The planet needs family planning, says Sara Parkin

Sara Parkin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:14:35 +0100

Why population control is a personal responsibility, as well as a global dilemma

Thwarting death – and particularly child mortality – has been one of the greatest human achievements of the last 200 years. Average life expectancy across the world has risen from 47 to 68 in the last 60 years alone. Growing old remains a privilege, though. Citizens of richer countries still live around ten years longer than those in poorer ones.

Unfortunately, lowering birth rates is not so prestigious and attracts significantly less investment. Although family size has dropped from a global average of over five children in 1950 to just 2.6 today, we are still on course for a world population of 10.5 billion by 2050. According to many ecologists, it would be impossible for the earth to sustain so many. Already, at 6.8 million, we are over-consuming and over-polluting to a dangerous degree.

There are plenty of incentives for politicians to hasten an ‘ecological demographic transition’ – in which birth rates come down to equal death rates, and populations stabilise at a lower level. As solutions to climate change and resource shortages go, this is one of the easiest and cheapest available – and would bring many additional benefits to women, children and economies.

When rich countries discuss population control, a commonly voiced fear is the cost of an ageing population. But, as Adair Turner, former Chair of the UK Pensions Commission, has calculated, raising children represents a far greater cost to families and to the state than caring for the frail and dying.

Globally, up to 40% of pregnancies are unplanned, revealing a huge unmet need for contraception and family planning services. Just by filling this gap, we would have a chance of bringing world population down to the lower UN projection of 8 billion by 2050.

In the poorest countries, where the average family size is over four children, women need the most help to plan their families and be confident that the children they do have will thrive. Improved access to contraceptives and advice in Iran, Thailand and Rwanda, for example, has been welcomed greatly by women – and has proved very successful at reducing growth rates. For determined governments, distance is no obstacle to making effective interventions. In remote upland regions of Mexico, contraceptives arrive in the villages in panniers carried by donkeys – with medical supplies in the same load.

Yet in the UK, where over a third of pregnancies are unplanned, Primary Care Trusts are failing to provide adequate services.

Currently, rich countries are alone in showing a rise in average family size. With a disproportionate impact on the environment, this puts them on fragile ecological, moral and diplomatic territory. A child born in Europe accounts for 11 times more greenhouse gas emissions than one born in Africa; for North America, the figure is 24 times. (These do not include ‘offshore’ emissions embedded in imports.)

Ultimately, it is clear that, with increasing pressure on key resources, such as land, food and water, everywhere, planning our family is a personal responsibility, as well as a global dilemma.

Sara Parkin is Founder Director of Forum for the Future.

Forum for the Future’s new report, Growing Pains, warns that the UK will struggle to meet the needs of a population officially projected to reach 70 million by 2030, and calls on politicians to start planning now.

Read it online at www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/growing-pains.

How would Sir Alex Ferguson implement your sustainability strategy?

Ben Kellard — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:34:01 +0100

Grappling with implementing a sustainability project or strategy? These four steps are what Sir Alex Ferguson might suggest, based on his experience of the ruthless competition that is the beautiful game.

All right, you may not eyeball your competition for 90 minutes every week like Manchester United. But your opponents will be just as determined to outperform you, and sustainability improvements are a key means to differentiate themselves.

So how can you move further and faster than your opponents?

1. Identify your key players

Assuming you have an agreed strategy or project, who are your Rooneys and Ferdinands? Who will make or break the performance and who do others look to for leadership? In organisations it’s often influential middle and senior managers who determine the success of a strategy. It’s therefore vital you know who yours are.

2. Agree on tactics

Are you playing a 4-4-2 long ball game or 4-2-4 possession football? Involve your key players in deciding the tactics you’ll use to deliver the strategy. By doing this, you benefit from their experience and insight, and ensure they are committed to the tactics.

Many organisations fall into the trap of jumping from strategic goals straight to implementing specific projects or initiatives without deciding on the best tactical approach. For example, you may have a strategic goal to become carbon neutral, but how will you do that? Will you focus on energy efficiency, renewable energy, offsetting or a combination of all three? Each of these is a tactical response. You need to decide on your tactics before you can move onto implementation – otherwise you risk creating confusion and frustration.

3. Keep the management on-side

So you’ve agreed with your key players what you are going to do – now you need to keep the management – or executive team on-side. Often this simply means updating them on your plan and giving them an opportunity to contribute before you put it into action. This will ensure the exec can see how your plan will support the organisation’s goals.

If your exec knows you have consulted their influential managers, they will be much more confident of success. Their permission will also give confidence to those implementing the plan.

4. Deliver, adapt and measure

Now you are ready to play the game. As you do, remember to have huddles to learn from how it’s going and make any necessary changes.

Sustainability is likely to challenge your organisation in new ways, so give yourself the opportunity to tackle this. Pick the right match statistics to know if you are on track and use them to review your progress.

This is also your chance to involve the broader team by giving them roles and the space to contribute. You can engage employees even more by celebrating success when you finally ruffle the net!

How certified fish can transform communities

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:45:12 +0100

Premiums aren't the only incentive for sustainable fishing

When the American Albacore Fishing Association (AAFA) had its tuna certified to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard for sustainable fisheries, the effect in financial terms was dramatic. Certified tuna can command premium prices from demanding European buyers such as restaurants, and for a small fishing community like that of Bonita, California, this made all the difference. With certification secured, they were able to sell direct, rather than depend on the constant flux of dockside prices. Whereas previously they’d received an average of $1,700 per tonne, they could now command, and stick to, a price of $2,260.

With the extra $560 per tonne, they were able to make their crumbling vessels seaworthy, and start to attract a new generation into what had been a dying industry. “It was the first time we had set [our own] price and enjoyed that stability,” says Natalie Webster, Director of Operations at AAFA.

It underlines the fact that the MSC is not just about ensuring sustainable fish stocks. It can also be a lifesaver for fisher folk. With this sort of premium, they have the power to stand their ground in a tough market, just as Fairtrade certification has helped out coffee farmers.

Across the Mexican border in Baja California, meanwhile, the certification of red rock lobster led to a significant investment in the infrastructure of ten coastal villages. When the Regional Federation of Fishing Industry Cooperatives (FEDECOOP) became the first community fishery in a developing country to meet the MSC’s criteria for sustainability and good management, international interest in the region soared. According to Mario Ramade of FEDECOOP, this attracted a $20 million grant from the Mexican Government to supply the villages with electricity, improve their roads and ensure access to drinking water.

For Rupert Howes, Chief Executive of the MSC, this reinforces evidence of a link between certification and wider social and economic benefits – something he hopes will attract new fisheries into the programme. “The potential market incentives are manifold, with fisheries reporting a combination of stable prices, stable customer base, market preference and access to new markets”, he says. “It’s not just higher prices.”

Take Norwegian saithe. While the extent to which fisheries have been able to mark up the price of their MSC-certified stock has varied, a surge in demand from food companies has helped business across the board. As Howes explains: “Greater throughput in factories means lower production costs.” And so, whatever the point of sale premium, other economic benefits are realised along the supply chain.

