greenfutures No.90 October 2013
Southeast Asia
Seven make-or-break trends for sustainability Get ready for #thebigshift towards collaboration Jonathon Porritt talks to a historian living in 2050 Crops take shelter for protection and efficiency
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About Us Green Futures is the go-to magazine for environmental solutions and sustainable futures. It was founded in 1996 by leading environmentalist Jonathon Porritt, and is published by the global sustainability non-profit Forum for the Future. Read it online at www.greenfutures.org.uk Join the debate on Twitter @GreenFutures, or find us on Facebook On the cover: low-lying paddy fields in the Philippines. As climate change threatens food security in Southeast Asia, demand for organic rice is on the rise.
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As consensus grows that climate change is indeed a manmade phenomenon, the question ‘What can I do?’ remains elusive. The role of individual people going about their own lives is often overlooked amid enthusiasm for the potential of communities, business and governments – and, most promising of all, collaborations across all three – to change things at scale [see ‘#theBIGshift’, p18 and ‘Taking the lead’, p28]. We forget that the success of any initiative depends on the decisions of individual people, who each bring their own hopes and dreams to bear. Our politics – I mean, the changes we would like to see in the world – are greatly influenced by what’s close to us: our personal circumstances and the people we care about. In the UK, for instance, those struggling to meet rising energy costs have responded warmly to ‘Red Ed’s’ offer of a price freeze. For many, the significance of this offer goes beyond the figure on a bill: it could be the difference between a hungry child unable to concentrate at school and a good family meal. Generally, we’re good at recognising the potential impacts of a solution on our own lives when it’s proposed. What we’re not so good at is spotting the things we can do ourselves, even when the benefits would far outweigh the efforts. So, coming back to the question of affordable energy, voting for a price freeze isn’t the only defence against a cold winter: there are also small changes everyone can make to their energy use and the efficiency of their homes [see ‘Energy debate’, p37]. Know-how only goes so far. The real impetus comes from the recognition that we can do something that will actually affect the things we care about – whether that’s our loved ones or our local woodland. Often hearing about a risk or threat leaves us feeling powerless; even more so when it’s something as intangible as gas particles in the atmosphere. Empowerment comes from relating this big cloudy risk to something both practical and personal. Recently, I booked a flight from London to Singapore where I’ll spend some time working in Forum’s new Southeast Asia office, kindly hosted by Forum for the Future’s partner, Swire – China Navigation Co. It’s a big deal to me: it’s my first long-haul flight since 2006, but much more importantly, someone I care about is at the other end. I’m quite aware that by flying 14,000 miles I’m responsible for three tonnes of carbon emissions. I also know that Southeast Asia is particularly vulnerable to climate change [see ‘What future for Southeast Asia?’, p14]. But these cases against booking the flight lost out in my mind against the desire to go. What we want for the future, and what we’re prepared to do about it, often comes down to what we care about. Yet, if we really value these things, it follows that we should also be willing to pay the price at which they come. I say ‘price’, but I’m pretty sure you read ‘sacrifice’. This semantic hitch needs straightening out, because the only alternative to investing in the things we value is neglecting the resources on which they depend. For me, this means it’s not enough to comfort myself with the efforts of TUI Travel and Heathrow towards minimising flight-related emissions [see ‘Tread lastingly’, p32, ‘High flyer’, p36 and ‘Winging ways’, p38]. Offsetting those air miles (at a cost of £25.47 for 3.4 tonnes of CO2, via ClimateCare) is just as important as packing my passport.
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Production support SARAH VENIARD Finance administration JENNY HAMMOND Founding Editor MARTIN WRIGHT Founder JONATHON PORRITT Design THE URBAN ANT LTD Green Futures would like to thank: Sejal Patel and Koray Yilmaz (interns) Helius (proofreading), Shelley Hannan (web) Editorial Overseas House,19-23 Ironmonger Row, London, EC1V 3QN, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7324 3660 Email: post@greenfutures.org.uk Subscriptions AASM, Unit 8 Earlstrees Court, Earlstrees Road, Corby, NN17 4AX, UK Tel: +44 (0)1536 273 543 Email: greenfutures@aasm.co.uk Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future Registered Charity Number: 1040519 ISSN No: 1366-4417 The opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of Forum for the Future, nor any of its associates. © Forum for the Future 2013 Our environmental impact At Green Futures, we strive to produce a gorgeous, glossy magazine whilst maintaining the highest environmental standards. We are printed by Pureprint, using their environmental print technology and vegetable based inks, developed back in 1990. Since then, Pureprint has gone on to win numerous awards for their environmental achievements, including the Queens Award for Enterprise 2013 – Sustainable Development. We print Green Futures on 100% recycled and FSC® certified Cocoon Silk paper, supplied by Arjowiggins Graphic.
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Green Futures October 2013
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Contents 21
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Number 90, October 2013
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13 Features 14 W hat future for Southeast Asia? Ivana Gazibara outlines seven trends that could make or break a sustainable future for the region.
26 C rops take shelter As growers look for protection from an unpredictable climate, has the time come to take food production indoors? Tess Riley reports.
18 #theBIGshift With the pace of technological and environmental change accelerating, Heather Connon shows why businesses need a more sophisticated approach to collaboration.
28 T aking the lead National leaders can learn from collaborative governance for sustainability at a regional level, says Duncan Jefferies.
21 C onversation with the future Jonathon Porritt discusses how things have changed with the protagonist of his new book, Alex McKay – a 50-year-old history teacher, living in 2050.
30 R eprogramming the city To unlock the full potential of our cities and solve pressing problems, we must re-imagine the existing urban infrastructure, says Scott Burnham.
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Briefings
Regulars
Partner viewpoints
The latest in green innovation, including:
24 A thousand words Worldly reflections in Shark Bay
37 Energy debate UK coalition aims to turn public anger into energy efficient action Forum for the Future
4 Malaysia gets smart $100 million fund for green energy 6 Power to the Peruvians Solar panels increase electricity access 7 Unsalted chip ‘Water chip’ for low-energy desalination 8 Soil-free organics Vertical farm receives organic certification 10 H ands-free kit Driverless shuttle arrives in Singapore 11 Hole in the wall Communal computers for children
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32 T he Green Futures interview Johan Lundgren, Deputy Chief Executive of TUI Travel PLC 35 Sally Uren Forum’s Chief Executive on how to help someone experience the need for change 36 Tomorrow’s Leaders Matt Gorman, Sustainability Director, Heathrow 46 Feedback Readers respond online and in print
41 Prize potential Sustainability awards drive change Pureprint Group
38 Winging ways Bringing down aircraft emissions TUI Travel
42 Biz and bees Engaging customers on bee protection Kingfisher
39 Power to waste Embracing waste-to-energy plants Amec
43 City vista Collaborating on smart cities Skanska
40 Living proof Carbon offsetting’s social impact ClimateCare
44 Material world Designers meet manufacturers Arjowiggins Graphic
48 Jonathon Porritt All bets are off for Brazil’s future
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Green Futures October 2013
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New funding in the air
Briefings
MIT maps PV potential
3D map covering shows optimal spots for solar energy in Cambridge, MA A new 3D map covering 17,000 rooftops in Cambridge, Massachusetts, means communities can estimate the benefits of installing PV panels on a particular building at a glance. The Mapdwell Project, developed by MIT’s Sustainable Design Lab, combines Google satellite imagery with light detection and ranging data. It improves on previous models by taking account of roof shapes, physical obstructions and weather conditions, offering a more accurate prediction of hourly solar energy production. The map uses a colour gradient, ranging from dark brown for zones with no PV potential to orange for ‘good’ and bright yellow for ‘optimal’ spots. Anyone can now access the user-friendly map online, select buildings in Cambridge and instantly view personalised installation costs, predicted electricity generated and carbon savings. The technology is ready to be applied to other cities and towns around the world. The research, a collaboration between MIT and The Modern Development Studio supported by The National Science Foundation Project, confirms the potential for the mapped area to generate a significant proportion of its electricity from solar. It calculates Cambridge could generate 380,000MWh/year, or one-third of its energy needs, if panels were installed on all the ‘good’ or ‘optimal’ locations, at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion. The map also allows businesses and households to estimate how long the solar panels would take to pay for themselves (typically under 7.5 years), and enables policymakers to reimagine unused urban space as a city-
