Newsletter
2024... ENTER THE WOODEN DRAGON
9 January 2024
As we conclude yet another transformative year, we want to express our sincere appreciation for your unwavering support and partnership. With immense pride and enthusiasm, we share the highlights of our journey together in 2024.
Throughout this year, amidst global challenges and opportunities, we remained focused on our commitment to driving sustainable change and co-creating a world where environmental stewardship and social responsibility flourish. With your support, we set ambitious objectives to guide our efforts, and we are delighted to report significant progress on various fronts.
Among our most notable accomplishments in 2024 was the successful execution of several impactful projects. We continued our collaboration with the Government of Mauritius, advancing the Greening of the public sector action plan with tangible results beginning to emerge. Additionally, our assignment for AFD produced groundbreaking insights into the intersection of green finance and sustainable construction, laying the groundwork for innovative solutions and best practices in the field.
On the global stage, our contributions to the advancement of sustainable development were acknowledged and celebrated. After co-drafting the "Africa Manifesto for Sustainable Cities and the Built Environment", we have participated in formulating the “Global Policy Guidelines for a Sustainable Built Environment”. Furthermore, our work at U4SSC continues, focusing on the Metaverse.
We firm up our position as thought leaders not only in the field of sustainable development but also in the convergence of technology and sustainability. Our colleagues moderated and participated in several panels at key events such as Africa Tech, Africa Climate Week, and COP28.
At these events, we have made bridges between key organisations such as the African Union, World Bank IFC, UN SE4ALL with our Government. It gave rise to the potential projects. AFR100, Ecofridge, IFC MAGIC to name a few.
As members of the G17Eco Institute standards council, we continued to advocate for transparency and accountability in corporate sustainability practices. We are thrilled to see that our solution, SGX ESGenome has been embraced by its community. As it sets a new benchmark for ESG disclosure and reporting worldwide, we are doing a feasibility study for the Mauritius stock exchange - SEMSI.
Looking forward to 2024, our dedication to driving positive change remains steadfast. The year of the wooden dragon, we are determined to leverage our expertise and resources to accelerate progress towards a more sustainable and inclusive future. With a renewed emphasis on innovation and collaboration, we are confident to confront successfully the intricate challenges ahead and seize ample opportunities for positive impact.
None of our achievements would have been possible without the trust, support, and shared vision for a better world of our clients, partners and collaborators. We are profoundly grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with you and eagerly anticipate continuing our journey together in the years ahead.
As we bid farewell to 2023, let us carry forward the lessons learned and the successes achieved, united in our resolve to cultivate a world where both people and the planet thrive.
With deepest gratitude,
On behalf of the Ecosis team,
Tony Lee Luen Len
Ready for 2023?
13 January 2023
We hope that you are getting to cruise speed for a fantastic year.
Have you set your OKRs (objectives and key results)?
We have.
First and foremost, thank you for your support during our uncertain times.
Let us celebrate together some of the achievements of 2022. We thank our clients, collaborators and supporters for making these possible.
And I am grateful to our team, as we did work especially hard. It took us a full year to complete the Greening of the public sector action plan for the Government of Mauritius. We hope to see some of the results in 2023. In addition, we finished a critical study for the AFD to develop a framework to link green finance with sustainable construction. We got to explore the value of green building certifications, bio-sourced materials, alternative construction techniques and the issue of various data.
Regionally and internationally, if we have to mention two assignments, it would be the co-drafting of the “Africa manifesto for sustainable cities and the built environment” for the World GBC and the “Guidelines for the implementation of eco-friendly criteria for AI and other emerging technologies” for U4SSC.
As part of the G17Eco Institute standards council, we can only be thrilled that the Singapore stock exchange is now using the solution. The SGX ESGenome is a world-first to support listed companies with their environmental, social and governance disclosure process.
So what about our OKRs?
We will continue to live our mission to co-create the World we want with you. We realised that our value is to help organisations with their sustainability strategies, thinking, action plans, and tools for successful implementation. So our objective is to focus on where we deliver the most value and where we can be more impactful.
The second priority is to accelerate positive impact in Africa. We will be busy on various fronts as per usual. But the one to mention is the scaling of our in-house innovation, the #1 app for doing good, anAngel. Supported by Google, Amazon and other key partners, anAngel is now launching in South Africa. The office at Innovation City in Cape Town is now set up.
None of these would have been possible without you. Thank you again for your trust and ongoing support.
We foresee 2023 as a year of action. So much to do, so little time… but the time is now.
We look forward to working with you.
Let us put actions behind our good intentions.
Let us cheer together for a better World for all in 2023.
Best wishes,
For and on behalf of the Ecosis team,
Tony Lee Luen Len
Happy New Year 2022!
11 January 2022
Bring on 2022!
We know that there will be numerous challenges ahead. However, we hope that you are as ecstatic as us about what 2022 has in store for us.