That is not to say that small-scale fisheries need wait for wider change in the industry to reap certification’s rewards. In Australia, the Lakes and Coorong fishery has sold MSC certified perch, mullet, mulloway and ‘pipi’ (cockles) to restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney at premiums of 30-50%. While in southern England, the Hastings fishery has secured price hikes of up to 15% for its Dover sole, herring and mackerel in European ports. “I have no doubt that the business case [for joining the MSC programme] has been proven,” says Howes, “and it’s not just the smaller guys who are demonstrating that.”

Also, most importantly, a strong ecological case is emerging. “There’s growing evidence of the environmental benefit of fisheries operating at such a high level of sustainability – and how market incentives can drive change in the way the oceans are fished”, adds Howes.

Markets are responding positively and changing rapidly. The Findus Group has announced that all its wild-caught seafood will come from fisheries certified to the MSC standard by 2012. Birds Eye also aims to buy all its wild and farmed fish from certified sustainable sources by that year. For wild fish, this means MSC certification, since no other standard meets Birds Eye’s fish policy requirements.

As the market grows, and consumers demand certified sustainable seafood, there is hope that the decline in global fish stocks can be reversed. Already, 12% of the global harvest is in the MSC programme. Over 5,000 individual products are available in 60 countries. The MSC aims to help increase that proportion to 25% over the coming decade. – Andrew Purvis

The Marine Stewardship Council
is a Forum for the Future partner.

What innovators can learn from... paint

Anna Simpson — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

When it comes to the colours of change, the bolder the better – argues Anna Simpson

It’s just a lick of paint: canary yellow to liven up a little nook; white to cool a south-facing room; red for that homely front door. But that slim skin of colour can fast track materials to landfill. According to estimates, half of the UK’s landfilled waste comes from buildings that – after an average life of just 27 years – are no longer wanted. Yet, in spite of this incredibly short lifespan, most buildings are not designed with decommissioning in mind, or “with an eye to their later existence as ruins”, in the words of WG Sebald. Recycling companies are keen to salvage what they can, but valuable resources have to be thrown away because the paint can’t be separated from the ‘contaminated’ raw material. What seemed to add value when the decorators were first called in detracts from it at the ‘graveyard’ stage.

It may blend – quite literally – into the background of our lives, but with roughly 400 million litres sold in the UK each year, the environmental impact of decorative paint is significant. A look at its lifecycle reveals concerns at every stage. There are energy-intensive ingredients like synthetic binders from fossil fuels; there’s the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – a form of greenhouse gas and sometimes detrimental to health; there’s packaging and transporting the stuff; and then there’s the heavy draw on water, both during production, and later on, to clean brushes and rollers. As one WWF campaign warned, “A single tin of paint can pollute millions of litres of water”.

Fortunately, the answer isn’t ugly walls. A project by Forum for the Future linked up various players in the paint supply chain – including manufacturer ICI Paints AkzoNobel, and contractor Carillion, a major user – to address some of these problems. The collaboration, they found, threw up all sorts of opportunities for innovation, with rewards in cost and efficiency. One result was a water-based paint, virtually free of VOCs, and with 50% less embodied carbon than previous formulations. Other outcomes included a new recycling process for paint cans, packaging formats to reduce bulk by 98%, and a mobile brush and roller cleaning station so as not to contaminate local water supplies.

But if all these solutions were so obvious, why did no one do it before? Because, explains the Forum’s Head of Innovation, Chris Sherwin, “no single company can own or influence the entire lifecycle [of a product], as generally they are only involved in one phase”. It’s by bringing people together that inefficiencies are exposed and new ideas born – and for Sherwin, the project’s biggest win was how effectively it illustrated this.

“The greatest innovations occur across a system,” he argues, insisting that conversation and ‘co-development’ across the lifecycles of products and services and between sectors are a major catalyst for change. With paint, the reward is scale: if you add together small steps taken by individual companies to address everything from product design to consumer use, the result is a leap for the industry.

But cross-sector collaborations can lead way beyond incremental change. With mobile technology and the web transforming how we live and work, more companies are getting nosy about their neighbours in the race to keep ahead. For some, the out-of-the-box thinking inspired by delving into another sector or mindset leads to radical transformation. And the most innovative companies, it’s emerging, don’t just reinvent themselves, but transform the way things are done around them.

Interestingly, it’s leading players in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector – the ones behind the rapid rate of change – who seem most eager to find new roles and identities. They are taking their core skills and asking where else they could be used: effectively gatecrashing other sectors. Take Google. It has spotted that the future of energy is as much about managing information, networks and systems, as it is about actual generation. Smart grids, for example, will link a range of renewable sources, switch between them to minimise the impact of intermittency, and then monitor and influence the end user’s demand. With Google’s growing portfolio of investment in clean energy start-ups and some major generation projects (see 'Google invests in clean energy'.), it would be no surprise to see the web pioneer of the last couple of decades become the energy giant of the next…

Another extrovert of the ICT world is Philips Electronics. “It’s not possible to deliver really big innovations as one company alone anymore,” says Ellen de Vries, Head of Communications. “The speed of innovation has accelerated and you need to focus on what you’re good at.” Philips’ design group has set up a process which pools the knowledge and expertise of industrial and academic partners to fast-forward breakthroughs. Design Probes identifies possible trends of the future and the products or services that could be in demand, and rehearses them as design concepts. One recent example is the ‘biosphere home farm’, where various mini-ecosystems thrive in a small indoor space, sharing nutrients and filtering water in a constant interdependent flux.

A more controversial idea, also from Design Probes, responds to the ‘nature deficit’ of urban living. In project Metamorphosis, ‘air trees’ mimic the rhythm of outdoor airflow and create subtle changes in humidity, and ‘healing beds’ with fibre optic canopies produce natural sun and moon light effects. ‘Why not just open a window?’ you might well ask. But at this stage, the aim of the game is to challenge assumptions and behaviours, making space for radically different ways of doing and looking at things – and so it really is the thought that counts.

Innovations that challenge our customs and comfort zones don’t always meet with approval at first. “Often really interesting concepts get hammered internally,” Sherwin remarks, “but then they go and win loads of awards, get great press, and heads start to turn…”

Other outfits are opening up the innovation process to their consumers – a smart way of generating new ideas and raising the profile of a particular initiative. Levi Strauss & Co.’s ‘Care to air design challenge’ is a crowd-sourcing competition for the most “covetable and sustainable air-drying solution for clothes”. It’s also a way to raise awareness of the extravagant use of energy that tumble drying represents, when simple exposure to fresh air will do the job and give your clothes that breezy outdoors scent. In another crowd-sourcing initiative, Starbucks asked coffee lovers to find an alternative to disposable cups. The winning solution, Karma Cup, isn’t a cup at all. It’s a behaviour change incentive in the form of a blackboard. Every time a customer brings a reusable cup with them, it’s tallied on the board, with a free drink awared to every tenth person.

Innovations to challenge and change behaviour are sprouting up across the world. When Japan’s three most important banks joined forces to save energy on indoor temperature regulation, the result was a sudden, massive shift in business clothing etiquette. By leaving the air con off until room temperatures rose above 28°C, they encouraged employees who would have worn suits and ties whatever the weather to opt for open-necked shirts.

It sounds sticky, and even smelly. But the race is on to design a world cool enough for comfort, and those willing to risk a few raised eyebrows now, could well be laughing later.