Malaysia gets smart $100 million to develop green energy announced Malaysia and Japan-based Asian Energy Investments Pte Ltd have created a $100 million investment ‘mega fund’ to seed promising green energy innovations in Southeast Asia. It is hoped this will accelerate the development of renewable energy products and businesses in the region. The fund will focus on investments in small to mid-size technologies and enterprises. A new Malaysia-based fund management company – Putra Eco Ventures Inc. – will channel the investments and provide business consultancy services to green technology companies. The announcement was made at a San Francisco meeting of the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council, created in 2011 through a partnership between Malaysian Industry-Government Group
for High Technology and the New York Academy of Sciences. “We hope to […] transform Malaysia into a knowledge-based, innovation-driven economy that is environmentally friendly while aiming to join the ranks of developed nations”, said Najib Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia. Dr Zakri Abdul Hamid, Science Advisor to the Prime Minister, believes market-driven decarbonisation will support the technologies developed through the fund. “Demand for these products and businesses will be again driven by consumer convenience, cost advantage and environmental necessity, and logic dictates that they will eventually trump non-renewable fossil fuels in global markets.” The fund management company will also be charged with helping revive Malaysian biodiesel plants left idle after sharp increases
in the price of crude palm oil, on which the plants used to depend for feedstock. The idea is to use cheaper alternatives, such as municipal waste and palm oil waste. The Malaysian Government plans for 5.5% of the country’s total generating capacity to come from renewable sources by 2015. Under a second, parallel agreement announced between General Electric, Green Tech and Tenaga Nasional Berhad, Malaysia’s main energy provider, the country will also accelerate the development of its smart grid programme. According to Jerry Hultin, former President of the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, green energy is an important investment for emerging economies, simultaneously promoting environmental interests, energy security, entrepreneurship, and prosperity. – Duncan Jefferies
Japan’s carbon trade
A mountain of new investment
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Green Futures October 2013
centrally coordinated Clean Development Mechanism. Japan will enter two country agreements, and monitor them using its own measurement and verification methods. Greenhouse gas emissions cuts achieved in Indonesia will be converted into non-tradable carbon credits for Japan. The Japanese government is supporting emissions reductions projects, with a budget of £24 million in 2013, to demonstrate its methodology for verifying carbon credits. The scheme is intended to increase overseas investments in Japanese technology companies, by boosting demand for low-energy technologies in foreign markets. It is part of a broader ‘Japanese Green New Deal’, with the combined goals of reducing emissions and creating jobs. In 2012, Japan undertook 54 feasibility studies in partner countries, of which Indonesia had the largest share. Pilot projects in Indonesia included a hybrid (solar-diesel) renewable energy system, wind and solar energy installations,
the refurbishment of hydro power plants, and more efficient shipping for transporting cement. Further feasibility studies there explore biomass and more efficient refrigeration in stores. Two of Indonesia’s model projects have received further financial support, one reduces air conditioning in a textile factory, another provides energy efficient retrofits of convenience stores. Further funding from the Japanese Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry will help to build knowledge for emissions reduction and offer training in how to measure and verify cuts. Hein Oomen, a Manila-based energy analyst, says the approach will benefit both countries. “Japan is a carbon-intensive economy and has limited means to reduce its footprint within its borders. For every Japanese Yen invested in Indonesia, there will be a higher return in carbon credits than from investments in Japan, where energy production and transport is already relatively efficient”. – Jon Turney
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big data to inspire communities to invest in their own renewable energy supply, helping to make the production of energy greener and more democratic.” Bristow heads up the UK’s Community Energy Coalition, an initiative by Forum for the Future to facilitate conversations and collaborations to take community energy to scale. MIT’s solar mapping tool does not yet clearly detail how efficiency improvements, such as double-glazing, insulation and energy-efficient boilers, would affect the energy use of the buildings mapped. The less energy a building consumes, the sooner the investment in PV panels will be paid off, and the greater the potential returns. – Marcus Merry
Hot spots for PV panels
“We need more insurgency in the city in order to break unsustainable and privatising patterns of urban development.” Photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
An agreement between Japan and Indonesia is one of the first fruits of a new carbon trading scheme designed to promote transfer of Japanese technologies to other countries. The Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM), agreed in August, will allow reduced carbon emissions in Indonesia to be counted as part of Japan’s own target reductions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It offers an alternative to the
Photos: tostphoto/iStockphoto; iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Emissions cuts in Indonesia to boost Japanese technology
wide source of renewable electricity. For Dr Anne Maassan, of Eco LTD Group, the Mapdwell Project is certainly a useful innovation. “Maps like these allow us to see the city in a new light – not just as a massive consumer of energy, but also as a potential powerhouse”, she says. Of course, solar take-up also significantly depends on a number of socio-political factors, including heritage policies, building ownership arrangements, and renewables subsidies; as Maassan emphasises, “cities are very complex places”. The Mapdwell Project indicates the potential for community energy elsewhere. Giles Bristow, Forum’s Head of Energy, says: “This tool harnesses the power of
Jeffrey Hou, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington, Seattle
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Green Futures October 2013
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Power to the Peruvians
Unsalted chip
Peru turns to solar panels to increase electricity access
’Water chip’ prototype offers low-energy desalination
Cajamarca: shining on the people
Four hundred miles north of Lima, in the Cajamarca region of Peru, 1601 rural households across 126 communities recently gained access to electricity for the first time, thanks to the National Photovoltaic Household Electrification Programme. It aims to put solar panels capable of delivering up to 80W on 500,000 households across the country, with the help of $200 million in Government funding. This would increase
access to electricity in Peru to 95% by 2016 – up from 86% today according to the World Bank – potentially benefitting around two million people. In rural areas only 63% of people currently have access to electricity, according to Carlos Cervantes, a Perubased consultant for Practical Action, an NGO that uses technology to challenge poverty in developing countries. The new programme is “by far the largest initiative to increase access to electricity to meet basic needs in rural households”, he says, adding that “nothing of this scale has been done in the world”. The programme should deliver significant quality of life benefits. It is “aimed at the poorest people, those who lack access to electric lighting and still use oil lamps, spending their own resources to pay for fuels that harm their health”, said Jorge Merino Tarfur, Minister of Energy and Mining for Peru, when inaugurating the first phase of the project. It will also increase the number of productive hours per day for children to study and adults
A new method for removing salt from seawater, developed by researchers in Germany and the US, could bypass the high energy costs associated with desalination. Desalinated seawater seems an obvious solution for coastal communities with low rainfall. Conventional methods include vacuum distillation, in which freshwater is boiled off as steam and then condensed; and reverse osmosis, where seawater is passed through a membrane which filters out the salt. The problem with these techniques is their costly high energy demands. A plastic ‘water chip’ which draws on a technique called electrochemically mediated seawater desalination could offer a low-energy alternative. Researchers from the Universities of Texas, Austin, and Marburg, Germany, have created a prototype to demonstrate the process. Water flows through a small channel in the chip, the path of which forks at an electrode. This electrode neutralises some of the chloride ions in the water, altering the local electric field by forming an ‘ion
to work. The Government claim it will save money too, as the panels will be significantly cheaper than extending grid connections to poor, geographically dispersed regions. According to Cervantes, the programme will be split into two parts – the installation of the panels and the operation and maintenance of the system – which will be auctioned to a private operator. The programme itself will be designed as a public-private partnership, funded in part by the state and in part by the households themselves. The scale of the programme may prove challenging for the market though. “There is no critical mass of technicians, installers and companies that could provide services for the installation stage”, says Cervantes. “Existing companies may struggle to carry out so many installations in so little time.” But despite these organisational challenges, the promise of providing electricity to a further two million rural poor is an exciting one. – Michael Ashcroft
Holding all the chips
