Crystal: [00:00:00] I’m Crystal DiMiceli, and welcome to the Forces for Nature show. Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom you hear of these days? Do you feel like you, as just one person, can’t really make a difference? Forces for Nature cuts through that negativity. In each episode, I interview someone who is working to make the world more sustainable and humane.

Join me in learning from them and get empowered to take action so that you too can become a force for nature.

Welcome to another episode of the Forces for Nature EarthX Conference Series, where I bring you behind [00:00:45] the scenes of my experiences during that week, and up close and personal with some of the incredible presenters. You know I’m all about solutions. And so after meeting today’s guest, Dave Rice, I wanted to bring him on the show because he is too.

Dave is using his expertise in business and technology to drive innovative solutions for some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Dave wears two hats as the founder of the non profit Sustainable Impact Alliance and its for profit counterpart. Sustainable Impact Alliance Solutions International.

Together, these organizations look for business solutions to help the United Nations achieve its Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. [00:01:30] For those unfamiliar, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals otherwise known as the SDGs, are a set of 17 global objectives that address critical issues such as poverty, hunger, education, clean water, and climate action.

These goals serve as a roadmap for creating a sustainable and equitable future. However, these large, broad, global goals can only be achieved if we can make them successful at the local level first. Starting in Orange County, California, Dave shares how the Sustainable Impact Alliance is doing this by leveraging cutting edge data platforms.

These digital dashboards, they are called, aim to [00:02:15] centralize and simplify complex data. Enabling communities to set goals, measure their progress, and engage their citizens in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Their flagship initiative is targeted to be a climate dashboard to inform local leaders and citizens about energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions, and to enable tracking progress on targets set by the county.

Dave’s passion lies in making these tools accessible, ensuring that everyone From policy makers to everyday citizens can contribute to a more sustainable future.

Dave, thank you so [00:03:00] much for joining me on Forces for Nature. It’s so great to have you.

Dave: Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Now, you wear

Crystal: two really important and interesting hats that I want to learn more about because you are a solutions guy. And so, where do you want to start? Because you have the business and you have the nonprofit.

Dave: Sure. Yeah, I think we should start with the non profit side. Okay. That’s really kind of what’s driving everything. And so I had a career in business and tech, retired a few years ago and was looking, you know, what can I do to make a difference? And I basically discovered the United Nations Association, something that’s been around since the beginning of the UN in 200 chapters now in the US and it’s global as [00:03:45] well.

And it’s citizens that just support the UN. And try to promote the value of the UN and white matters and people need to support it. And I looked at, I started studying it. It was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that actually drew me in. Such a common bond denominator for everything and the basis for solving world problems.

And then found out more about the Sustainable Development Goals. Realized that those human rights actually ended up leading to the development of these SDGs. Starting in 2000 with the first eight called Millennial Goals and then another nine added in 2015 to create 17 SDGs. And that the UN had a challenge to all of its members to say, the only way we’re going to achieve these goals globally is if we can [00:04:30] take this model and apply it locally.

So I love our mantra is to think globally, act locally, and it just fit. And it made sense that we take this on and so we decided to look at, well, what does that mean in our community, in Orange County, California. To actually implement this program. So as we started researching it, there are a lot of sort of pieces to it.

We need leaders together. We need collaboration, but we really need to understand where are we. With every issue that’s going on and the only way to really do that is to get at the data that can inform us of where we are and then also give us a way to track progress.

Crystal: And the idea is to do that through your nonprofit, the Sustainable Impact Alliance.

Dave: Yeah.

Crystal: Yesterday you mentioned [00:05:15] something to me about having dashboards that would do this compiling and tracking that you’re, you’re talking about. Yeah. What would these dashboards look like?

Dave: Yeah, so if you look at the SDGs, end poverty, hunger, quality healthcare, quality education, gender equality, clean water, etc.

Basically, each one needs to know, okay, where are we on this issue? So you need to know, well, where’s the data that’s going to tell me where I’m at on poverty, hunger, education, whatever.

Crystal: I can’t believe that doesn’t already exist.

Dave: And it probably does, but the issue is how do you get your arms around it?

There is good data out there, but it just, a lot of it needs to be pulled together and made very available. And not just available to the data wonks, but, or the decision makers, but to everybody who [00:06:00] all want to get involved and try to help in these issues, whatever your issue is, right? So it became clear that the area that seemed to be a good place to start on all of this would be climate.

We’re really working to start off with a climate dashboard that would help communities get a better sense of where they are in terms of dealing with emissions and going green. And so what does that entail? What’s our energy usage like right now? How much of it is coming from the fossil fuel based energy?

How much of it’s renewable? What’s our usage all the time, and how are we doing on our projects, right, in going green, installing solar or, or wind, and getting energy from those sources? How are we doing on [00:06:45] EVs? What’s our percentage, you know, of population that’s going EVs? How are we doing on infrastructure?

How are we doing on charging stations? And then you’ve got the whole building emissions issue, so there’s a lot to track. So we want to start with that and basically have a dashboard that would inform a community on where they are on these issues. And then that gives them an ability to start setting goals and targets at a leadership level, one year, five year, ten years out, to be able to track the gap between where we are and where we’re trying to go.