Anna Simpson is Deputy Editor, Green Futures.

Ecotourism project "repurposes" Albanian bunkers

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:59:43 +0100

Albania's 750,000 military bunkers find new life as luxury stop-overs

In Albania, where 750,000 military bunkers litter the landscape as an indelible reminder of the Cold War, plans are afoot to turn symbols of hostility into hospitality. Built to survive bombardment, the domed pillboxes have proved costly and difficult to destroy – but two Albanian graduates from Milan Polytechnic have found a sustainable use for them: as bars, cafes and small, perfectly formed hotels to kickstart a flagging eco-tourism industry.

Elian Stefa and Gyler Mydyti, who studied landscape architecture, have mapped and categorised the bunkers and identified uses for them – ranging from highland hotels for two with mountain views (albeit through a slot), to ten-bed igloos for backpackers. Their Concrete Mushrooms Project is now seeking to raise funds and engage stakeholders, including UNESCO.

As well as “giving bunkers value instead of having them as a burden”, claims Stefa, the project will create jobs. It will also “preserve the memory of a significant period in Albanian history”.

Built between 1950 and 1985, the bunkers were the brainchild of an increasingly paranoid Enver Hoxha, Albania’s Stalinist prime minister, who alienated not only the West, but neighbouring Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and China. Fearing attack, he began a programme to build one bunker for every four Albanians, each big enough for a family or a squad of soldiers.

Vicky Murray, sustainability advisor to the tourism industry at Forum for the Future, applauds the repurposing of the bunkers. “It demonstrates the potential for innovative, sustainable tourism to have a positive impact on destinations,” she says, adding, “I hope they use our Paradise Found guidelines to ensure this develops as sustainably as possible!” – Andrew Purvis

The essential ingredients for smart retail

Sally Uren — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:59:29 +0100

Sally Uren whips up a sustainable brand salad

There’s no shortage of talk about smart, sustainable retail. But how do we make it work in practice? Here is a personal recipe.

A large helping of leadership
We need to speed up the shift towards sustainable business models – ones that deliver economic success within environmental limits. A great example of this is Unilever’s announcement that it will double its size, while reducing its overall impact on the environment.

An infusion of innovation
If you want to make sustainable living affordable and easy, innovation is the way to go. B&Q’s partnership with Bioregional and the London Borough of Sutton to offer home owners loans to improve the energy efficiency of their houses is just one example of the fresh thinking that will deliver immediate financial and carbon savings.

A dash of making-it-easy juice
By providing recipes and even little boxes for bits of food that would normally get thrown away, Sainsbury’s ‘Love your Leftovers’ campaign made it easy for people to reduce their food waste, and so reduce food to landfill.

A dose of reward
We all like a little more than a pat on the back. One of the best examples is the partnership between M&S and Oxfam, where M&S customers are rewarded with a £5 voucher for taking their old clothes, and more recently curtains, to the charity shop.

A layer of living it
It’s critical that staff on the shop floor can answer questions from the hapless consumer on green issues, and retailers can help staff practise what they need to preach. M&S offered their staff free home insulation, while Walmart handed out energy efficient lightbulbs.

And a topping of brand delight
People trust brands in a way they don’t trust business or government. Smart retailers will use this trust to encourage more sustainable behaviours, recognising that endless labels on packaging have their limits.

Sally Uren is Deputy Chief Executive, Forum for the Future.

How will we holiday in 2020?

Peter Madden — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:44:35 +0100

Peter Madden takes a tour of tomorrow's top holiday destinations

In a couple of decade’s time, holidaying abroad could be but a distant memory for Brits. We’ll flock instead, with our buckets and spades, to the UK’s new eco-resorts and regenerated seaside towns.

Who’d want the heat, hassle and exorbitant cost of going overseas? As key resources become more scarce, power cuts, water shortages and searing summer temperatures will make the Med less fun.

And exotic resorts might be glad to see the back of us, with resource shortages weighing down on local needs. Tough quotas could send prices sky-rocketing, meaning that some of the most iconic attractions in the world, such as the Pyramids, can only be visited virtually by most people.

Some destinations will be uncomfortably crowded as mass tourism from China causes problems from traffic congestion to eroded landscapes. Other destinations will feel less welcoming as strict religious laws prohibit bikinis and booze.

At the same time, the UK could feel more attractive as it experiences milder winters and dryer summers. English wines and olives will bring the Mediterranean experience north. Holidaying in the British Isles won’t just be the most affordable option; it will also be chic and ethically ‘cool’, with celebrities spotted on the beaches of South Wales.

And when people do venture abroad, a combination of tough personal carbon budgets and restrictions on flying will mean they travel overland, or hop on an airship. Those who really want to fly will save up for years for special occasions such as honeymoons or visiting friends and family.

We can see some of the seeds of these changes already, with quotas and water levies in some destinations, and the recent vogue for ‘staycationing’.

Will this be a good thing from a sustainability point of view? There will certainly be big carbon benefits from less air travel. But there will be downsides, too, including loss of revenue for countries that have depended on tourism and increased pressure on habitats in the UK from higher numbers holidaying here. We may even see the French middle classes descend en masse to our campsites in August, to escape their sweltering summers.

Peter Madden is CEO, Forum for the Future.

Exploring Sweden, in search of equality

Steven Bland — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:16:41 +0100

What do cycle touring, equality, film-making and wild camping have in common? At first glance, not very much. But from August 4th to September 16th, two young graduates are cycling across Sweden, filming their adventure and asking what it's like to live in a more equal society.

One is a graduate from Forum for the Future’s masters course in Leadership for sustainable development; the other a future solicitor. On the journey, we will be asking if there are things we can learn that can be applied to the UK's political and economic realities, and the ‘big society’.

These questions arose from reading a new book called The Spirit Level, which spells out in convincing and shocking detail the statistical relationship between a whole range of social ills (for example, crime, bad health, teenage pregnancies and lack of trust) and levels of income inequality within developed countries. The authors, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, argue that it is a lack of social democracy, not GDP, which appears to determine a countries ability to tackle the long-standing and fundamental social problems we face. The most unequal countries – the USA, UK, and Singapore – fare many times worse than the most equal: Sweden, Norway, Finland and Japan.

And so we have looked to Sweden: a country of low inequality and poverty, yet high economic growth, health, education, happiness and trust. We want to find out what it actually feels like to live in a more equal society. Are the prejudices many of us hold in the UK true? Are more equal societies boring, turgid, lacking in innovation and places in which it’s hard to be an individual or be ‘successful’? Most importantly, do the Swede’s already have the ‘big society’ many involved in sustainability might like to see? There’s a chance it conflicts with the big society plan the coalition government is calling for.

The exploration will take us over a thousand miles through the cities and lakes of Sweden, wild camping, staying with strangers, talking with both ordinary people and academics alike. We are recording our six week journey via video diary, photo-blog, interview and finally, documentary film.

At the 2010 graduation for Forum’s Master’s students, Ed Gillespie of Futerra Communications suggested we needed to ‘hijack the big society.’ I’m not sure anyone really knows how to do this yet. But I think it is the responsibility of those working in sustainability to use the arguments in The Spirit Level to push for a fairer society.