depletion zone’. The change is enough to funnel salt into one branch of the chip, with purer water coming out of the other. The whole process can be powered by a standard three volt battery. The water chip is now being prepared for commercial application by a spinoff company, Okeanos Technologies. At present, however, the prototype’s capacity is limited: it only removes around 25% of the salts from seawater and the microchannels (about the width of a hair) output freshwater at a rate of 40 nanolitres per minute. “While the results appear interesting, the low salt rejection and high water recoveries per stage of treatment remain a challenge for practical application”, says Professor Stephen Gray, Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Innovation, Victoria University. Nevertheless, the researchers are happy with the prototype as proof of concept, and confident that it could achieve 99% desalination rates at practical capacity: “The chip is currently small
Grow your own glacier
Water for hot cows
Himalayan farmers benefit from artificial glaciers
Combined solar desalination pilot provides clean water for cattle
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Green Futures October 2013
is in increasingly short supply for farmers in the Himalaya”, she says. The lower-altitude glaciers that used to provide vital meltwater for irrigating crops in March and April have disappeared; higher up, and in constant retreat, they don’t yield anything until June. Geoff Manaugh, futurist and author of a speculative blog about architecture, landscape and the environment, says that while artificial glaciers are “by no means a replacement for large-scale freshwater infrastructure”, they “seem both reliable and locally effective” for rural communities whose livelihoods depend on agriculture. – Roger East Farming at a glacial pace in Ladakh
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Cow well
Photos: The University of Texas at Austin; Photodisk/Thinkstock
while others average around 250m long by 100m wide, holding around 20,000 cubic metres of water and costing only $6,00010,000 to set up. The materials are strictly local – stones and earth – and there’s no pumping or other energy use involved, just manual labour. An alarming 260 gigatonnes of freshwater is lost each year due to glacier melt, according to research published earlier this year. Amy Higgins, who wrote her PhD thesis on glacier-growing in Ladakh, explains how this has affected local farmers. “As climate change uncouples glacial melt cycles from the agricultural season, water
Photos: © R. Gino Santa Maria – Shutterstock ; W.E Garrett/National Geographic Creative
Strategically placed ‘artificial glaciers’ are providing water for farmers in Ladakh, India, replacing dwindling meltwater supplies from existing glaciers. As well as reducing water sharing disputes, this allows farmers to extend the growing season, harvest two crops in a year and develop pastures for cattle rearing. The technique has been practiced for centuries in the mountains of the Hindu Kush and Karakorum ranges. Retired civil engineer Chewang Norphel, known locally as the ‘Ice Man’, has been growing artificial glaciers in Ladakh for over a quarter of a century. Streams are diverted in October and November to a shady part of the mountainside, where stone embankments are constructed to hold the water in a series of shallow pools. Here it soon freezes, but trickles out through narrow pipes as the weather warms up in the spring. Local communities in Ladakh have shown sufficient enthusiasm for this solution to share the modest costs of the dozen artificial glaciers Norphel has so far completed. The first of these, in Phutse village, is still the largest at some 2km long,
A solar-powered desalination plant should begin producing water from an aquifer in Arizona that’s clean enough for livestock to drink by early 2014. It’s the latest step in efforts to develop an off-grid water treatment system that can produce clean drinking water for rural communities in the Navajo Nation, a semi-autonomous Native American region covering parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Currently, drinking water must be hauled in from miles away. Following a proof-of-concept study by the University of Arizona, the pilot will scale up the technology to increase the volume of water processed. The aim is to
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provide enough drinking water for Navajo ranchers’ livestock – about 100 gallons a day. Ultimately, the process will be further developed so that it produces water clean enough for human consumption. The local Native American communities will maintain and run the system once it is completed. The plant will process water from an aquifer tens of metres underground. The water is brackish (briny), with a total dissolved solid content between 1000 and 3000 parts per million. To make it drinkable for livestock, the water quality needs to be improved by around a third, which means mixing distilled water processed by the plant with poorer quality water drawn from a well. The process uses electricity from solar PV panels to pump the brackish water up from the aquifer, and heat from solar thermal panels to bring the water to almost boiling point. The heated water passes through a series of membranes that filter out the contaminants. Distilled water is captured for blending with the well water. Any excess brine is sent to an on-site evaporation pond. The solar-powered pumping system supplies around ten gallons a minute. “It’s a
scale and requires little infrastructure, so it could find applications in resource-limited settings”, says Kyle Knust, a researcher at the University of Texas. Okeanos has contemplated building an array of chips for disaster relief settings, or a system the size of a drinks dispenser to quench the thirst of a small village. – Ian Randall
good curve, with the productivity of the solar plant matching the peak demand, as the livestock need more water in the summer”, explains Mitch Haws, from the Phoenix area office of the Bureau of [water] Reclamation. Cogenra, a company headquartered in California, is supplying the combined solar technology. “Water desalination powered by solar energy is developing into a huge market opportunity, whether it’s reverse osmosis-based desalination powered by photovoltaic-derived electricity, or solar thermal desalination”, says Mani Thothadri, Vice President of Product Management, Cogenra. “Solar powered desalination has been studied for some time, but the cost of implementing this technology has been prohibitive”, adds Professor Stephen Gray, Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Innovation, Victoria University. “However, the decreasing cost of PV cells and the more ready availability of thermal systems, such as membrane distillation, is making it more attractive – particularly for small-scale systems where grid electricity is not readily available.” – Sara Ver Bruggen
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Soil-free organics
Paying with plastic
World’s largest vertical farm receives organic certification
Plastic Bank offers goods and micro-finance in exchange for waste plastic
A 90,000 square foot warehouse 15 miles outside of Chicago is now a thriving urban garden that supplies nearly one million pounds of herbs, arugula, watercress and other greens to local restaurants and grocery stores. The company behind it, FarmedHere, uses an aquaponic system, with waste from tilapia fish providing nutrients for the plants. Whole Foods, the largest of its customers, helped finance the facility with a $100,000 loan. As well as being the largest vertical farm in the US, it is also the first to be certified organic by the US Department of Agriculture. In order to establish the new site, FarmedHere had to battle outdated zoning codes that didn’t allow farms within the city limits. “We were lucky to be within the Bedford Park, a local, progressive community with an energetic mayor”, says Paul Hardej, co-founder and Vice President for Development. “It took a lot of education and hand-holding on our part, but the end result
is a win-win for us and the community.” The extent to which the farm merits its organic certification is disputed. Louis Albright, a professor emeritus at Cornell University who has been involved in agricultural engineering research and teaching since the 1970s, dismisses it as marketing hype: “There are almost no pesticides certified for greenhouse vegetable growing”, he says. He is concerned about the large carbon footprint of indoor growing systems that rely on artificial light. Nonetheless, the efficiencies of FarmedHere are impressive: the farm saves 90% of its water, compared with conventional farming techniques, and produces no agricultural runoff. Additionally, all of its waste, such as plant roots, stems and even biodegradable packaging, is recycled in collaboration, making FarmedHere a zero-waste facility.
Plastic pollution is quite literally an evergrowing problem. Waste bottles, bags and packaging can be seen littering most urban environments – but unlike other forms of waste, they can take anything from 50 to one million years to decompose. Such waste is a particular problem in poverty-stricken areas, where environmental regulations tend to be lax. In addition, millions of small pieces of plastic flotsam are swirling around in the Pacific Trash Vortex, damaging marine life. A new scheme aims to encourage people living in poverty to help tackle the problem, and profit from it. They are invited to collect plastic from homes or common littering sites, such as beaches, and exchange it at a Plastic Bank for goods, 3D-printed products (made from the very plastic the bank recycles) and micro-finance loans. A pilot of the scheme is being launched in Lima, Peru – where only 2% of plastic waste is currently recycled – next year. If it proves successful, plans to open Plastic Banks worldwide will be pursued. Plastic Bank is a business: it will generate profit by selling on the plastic it recycles. But the founders seem confident that it will have a positive social impact too. “Global social
Green fingers: Jolanta Hardej, CEO, FarmedHere
“There is always going to be some kind of impact, but a food growing system that is based on principles of nutrient recycling, growing fresh produce close to market and reducing waste has to be supported”, says Mark Driscoll, Head of Food at Forum for the Future. “There is great potential to develop more of these type approaches using roof spaces across many of our urban areas, particularly in the developed world.” – John Eischeid
“There is now a rising worldwide demand that policy be more closely aligned with what really matters to people as they themselves characterise their wellbeing.”
