Solutions and Action Through Innovation with Philippe Cousteau

Today is the first day of the South By South West Eco festival (hashtag #SXSWEco) and, as you can see, the place is a buzz of activity.

Ignoring the uncomfortable feeling of seeing plastic and Chevrolet everywhere, I am excited. Not only are the registration lines long but the panel discussion rooms are already filling up.

From SXSW Eco

Right now I am waiting for Philippe Cousteau's "Solutions and Actions through Innovation" discussion to kick off a blend of tech, eco-solution and hopefully Ocean issues.

Philippe touched on three main pillars to success in pushing for conservation. Investing women and children, utilizing the market of Wall Street and Environmental education.

The following video shows him covering how to tackle the Women and Children issue:

Wall Street has been shown to be highly useful in generating funds but is volatile and is not getting the money in the right places these days.

Cousteau promoted the stock ticket "GIVE."  This is an amazingly brilliant concept. GIVE is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that is geared towards sustainable and impact related investments. As AdvisorShares states on their site:

GIVE is designed as a core allocation that proactively seeks opportunities in Sustainable Investment themes while reducing volatility. The fund will allocate capital to equity and debt securities of publically traded companies who have a proactive and meaningful sustainability mandate, as well as securities that may technologically, socially and environmentally impact the earth positively, with a focus on themes such as water, clean energy, innovation and other sustainable themes as defined by the portfolio managers. Additionally, AdvisorShares regularly contributes a portion of assets under management to Philippe Cousteau Jr.’s Global Echo Foundation.

Philippe is soft launching a watershed management game that looks incredible and has amazing potential to bring in a large mass of people and I will be checking it out later.

These initial sessions are limited to 15 minutes which is like a candy sampler or wine flight - you get the flavor but not really the substance and don't have the opportunity for real conversation. Philippe did a great job, just wish there was more of a chance to get into the thick of it.