I hope by learning from the Swedish, we can spark a debate about what our own big society could actually look like in a way that puts us on a platform to tackle our linked social and environmental problems. Tune in at Exploring Equality's website and get involved in the debate.

Let’s get talking about the kind of society you want to live in.

You can follow Explore Equality on:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ExploreEquality
Facebook
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/exploringequality/
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/ExploringEquality

O2 Eco rating helps consumers choose a sustainable future

James Taplin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:43:10 +0100

Do you know how sustainable your mobile phone is? Not in general terms, but in comparison with the other handsets out there? Yesterday I’d be confident in putting money on the fact that you didn’t, but that is all set to change with the launch today of the new O2 Eco rating, which we’re proud to have helped develop.

Forum for the Future has been working in partnership with O2 for a while now to help them in their goal of being a leading sustainable business. The Eco rating, which can now be seen on O2 handsets online (and in-store from Friday), is one small part of that work.

O2’s Eco rating is a total sustainability assessment scheme which we’ve created together, in close collaboration with handset manufacturers, and it gives UK consumers the information they need to make an informed choice about the devices they use.

I’m not naïve enough to think that the sustainability of a handset is suddenly going to become the deciding factor when people are choosing a phone. But we do know that it is a significant issue for many, and a key concern for a growing few.

What’s more, it is information that UK customers have been asking for – and now they have it, for the very first time.

Sustainability involves an endless range of considerations – from carbon, to water, to biodiversity, to fair trade, to corporate policies, and so on. In the face of this conflicting complexity, it’s remarkably difficult to keep things easy, so we’ve spent much of the last year doing just that.

The result is that Eco rating is a sophisticated but simple assessment, which takes the full range of mobile phone sustainability impacts into account. And it does so in a way that allows all to be fairly assessed, and which communicates the results to customers in a clear and understandable way. In doing so, it also tackles one of the more fundamental challenges to a better world.

Sustainability can be paralysingly difficult to understand – and it doesn’t help that the messages are too often those of doom and gloom. Listen to the popular media, and it sounds as if the only alternatives open to us in the future are to be wiped out by packs of ravenous polar bears carried in on the tsunamis that wash across our burned and battle-scarred lands, or to revert to lives of shivering in caves huddled around earwax candles.

Now, I don’t know about you, but neither of these options are particularly appealing to me. And I don’t imagine they are of much interest to anyone else either, save perhaps big-game-hunting hermits (a woefully under-represented demographic group). Faced with these options, it’s little surprise if people either feel so daunted by the challenge that they need to retreat to bed and pull the covers over their head, or get on with consuming at an even greater rate.

After all, if the future is rubbish either way, the best thing to do is clearly to have as much fun now while you still can. The result of the apocalyptic message is that rational, intelligent and caring people do the opposite of what’s needed.

However, these nightmare future scenarios are only a tiny subset of the potential story – what is missing are the visions of how much better life could be in a sustainable future. And it will be. All the results of what is proposed in the name of ‘sustainability’ are also desirable in their own right: safer, more connected, communities; reduced fuel bills and dependence on expensive energy; a more diverse landscape producing more nutritious food; improved health for ourselves and our children; greater social justice and equality around the world; a better work–life balance...shall I go on?

This is the world I want, and because the future isn’t decided, it’s also the one we can have if we set our minds to it. Showing people how their future will be better and giving them clear steps to getting there offers something positive to work towards, and an incentive to do so.

Eco rating removes the incapacitating indecision of too much complexity and shows how desirable, cutting-edge technology has a place in a sustainable world. It gives the clear and positive message of a sustainable future that is needed to motivate people and which will, hopefully, prevent me having to brush up on my bear wrestling.

For more information, please visit the Eco ratings project page.

Ecotourism drives jobs and reforestation in Costa Rica

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:22:27 +0100

Conservationists turn to hotel management, saving the trees and the local economy “There was only one rock you could stand on to get a Blackberry signal!” Debbie Dwyer, Management Development Director of TUI Travel, is describing the challenges faced by colleagues on their management training course in Costa Rica. “Senior managers were incommunicado for a week, which to them was torture.” Propelling ‘high potentials’ out of their comfort zone was one aim of the Heliconias Lodge and Rainforest Project, in which key executives met colleagues from across the group to discuss shared values and ideas on doing business better – or, as Dwyer puts it, cultivating the “Too-ey Spirit” (which is how TUI is pronounced). So far, so corporate. But if you knew the history of Heliconias, you’d never think it a likely spot for management training. On the edge of the Volcán Tenorio National Park, a biodiversity hot spot, this patch of primary rainforest was earmarked for deforestation and redistribution in 1985. But the plans were opposed by 23 local families, who formed the Asociación Bijagueña de Productores Agricolas (ABIPA) to manage and protect the land, and diversify local income streams. Ten of the original families remain, and with TUI Travel’s support they have transformed their private reserve into an ecotourism business. Staying in basic rooms and working with local people, TUI Travel’s castaway managers used their travel expertise to help lay the foundations. For early participants, build was the operative word. “They literally dug trenches for six new lodges which they built by hand,” Dwyer explains. Referred to as ‘three-star’, the new accommodation is “clean, en-suite with a nice bed and a wardrobe to hang your clothes in”, says Bruce Haxton, Operations Director of i-to-i, a TUI Travel-owned company that places volunteers (including corporates) on development projects abroad and ran the Heliconias programme. As a result, the lodge doesn’t just attract backpackers – but families, mainstream tourists from the coastal resorts, and “San José urbanites”. The transition from treehugger HQ to alternative hotel has been helped by a new website, an online booking engine, financial help and staffing controls – areas in which TUI Travel’s strategic advisors specialise. The result? More visitors, more foreign currency and the creation of 20 jobs in a rural area dependent on erratic subsistence farming. In the neighbouring village of Bijagua, taxi drivers and stalls selling meat and vegetables benefited, too. “There’s even a little pizzeria now, which didn’t exist before,” says Haxton. “The project has shown people that there are ways of earning money other than farming” – ones which make fewer demands on the renowned local landscape. The upshot, Haxton explains, is that with viable alternatives, such as working as forest guides or restaurant staff, Bijagua is less likely to lose its younger generation to the urban attractions of San José. “Community-based enterprises frequently struggle to develop effective links with the tourism market, and to create products which are best suited to that market,” says Jane Ashton, Head of Sustainable Development, at TUI Travel. “The Heliconias project has avoided simply building something ‘blind’ which they hope tourists like. Instead, it has worked with industry to design a product that will be an asset for future generations.” A further advantage for communities, continues Ashton, is that tourism is labour-intensive compared to other non-agricultural industries. “It offers work opportunities for the unskilled and semi-skilled, and employs high numbers of women.” And it means that ABIPA has more money to spend on reforestation, planting tens of thousands of trees a year and supporting local wildlife as well as partially offsetting the carbon cost of their visitors’ flights. Local children are encouraged to help out with tree planting, carrying forward the message that the forest is a precious resource – and one that can be profitable. But isn’t pizza in a remote Costa Rican village the thin end of the tourism wedge? Couldn’t the trickle of visitors swell to a torrent, consuming more resources? “Economic activity has an impact,” Haxton concedes, “but if we do nothing, nothing improves. Besides, there is a self-control aspect because people don’t want mass tourism here. There’s no push to tarmac the roads; they don’t want coach-loads of people swinging from the trees.” And what came of TUI Travel’s adventurous management training stint there? Dwyer insists that the advantages have been striking. “What people brought back was humility and a better, simpler way of doing things. One guy looked at all our systems to make sure we weren’t making things overly complex for our customers.” Next, they might even give up their Blackberries. – Andrew Purvis TUI Travel is a Forum for the Future partner.