Life in plastic: not so fantastic
Online rental service for bikes in 40 countries
Box fresh Lau. “While ours is very much a software infrastructure play, theirs look at solving the final-mile problem of delivery logistics.” Bucky Box was made available to the public at the end of last year, yet remains in so-called ‘beta mode’, which means it is up and running but still being tweaked. “Any help in terms of enabling local food systems to become efficient, more productive and professional has to be welcomed. There is definitely a need for this type of technology”, says Michael Heasman, Senior Lecturer in Food Policy and Management at Harper Adams University. Bucky Box plans to reinvest a minimum of two-thirds of its profits in sustainable food projects. “Being a social enterprise, we are very careful about values alignment when it comes to whom we allow to put money into the venture”, says Lau. – Rohan Boyle
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Photos: iStockphoto/Thinkstock; iStockphoto/Thinkstock
so I decided to build a software package that would cut out two days of needless administration every week”, he says. The result is Bucky Box, a web-based app that automates subscription, delivery and billing of food boxes. The seed-funded start-up charges users a one-off price of $3.75 (£2.41) per customer, putting the software within reach of even the smallest budget. “As a small concern it is hard to get the capital to spend on software”, says Nick Bourne, founder of Bristol Veg Boxes in Southwest England. “Bucky Box is cheap to start off with, which means you can do it straight away and it puts you on a level playing field with the bigger companies.” Bucky Box is not alone in this market. Others, such as Good Eggs and Farmingo in the US, are working on the same problem, yet their solutions are different, says
Photos: FarmedHere; Andrew Hobbs/Thinkstock
Web-based app simplifies admin for food box schemes
Bucky Box: the next step for 8 local Green Futures October 2013 food?
Frankson, Co-founder of Plastic Bank, hopes the social improvement story of the recycled waste – which they term ‘social plastic’ – will increase its value to the end consumer (as with fair trade products). Thomas Nosker, a plastics expert from Rutgers University, sees potential in the initiative. “The Plastic Bank idea needs to be focused on careful instruction and training as to how sorting should be done”, he advises. “If properly sorted, plastic can have a very significant value, and is in fact already a commodity here in the US.” – Ian Randall
Peer to peddle
Jeffrey Sachs, a senior advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
One of the main impediments to veggie box schemes is the administration of ordering, delivery and payment. New Zealand-based entrepreneur Will Lau saw just how much of a handicap it was when helping out friends with their scheme. “There were no solutions out there
and environmental crises are linked, and so are the solutions”, says David Katz, CEO of Plastic Bank. “The crisis of waste plastics is an industrial problem that demands a transformative solution, like taking oceanbound plastic waste and assigning it value.” The exchange rate for waste – which may feature subsidies to assist people in need – will be established during next year’s pilot programme. Once set-up, Plastic Bank’s computerised exchange platform will track the impact the bank is having on each member’s standard of living. Shaun
Spinlister, a peer-to-peer bike rental service, allows bike owners in over 40 countries to rent out their bikes. Potential renters can check out cycles, rates, owners and locations online. If they find one they want, they agree to rent it, paying Spinlister the fee set by the owner plus a 12.5% service charge. Spinlister then forwards the rent to the owner less a 17.5% commission. The service is popular with tourists and locals, especially in places without municipal bike-hiring services. By encouraging cycling, it helps cut pollution and congestion, while promoting a healthier lifestyle. For Marcelo Loureiro, CEO of Spinlister, the social connections are “especially exciting”. He explains, “Owners give renters invaluable local information about the best rides, sites, bars, restaurants etc. so, not surprisingly, many become friends.” The bike is the renter’s full responsibility while they are using it, and they may need to pay for a replacement if it is lost or stolen. Spinlister also covers up to $5,000 in damages in the US and Canada if the renter
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is unable to pay. And reviews are collected from the owner and the renter following every bike rental. Based in Santa Monica, California, Spinlister is a relative rookie in the so-called ‘sharing economy’ – a marketplace of online companies that connect people who temporarily need something, somewhere, with people who have spare capacity of that something. An early player was Airbnb, now Look Mum: no feet! :
a hugely successful web business enabling people worldwide to rent out their spare rooms short term. RelayRides is a similar service for cars. “Spinlister is exactly the sort of entrepreneurial business we can expect within the sharing economy”, says David Bent, Director of Sustainable Business at Forum for the Future. “As with any new domain, many will fail. But some will win big. Meanwhile, we will shift from being passive consumers to active providers and users – with the prospect of much less environmental impact for just as much fun.” Spinlister had teething problems last year – a name change and a shutdown (both temporary). It re-launched in April 2013 in the US, then globally in July. Already, it’s listing over 2000 bikes, and a new iPhone app is available. Loureiro hopes the service will eventually become the go-to place for all sorts of peer-to-peer outdoor equipment rentals. “Later this year we hope to start listing winter sports equipment”, he says. “After that, who knows?” – John Fencer
Green Futures October 2013
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Hands-free kit
Hole in the wall
Driverless shuttle arrives in Singapore
Communal computers for underprivileged children
A two-year trial of an eight-seater driverless shuttle, the Navia, has begun in Singapore. The vehicle, the result of a seven-year, $10 million project by the French technology company Induct, is programmed to travel on pre-programmed routes at speeds of up to 12.4mph (20.1km/h) using a lithium-ion battery that lasts around 10 hours. It will transport passengers between Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the CleanTech Park, 2km away. Singapore uses a congestion tax and a vehicle quota system to keep traffic to a minimum. In 2010, it had 223 vehicles
per kilometre of road – ranking fourth in the world for congestion, just behind Hong Kong. A Certificate of Entitlement (CEO) is needed to own a vehicle to use on the roads for a period of 10 years, which can cost between $50,000 and $75,000. Although this makes owning a vehicle difficult and expensive, this hasn’t decreased their desirability. In the long term Singapore needs mobility solutions like the Navia that are both attractive and energy efficient – especially if it wants to establish itself as a major global smart city. Test drive: the Navia
Over 500 ‘hole in the wall’ computers are now freely available to use in India, Cambodia, Botswana, South Africa and other African nations. Apart from being able to browse the internet, underprivileged children can play educational games and learn basic IT skills. The computers are installed in safe, public spaces, and their use is monitored remotely. Sugata Mitra, who created the first hole-in-the-wall computer in 1999 while Chief Scientist of the National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) in Kalkaji, New Delhi, defines it as ‘minimally invasive education’. His argument is that learning happens best when it feels like play. The experiment capitalises on the innate curiosity and enquiring nature of young minds, a necessary precursor for future innovation. The hope is that children who learn through unconventional methods will in turn create exceptional products and solutions. The next step for Mitra is the
During the trial the Energy Research Institute at NTU will review the vehicle’s ability to safely manoeuvre between traffic in Singapore, with a view to solving the ‘first mile, last mile’ problem of commuters travelling to and from transport stations and across campuses and airports. The vehicles’ intelligence systems reassess their environment every tenth of a second and have no blind spots. “So far the technology hasn’t failed”, says Max Lefèvre, VP of marketing for Induct. “It’s very reliable.” Leased as a service, rather than sold as a product, Induct estimates the costs are 30-50% cheaper than a regular shuttle system. It currently has the capability to build one shuttle a week, and set-up is easy – only one Navia is needed to drive the route to create a map of the environment. This can then be used to programme other vehicles, and on each journey updated maps are created. Singapore’s Ministry of Transport has invested $17.8 billion in improving the country’s wider public transport network, building two more subway lines, 37 more train stations and a 5km expressway over the last five years. But Navia could have one big advantage over these other forms of travel. As Ivana Gazibara, Head of SE Asia, Forum for the Future, says: “The main motivation for driverless technology is that it essentially gives you back useful time while allowing you to maintain personal space.” – Lizzie Rivera
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) is partnering with the IKEA Foundation on a new temporary shelter for refugees. Twenty-five of the flatpack shelters are being tested in the Dollo Ado refugee camp in Ethiopia, home to over 190,000 refugees. A further 12 shelters will also be deployed to Lebanon, which hosts more than half a million Syrian refugees. The 188 square foot shelters are made from rigid plastic panels attached to a lightweight frame. They can be assembled in about four hours by two people, and will comfortably sleep five. A solar panel
Photos: Hole-in-the-Wall Education Limited; Ikea
Here’s one they made earlier
Photo: Induct
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With a wall to learn...
