The
Planetary
Accounting
Network
Applied Research for a Healthy Planet
The Planetary Accounting Network is an independent, not-for-profit research centre.
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We believe that living well requires a healthy planet. The Planetary Accounting Network, or PAN, works to enable people, businesses and governments to make decisions that will revitalise and sustain our environment using Planetary Accounting, a framework for science-based decision making to respect and stay within the Planetary Boundaries.
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We support a broad range of initiatives, such as setting corporate Planetary Science-Based Targets (P-SBTs), creating "Planetary Facts" labels for products and services, and developing future visions and roadmaps for cities and regions to operate within the planet's limits.
We also offer a range of training and education support to grow awareness of the Planetary Boundaries and how tools such as Planetary Accounting could help us to operate within these.
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OUR MISSION is to make planetary accounting easy to access, easy to understand, and easy to use.
Our vision is to create an international community of like-minded people who can work together towards living within the planet's limits.
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Join us and become part of our global network of individuals and organisations who are working together to transition to a sustainable future.
Meet OUR Team
Kate Meyer
Founding Director
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Kate has a vision of world where people flourish on a healthy planet.
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Kate is an engineer, a sustainability scientist, and a consultant. Her early career was focussed on sustainable building design in NZ and then Singapore. She led the environmental design for many significant and cutting edge built environment projects in NZ and Singapore before moving to Perth to set up a sustainable buildings team for engineering firm Arup.
Kate noticed a large gap between the science of sustainability and business and government policies and approach. She shifted her focus away from the built environment and started a sustainability consultancy firm in Perth, and later NZ (Ecometrics) which helps organisations understand and manage their environmental impacts. In 2014 she began a PhD to look at how to best address the gap between science, behaviour, and policy.
The result was Planetary Accounting.
Richard Lauder
Chairman
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Richard has recently completed a career managing companies in sectors as diverse as tourism, infrastructure services and experimental aviation.
Richard studied chemical engineering, business and ethics and is now focusing on contributing to, and influencing NZ policy on, climate change mitigation and the environment. Richard currently chairs Natural Habitats, a large landscaping company, and also the Trust that runs the Cool-Safe product stewardship scheme - collecting and destroying high global warming synthetic gases.
Andrew Cowie
Trustee
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For Andrew, living well means having access to a beautiful, natural environment, which is his source of joy and one he hopes to preserve for his children and their children.
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Andrew works for a leading Australasian engineering consultancy where he supports clients in improving their businesses through the application of emerging technologies. His key strengths are in communication, facilitation, ideation and project management. Over his career so far Andrew has been fortunate to work in over 15 different countries across a very wide range of industries. This also allowed him to get to know and work with a lot of great people.
Andrew is an optimist who believes that innovation is the solution to our problems and will improve our future. Despite this optimism, Andrew is extremely concerned about today’s pressing environmental issues and trends. He joined the Planetary Accounting Network as the framework provides the opportunity for everyone to be empowered with the right information to make 'the right choice' for the environment and consequently us; something that he feels is currently missing.
YVONNE LARCHER
Trustee, Board Secretary & Treasurer
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Yvonne is passionate about doing her part in finding and supporting sustainable solutions for us and our planet.
Yvonne is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades with a love for the outdoors. She is a senior finance leader and has worked within various industries (e.g. the transport sector, the oil & gas industry, professional services, the jewelry industry and IT start-ups) and in different roles (from finance related roles to executive advisory) in the private and public sectors in Europe as well as in New Zealand.
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Having grown up on the Austrian countryside, she learned at an early age the connection between humans and their environment. She rediscovered this insight again at a later stage when she settled in New Zealand. Seeing the impact of human activities on our planet made her wanting to do her part in stopping this destructive behaviour and working towards a sustainable future for humans and our planet.
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Yvonne brings her experience managing finances and working with large corporates to her Planetary Accounting role – helping to communicate environmental science to stakeholders in business, risk, and accountancy terms.
RACHEL DANCE
Graphic Designer
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Rachel believes pictures are worth a thousand words and wants her illustrations to reach an audience of all ages as well as all levels of knowledge with our sustainability message.
