Shaken Not Burned

When disaster strikes, insurance may pay some of the bill. But who pays the rest?

This week on Shaken Not Burned, Felicia Jackson talks to Regula Hess, deputy head of WWF Switzerland, about the growing insurance protection gap — and why it matters far beyond the insurance industry.

When losses aren't insured, they don't disappear. They fall on households, businesses and governments, affecting everything from mortgages and investment to public finances and the speed at which communities recover. 

But WWF argues that simply expanding insurance isn't eno...

We rely on water for pretty much everything: growing food, manufacturing goods, building cities and sustaining everyday life. But what happens when the systems we've built around it start to reach their limits?

Felicia Jackson talks to economist Dr Robert Johnston about why he sees today's water challenge as a systems failure — and how individually sensible decisions can combine into what he calls a catastrophic harmony.

We explore why the price of water often fails to reflect its real value, how natural and economic systems are connected, and whether better ways of...

As extreme heat and wildfires sweep across Europe, the gap between recognising climate risk and responding to it is becoming harder to ignore. The good news is that the evidence, expertise and many of the solutions we need already exist. Why, then, is meaningful action still so difficult?

That was the question at the centre of this special live edition of Shaken Not Burned, recorded at SOAS during London Climate Action Week. Felicia was joined by Julia Davies (We Have The Power and Patriotic Millionaires UK), Gosbert Chagula MBE (Future Impact Ventures), and Dr Harald Heubaum (Centre...

Describing infrastructure as boring was a compliment. A building used to have a relatively straightforward job: keep the weather out and the people inside reasonably comfortable. Roads moved traffic, power systems supplied electricity and factories made things. Once infrastructure had been built, the task was largely to maintain it until it needed replacing.

Sure, politicians like to throw themselves behind a flashy, expensive project that raises the profile of their country (example: the HS2 railway in the UK), but what ordinary people need is reliable systems that are ticking along in the background, making everyday...

For years, sustainability has been associated with targets, reporting and disclosure. While those remain essential, they're starting to take a smaller part of the picture. As organisations operate under growing pressure from ageing infrastructure, volatile energy systems, climate disruption and more complex supply chains, sustainability is becoming part of day-to-day operational decision-making.

In this week’s episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks to Sophie Graham, chief sustainability officer at IFS, about how AI, data and operational intelligence are helping heavy industry move beyond measuring performance to improving it.

Ra...

For decades we've largely thought about buildings as fixed assets: we build them, maintain them, and expect them to provide the spaces where everyday life happens. But what if that's only part of the story? 

The built environment accounts for around 40% of global emissions; much of it was designed for a different climate, and replacing it simply isn't an option. As cities become hotter, energy systems more complex and organisations more dependent on resilient infrastructure, the challenge is no longer just building better buildings – it's helping the ones we alr...

Modern cities appear to function effortlessly. We switch on the lights, turn on the tap, catch a train, connect to the internet or walk into a hospital without giving much thought to the systems that make it all possible. Beneath that apparent simplicity sits a network of interconnected infrastructure that keeps everyday life moving.

In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks to Rodrigo Fernandes, global sustainability director at infrastructure engineering software firm Bentley Systems, about why understanding those hidden connections is becoming increasingly important as cities face climate change, ageing infrastructure and growing demands on...

Welcome to the final episode in our arc on the fashion industry, where we ask an uncomfortable question: are we trying to make fashion more sustainable, or are we mostly trying to manage the side effects of a system that produces more clothing than the world actually needs?

Over the past few weeks we've explored the industry from several different angles. We interviewed Kristina Elinder Liljas at the Apparel Impact Institute about climate risk and why sustainability is increasingly becoming a competitiveness issue. 

We sat down with Áine Clarke at the Business and Human Rights Ce...

Fashion is often described as one of the world's most polluting industries. The scale can be difficult to grasp as it feels so personal, but every year, billions of garments are produced, sold, worn briefly and discarded, with consequences that reach far beyond our wardrobes.

The industry is worth around $2.4 trillion and is estimated to account for up to 8% of global carbon emissions. It consumes around 15 trillion litres of water each year and is responsible for roughly 11% of plastic waste. Yet many of these impacts are not accidental by-products of the system. They are linked to the...

The clothes you're wearing have travelled a remarkable distance before reaching your wardrobe.

A typical garment may spend months moving through a global network of farms, mills, factories, suppliers, logistics providers and retailers. Raw materials are sourced in one country, processed in another, assembled somewhere else and shipped across continents before arriving in stores. What begins as simple clothing design often passes through dozens of hands before it reaches the customer.

Fashion is a $1.7 trillion industry built on supply chains designed for speed, flexibility and low costs. Those same qualities have helped drive growth and...