Temporary structure offers refugees an alternative to tents
The number of electric vehicles on California’s roads by 2025, according to a goal set by Governor Jerry Brown, ahead of new legislation incentivising their purchase.
Green Futures October 2013
is now been replicated in other developing nations. However, Viraal Balsari, India Co-Director, Forum for the Future, says that while HiWEL is “a good on the spot innovation” for long-term impact “such learning has to be dovetailed with access to primary education”. – Charukesi Ramadurai
Flat-pack shelter
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development of a ‘School in the Cloud’. Earlier this year, he received a $1 million TED Prize to help design and build this learning lab in India, which will pioneer cloud-based, scalable approaches to self-directed learning. Since setting up the first hole-in-the-wall computer, a PC placed in a wall separating the NIIT campus from an adjoining slum, Mitra has received numerous awards for his work. He was initially driven by the belief that a computer would lure children from the nearby slum to explore and learn on their own, which it did. Encouraged by the success of the experiment, he then set about installing similar freely accessible computers in other towns and villages. In 2001, the International Finance Corporation joined with NIIT to set up Holein-the-Wall Education Limited (HiWEL), with the aim of conducting more research and broadening the scope of the hole-in-the-wall experiments. Learning stations were set up in 23 locations across India, and the experiment
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mounted on the roof can power a light after dark or charge a mobile phone. And in true IKEA style, the shelters can be disassembled, moved, and reassembled at a different site. As the shelters last for three years, they could be a good alternative to canvas tents, which currently house around 10% of the world’s refugee population – some of whom could be dislocated from their homes for up to 12 years. The IKEA Foundation is investing 3.4 million euros (£2.9 million) in the project. “The IKEA Foundation provides funding and management support, UNHCR brings
the know-how and field experience, while we and our private and academic partners carry out the hands-on development of the product”, says Johan Karlsson, Project Manager at the Refugee Housing Unit, which is also a member of the partnership. Trials have shown that locally sourced PET bottles can be recycled into the plastic panels, which could bring down the price tag for each shelter – estimated to be around £4,500, making them far more expensive than a tent – to around £660. Sonia Molina Metzger, a shelter expert at the British Red Cross, believes there are also questions relating to “effective living space, type of foundation, resistance to natural hazards (eg wind, heavy rain), cost, maintenance, flexibility to be adapted to certain needs or cultural contexts, weight, etc.” She added that, “The introduction of a final prefab product with very special pieces makes it difficult to repair.” Modifications to the design once the field tests are complete should address some of these concerns. “Now the shelters are up for testing with the most valuable feedback loop – the end user”, says Karlsson. – John Eischeid
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Rhinos in the pink
5.8 gigawatts
An innovative dye could disrupt demand for horns Pink could be the colour to ward off poachers, thanks to a new treatment. The Rhino Rescue Project (RRP) is injecting an indelible pink dye containing parasiticides into the horns of rhinos to deter poachers and disrupt demand. Ed and Lorinda Hern, founders of the RRP, along with veterinarian Charles van Niekerk, pioneered the new treatment in response to the recent surge in poaching of African rhino horn. It lasts for four years until the horn grows out. The dye, which is not visible from the outside, is similar to that used to stain banknotes, and shows up on X-ray scanners at airports. The ectoparasiticide compound in the dye protects the rhino from parasites and has no negative side effects; however, it is toxic to humans, and so intended to disrupt markets procuring rhino horn for human consumption, including medicinal purposes. Crucially, poachers and buyers can easily recognise horn that has been contaminated, as the dye is both impossible to remove and immediately visible when the horn is cut open or ground to powder. Conspicuous signs are posted in areas where rhinos’ horns have been treated, to alert and discourage poachers. Implementation involves drilling a hole into the horn of a tranquilised rhino, through which bright pink dye is pumped alongside an ectoparasiticide compound. A tracking device is usually inserted while the procedure is being carried out, and a DNA sample is also harvested and added to the national rhino database. This information can then be used to trace the origin of poached horn that has been seized by authorities. Despite its success, the practicality of the project has been criticised. “Finding
The combined capacity of solar photovoltaic modules shipped by the 20 leading PV manufacturers in the second quarter of 2013, up 21% on the previous year.
Forest funds by the indigenous owners of the land. The project, which aims to circumvent five million tonnes of CO2 emissions over 30 years by protecting the forest from loggers, will provide income for sustainable development for the Suruí. Since the Suruí ceased living in isolation in the late 1960s, they have earned income from logging, including illegal deforestation. This switch to the often proposed but rarely realised alternative of being paid to maintain ecosystem services has been a lengthy process, animated by Chief Almir Suruí. It
Legal livelihoods for the Paiter Suruí people
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Green Futures October 2013
began with confirming his people’s legal title to their land, then moved to a detailed consultation with the four Suruí clans, who signed an agreement to support the carbon project and share the benefits in 2009. The agreement aligns with a 50-year development plan which will begin by using the carbon revenues to improve schools and health care. It rests on strenuous efforts to ensure everyone in Suruí villages understands how REDD+ works, and how the forest protection – and carbon savings – can be verified. Local NGOs hope this will be a model for other indigenous peoples, who control around 13% of Brazil’s land, to get involved with REDD+. The sale to Natura Cosméticos demonstrates that there is a market for the carbon credits the scheme is now generating. The company’s product development resembles that of the Body Shop in Europe, an approach it combines with carbon neutrality, either by eliminating or offsetting its emissions. Scott Poynton of The Forest Trust welcomed the fact that the scheme secures revenue for forest conservation. However, he cautions that doing so via carbon offsetting does nothing to reduce CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels, so does not safeguard the long-term future of forests in the face of climate change. “It may end up only a short-term win unless those funding the project move away from the whole offsetting concept and instead work intensively to reduce their overall carbon footprint”, he said. – Jon Turney
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rhino and darting them is time-consuming, extremely costly, and carries inherent risks”, says Tom Milliken, rhino programme coordinator for TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network. But compared with the alternative of dehorning – not only stressful and expensive, but also bad for a rhino’s health and social behaviour – these risks seem justifiable. Moreover, dehorned rhinos are often still poached for the base of their horns, and many game reserves reliant on tourism are wary of the economic impact of dehorning rhinos. The procedure has proved to be
extremely effective for the hundreds of rhinos treated, and has been rolled out to reserves across South Africa, most recently the Sabi Sand and Dinokeng game reserves. These reserves pay up to £1,000 per rhino for the treatment. Insurance broking giant Aon has already begun to offer cover for treated rhinos against the risk of poaching. The next major task for the project is raising awareness of the dye in East Asian markets. If successful, this would cut demand for rhino horn at its source. – Koray Yilmaz
“Art is about taking a vision and turning it into reality. By contrast, many problems on the world stage exist because there’s a huge disconnect between thinking and doing.” Photo: Rhino Rescue Project
Brazil’s largest cosmetics company has helped realise a pioneering plan to reward indigenous people for preserving the country’s forests, by agreeing to buy carbon from the Paiter Suruí people of the southwestern Amazon. The deal, which Natura Cosméticos buy 120,000 tonnes of carbon, sets the seal on six years of planning to set up the Suruí Forest Carbon Project. It is the first time a project which falls under the REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, plus sustainable forest management) mechanism has been set up
Photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Cosmetics company pays for Amazonians to manage forests
A species-saving injection?
