Transformative Projects
As part of their Master’s degree in Sustainable Management and Technology, students work on a sustainability challenge provided by a company to propose new perspectives or solutions that can have the potential to transform an industry or societal practice.
The Swiss government, as part of its comprehensive climate strategies, has set a goal to reduce the impact of greenhouse gas emissions produced by agricultural activities. While the public sector offers various incentives and subsidies to support the ecological transition of agriculture, the participation of the private sector is paramount to help speed and fund the decarbonization process. In this context, UBS initiated a project to support the decarbonization of its portfolio of clients in the agricultural sector. The primary questions approached by the project are the following: how UBS advisors can engage farmers in discussions about decarbonizing their operations? And what solutions can be funded and implemented to help this transition?
The project highlighted that there are plenty of different technologies and solutions that can be adopted to reduce emissions in the agricultural sector, whose effectiveness changes according to the farm in which they are applied. This variability complicates the task of identifying optimal carbon reduction approaches. Additionally, financeable assets—those with a value high enough to warrant a bank loan—are often high-tech and still lack sufficient testing to confirm their effective impact on climate.
To address these challenges, the team developed an assessment framework to categorize relevant technologies and solutions, as outlined in a booklet developed to support UBS client advisors in their discussions with farmers. This framework adopts a ranking of the technologies based on specific criteria that can be defined on a case-by-case basis. The team also created a client conversation roadmap to guide UBS’s exchange with farmers on the way to finance these solutions. The roadmap suggests, for instance, that insights from interviews with sustainable agriculture experts inform bank advisors at each step, helping them to engage effectively with clients and other key stakeholders.
The project deliverables are designed to inform and guide UBS and its client advisors. They provide an understanding of the current state of the Swiss agricultural sector, identify emission-reduction strategies, prioritize them, and offer guidance on fostering critical dialogue and collaboration with public entities and individual farmers.
Students: Lorenzo Vella, Anastasia Kozikis, Dan Luca Fulger, Jinjin Yu
Company Supervisors: Tanya Furrer, Marco Arcari
Academic Supervisors: Jean-Pierre Danthine, Veronica Petrencu