From investment banker to climate warrior: Keith Tuffley receives King’s birthday honour

Keith Tuffley has spent two decades combining his passion for the environment with investment banking. ‘Are we handing across an economy, an environment and a planet which means that our kids will be poorer?’

Investment banker and climate warrior Keith Tuffley is CEO of Race to Belém.

Keith Tuffley is in Monaco getting ready to attend this year’s UN Ocean Conference.

In Sydney and Melbourne, he made his name in investment banking in the 1990s and 2000s, but Tuffley has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to conservation and environmental sustainability, as well as to the financial sector.

That a banking career spanning decades, including stints as head of investment banking at Goldman Sachs Australia and a managing director of UBS, comes second to his work on climate is just as Tuffley would have it, although he doesn’t say so.

After spending a few years as CEO of Richard Branson’s The B Team and then at Citi leading its energy transition and sustainability team, Tuffley, now in his 60s, is busy with his latest endeavour as CEO of Race to Belém, an initiative to raise billions of dollars to help stop deforestation in Brazil, in particular in the Amazon.

For many years now, his focus has been on bringing finance and climate together.

“I initially left investment banking with Goldman Sachs (in 2008) because at the time I thought there’s no way that banking could do something about climate change and nature and biodiversity loss,” Tuffley tells The Australian.

Keith Tuffley is waging war on climate change using finance.

“We were just a service provider to our clients. And if a client said they wanted to do something, well, it was our duty to give them the money to do it. Well, that’s all fine, but it doesn’t solve the (climate) problem.”

In time, he realised just how crucial the finance sector was to the war on climate change.

“We need so much capital and so much innovation and so much technology and human behavioural change; this is a whole-of-economy type of issue. And my background in finance has been incredibly helpful to this,” he says.

“The reality is, most of the money in the world is in the private sector. And so today’s thinking is very different. Looking back over the last 10 or 12 years or so, you can see the roles that many investors, asset managers, asset owners, banks are playing to be a conduit for positive change.

“There’s going to be short-term headwinds like we’re seeing at the moment. But we’ve just got to keep our heads high and find creative ways (to move forward).”

Tuffley’s interest in the environment has been lifelong. Spending his early years in north Queensland in the late 1960s and early 70s, he was surrounded by nature. Holidays were filled with camping trips to the bush with his parents – dad the manager of the local sugar mill and mum an economics teacher – and siblings.

They relocated to Sydney when he was 10.

He studied economics and law and began working at law firm Allens in the late 1980s before making the switch to banking. A masters degree in sustainability leadership from Cambridge University came later.

He’s combined his passion for the environment with a love for adventuring, including journeying to both the North and South Poles — he spent six weeks skiing and cycling at the South Pole a few years ago — to see for himself the impact of global warming.

Keith Tuffley.

Making a home in Switzerland, where he lives today, wasn’t originally part of the plan but after spending a couple of years in London while at Goldman, the Tuffleys weren’t ready to bring their growing brood back to Australia.

The appeal of living in central Europe, close to many of the climate-focused non-governmental organisations, was too hard to resist. More than 15 years later, he and his wife have put four kids through the Swiss education system. Two are now back in Australia at university, giving Tuffley an added reason to return to Sydney.

The Race to Belém is helping to elevate the importance of nature and biodiversity as a tactic to solve the climate crisis, he says.

“I’m out there meeting with literally hundreds of private sector companies to persuade them that saving the Amazon is actually important for all of us. It’s not just an Amazonian or Brazilian issue, it’s a global issue.”

Speaking to Tuffley, you get the sense he doesn’t want to slow down. But there’s a relentless optimism and drive; he insists we must not give up the fight.

“The biggest danger we have is if we all start to feel it’s inevitable that our kids are going to be worse off than we are. We’ve got to get in our minds this determination, this willingness to improve the world.

“I’ve grown up in a good era but are we handing across an economy, an environment and a planet which means that our kids will be poorer? We’ve got to reverse that. We’ve got to understand this is an opportunity, and if we don’t do anything about it, GDP and any other measure of economic prosperity and wealth will almost certainly decline across the world.”

Originally published as From investment banker to climate warrior: Keith Tuffley receives King’s birthday honour