Olafur Eliasson, Icelandic-Danish installation artist and renewable energy entrepreneur
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Ivana Gazibara outlines seven trends that could make or break a sustainable future for the region. policy, business practice and societal developments over the coming years. For Forum, they are particularly interesting not just as drivers of change, but also as systemic issues which interact with each other in complex ways. As Stephanie Draper, Forum’s Deputy Chief Executive, explains, “Our work at Forum is often focused on creating change at a systemic level rather than working on isolated issues. We analyse trends and explore various scenarios to help our corporate and public sector partners plan better for change and work proactively towards a sustainable future.” The trends below need to be understood and addressed – not just as separate issues, but in tandem – if Southeast Asia is to fulfil the promise of the ‘Asian Century’ of growth and prosperity, and prove resilient in the long term.
2. The eco-car catalyst
Manila: smart city of the future?
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The haze could signal a long-term shift in attitudes
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No one could deny the pace of change in Southeast Asia: it’s one of the fastest growing economic regions in the world. But rapid growth and the rising aspirations of a growing middle class is increasing pressure on natural resources. Southeast Asia has lost 13% of its forests since 1992 – an area equivalent to the size of Vietnam, the United Nations Environmental Programme reports. The impacts of global deforestation on the climate will be felt close to home: the region is one of the world’s most vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as droughts, floods, typhoons, sea level rise and heat waves, notes Dr Raman Letchumanan, Head of Environment at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. So what’s the likelihood of a sustainable future for the region, and what will drive it? This is one of the questions that a new Futures Centre in Singapore, run by Forum for the Future, seeks to answer. The global sustainability non-profit is working actively in the region with business, civil society and government. This emerging conversation has prompted me to try to summarise some of the key things that we are hearing and observing in the region. This is not left-field stuff you’ve never heard of. Rather, these are the big picture trends that are going to be influencing
Green Futures October 2013
The haze in Singapore has been the subject of much media attention and debate, with widespread public anger against the failure to enforce forest protection laws in the region. News coverage has contributed to rising environmental awareness: page views of the National Environment Agency website in Singapore went up by 610% during the haze. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this situation in the long-term will be the potential shift in public attitudes that it could signal, with more people looking to business and government for real leadership on natural resource management. “The Singapore haze has highlighted to people that this is a really big issue, and not just something affecting orangutans in the bush”, says Scott Poynton, Executive Director of The Forest Trust. “In Sumatra and Kalimantan it’s affecting day-to-day health, catalysing people to take a serious look at what’s happening out there with natural resources and say, ‘Hold on a minute, this is not sustainable’.” This is certainly not the first time Singapore has experienced the dreaded haze. In fact, it is becoming a regular fixture above the city, which is exactly what is provoking the strong public response. The proliferation of digital air pollution monitoring platforms is another factor, allowing members of the public to identify correlations between a company’s
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Photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
1. Beyond the haze
Like many rapidly growing regions, Southeast Asia has to contend with the issue of growing traffic congestion levels, air pollution and other downsides of the current transport paradigm. Singapore realised that the traffic congestion was reducing the country’s potential prosperity by slowing productivity and inhibiting meetings, and so introduced the Vehicle Quota System, so that even those with the means (car ownership is now prohibitively expensive) must apply for the right. This move could prove a catalyst for leadership in new forms of transport in the region, such as driverless electric shuttle buses (see p10). Michael Khor, Director of Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, sees e-mobility as “central to the development of megacities today”. While many Singaporeans still see the car as a status symbol and strive to make the purchase, the city’s roads remain pleasantly unclogged thanks to stringent policies around car ownership. The Development Minister of Brunei, which has the world’s ninth largest number of cars per capita, has floated the idea of adopting a similar policy. Elsewhere in the region, countries are competing to become automotive production hubs – but with a twist. Thailand manufactured more than 2 million vehicles in 2012, a record figure for its automotive industry. Part of this increase has been prompted by the adoption of the eco-car scheme in 2009, which aims to promote the manufacture of low-carbon vehicles through tax incentives and other measures. The scheme also sets production parameters aimed at reducing energy consumption, both to reduce emissions and to lessen the country’s dependence on imported oil. Phase II of the scheme started this year, with all new phase II eco-cars set to meet the Euro 5
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environmental standard of releasing less than 100g of CO2 per 100km. Indonesia is now following in Thailand’s footsteps by offering incentives for the production of small, fuel-efficient cars. According to IHS Automotive, these cars could account for 35% of the 1.8 million passenger vehicles expected to be sold in the country by 2020. And Laos has declared itself the ‘battery of Asia’ because of its high levels of clean electricity production from hydropower; it is now aiming to convert 40% of its local four-wheelers, tricycles and motorcycles to electric vehicles (EVs). Last but not least, Malaysia’s National Automotive Policy is promoting hybrids and EVs, and the development of related infrastructure. Could a combination of policy to reduce congestion and investment in low-emissions vehicles make Southeast Asia a global leader in the next generation of urban transport?
3. Smarter cities Many of the cities in the region are now well aware of the precariousness of their economic position – due to their climate change vulnerability and the threat of rising resource security – hence the push to maximise resource efficiency and become ‘smart cities’. According to a recently published report by the Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA), the Asian smart building market alone will grow from the current size of US $427 billion to US $1,036 billion in 2020, creating vast opportunities for advanced building technologies and services. Mark Wong, Head of Sustainability Reporting and Carbon, Sime Darby, says that the company has started to look into green buildings – “to see if this could be a big driver for consumer demand in future. We have developed a test bed: what does sustainable design look like given the tropical climate we live in? At what point will technologies become commercially feasible?” In fact, Singapore is already billing itself as an ‘iconic smart city’, despite some criticism about how much progress has really been made towards this goal. It has teamed up with energy company EDF on an urban modelling project that will allow it to develop, trial and commercialise innovative solutions in the city – particularly in terms of growing the clean technology and urban sustainability sectors. Its fouryear old University of Technology and Design aims to attract a new global elite to study architecture, sustainable design and systems engineering. Just across the border, Malaysia is engaging in a bit of friendly competition by developing Iskandar, a sort of ‘eco megacity’.
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the Asian smart building market could be worth US $1,036 by 2020
4. Climate vulnerability The region of Southeast Asia “is likely to suffer more from climate change than the rest of the world if no action is taken”, warned the Asian Development Bank back in 2009. Factors include the sheer concentration of people and economic activities in coastal areas, its resource-based economies, and the scale of the poverty challenge in the region – despite fantastic growth rates over the past decade. Densely populated cities run particularly risks. In its Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2013,
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What future for Southeast Asia?
operations and their own quality of life. As Anna Lyons, Programme Manager of Fauna & Flora International’s Business and Biodiversity team, says, “The use of real-time monitoring is a very powerful tool. The names of some of the companies that we work with came up during the haze, and three out of the four responded, because they could see the reputational risks.” One sector bearing the brunt of criticism from consumers is ‘dirty’ palm oil. As Lim Biow Chan, President of the Consumers Association of Singapore puts it: “If we can signal strongly to the companies that buy palm oil [to manufacture their] products that we are extremely unhappy, and [that] they are risking the wrath of consumers, then they can signal [this] to the palm oil companies.” This is particularly relevant in the context of Singapore. There, much of the root cause of the haze can be traced right back ‘home’. Many plantations in Sumatra are actually owned by Singaporean companies – something which was pointed out by Indonesia, when Singapore sought to lay the blame at its door. The Minister for Environment and Water Resources, Vivian Balakrishnan, has called (via his Facebook page) for the companies responsible for the fires to be named and shamed, in the hope of provoking a consumer boycott. The haze could also begin to put off investors, which will no doubt ratchet up the pressure on business to act.
