again that's our reminder that Earth is just a small rock hurtling through space subject to the whim of our Sun and its solar wind. It also tells us about our own magnetic field and the fact that under our feet there's a whole tumultuous molten lump of stuff that is moving the poles around, changing our environment that we cannot have any agency over. So it's much bigger than us and it's right above us. So it's, Again, that's an analogy there of this island earth.

Speaker 2:
We're just custodians on a short journey.

Speaker 0:
Gavin, what is your story of hopefulness that's not your own? About a person, business or non-profit who are doing amazing things for the world.

Speaker 2:
I'm a trustee of a charity called Blue Ventures. It's a marine conservation charity. And they're just doing remarkable work. They're supporting coastal communities around the world, helping to restore ocean life, creating sustainable fishing. There, there's 300 million people worldwide who live in those communities.

Speaker 2:
And they're totally dependent on the small scale fisheries for their life and livelihoods. Blue Ventures has been developing their work for over 20 years now, and they're starting to scale it up, based on the science, based on the data, and the base of evidence of what works, but then working with humans, supporting the communities so that they can scale the work themselves. They've been working from Madagascar to Indonesia to Belize, and they're taking a real systems-based approach. So it's not just about protecting the oceans and the marine life. They're also including gender equality, so empowering women, helping to educate men and support everybody in the communities.

Speaker 2:
Right the way through to addressing net 0 with mangrove development. Mangroves can sequester 10 times the amount of carbon than a rainforest. So they've been trying to work out how do they take that back out to some of the commercial markets. There's a huge opportunity there. So their work, while they're 2 decades in, now I think they're an inflection point where they can really start to scale this up from hundreds of thousands, millions of people have helped so far to 10 times or a hundred times that.

Speaker 0:
Finally, as we prepare to re-enter, what insight, wisdom, or question would you like to share with us?

Speaker 2:
Another great question. I think the scale of change ahead really needs everyone to lean in and work out how we're going to collaborate. So in a bit of a left field link here, I also did a master's degree in electronic music. And I'm a trustee on another charity called Long Player. And Long Player is a piece of music that's designed to play for a thousand years.

Speaker 2:
It's been going 22 years so far. But as a trustee there, my role is to think about how did we maintain that narrative, that story over generations. And when I think about the challenge we've got ahead of us in terms of climate change, biodiversity, species collapse, the myriad things that are becoming more and more urgent in our world. We're gonna need governments, regulators, industry, investors, creatives, people to work together on how we quantify and measure value and what does this mean for our actions in the next decade? What's it with now really?

Speaker 2:
The investments we make and the decisions we make in the next 10 years will have really lasting consequences So we need to work out how we're going to have better conversations.

Speaker 0:
To find out more about the work and vision of Gavin, go to icebreakerone.org. In his story of hopefulness and final insight, Gavin talks about Blue Ventures and Longplayer and you can find out more at www.blueventures.org and www.longplayer.org To engage with the previous 73 Wonderspace episodes, go to our website ourwonder.space I want to thank Gavin for joining us on Wonderspace and I hope you can join us next week for more wonders and stories of hopefulness.