And also serves as a great way to get people in the community engaged and involved in helping close that gap in a much more, let’s say, efficient way than maybe what’s out there right now. [00:07:30]

Crystal: And you’re looking to work with others in creating these dashboards.

Dave: So we’re looking now at several partners.

There’s one company in particular. That’s named Polco, P O L C O, that is out of Wisconsin, and they have created a lot of dashboards using survey data from.

individuals, communities, and cities and they’ve accumulated the largest amount of survey data in all of the US enable data driven [00:08:15] decisions based on a lot of what this information is giving her. So they’re well set up to do what we want to do. They’ve enabled their whole platform to sort of tie directly into the STGs, which is always what we’ve wanted to do. So I think that makes sense.

Crystal: What kind of surveys? Do they have, like, what kind of information?

Dave: It’s, it’s a lot. It’s a lot about transportation. It’s pretty much, you know, the gamut of what you would expect. But what they don’t have is climate data.

Crystal: Oh, okay.

Dave: Yeah. So they see that sort of gap and are interested in a working relationship.

[00:09:00] To see about developing that sort of capability, because our goal is to help cities in California, especially for starters. With their climate action plans. And they have been asked by the state to create climate action plants, but they have very little resources to do that. They have to hire people if cities can afford it, they’re lucky to get one person to sort of sign on as a sustainability person, and then they don’t really have.

A lot of sort of existing templates to just here, here you go, here’s a plan modified a little bit. I mean, that’s the kind of thing we’re wanting to help, uh, cities with and sort [00:09:45] of inform on best practices for climate action plans. But even the cities here that have climate action plans struggle to implement them, struggle to be able to track and measure progress, right?

Yeah. So our ultimate goal is to. Work with the state of California to have a climate dashboard capability with data coming in from the utilities that would inform them on energy usage and hopefully identify how much of this is renewable energy versus non renewable energy and be able to track those kinds of things, as well as water usage, usage of resources like that, [00:10:30] as well as emissions data.

We want all access to all of that information that’s available. It’s out there. And have them offer that up in a larger sort of a templated framework to cities to help them with their climate action plans. So that’s kind of where we are wanting to go with all this. And I think that whether it’s, you know, working with Polco or, or some other company, we’re, we’re still looking to get that, you know, rolling.

Crystal: How do you address concerns around data privacy and accessibility with all of this data?

Dave: Absolutely. Very good question. And, and. So, if you’re familiar in the medical space with HIPAA laws, they basically [00:11:15] say that you, you need to privatize, you know, all that health care data. And if the state is going to, for example, in California, take all the data from hospitals, And then go through it and sanitize it, basically, so that they remove personal information from that data.

But all of the rest of the data then becomes available for researchers and other hospitals and people in the medical industry to use. To better understand what are our demographics looking like relative to these various diagnoses and treatments and conditions and how can communities better establish their community public health in a more effective way based on, [00:12:00] you know, what’s really going on etc.

So all that information becomes available. So I just refer to that as hypnotizing data. So you’re needing the same kind of capability to do that. And there are lots of firms out there these days that do that for a living.

Crystal: And this data platform, this data dashboard would be under your business side of things.

The Sustainable Impact Alliance Solutions, right?

Dave: Yeah, correct. So then we, we decided then. That a couple of things, one, you know, we were looking at the need as a nonprofit volunteer based organization that if we’re going to move forward on this, we’re likely going to need to hire some folks and have some full time people really committed to this program as we [00:12:45] launch and as we get it going, help others get going as well, because that’s our, our goal.

And in order to do that, we said, you know, the current nonprofit funding model is challenging. A lot of challenges with it, you know, where it’s based on membership fees or donations, And so there seemed to be this sort of movement to start looking at the business community and what can we do to align with the business community and start driving a more sort of a revenue flow that we could count on.

And so we created our own. So we created our own for profit benefit corporation, B Corporation, that would basically be driving game changing solutions that we could pull together. And, yeah, and, and so it’s a, it’s a win win because not only are the solutions going to really help move things forward, [00:13:30] but it’ll also drive some revenues to the, uh, nonprofit.

And you’re looking at other solutions besides just this data dashboard. Correct. Such as

Yeah, so we brought them all together here at EarthX for the first time. So this is new. And, uh, we’ve so far accumulated about eight solution companies. It’s really exciting. One company is called Komodifier, has a eco friendly product that you can use to either pre treat homes, structures, trees, whatever, and prevent them from burning.

Or you can use it for doing contained fires as you need to. And that’s a really effective solution. Or you can use it to actually put out fires, or much better than the current toxic, you know, sort of solutions that are being used. There’s another company called [00:14:15] Irix that. Really installs their, their AI driven software in camera networks and can do identification and help really prevent crime, help do a lot of tracking.

There’s a lot of applications for that. There’s another company that is called Edison Extreme Fast Charging. And they are a EV charging station that can charge a Tesla in say eight minutes. Why are they not

everywhere?