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7. Sharing the benefits Despite the promise of the ‘Asian Century’, there are worrying signals that the benefits of economic growth have not been as widespread as one would hope. Increasing income inequality suggests that for the average person in the street, purchasing power has not risen as much as headline GDP growth would suggest. Millions of poor people in the region continue to exist in a parallel economy, one characterised by a population marginalised from the mainstream
6. Resource challenges As countries in the Southeast region seek to achieve and maintain rapid growth, securing resources to make everything run smoothly today and tomorrow becomes the priority, with less of a focus on longterm sustainability. Take energy: countries are still overwhelmingly prioritising capacity that will help cope with a breakneck increase in demand, and making sure there are no blackouts. Feed-in tariffs for renewables are still at too small a scale in most of the region to play a meaningful role in the energy picture. In many ways, the ‘noise’ around renewable energy is there, as a lot of people are talking about it. But from a commercial perspective, high carbon energy sources predominate. There is still some way to go in terms of the culture and behaviour around energy use as well. Commercial buildings are, on the whole, wasteful, and only beginning to develop recognised frameworks for energy efficient design in the built environment. A general lack of awareness about the potential and value of energy efficiency predominates. “People don’t like ceiling fans. It is associated with being poor whereas aircon is associated with being rich”, explains Hein Oomen, a futurist and clean energy professional based in the Philippines. Water is also a significant concern. In order to reduce its dependence on Malaysia, Singapore has invested significantly in rainwater harvesting. Its recycled water tariff is also lower than its freshwater
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economic landscape and the familiar media headlines about record levels of growth. The gap between rich and poor is most pronounced in the Philippines, where the richest 20% outspend the poorest 20% by more than eight times, but inequality is also high in other countries in the region. The opportunities to correct the situation are tremendous. As Johannes Loh, Research Associate at the Asian Trends Monitoring Bulletin, points out, in Malaysia, 75% of the population is still ‘unbanked’ and could benefit hugely from an expansion in financial service provision, particularly in microfinance and mobile finance. Low quality of schooling, as well as vocational training for young people in rapidly overpopulating urban centres, exacerbates the problem. And those who fall can fall pretty far, because many of the countries in the region lack comprehensive social protection nets. As The World Economic Forum on East Asia pointed out, issues such as inequality – unless addressed – will hold back the region’s potential in the future.
Seven trends, one response
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in malaysia, 75% of the population is unbanked
Whether or not we see that Asian Century of growth that the ASEAN has been banking on – and, crucially, whether this growth is sustainable – will depend on how all seven trends play out. None of these trends, and the challenges I have highlighted, can be isolated from the rest. The ability of this region to address resource challenges and offer opportunities to its growing population such that everyone is able thrive, will depend on a combination of smart approaches to urban development, government leadership, rising public awareness of the challenges, and the active participation of both citizens and business. The Futures Centre in Singapore is Forum’s first contribution to this effort, with the aim of building a shared understanding of the challenges, and bringing people together to search for solutions. Ivana Gazibara is Head of Southeast Asia at Forum for the Future.
Organic rice is increasingly on the menu in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore
Photo: CEDAC
Natural look: consumer demand for ‘chemically clean’ cosmetics is rising
Hyperconsumption has hit the high street and myriad shopping centres of Southeast Asia, prompting rapid growth in sales – particularly at the luxury end. Luxury is not necessarily contrary to sustainability; in many cases, its selling point is the compelling story behind a product or an experience, recognising the value of the materials, design, production skills and labour. Many luxury brands also promote the idea of preserving cultural heritage for future generations – from heirloom watches to historic hotels. But the scale and rate of growth in consumption in the region is a worrying trend, in the context of strained resources. There is some indication that consumers are beginning to look for more sustainable options, however. Some of this is a response to health and safety concerns. High consumer demand for ‘chemically clean’ cosmetics, for example, is leading
tariff in order to encourage water recycling, and recycled water now makes up some 15% of all water use in the city. Other countries are finding their core industries challenged by water constraints. Agriculture sucks up a grand total of 70% of Thailand’s total water supply (it is the world’s largest rice exporter), making for significant risk exposure in a country already grappling with drought issues. There is huge potential for improving the efficiency of resource use across the region. For example, the smart water meter market in Asia Pacific should grow substantially over the next five years, driven by the nexus between growing demand and dwindling supply. Food security is also a growing problem. Southeast Asia is known for its food exports, with countries like Indonesia and Thailand regularly featuring among the world’s top food exporting nations. However, in 2008, the region experienced a sharp turnaround in rice production, with countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam calling a halt to their rice exports, and the Philippines frantically seeking to secure supply from those still selling. As with many other resources, Singapore is almost entirely reliant on imports for its food supply. It is therefore no wonder that it’s been exploring opportunities like vertical farming, and encouraging key players such as Syngenta and Bayer CropScience to develop ‘elite’ crop varieties for the region. As climate change hits harder and resources like water become scarcer, the region will have to think about the security of food supply much more actively.
Photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
5. The consumption wildcard
many Asian companies to jump on the natural and organic bandwagon. According to German cosmetics giant Beiersdorf, natural ingredients are very well perceived in countries like Vietnam. There has also been a developing trend for ‘authentic’ products in places like Thailand, drawing on ancient Thai cosmetics that consisted mainly of extracts from various tropical flowers. In Thailand more broadly, the number of green consumers has been increasing over the past two decades, with a focus on things like energy saving, environmental goods purchasing, cycling, green labelling, and organic agriculture. And Filipinos report concerns about issues such as carbon emissions, environmentally friendly packaging, waste disposal and energy consumption. Demand for organic rice is also on the rise, especially in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. “People are aware of the environment”, says Yang Saing Koma, the President of the Cambodian Centre for Study and Development in Agriculture. And, at the end of 2011, the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Group announced a global ban across the company on serving shark fin – another sign of changing attitudes. “This was well received by guests. People wrote to say they are fully supportive of this act”, says Natalie Chan, Senior Manager of Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability for the Group. Policy is helping shift behaviour too. In Thailand, the Government has had a green procurement policy since 2008. More recently, the local government in a suburb of Manila banned plastic bags in shops, forcing people to switch to brown paper bags. According to a member of Forum for the Future’s network in Manila, within a few weeks everyone had become used to it.
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luxury is not necessarily contraRy to sustainability
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Maplecroft identified Manila, Bangkok, Yangon, Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City at the top of its list. This takes into account concerns such as exposure to climate related natural hazards, resource constraints, agricultural dependency, government effectiveness and education levels. Key industries are also under threat. Global warming is likely to cause the rice yield potential to decline by up to 50% on average by 2100 compared with 1990, and jeopardise critical export industries in the region. In Malaysia alone, for every one degree increase in temperature, palm oil revenue decreases by an average of 42.6 Malaysian ringgits [US $13.2] per hectare in key producing regions. And in countries like Myanmar (Burma), which are economically underdeveloped, climate change could hinder government efforts to alleviate poverty. A massive part of the challenge here is that most of the region is unprepared to cope with the impacts heading its way, which calls into question its optimistic projections for growth and development. Will it be able to both adapt and mitigate impacts effectively going forward?