Opening up innovation for sustainability

Chris Sherwin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:24:20 +0100

In March this year, M&S launched its ‘Your Green Idea’ competition inviting customers to suggest new, positive, green actions the company could implement as part of its ever-expanding Plan A. The winner, voted for by the public, would receive £100,000 to donate to an organisation, charity or company of their choice.

These types of ‘open source’ projects can be a powerful way of tackling the challenges of sustainability, and hats off to M&S for being progressive and creative. But something went wrong and it announced earlier this summer:

“After much deliberation, our judges collectively agreed that we didn’t actually have three brand new brilliant ideas that would meet our criteria of fitting with what we do at M&S, having a sufficiently significant environmental benefit, and allowing our 21 million customers to take part.”

What happened and what can we learn about how you innovate for sustainability and structure these kind of projects?

Your Green Idea is only one example of a recent wave of ‘open innovation’ projects directed at companies’ big environmental and social challenges. Starbucks’ recent Betacup competition invited ideas and designs to reduce the number of non-recyclable cups thrown away by its consumers. Do take a peek at the winning Karma Cup, a behavioural initiative in which every customer bringing in a reusable cup marks a chalkboard by the till, with the 10th person getting a free coffee.

Similarly, Levi’s ‘Care to Air’ challenge invited novel ideas to encourage people to air dry their jeans. This tackled a growing US trend for people to use tumble driers, the energy from which accounts for 60% of the carbon footprint of a pair of jeans over its lifespan.

This year also saw the launch of dedicated open innovation platforms where the challenges or briefs are directed solely at solving social and environmental problems – notably myoocreate and OpenIDEO.

As a formal concept, ‘open innovation’ was coined by Henry Chesborough, Professor at UC Berkeley, as recently as 2003. Fuelled significantly by the internet, in essence it “assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology”.

Companies have been quick to embrace this as a way to open a new dialogue directly with customers and as a way to get lots of brains from outside their business to throw in great, new, and commercially viable ideas. Through its Connect + Develop program, open innovation veterans P&G claim “50 percent of product initiatives involve significant collaboration with outside innovators”.

It’s understandable that open innovation would be quickly turned to sustainability goals. It allows companies to invite collaboration on many of those thorny social and environmental issues outside their direct, operational control. And if ’outsiders’ are involved in creating the solutions they may be more acceptable to that outside world too. Levi’s is a clear case in point with the invite around laundering jeans.

One reason why Your Green Idea may have stumbled where others succeeded is because it asked for ideas from its customers, whereas other initiatives targeted creatives, designers or innovators. Consumers often struggle to express their needs and desires in the abstract world of a sustainable future. But – as we’re finding in our work on sustainability in the UK creative industries – involving creatives in tackling sustainability challenges can lead to amazing ideas and imaginitive leaps: that’s what they do!

It’s surprising therefore that M&S should turn to its customers with the competition given that Stuart Rose, the former CEO and instigator of Plan A, often said that as a leader, M&S needed to be “half a step ahead of consumers”. Why ask them for ideas and innovations if that’s the case?

There’s also a world of difference between asking people to suggest an idea and asking people to solve a specific problem or challenge. Though problem solving alone can be limiting, the invitation to contribute a new idea on such a broad topic as sustainability or going green can be daunting. Little surprise then that M&S’s submissions were disappointing.

What lessons does this give us for open innovation for sustainability? It can be a powerful and engaging tool to help companies on their sustainability journey, but it needs to be used and designed properly. We’d suggest two important criteria are; getting the brief and challenge right, and targeting the right people to ‘open up’ to.

Tug of war over climate change solutions in the US

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:20:17 +0100

While a 'Responsiblity Revolution' is sweeping America, hopes for a binding climate treaty are slim.

I still find the US a very perplexing place. I was over there in May, on the east coast, for the latest in a series of seminars run by The Prince of Wales’s Business and the Environment Programme.

We had a fantastic bunch of business delegates: open-minded, deeply concerned about the state of the earth and climate change in particular, and all incredibly keen to see themselves and their companies as part of the solution rather than the cause of the problem.

For a lot of them, the highlight of the week was the sharing of a new film, Carbon Nation. This picks up from where An Inconvenient Truth leaves off, with 80% of the content focused on developments in energy efficiency and renewables in the US. It’s a smart piece of work, interviewing both the usual suspects (Amory Lovins, Lester Brown and so on) and treehuggers, with some ‘salt of the earth’ entrepreneurs, farmers, community activists and even military types.

It was the first time I’d heard of the Pentagon’s Green Hawks. They’re driving a programme of energy efficiency through the US armed forces (particularly ‘in theatre’ in Afghanistan and elsewhere) which makes most civilian enterprises look weak-kneed by comparison. Its success can largely be put down to its appeal to patriotic and nationalistic sentiments – summed up neatly by Thomas Friedman (author of the brilliant Hot, Flat and Crowded) with the soundbite, “Green is the new red, white and blue”.

This stuff works in the US. Friedman’s latest rallying call is that American environmentalists should give up on their ‘Earth Day’ rhetoric and focus instead on the emerging ‘Earth Race’ – the race between the US and China to become the dominant player in the burgeoning cleantech sector. This is a big deal: the cleantech market is worth around $150 billion a year at the moment, but will need to grow to a minimum of $500 billion a year if we are to meet today’s targets for reducing greenhouse gases.

Tough-talking army officers and aggressive entrepreneurs add a new dimension to the way all this sits with US citizens. But it’s still a tug of war. On the one hand, a Gallup poll in March showed that 46% of US citizens are now persuaded that climate change is caused by natural factors rather than man-made emissions. On the other, a big piece in Time Magazine a few months ago highlighted what it called the new ‘Responsibility Revolution’ sweeping America, with 40% of US citizens claiming to put the environment at the heart of their purchasing decisions.

On one thing, however, everybody agreed: the US political system is broken. Any dreams of bi-partisanship have withered in the face of Republican intransigence; Capitol Hill is besieged as never before by lobbyists of every description; and that good old US ‘pork-barrel’ is as prominently displayed at the heart of Congress as it’s ever been.

The likelihood of getting any climate treaty passed is close to zero. Indeed, the requirement to have a majority of two-thirds in the Senate means that there are already 45 international treaties stuck in the logjam waiting to be ratified. To that resonant election catchphrase “Yes We Can!”, have been added the words “but we probably won’t”…!

And so Barack Obama is increasingly dependent on going over the heads of such a chronically dysfunctional Congress. With the emphasis on energy security, new jobs, skills and innovation, he’s out with a nationwide crusade around the “Clean Energy Economy”. By all accounts, this has hardly been barnstorming Barack at his best, and hopes are fading that it could parallel JFK’s summons of the entire nation in support of efforts to get a man on the moon – before the Russians did!