We've just finished a year that was full of both challenges and victories. It's reassuring to know that we can rely on all of you no matter what comes our way.
In 2021, we saw the market changing with many organisations integrating sustainability at different levels.
Despite being busy with our Living Lab initiative, we have responded positively to support the market in this thrust.
We are slowly but surely making some headway to bring innovative ideas to real life. Our first project, anAngel, the #1 platform for doing good, has successfully completed its proof of concept. The next step is to pilot the full version in South Africa. We can only be grateful to our advisors and partners. Google for Startups, the Solution Space of the Graduate School of Business of the University of Cape Town, the Africa Management Institute in collaboration with Stanford Seed are now supporting us.
As our network, our involvement in the startup world is growing. We will continue mentoring and advising in the Google for Startups Ecosystem.
2022 will see the continuation of our work for U4SSC and the World Green Building Council. Under U4SSC, we have been working relentlessly over the last two years to deliver several reports and guidelines on the "Environmental Efficiency of AI and emerging technologies". With the World Green Building Council, the "Health and Well Being framework" and the "Africa Regional Network" manifesto have been completed, whilst we are still busy with the "Resources and Circularity" framework. We are excited to start the "Smart Places" project of the AU under Agenda 2063. We certainly look forward to Cop 27, which will come to Africa for the first time!
We will still be busy with green building certifications, environmental product declarations, impact assessments, advisory and strategy work. But, we will also be focusing on assisting organisations in integrating sustainability deeper at different levels while balancing the triple bottom line. Using our research on the monetisation of positive impact, we hope to strengthen the economic value proposition to be green and to do good.
We hope to be of service to you even if we are all guns blazing on the mammoth task of "greening" Mauritius's public sector.
Working with some of you over the last year has been a pleasure. We are grateful to have you all on board supporting us. Your support only provides us with more inspiration and drive to co-create the World we want.
Best wishes and joy to you and your families.
We are looking forward to working together for a happy and impactful 2022 full of positivity and light.
Kind Regards,
For and on behalf of the Ecosis team
Tony Lee Luen Len
Ecosis Season's Greetings
24 December 2020
Wow! What a year!
While we look back at this special and disruptive year,we acknowledge the many parts that were hard, but wish to celebratewith you the positive bits, our accomplished work.
For us, at Ecosis, we embraced the challenges and went on a self-transformation journey.
As many of you, we have worked harder this year than any other year.During the few months of lockdown, we were juggling between home schooling, baking our own bread, and mainly re-inventing ourselves to adapt. As some of my colleagues admitted, we have never worked so hard.
At least it was not for nothing, and we are grateful that we were able to complete so many things this year.
First and foremost, we need to celebrate the effort we have all put in.
The highlight of this year has been our focus on technology, especially on technology for good. We worked on three start-ups this year. The first one is a telemedicine application eDoc, intending to provide affordable healthcare when you need it. People with chronic diseases were our target, as good management is critical. The second one is a free application, a freelancer marketplace where people can share and sell their skills.We thought that could be useful.
Then there is the promising anAngel application. It is an idea that we had for years. It took us some time, but we managed to get it out. We were thinking of doing a soft launch with our minimum viable product. But coincidentally, the timing was as wrong as the incident itself, the Wakashio oil spill. We found ourselves to ramp up our game to respond to this ecological disaster. It gave us the opportunity to stress test the app, and to carry out our design thinking exercise faster. It was so gratifying to see how the anAngel tool does what it intends to do; to use the power of the citizen to support social and environmental initiatives. Our aim to simplify and amplifying positive impact. The start of our journey saw us bagging two international awards.
In the whirlwind, we were selected to mentor selected startups by Google for their SDG accelerator programme.
We were happy to witness some progress on some of our work. For U4SSC, two documents were published, “City Science Application Framework for Smart Cities”, and “Blockchain for Smart Sustainable Cities”. A month ago, we saw the Government finally approving the EV 10 yr roadmap for Mauritius.
We have continued to contribute on important documents. Locally, we worked extensively on the Mauritius National Environmental Policy, specifically on the “Urbanisme et PolitiqueEnvironnementale” issue. Internationally, we reviewed the North Star goals of the World GBC, and their Health and Wellbeing framework, and for Global ABC, the Global ABC regional roadmap for buildings and construction in Africa 2050.
Of course, with the pandemic, we moved to virtual conferences and webinars. We presented at various conferences hosted in Athens, Accra, Tel Aviv, Reunion Island, Mauritius and… the cloud, on topics varying from circular economy, innovation, SDGs, green buildings, partnerships, health and wellbeing in the built environment, energy efficiency to innovative finance.
And yes, lest not forget the on-going projects! But we shall keep this for next end-of-year newsletter.
The team joins me in wishing you and your loved ones a safe and joyous Christmas and a super 2021 full of light, happiness, success and good health.
Best wishes,
Tony Lee Luen Len