For years, sustainability in fashion has often been discussed almost as a parallel conversation to the business itself. Some brands publish reports, set targets and talk about responsibility, while others turn their sustainability credentials into a marketing tool. 

Yet, at the corporate level, many of the real decisions are still being driven by the old metrics of margins, supply chains and growth – but that's beginning to change. 

Behind the scenes, there is a vast global industrial system increasingly exposed to climate volatility, energy prices, material shortages and carbon regulation. And its stakeholders have realised that sust...

AI is no longer just a technology issue, it’s starting to reshape how whole systems operate.  Yet we’re not paying enough attention to that yet: most of the focus on AI is on what it can do, with individuals and organisations alike rushing to implement this new technology.

But AI capability is advancing extremely quickly, while the systems around it —  governance and regulation, infrastructure, organisational learning, labour markets, productivity models and even public understanding — are struggling to adapt at the same pace.  

And all of this is unfolding i...

As AI systems become more autonomous, the conversation is shifting from capability toward something much bigger: trust, legitimacy, identity and participation in digital systems.

In this episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks to Erika Maslauskaite, co-founder and CEO of alongID, about the rapidly evolving world of digital identity, interoperability and cross-border trust infrastructure — and why these questions are becoming increasingly important as AI agents begin acting on behalf of people and organisations.

From digital wallets and verification systems to fraud, privacy and governance, the conversation explores the growing tension between convenience, security and control in...

Generative AI promised to transform how we work, while Agentic AI is beginning to transform how businesses themselves are built.  

In this week’s episode of Shaken Not Burned, Felicia Jackson talks to Ethan Ouyang, who is AI ATOMS Spokesperson and responsible for North America Market & Partnerships. ATOMS is the venture building platform developed by DeepWisdom, one of China’s leading artificial intelligence companies. It has been designed as an agentic AI system, helping businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, integrate AI into their operations. 

Unlike traditional generative AI tools, agentic AI systems can take goals...

AI is becoming one of those topics where the scale of the claims can make it surprisingly difficult to work out what is actually happening.

We are told it will transform business, unlock extraordinary productivity gains, reshape jobs, and even help solve major global challenges like climate change. At the same time, there are growing concerns about energy demand, governance failures, bias, job losses, and the sheer speed at which these systems are developing.

The dominant narrative tends to swing between utopian optimism and existential fear, often without spending enough time on a more practical...

This is the final episode in our mining arc. Rather than revisiting what we’ve already covered, we step back to ask a different question: what does mining actually teach us about how change happens in complex systems?

Across the series, one tension kept coming up. The transition to a cleaner economy depends on scaling one of the most environmentally intensive industries on earth. We need more minerals, but we are deeply uncomfortable with how they are extracted. In practice, that tension shows up in whether projects can actually be built.

In this episode, we pu...

Welcome to the latest episode in our mining arc! In the previous two episodes, we covered the geopolitics of critical minerals and whether deep sea mining is the innovation we need to meet growing demand for critical clean tech raw materials.

This week, we turn to one of the most important lessons emerging from the mining sector: modern projects succeed when trust is built before the digging begins. How mines affect and benefit people, especially those isolated communities that live on resource-rich land, is becoming an essential part of mining operations. 

Around half of the w...

Welcome to the second instalment of our mining arc. After covering the geopolitics of critical minerals (check out the episode here), this week we ask a harder question: is deep sea mining a necessary innovation, or a risk we don’t yet understand well enough to take?

Deep sea mining means extracting minerals from the bottom of the ocean, at depths of 200 metres and beyond, no easy feat. It’s often framed as the next frontier for securing the metals needed for the energy transition – batteries, renewables, electrification. But that framing sits alongside a more uncomfortable reality: these...

Once a somewhat niche industry, critical minerals are now dominating headlines, influencing geopolitical trends and driving international trade. 

These materials are core components of technologies crucial to the energy transition and defence systems, and heightened interest in these areas is fuelling demand. For example, lithium demand jumped by 30% in 2024, while nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths all increased by 6-8% – and it is expected to keep climbing. 

With the International Energy Agency forecasting demand for these minerals to triple or even quadruple by 2040, the rush for critical minerals will continue shaping international relations, highlighting the need...

The world is starting to feel unpredictable in ways that are difficult to pin down.

Not just because of individual events, but because of how many different pressures are building at the same time. Climate impacts are becoming more visible, geopolitics is fragmenting, technology is moving quickly and economic conditions are being shaped by multiple shocks at once rather than a single, identifiable cause.

It is tempting to treat these as separate issues. Climate as an environmental problem, geopolitics as a political one, technology as something else again. But that ...