It’s hard to go over the heads of Congress, directly to the people, if you can’t rely on the media’s help. And that just isn’t happening. When I’m in the US, I’m invariably over-taken by a bizarre compulsion to tune into Fox News, immersing myself masochistically in its melee of misinformation and madness.

What’s most scary about Fox News is that it gives no more standing or authority to science (as in the pursuit of evidence for or against any particular hypothesis) than to political opinion or ‘received wisdom’. Whether Fox News is simply reflecting a growing denialist trend, or actively fashioning it, the implications for policy-makers are grim. And it’s not just businesses that find this very perplexing indeed.

Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future.

Jonathon’s blog is available as a podcast at: www.JonathonPorritt.com
Listen to Jonathon at: www.ipadio.com/phlogs/JonathonPorritt

Testing the coalition's commitment to resourcing sustainable development

Jonathon Porritt — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:41:08 +0100

Forgive the extended blog the other day – a bit over the top. I want to reassure Mrs Spelman and Mr Huhne that they now have two weeks respite as I’m away on holiday.

Which also means that I’ve kept Test Number 4 just about as simple as possible.

On July 27th, in response to a Parliamentary Question from Green MP Caroline Lucas, junior DEFRA Minister Jim Paice made the following commitment: “DEFRA will establish an enhanced departmental capability and presence on sustainable development”.

To put that one to the test, all we have to do is compare DEFRA’s “SD capability” on May 5th 2010 with its capability on May 6th 2011.

In the interests of proper transparency, it would therefore be very helpful if Mrs Spelman could publish what DEFRA’s total resource looked like when they entered government. I’m sure her officials should be able to help her (and possibly me too!) in unearthing those baseline figures in terms of core staff resources and other financial commitments. Including the Sustainable Development Dialogues and so on.

If that sounds just a little bit too easy, don’t forget that we’re starting from a low baseline in terms of ministerial capability. In his answer to that Parliamentary Question, Mr Paice made the following statement: “While Government has made progress, we need to take more concerted action on the carbon agenda led by DECC, and also on the wider sustainability agenda including waste, water, biodiversity, resource efficiency and other areas which DEFRA leads on.”

Unfortunately, Mr Paice, that’s not the same thing as sustainable development. You seem to have omitted vast chunks of what falls within this territory, as you would probably have spotted had you had a chance as yet to look at ‘Securing the Future’. There’s no reference here to anything to do with health, education, economic policy, international development, social services, governance and so on. Oh dear!

In my last blog, I referred to the paper from Andrea Ross, and there’s a very helpful paragraph in there that I think will help you to understand why sustainable development is so much more than the sum of its constituent parts – including straight environmental issues and climate change.

“As a ‘whole systems’ concept, sustainable development must not be too closely linked to one particular concern, including environmental protection, human rights or climate change. Consequently, sustainable development cannot be an effective champion for any of its component parts on their own. These concerns need their own champions. Instead, sustainable development is most appropriately viewed as providing the forum or ‘table’ to which important and more concrete objectives and values can be brought. Used in this way, sustainable development can offer a framework for decision-making which ensures that these objectives and values have influence in the decision-making process.”

In other words, “whole systems” not disaggregated bits of greenery.

Can we be too smart? What is the environmental impact of our growing appetite for ICT?

James Taplin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Is ICT a help or a hindrance on the low-carbon road? Everything is getting smart – fridges and lighting, homes and cars, workplaces, cities and services, too. Behind this ‘smart’ revolution is a radical rethink of how we can achieve what we need – personal contact, satisfaction, variety, excitement, security – without relying solely on ‘stuff’. We’re increasingly using ICT to connect more aspects of our daily life, allowing us to understand and manipulate the mountains of data in a growing variety of ways – and there’s every reason to believe this trend will accelerate. But while ICT can be used to wean us off our material obsessions, it’s not without its own environmental impact. Globally, the greenhouse emissions of the sector are similar to that of the aviation industry – about 2% of the total. And, like aviation, these emissions are set to rise. There is much work underway to reduce them, of course – but rising ICT emissions is not necessarily wholly bad news. Because in general, ICT is providing a substitute for more carbon intensive services in energy, travel – especially aviation – and retail, among others. So overall, global emissions should fall, even while the proportion accounted for by ICT rises. But in addition to energy consumption and carbon emissions, there are significant raw material demands associated with the sector, such as toxicity and waste disposal – as well as social concerns, such as access to information. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency for ICT organisations to overlook their impacts and develop as they see fit – assuming that all growth is good for society and that negative impacts will be swamped by the flood of positives. It’s a short-sighted view. If we develop and apply ICT badly, it will add to the world’s problems – from resource shortages to equality gaps. But if we apply it well, the rewards could be enormous. It could enhance problem-solving creativity and innovation, build communities, give more people access to goods and services, and allow us to use precious resources more efficiently. James Taplin is Principal Sustainability Advisor for the Forum’s Business Programme. Read more about Forum’s work with leading ICT organisations in the next issue of Green Futures.

A toolkit to help companies make millions from sustainability

David Bent — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:46:24 +0100

Three years ago Marks & Spencer made a bold commitment to sustainability with the launch of Plan A. They thought it would cost them £200 million but it's already adding millions to their profits. We want to help other companies find how social and environmental responsibility can pay.

M&S launched Plan A in 2007, making 100 commitments to tackle key challenges on climate change, waste, sustainable raw materials, "fair partnership" and health over five years. They expected to invest £200 million to achieve these goals but Plan A broke even early and added £50 million to the bottom line in 2009/10, according to their latest "How We Do Business" report.

M&S isn't the only leading company to have found a business case for sustainability. General Electric has spent $5 billion on R&D in the first five years of ecomagination but the program to develop the clean technologies of the future has already generated revenues of $70 billion.

With such shining examples you might think companies would be falling over themselves to find new opportunities in social and environmental responsibility. But the reality is that many struggle. That's why we're launching a new toolkit to help companies find the business case for sustainability.

Our experience at Forum for the Future is that the complexity and uncertainty of sustainability creates major barriers to making a business case. First, the numbers are much "softer" than senior decision-makers are used to. Companies are often breaking new ground, which is difficult to model quantitatively, and are also anticipating future trends.

Second, companies get stuck in a vicious cycle: finance directors want to see a business case before giving permission to go ahead with a sustainability project, but often the information to build that business case can only be generated from the experience of going ahead.

Finally, many financial tools designed to deal with certainties are ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of how business succeeds in the face of sustainability challenges like climate change, peak oil and population growth.

So, we have developed a set of tools to help companies get over those barriers and make better decisions which generate real value. We've given it a cunning name – the Better Decisions, Real Value toolkit. It's designed to be used by sustainability practitioners and finance professionals in any organization to determine how sustainability can add value to their business.

The Foundations guide sets out the general business case for sustainability, equipping you with the arguments you need to start your case.

Entry points is a step-by-step guide to winning permission to go ahead with a sustainability-related initiative, so that you have the clarity of purpose you need, an understanding of the organizational context, a plan for a possible project, and a strategy to influence internal stakeholders.

The Pathways tool summarizes the different ways sustainability can create financial value, and gives guidance on how to collect evidence to make your business case.

The Ready Reckoner helps you assess which of these pathways to value are most important for your project and calculate good enough numbers to get the permission to start.

