Decommissioning Finance’s Dam Barriers for a More Sustainable, Just & Safe Future

The largest dam removal project in history was completed in October 2024 when four dams were removed from the Klamath River in California and Oregon. Suddenly, 676 kilometres of river was returned to being river. Salmon could run. Ecosystems were ready for restoration. Native American tribal ceremonies and cultural heritage practices are able to be reprised. Life flows once again.

Decades of efforts to re-organise and tilt finance towards responsible investment, sustainability outcomes and respecting human rights have occurred in parallel to near yearly record emissions, a rise in authoritarian political leadership, ever-concentrated wealth and a collapsing civil discourse. At a time when there have never been more commitments from financial service organisations to sustainability, justice and equality we pass the dreaded 1.5C threshold. Pick your ESG topic and you don’t have to look too far to find a record breaking statistic from the last 12 months.

So how can there be record levels of commitments and positive action at the same time that just about every form of deleterious real world problem seemingly worsens? When finance is the lifeblood of the modern economy, what are the equivalent of the Klamath Dam walls blocking the flow of life, where capital becomes a tool in the pursuit of the type of society we want to live in and not the end in and of itself.

A calamitous salmon die-off event in the Klamath in 2002 catalysed a movement that crescendoed with the destruction of the four dam walls in 2024. What is finance’s launching off moment equivalent? When will financiers and financial service institutions awaken to the losses and damages piling up around Australia and the world?

A mid-winter fire event in the suburbs of one of the most iconic cities in the world? The arrival of an authoritarian politics seeking the eradication of ESG? A mindless dig baby dig, frack baby frack charade cloaked as a nuclear energy ‘plan’? Take your pick, there is no longer any shortage of the real world events that could just tip the scales.

So what is happening in finance that is preventing the real flow of the types of capital we all know and hope can be deployed to create the future society we all imagine? A $43 trillion new economy opportunity over here. $178 trillion in losses over there in damages from a changing climate. A $7 trillion hit to Australian GDP just by not adopting a renewable energy future. Big sums. Numbers financiers salivate over you’d think? But apparently not.

Finance sits at the heart of our economy. We work in it because we believe it can utilised as The Tool to bring about the futures we imagine. But blockages exist. What are they?

In this session, we will explore together the experiences and anecdotal stories that we hold as aspiring change makers in the broad world of finance as to what really blocks substantive action that goes beyond the big figure forecasts. A restructure that sees a key senior ally leave the organisation. An advocacy or active stewardship team that sits on the conservative end of the spectrum when it comes to making common sense requests to government or clients. The simple lack of climate literacy or too many decision making rooms. An Executive that gets bored with an existing multi-year initiative because his 20-something girlfriend shares a social media ad for a speculative alternative proposition she likes the look of. We all have these stories, the tiny reasons action is blocked or prevented or avoided or dismissed.

To make big changes we need make hundreds and thousands of tiny ones.

The transition to a truly sustainable finance system depends on it.

The problem is usually not the problem. That’s what this session is about. What are the dam walls we and only we know need to be removed to see the flow of capital reprise societal equity, positive environmental outcomes and fair economic benefits?

Finding Nature with the support of Altiorem and Greenfluence will facilitate a session of finance and sustainability professionals to explore this and to uncover all the tiny, small and moderate problems that make impactful action on a daily basis difficult. From there, once these are identified, we can develop tactics and plans and share stories on how we have succeeded or struggled in these everyday ways. Not the grand plan visions of brighter futures, but how to do change in seemingly unimportant ways each and every day.

From this session you’ll come away with an overflowing personal toolbox for change making, a sense of relief that it’s not just you experiencing these inane blockages and most likely an incredible rolodex of anecdotes that cross the hilarious, the depressing, the unbelievable and the tedious. All aimed at helping you do change in finance more effectively.

Grab your ticket and come help us work out how to decommission finance’s dam walls.

Lunch to be served by TwoGood Co & coffee from White Horse.

To see all events happening at Climate Action Week Sydney 2025  CLICK HERE