Crystal: Right. And so they’re just getting out the door. So this company is just waiting for their permit to actually.

Put their first station up in Las Vegas and then, yeah, and then grow from there. So there’s just a range of, you know, really cool solution companies.

What challenges are you facing bringing these to market?

Dave: You mean the solution sets to [00:15:00] market? Yeah, I think many of these companies are needing funding. So they’re, you know, various stages of that.

I mean, the extreme fast charging, they just need like 2 million right now to kind of get this thing finalized and out the door, which isn’t a lot. So I think that’s always a bit of a challenge for them. So we’re trying to help them with that piece and also just to start finding business. We’re setting up also offices, country offices at other, in other countries around the world.

We set up a S I A S C S Taiwan to be doing, you know, work over there. And we see that happening in some other countries. So that’s kind of an exciting opportunity. For driving sustainable solutions in a collaborative way to the market, but quite frankly, much of the success of [00:15:45] all of that stems on the success of the sustainable goals program being able to be rolled out so that we can really help communities get a handle on how they can do a better job of being more effective.

on dealing with those issues.

Crystal: For the listener, is there anything that they can do?

Dave: Absolutely. Yeah. So, I think whatever the interest is. You know, the UNA, United Nations Association, half our members are young folks. There’s two reasons. One, it’s free under 26, so that’s not bad. But really, more importantly, they’re all very interested in sustainability, sustainability issues, circular economy, I don’t know who we

And I didn’t know that even existed.

Yeah, exactly. And

most, many don’t. They’re not alone. It’s kind of a standing joke. [00:16:30] And, and for good reason, you know, part of it is because historically the mission has more been focused on helping educate the public about the UN, its value, many good things it does on a global level, why we need it so badly.

And trust me, we really need it, especially now more than ever. So it’s important that we maintain support for that financially and in other ways. They haven’t focused that much on the sustainable development goals. And so this newer concept that the UN came out with, it’s called Local 2030. Anybody can go check it out at local2030.

org. You can see what’s going on at a, at a global level. So that’s good. I think locally then, depending on whatever the issue is that somebody wants to get [00:17:15] involved in, there’s obviously opportunity here. Whether it’s homelessness or housing or mental health or whatever, there’s going to be an opportunity to get involved in teams that would start looking into these issues, just trying to find out.

Where are we on this issue? Who are the groups that are working on this right now? We need to pull all that together. Where’s the data that we need to start tracking where we are and then start tracking progress? And feed that. So that’s kind of the goal that would happen there. Climate right now, you know, so many folks very interested in that and there’s so many opportunities there.

Again, in California, every city is required right now to create a climate action plan. And what we’re finding is that many cities are very open to [00:18:00] establishing citizen coalitions, citizen commissions to help advise. So I think that’s a great place to go. But there’s a lot of groups out there, coalition groups, climate groups, just a great place to start learning and to get engaged.

And whether it’s activism, whether it’s policy. Or whether it’s projects, there’s a lot to be done. So, yeah, there’s plenty to do.

Crystal: Okay. Is there anything else you would like to leave us with?

Dave: Yeah, so I think that the main thing I would, I would leave is just how important the SDGs really are. I think we really need to start studying them.

Getting an understanding of why they’re all interrelated and connected and how important that is to promote. That whole idea and the whole [00:18:45] concept to our leaders in all of our communities we’re seeing in the business community right now with the focus on ESGs and, and also businesses trying to be sustainable and they’re going to appeal to a broader audience, especially a younger audience, the more that they can.

So our mantra there is sustainability equals profitability. But just to understand, yeah, what they’re all about, get the SDG pin, wear it, you know, promote, you know, represent, and yeah, and just, I think, strengthen numbers and the more folks that come together around this whole idea and really are bringing that into their discussions, it gets away from the identity politics that we have right now, it’s a way to help bridge, which this conference is certainly all about, and I’ve so appreciated that.

Thank you. [00:19:30] And, uh, we need these efforts, you know, to do that, so.

Crystal: Excellent. Dave, thank you for all that you do. You’re making a difference. Thanks so much. I really appreciate the chance to share.

The challenges the world faces are large and can easily feel intractable, in turn paralyzing us from taking action to address them. That’s one of the reasons behavioral psychologists say that, despite overwhelming evidence to the existence and danger of man made climate change, We aren’t doing enough to address it.

It’s just too overwhelming. Dave’s mantra of Think Globally, Act Locally can change that. [00:20:15] When you localize an issue and make it relevant to a person’s surroundings and everyday, they can see and feel progress. They have a stake in the end goal. And it all adds up. If every county across the U. S. focused on progress towards their own goals, the cumulative effects compound into impressive global results.

The companies Dave is partnering with also know these benefits. And since you do, too, What can you do in your community that would be beneficial for a cause you care about?

Don’t forget to go to forcesfornature. com and sign up to receive emailed show notes, action tips, and a free checklist to help [00:21:00] you start taking practical actions today. Do you know someone else who would enjoy this episode? I would be so grateful if you would share it with them. Hit me up on Instagram and Facebook at becoming forces for nature and let me know what actions you have been taking.

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