We developed the tools working with a number of Forum for the Future's closest corporate partners on their business case. I've discussed some of our thinking in previous posts about lessons on finding a business case, tips for getting buy-in from finance, and seven steps that could save you millions.

We're really keen for people to use the BDRV toolkit. We want to hear about your successes but we also want your feedback on how to improve the tools and what else you need. So, please download them here and then send your feedback to d.bent@forumforthefuture.org.

This blog post originally appeared here at GreenBiz.com on 13th August 2010

Coalition cuts could achieve much more with 3D leadership

Stephanie Draper — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:21:08 +0100

The first 100 days of the UK coalition government have made it clear that this government is going to cut, and cut in a big macho way, but is it really going to ‘cut it’ from a sustainability point of view?

I would suggest not. The sort of leadership that is going to take us towards a sustainable future looks further, engages widely and is authentic (connected to people’s core values) – the characteristics of 3D leadership, as we call it at Forum for the Future. And that is not the sort of leadership that we are seeing.

If the proposed higher cuts in Defra (the Department for Food and Rural Affairs) and the axing of the Sustainable Development Commission are anything to go by, it is difficult to see how the Tories’ promise of ‘vote blue, go green’ will ‘be authentic’. And if the rumours in The Times this week are true - that the Treasury is "planning to axe hundreds of millions of pounds from Britain's renewable energy and nuclear clean-up budgets" then we can ask serious questions about whether the coalition is ‘looking further’ or taking a shortsighted approach. But it is the lack of the systems thinking that underpins what we mean by ‘engaging widely’ that is the real missed opportunity.

The coalition promised a ‘root and branch’ review of what government is there to deliver and I was mildly hopeful. This was a chance to look at the whole system of public services, what we receive and how, and to find efficiencies by preventing problems rather than fixing them.

It hasn’t really panned out that way. Instead we have the Ministry of Justice proposing court closures one day and Defra talking about selling off nature reserves the next. You can’t look at the whole by asking each department to cut on its own. Prisons are being thought about separately from education; health separately from housing, education, nature... and so it goes on. Yet all these things are intrinsically linked. The ring-fencing of the NHS, although welcome, is symptomatic of this end-of-pipe approach. It shows that the government is not thinking about how to provide health – through good housing, fulfilling work, education and indeed a high quality natural environment - but how to deal with illness.

I fear that this reductionist approach is only going to lead to more end-of-pipe solutions with prevention continuing to be the poor relation of cure. We will have a smaller deficit, but we will have missed the chance to actually become more efficient. It is invariably more cost effective to prevent a problem than solve it – as the Stern review showed in relation to climate change. This is a big missed opportunity.

By engaging widely through a real root and branch approach we might spend less and get more, rather than spending less and getting less. This would mean that instead of asking people what they think we should cut and asking departments to find their percentage, you would ask them what they want delivered and rebuild public services on the basis of the things that society needs and wants. It would take a bit more time, but would certainly lead to a better outcome. That’s a big part of 3D leadership, and we will need more of it if we are going to get a good outcome from all these cuts.

Image used courtesy of Flickr under Creative Commons guidelines

Hydro power that's fish friendly

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:36:44 +0100

A new wave of hydro plants might be a boon for fish, as well as an energy source

Install small-scale hydro at suitable sites across England and Wales, and you’d generate enough electricity to meet 1% of the country’s predicted demand for 2020.

With all their locks and sluices, weirs and waterfalls, the waterways of England and Wales present nearly 26,000 opportunities for small-scale hydropower, according to Entec’s Neil Webster. He’s mapped every single one for the Environment Agency (EA), gathering data on water flow and gradient to estimate the energy potential of each site. The total available capacity, according to his team, is a respectable 1.2GW.

That is, of course, relatively small beer. In 25 countries, hydro power is by far the most important source of electricity, meeting 90% of demand – while Norway, the undisputed hydropower champion of Europe, relies on it for 99%. By contrast, the UK generates no more than 2% of its electricity needs from hydro.

Much existing hydro, in Britain and Europe, is produced by big dams, which can be highly disruptive to local ecology. But small-scale ‘run of the river’ hydro offers a more benign alternative. So, as clean tech solutions go, increasing the UK’s hydro capacity by half through small-scale projects may seem like relatively ‘low hanging fruit’.

However, Webster stresses, the top line total from his mapping study doesn’t tell the full story, taking no account of the environmental impact of installation.

One of the most important considerations for the EA is the well being of migratory fish, such as salmon, sea trout and eels. Any scheme that impedes their free movement will not get the go-ahead.

“A site can have high potential [for energy generation], but if it lies within a salmon spawning ground it rates as a low opportunity, because there’s no way you could get a proposed scheme past the regulator”, says Webster.

For the purpose of the exercise, Entec cross-checked each site against fish monitoring data and maps showing areas of high nature conversation value. The results show up a built-in tension between energy generation and the interests of wildlife. Broadly speaking, the best hydropower opportunities are in the uplands, where water moves quickly downhill, but these rivers are also key to the fortunes of migratory fish.

The obvious solution is to install a fish pass – a sort of flyover for fish on the move that removes an existing obstacle to swimming upstream. But such passes add cost to any scheme.

Take Osbaston, on the River Monnow, in Monmouthshire, where an EA-supported hydro scheme is now generating around 670,000kWh of electricity a year. Here, the fish pass which allows salmon to leap into the upper reaches of the Monnow added hundreds of thousands of pounds to the installation cost.

On the plus side of the balance sheet, the introduction of feed-in tariffs for small-scale renewables is shifting economics in favour of schemes such as these. Hydro producers will receive 20p per kWh, which should help offset the capital costs.

Further incentives come from Europe. The European Commission’s Water Framework Directive (WFD) has set an ambitious target for all water bodies to achieve a ‘good ecological status’ by 2015. Under this legislation, the UK is obliged to draw up a river management programme to minimise the ecological impact of man-made modifications – and this includes helping native species to return.

In some cases, a hydro scheme complete with fish pass might actually be an improvement on what was there before, allowing salmon, say, to navigate past a man-made obstacle, such as a dam or lock, which had hitherto blocked their passage. Moreover, the WFD insists on the full-cost recovery of all water management schemes, and so income from the hydro scheme would make this an ideal response, both economically and ecologically.

Webster’s estimate is that a little over 4,000 potential hydropower sites – including many on major rivers like the Severn and the Thames – could offer this ecological payback. If schemes are implemented at each site, they would meet about half the UK’s total hydroelectric potential without harming fish.

“Our thinking is that if you remove an [existing] obstruction [to upstream migration] and replace it with a hydropower barrier that has a fish pass, you are improving a watercourse – you not only harvest energy, but you can bring back fish” says Webster. “That really is a win-win.”

Entec UK Ltd
is a Forum for the Future partner.

Mainstreaming sustainable development

Jonathon Porritt — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:25:53 +0100

This year’s CEO Study 2010, ‘A New Era of Sustainability’, carried out by Accenture on behalf of the UN’s Global Compact initiative, came out with some fascinating insights into the state of mind of around a thousand CEOs all over the world. It’s actually hugely encouraging – especially at a time when our politicians are still all at sea on sustainability.

