In 2026, Earth Overshoot Day, the date by which humanity will have consumed more from nature than the planet can regenerate in a year, was calculated to fall on July 30. In this piece I argue that the driver behind this isn’t greed or indifference, but the way we innovate, and that closing the gap starts at the design stage, where most of a product’s environmental footprint is determined. 

The article introduces RISE, a framework built on two decades of cross-sector research and advisory work, for innovating with nature rather than against it.

I also present how AI is beginning to close a long-standing gap between ecological and business thinking, helping organizations translate biodiversity data into decisions boardrooms can act on, accelerating direct conservation work through tools like species-recognition AI, and pointing toward models of prosperity that don’t depend on ever-greater resource consumption.