Tim Stumhofer, Senior Program Associate
As the Institute’s youngest staffer, I come to this prompt with a unique perspective. Unlike my colleagues, I don’t have the better part of an impressive career behind me designing, negotiating, and implementing climate programs, agreements, and standards. Indeed, when I started with GHGMI in early 2009, I found this somewhat extreme junior-senior juxtaposition to be a bit jarring and even intimidating. Fortunately, the corps of climate greybeards that make up the Institute are as humble as they are experienced and have cultivated a “flat-floor” working environment — an egalitarian ploy that piled enough work on my shoulders to ensure I fast forgot with whom I was rubbing elbows.
While this introduction paints a complimentary picture of the Institute (a portrayal that won’t win me much praise with my colleagues as they are practically immune to flattery), it is an incomplete sketch. To understand what makes these folks tick and GHGMI click, it’s essential to consider the mission of the Institute and the drive behind those who built it from the ground up. (For the Institute’s formal mission statement see the appropriate page of our website; for more on individual inspiration, see the associated posts in this series.)
A longwinded, buzzword laden mission statement is one thing; what it translates to in practice can be another matter altogether. To this end, there are two key truths to the Institute’s objectives that I believe are incompletely captured in the GHGMI mission: 1) the sincerity of execution to meet these goals; and 2) just how thankless this capacity building business is. This first tenet again speaks to the quality and intentions of the people that have coalesced around the Institute; the second comment, however, demands further examination.
The Institute and the challenge of capacity building
On the conference circuit GHGMI presentations are often met with nods of agreement and encouraging side comments. Talking points on the state of human resource capacity and competency in the market, the challenges of scaling global GHG measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), and the need for an enabling professional infrastructure all frequently garner support amongst practitioner audiences. Yet, across the carbon landscape, with GHG schemes of all shapes and sizes in various stages of development, the challenges of capacity building and implementation are, with precious few exceptions, not taken seriously. Facing operational challenges on all fronts, capacity to implement is categorically couched as a blanket assumption: unprobed and unchallenged.
Reality, of course, only vaguely resembles these assumed scenarios. Institutional capacity and professional competency matched with corresponding systems of governance are, across the board, necessary to realize program objectives (which are broadly defined both in terms of enabling success and assuring against failure, manifested in fraud, manipulation, and environmental integrity). Here the Institute is a rare voice and conduit, charting headway toward the noble and necessary objective of a smoothly functioning, expertly grounded, and properly braced climate infrastructure.
This litany may sound sexy in the lingua franca of a policy and governance wonk, but the reality on the ground is a decidedly unsexy behind-the-scenes slog. Yet, it is that very slog that makes the work so genuinely and uniquely rewarding. From the challenge of building infrastructure from the ground up to navigating a sea of institutional barriers and hazards to toggle the chokepoints of implementation, the ultimate satisfaction of contributing a measurable addition to the creation of a complex network of policies, programs, and standards that will in the end play a role in combating a collective action problem of monumental proportions makes for an inspirational workday deserving of a more lyrical treatment than I’m capable of offering in a blog post on a technical website. Moreover, working towards a shared vision in the face of a collective challenge makes for a dynamic bond both between Institute staff and the larger GHGMI community, including our many cheerleaders and evangelists (for which we are eternally grateful).
My route to GHGMI
Against this idealistic backdrop, it seems fitting that my path to the Institute tracks what could grandiosely be considered an “existential rethink” or, with less bravado, a “structural career adjustment.” Cutting to the chase, I came to the Institute as a researcher first and market participant second, still excited to have found a field as fulfilling and intellectually challenging as climate policy. At the same time, however, this intense enthusiasm was fast waning and I found myself on the brink of becoming disaffected with the discipline that had absorbed so much of my energy. At the heart of the issue was the reality that I was an analyst tired of exploiting market inefficiencies, ready and eager to build market efficiency.
And the rest is flowery prose. My short time with the Institute has put me in the company of industry thought leaders, brought me closer to the international development and GHG program design challenges that captured my imagination and pulled me to the field in the first place, and provided a substantive forum to contribute to the development of the professional infrastructure necessary to usher in and govern this emerging discipline. In practice the work may often be tiring and indeed frustrating, but for the people, the overarching mission, and the day-in-day-out challenges the job presents, being part of the Institute team confers outsized and, in my view, unparalleled professional and personal satisfaction.
