Tara Shine
Corporate climate commitments are colliding with a tougher policy environment, slower capital, and visible scepticism about ESG. Boards now need to translate net zero language into operating decisions that will survive an audit and a shareholder challenge. The gap between the climate narrative inside the company and the substance underneath it has become a business risk.
Dr Tara Shine is a climate scientist and former UN negotiator who helps organisations turn climate commitments into operating decisions backed by policy, science, and business credibility.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Tara Shine
- Two decades inside the UN climate negotiation system, including EU negotiating roles within the UNFCCC, give her direct authority on the policy environment shaping corporate net zero obligations.
- Reviewed the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C, the scientific reference point most net zero strategies are still benchmarked against.
- Runs Change by Degrees, a B Corp certified Irish social enterprise, so her advice is grounded in the operating reality of building a sustainable business, not only in policy theory.
- Communicates climate substance to non-specialist audiences without softening it. The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures and BBC One presenter work demonstrate the rare ability to hold scientific authority and audience accessibility in the same conversation.
- Adviser to the Mary Robinson Foundation and The Elders, giving her a track record at the level where climate strategy meets serious geopolitical and ethical scrutiny.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder and Director, Change by Degrees (B Corp certified social enterprise)
- Chair of Trustees, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 2014 to 2025
- Former Special Advisor, Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice; adviser to The Elders
- UN climate change negotiator for over a decade, including for the EU under the UNFCCC
- Co-facilitator, Structured Expert Dialogue of the Second Periodic Review under the UNFCCC
- Reviewer, IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C
- Presenter, Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2020 (Lecture Three: Up in the Air); BBC One contributor
- Author, “How to Save Your Planet One Object at a Time” (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
Biography
The Paris Agreement was negotiated in rooms most business audiences never see. Tara Shine spent a decade in those rooms, including in EU negotiating positions, and later co-facilitated the Structured Expert Dialogue assessing whether the Agreement’s goals were actually being met. That history matters now, because the policy assumptions corporates built their net zero plans on are being tested in real time.
She is co-founder and director of Change by Degrees, a B Corp certified Irish social enterprise that advises organisations on the operating side of sustainability. Her work as a reviewer of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C gave her standing in the scientific community; her role as Special Advisor to the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice gave her standing in the political one. Few speakers carry both at once.
Public audiences know her from the 2020 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, where she delivered Lecture Three on air pollution and climate, and from BBC One presenting work on heat pumps and electric vehicles. Her 2020 book “How to Save Your Planet One Object at a Time” (Simon and Schuster) translated climate science into household decisions, and was reviewed by The Times as “an unpreachy guide free of jargon and full of often surprising information.”
She chaired the Board of Trustees of the International Institute for Environment and Development from 2014 to 2025, a tenure that placed her at the intersection of climate, equity, and development finance for over a decade. That vantage point gives her something most sustainability speakers do not have: a direct view of how climate policy is made, contested, and translated into the rules companies have to operate inside.
Key speaking topics
- Climate policy and the UN negotiation system
- Corporate net zero and the credibility of climate commitments
- Energy transition and the gap between policy and capital allocation
- ESG under scrutiny
- Climate justice and the geopolitics of climate action
- Sustainability strategy for B Corps and purpose-led businesses
- Science communication for non-specialist audiences
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees setting or revising net zero strategy
- Chief sustainability officers and ESG leads briefing investors and regulators
- Corporate communications and investor relations teams under scrutiny on climate claims
- Sustainability and transformation leads inside energy, finance, manufacturing, and consumer sectors
Audience outcomes
- A clearer read on where global climate policy is heading and what it requires of corporates
- A sharper distinction between climate commitments that will hold up under scrutiny and those that will not
- Practical reference points from a B Corp operator, not only a policy adviser
- A scientific grounding for boardroom climate conversations, free of jargon
- Confidence to engage seriously with stakeholders on climate without retreating into PR language