From the field: Deep Transitions research reveals the future

Deep Transitions is one of these, which brings together scientists, academics and investors to work on a blueprint for investing for systems change.  

If understanding what sort of investments bring about systems change depends on the future we’re aiming for, knowing what that looks like is a good starting place. Recently, Dimple took part in stress testing three possible futures in 2050 for the Deep Transitions project which the researchers expect will have come about when sustainability is the new normal.

1. Fabulously Frugal

This future dawns when people realise that mass consumption, consumption, and more consumption is not the answer. Continually buying things that are ‘bigger, better, max, super, new, improved’ does not make you happier or live longer. Fast fashion, big food, the clamour for status through ‘things’ doesn’t make us better or healthy. It makes us and the planet die sooner.

This is a world where humanity stops taking, recovers from its addiction to mass consumption, reduces business and individual carbon footprint, and the gap between haves and have-nots. Citizens take just what they need as it is considered vulgar to not be ‘fabulously frugal’.

"Companies and funds that focus on circular economy principles would do well in this environment."

2. Reembrace Mother Earth

In this new, sustainable world, Mother Earth takes us back into her bosom. We stop our fight and conquest of the natural world to work with and for ecosystems.

We learn how we can live abundantly within biodiversity to give us a world that can breathe, flourish, and prevail for humanity. Our green systems integrate and regenerate back to life to preserve people and planet for generations to come. Central to lifestyle is the preservation of the oceans, forests and living beings – us included.

"We work with several networks to learn, collaborate and work out ways to invest in scalable biodiversity solutions, such as CREO and Toniic."
 

3. Shoot for the Earth!

Human endeavour and creativity go into over-drive to shoot towards a sustainable, just world. Technological and social missions become super-charged and super-green. Enterprise and entrepreneurs create desirable lifestyles that are guided to recycle and reuse on a massive scale.

A world is created where humanity is saved and sustained by an explosion of radical innovation, both of technology and society, for sustainability. Science saves the day with food grown in laboratories and mass green transportation.

"Companies and funds that harness technology to enable radical inclusion and innovation already paving the way here."

Seeing is believing… watch the three futures here:

We will publish the conclusions of the Deep Transitions research in a White Paper sometime next year.

“Participating in this Deep Transitions Project allows for constituents from the public, private and academic spheres to opine on what successful systems level change could like and how best to implement it. Collaborating with this group on pilot and sharing our findings via a white paper next year will allow others to see how they many implement systems level change in their own organisations. Our multi-asset impact investing portfolios will attempt to do just that.” – Dimple Sahni.
 

Our Multi-Asset Impact Strategy

At Anthos we are already investing in the sustainable future we hope for. For us, we focus on our three core themes of sustainability, human dignity and good corporate citizenship.

Find out more about our Multi-Asset Impact Strategy which combines ten years of learnings at the forefront of impact investing. The result offers professional investors access to a broad and deep array of impact opportunities whilst also generating an inflation-beating financial objective.
 

Would you like to help crowdsource the future?

Part of the research uses crowdsourcing to test findings against people’s intuition, feelings, insights and thoughts about a sustainable future to feed into the data and results which will be used by Dimple and the Global investors Panel to make decisions about Transformative Investment. Take part in the research: do you agree, partially agree and not at all agree with the findings? See other possibilities? Give your thoughts and vision to be part of the drive for change.
 

Further reading

• Deep Transitions
• Read this piece by Dimple on “Investing for systems change”
• Explaining tough concepts: What is systems change?

This is a marketing communication. Please refer to the Private Placement Memorandum of Anthos Fund II RAIF-SICAV S.A. ("PPM") before making any final investment decisions. The PPM may be provided upon request. Please note: these funds are open to professional investors only.