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Since her childhood Rachel has been inspired by nature and Aotearoa’s magnificent landscape. Her awareness of nature’s fragility and consequently the importance of preserving our natural environment for generations to come grew when having her own children. Since then she has been focusing on how she can support preserving and improving our environment.
Rachel is a creative spirit and therefore naturally gravitated towards a career in Graphic Design. Previously she worked in the design area in media and corporate environments, where she was involved in Art Direction, Design, Illustration, and Photographic Retouching. In her role as Graphic Designer at PAN, Rachel specializes in Illustration and Infographic Design. This means she translates ideas on sustainability, particularly sustainable building design, into illustrations and visual storytelling, making sure a picture is really worth a thousand words.
CAROLINE HOPE
Sustainability Advisor​
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Caroline is passionate about intergenerational, systems-based solutions that will contribute positively to all pillars of society. Trained as a process engineer, who has worked across a variety of fields, she is an advocate of integrated, multidisciplinary thinking,
After almost 5 years working across sustainability, water, artificial intelligence at Beca Ltd, she has taken a year out to complete a masters at the University of Cambridge. Her focus for the MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development is low-carbon, resilient food systems which a specific focus on the New Zealand agriculture sector. She will apply Planetary Accounting methods to inform the research.
Alice Oswald
Senior Planetary Accountant
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Alice believes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and is excited to see the PAN network grow and collaborate to reach as many organisations/people as possible.
Alice started her career in accounting and commercial finance before broadening her focus to sustainability advisory. Alice has experience supporting SMEs with carbon measurement and reduction initiatives, and helping businesses cut through the ‘noise’ to develop clear, transparent, and measurable sustainability strategies. She also has experience supporting organisations to deliver their climate risk assessments in alignment with the National Climate Change Risk Assessment process. She is passionate about supporting organisations to achieve their sustainability aspirations, and believes Planetary Accounting provides the perfect framework to enable these.
Alice grew up in sunny Nelson but now resides in ÅŒtautahi/Christchurch and spends as much time as possible in the outdoors (preferably on the beach or in the hills/mountains!).
Gabriella Rutherford-Carr
Planetary Accounting Specialist
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Gabriella is passionate about helping businesses realise their potential to generate positive change that allows us to live more in sinc with nature.
Gabriella is a sustainability professional, working in the space of greenhouse gas reporting, and supporting sustainability initiatives to drive down environmental impacts. She has a Masters in Sustainable Business from the University of Otago, and also previously worked as a marketing account manager. She loves pairing the skills from both backgrounds to help translate wicked sustainability problems and to promote solutions for everyone.
She has joined PAN to develop more skills in other areas of sustainability, and to better understand all planetary challenges so that she can help others.
Lokesh Sangarya
Sustainability Advisor
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Lokesh grew up in Bangalore, India where he managed to dodge the traffic and race as a pro-cyclist in the Under-23 age category. Following retirement, he completed his Master’s in Mechanical engineering from Monash University with a particular interest in operations management. In his previous life, he oversaw beer production at Australia’s oldest brewery in Tasmania. Living in ‘Tassie’ helped him develop his green thumb. He gave up the free beer to work full-time in delivering sustainable outcomes on water infrastructure projects across Australia and New Zealand.
Lokesh joined PAN to develop and utilize a system thinking approach to identify drivers of the largest ecological crises of our times and implement solutions to deliver a regenerative planet for future generations.
Claudia Loos
Network Ambassador
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Claudia works in commercial finance in the FMCG industry. She is a passionate foodie with a love for outdoor adventures. In her spare time she enjoys being in nature, hiking, surfing, skiing and exploring. Combining these, Claudia's mission is to help deliver nutritious and delicious food to consumers, without negatively impacting the planet and our environment. Claudia strongly believes that Planetary Accounting and the work that PAN does can help to achieve this mission.
Claudia is a network ambassador for PAN and also manages the website. By joining PAN she hopes to learn more about sustainability, beyond food systems, doing what she can to help the planet return to and remain in a safe operating space.