But one finding had me hooting with laughter: 81% of CEOs – compared to just 50% in 2007 – were of the opinion that sustainability was now “fully embedded into the strategy and operations of their company”. Really?!

Don’t get me wrong. Lots of companies are doing lots of things to address today’s most pressing sustainability challenges, and many of them are already making a real difference. But that’s not the same thing as “fully embedded”. Of all the companies that I have come into contact with over the last twenty years, through both Forum for the Future and The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, I would say that less than 5% could make any sort of claim to sustainability being “fully embedded”.

That may sound like a low level, but it’s no mean feat “fully embedding” sustainability in any organisation. Which is why my incredulity went into overdrive on hearing Mrs Spelman (DEFRA Secretary of State) claim that one of her reasons for axing the Sustainable Development Commission was the fact that sustainable development was now “mainstreamed across the whole of Government”.

In case you feel left out at having missed such a momentous mainstreaming moment, let me reassure you that this is just a figment of Mrs Spelman’s virgin imagination – that’s her SD virginity of course.

In reality, there is not one single part of government – or the whole of the public sector, for that matter – anywhere in the UK where sustainable development has as yet been properly mainstreamed. And by properly mainstreamed, I suggest DEFRA continues to use the old Sustainable Development Commission definition as in “sustainable development becoming the central organising principle for everything that Government does”.

That judgement is powerfully reinforced in a very interesting new paper from Andrea Ross (Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee), with the compelling title: “It’s Time to Get Serious – Why Legislation is Needed to Make Sustainable Development a Reality in the UK”.

Whilst acknowledging that good progress has been made over the last few years (particularly in terms of the ‘architecture’ of SD and rigorous watchdog interventions), Andrea Ross argues that the current framework is still not delivering in three critical areas: “improving understanding, providing a comprehensive framework to integrate potential conflicting priorities, and proving an operational toolkit”. Her paper highlights better progress in Wales (where SD was statutorily ‘embedded’ in the Government of Wales Act 2006) and (to a lesser extent) in Scotland. But it reveals continuing inconsistencies across the whole of the UK in terms of both interpretation and the use of SD. She concludes:

“The UK is now at a stage where specific legislation is required to drive the implementation of sustainable development further forward. Legislation directed at the implementation of sustainable development could potentially address many of the current shortcomings by increasing the priority, support and protection afforded to sustainable development across government(s) as a long-term policy objective.”

That should go down well with Mrs Spelman and Mr Huhne!

I did consider, briefly, setting that as my third Spelman-Huhne Test to give them a chance to put their professed enthusiasm for sustainable development into practice. But that would be unfair given the total indifference of the rest of their Cabinet colleagues.

So let’s set the bar much, much lower from a mainstreaming point of view. The Government’s own sustainable development strategy (‘Securing the Future’) was produced in 2005 and is now ‘out of time’. So it’s now incumbent on Mrs Spelman (with Mr Huhne’s loyal support) to prepare a new strategy which will give them a chance to show what effective ‘mainstreaming’ looks like across the whole of government – without the Sustainable Development Commission to help them out.

And it would, I think, be entirely reasonable to set a deadline for a new strategy to appear before May 6th 2011.

Don't jump too soon, Julie Hirigoyen advises future leaders

Katie Shaw — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:50:12 +0100

Since 1996, Forum for the Future's Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development has been training the sustainability leaders of the future. Green Futures tracks the career of a Forum alumnus.

Julie Hirigoyen

Class of: 1997-98
Currently: Lead Director, Upstream Sustainability Services at Jones Lang La Salle.

Why I chose the MProf

I was doing a Masters in Environmental Protection and Management at Edinburgh University, which gave me all the important scientific knowledge, but missed out the wider social and political forces that affect our ability to achieve sustainability. I wanted to work in policy and business, and so when my mum forwarded me an ad for the course – a cut-out from the first ever issue of Green Futures – I applied straight away. It ticked all the right boxes.

What I learnt

It felt very elite at the time, and unique, with Jonathan Porritt and Sara Parkin and Paul Ekins – all these people you were reading about – spearheading it. The entry criteria were really tough, too. I remember thinking, “If I get onto this, it’ll be extraordinary”. You just knew that once it was over you would a) know lots of people, and b) have a much better feel for what’s out there and where you could have an impact. It did all of that. One of the key things I learned is that you can’t know it all. The course covered such a broad set of issues and sectors, and there were so many inspiring people... I got a lot of inspiration from it, which I don’t think one necessarily gets from an academic exercise.

Career to date

It’s quite straightforward really. As soon as I finished at the Forum, I joined Upstream. They were working with several major property companies in the UK, and it was the first year the Business in the Environment index came out. Several of the companies were right at the bottom, and so we asked them why they weren’t doing anything. For the next ten years we expanded the practice, trying to get sustainability taken more seriously. After about five years, interest shot up and the business went exponential. It was also partly to do with having been there right at the start, when no one else was addressing the real estate industry.

What I plan to do next

A big change took place in 2007, when we sold Upstream to Jones Lang La Salle, so now we’re part of a much bigger group. The vision behind that was to embed sustainability at the heart of real estate transactions, so that – rather than sitting on the outside and advising individual companies on what they can do – we’d influence all the deals and loans from within. From a personal perspective, I have two missions: one is the real estate industry, and the other is this firm – I want to integrate sustainability into everything it does. Recently, it’s been very challenging given the market: we’ve been in survival mode, really. But when we do get back to normal practice, this is going to be at the heart of what we do – because we know it has to be.

Advice for future leaders

Don’t jump too soon. Make a measured, informed choice about where to channel your efforts before you take your first job, because it will shape your whole career. And maintain your contacts. If you can find a way to do that systematically, then it will help all of us to achieve a great deal.

Julie Hirigoyen was in conversation with Katie Shaw.

Next generation PV is smaller than small

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0100

A nanocrystal cell could see all high-rise windows double up as photovoltaic panels

A surge in innovative design to capture sunlight could see the cost of photovoltaics (PVs) plummet as their applications soar.

The inventor of a nanocrystal cell that could see “the glass of all high-rises in New York” become electricity-generating panels has been awarded the €800,000 Millennium Technology prize. Professor Michael Grätzel of the Lausanne Federal Technology Institute and creator of the dye-sensitised, ultra-efficient Grätzel cell, took inspiration from natural photosynthesis to develop films in which the PV particles “are so small, they don’t scatter light”. His microscopic suntraps are capable of collecting light from all angles, and could be incorporated into window panes, assigning heavy roof-top panels to the past.

Small is beautiful for researchers at Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico. By producing PV cells no bigger than glitter, they claim to have opened up the door to electricity-generating coatings for almost any shape or surface. The tiny cells are made from crystalline silicon and can be produced cheaply using techniques common to today’s electronics industry.

Researcher Murat Okanda claims that the micro-cells match the efficiency of current PVs, with the added bonus of “a significant reduction in manufacturing and installation cost compared with (standard) techniques”.

Glitter-sized or paper-thin? Scientists at the Solar Frontiers Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have managed to print solar cells on sheets of paper. Carbon-based dyes act as semiconductors that can convert sunlight into electricity. As yet, the paper cells are far less efficient than current PV cells, but their relatively low cost could make them an attractive option.