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Collaboration will be vital to the future of both business and society
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That is the inspiration behind the Forum for the Future’s #theBIGshift initiative, which aims both to encourage co-operation between multiple organisations and to provide a toolkit to put them on the path towards sustainable innovation. “If we are to get to a sustainable future we need to be more sophisticated and joined up in the way we act”, says Stephanie Draper in a paper entitled ‘Creating the Big Shift: System Innovation for Sustainability’. The approach she advocates involves diagnosing systems – such as energy and food – and identifying the optimal places for focus. The aim, she says, is “to address the barriers to change as a collective, rather than as separate individuals or organisations. We don’t have time to make the same mistakes over and over again, so we need to learn from others and help others to learn from us.” There are some good examples of what can be achieved through industries working together: Unilever was instrumental in the creation of organisations like the Marine Stewardship Council and the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil; B&Q, the DIY chain which is part of the Kingfisher group, was a key player in the establishment of the Forest Stewardship Council; Nike is working with its rivals in the industry to encourage more sustainable practices in its supply chain; the collapse of the Bangladesh clothing factory earlier this year has
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Photo: Matteis/Look at Sciences/Science Photo Library
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At the start of the new millennium, Microsoft and Nokia were riding high as the world’s biggest software and mobile phone companies respectively. By the time Microsoft announced it was buying Nokia’s phone business in September, both former giants were struggling to recover from their failure to grasp the implications of the shift to mobile computing and smart phones. They are not alone: corporate history is littered with companies which have failed to grasp the implications of change, from Kodak to Borders to Blackberry, and a host of regional newspaper groups. The pace of change is accelerating. The internet is undermining long-established business models and creating new ones at a rapid pace. Less visible but even more significant are social and environmental issues like climate change, food shortages, rising populations and increased demand for consumer durables. The challenges are so significant that they affect all areas of industry; and, just as Microsoft and Nokia decided they needed to solve their problems together, so collaboration and co-operation – not just between businesses, but involving all the various entities that play a role in our complex systems for communications, or energy generation, or food production – will be vital to the future of both business and society.
Photo: Stocktrek Images/Thinkstock
Heather Connon shows why businesses need a more sophisticated approach towards collaboration.
sparked similar moves among clothing retailers. These initiatives are a useful start but there are huge issues still to be addressed: for example, the growing demand for palm oil for use in food and other consumer products is causing massive deforestation in Indonesia, adding to global warming and exacerbating the pollution which is blighting Singapore. Sustainable palm oil supply addresses only one small part of the interconnected issues. “We face a series of enormous, inter-related challenges which are too big for [one organisation] to address alone”, says David Bent, the Forum’s Deputy Director for Sustainable Business. “For a business to be successful, it needs a world to be successful in – a political and social framework, a thriving community, scale and dynamism – as much as it needs to offer long-term returns to shareholders. Business as usual will not work.” Some of the most successful businesses already realise that they are part of a bigger ecosystem and that others play a key role in securing their profitability. Apple recognised this in its hugely successful app-based iPhone model. As Anna Birney, leader of the system innovation lab at Forum for the Future, points out, the huge number of apps which the iPhone can host is key to its appeal: ‘Apple recognised that the iPhone model does not work without apps, so it needed those apps developers to make its product work,’ Other innovative companies are taking similar steps: Avis acquired ZipCar, the car-sharing business which could have posed a threat to its car hire interests; Google has acquired an average of one company a week since it launched 15 years ago, including companies like Beat That Quote,
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Left: Organisations should pull together to navigate change Right: Sustainable palm oil is only one small part of the answer
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Some of the most successful businesses realise they are part of a bigger ecosystem
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#theBIGshift
which it used to leverage its own price comparison business; British Gas invested in the AlertMe home monitoring business to beef up its own smart meter interests. Julie Meyer, the Founder and Chief Executive of Ariadne Capital, calls these examples of entrepreneurial digital Davids being sought out by business Goliaths. “Companies can no longer think of themselves as a silo or a stand-alone firm”, she argues. “They are part of a network and they must think like a “business-model architect”, building up their natural allies and partners. That takes deep thought, careful market analysis, clever dealmaking and digital, cloud-based infrastructure.” The Technology Strategy Board, the government body charged with stimulating business-led innovation, uses a digital tool called Horizons, developed in partnership with Forum for the Future, and similar to its Big Shift Framework for Change. Mike Pitts, the TSB’s lead specialist for sustainability, recognises “a common desire between the Forum and TSB to identify challenges which are too big for anyone to tackle on their own”. Its series of industrial ‘Challenge’ programmes involve bringing together consortia, representing disparate interests, which are required to come up with collaborative solutions. Issues they tackle include those created by an ageing population, or the potential for collaboration across the digital sector, or supply chain efficiencies. The results, says Pitts, have been good – once the participants realise the benefits of embracing cooperation rather than pursuing their own agendas. One of the biggest challenges currently facing Western governments is the financial crisis, which highlighted the complexity of the economic ecosystem. The Forum’s Bent points out that the proximate cause of the crisis was a serious, but apparently manageable, issue of overextended mortgage borrowers in the US; the explosion in the creation and distribution of complex financial instruments meant, however, that the pain of these over-extended mortgagees was magnified throughout the global financial system. One false move – in the form of the collapse of Lehman Brothers – caused a virtual economic meltdown. Bent argues that financial regulators are still spending too much time developing rules for individual parts of the financial system rather than recognising the effects of intermediation and the intricate connections throughout the financial ecosystem. Some in the financial industry do recognise the need for change. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), for example, is involved in a range of projects including the Finance Innovation Lab, in conjunction with the WWF, aimed at stimulating change in the financial system. “The crash shows that the financial system failed”, said Richard Spencer, Head of Sustainability at the ICAEW. “If we do not get it right in the future, we face the real prospect of a perfect economic, social and environmental storm, all occurring at the same time.” Bent believes this interconnectivity in the financial system is at the root of many other societal issues, and will be key to solving them. He points to the oil industry’s carbon bubble. When the implications of burning the remaining reserves upon the atmosphere are finally accepted, there is a risk
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Conversation with the future
need for collaboration on these issues. “To be pioneers, we need to change systems, to change the external environment”, said Birney. “You can either work with disruptive influences or be destroyed by it.” Heather Connon is a freelance journalist specialising in finance and business.
Shape and innovate
Jonathon Porritt discusses how things have changed with the protagonist of his new book, Alex McKay – a 50-year-old history teacher, living in 2050.
David Bent describes how businesses are learning a new two-step.
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on existing products or services. But this particular ‘innovate’ step is about long-term disruption; it means being prepared to cannibalise today’s sales for a more successful tomorrow. Developers of breakthrough innovations in big companies struggle to nurture them and protect them from the momentum of business-as-usual. So, what do I expect from businesses as they try to learn this two-step? First, different companies are at different stages of awareness about the risks of unsustainable business, and will act accordingly. The unaware will remain laggards. The aware will watch the leaders for stories of success. Then they will join in. The curious companies will start to experiment with different collaborations. The experimenters will get more systematic. Today’s leaders will see it in their own interest to help other companies to make a similar journey. Second, there will be consolidation of best practice through collaboration. There’s a need: I know of at least three different attempts at ways to report on sustainability, although I hear of moves to negotiate a combined standard. I know of at least four different attempts
to establish a widely accepted definition of ‘sustainable business’ which will set expectations of what is ‘good enough’. The same is true for labour standards, packaging, and more. Any young field has a period of diversity followed by a shakedown, in which a dominant version comes out on top. Sometimes the winner simply beats the others; sometimes they all merge. The same will happen with today’s dizzying variety of collaborations within sectors. Finally, there is the need to innovate to win. After all, companies need to create shareholder value. I expect leading businesses to gather many players around themselves who can help originate, develop and then scale innovations. You can refer to this as ‘stakeholder engagement’, but that seems too sterile to me. They are orchestrating an ‘innovation ecosystem’ – this is what will emerge from their shape-and-innovate dance. And this will be how companies win in our connected, interactive, collaborative world. They will lead ‘the big shift’ towards building longterm value, together.
What might a genuinely sustainable world look like in 2050? Environmentalist Jonathon Porritt sets out his vision in a groundbreaking new book, The World We Made. It’s articulated by Alex McKay, a fictional history teacher born (half a century after the author) in the year 2000. Alex looks back from the year 2050 at the momentous events that have transformed the world since the millennium. I couldn’t help wondering what kind of conversation Jonathon and Alex might have if the bounds of time could be temporarily set aside... Jonathon: I hope you don’t mind me asking, Alex, but have you ever heard of Pollyanna? Alex: I don’t think so. Your vintage? J: Not quite. It was the title of an early 20th-century novel about a little girl who stayed hopeful about things, however grim the situation. A: You seem to be implying that I’m some kind of deluded optimist? J: Well – you do end your preface, looking back from 2050, saying: We’re still very hard pressed by the legacy of all those wasted decades, but with a renewed sense of purpose as a family of nations, celebrating afresh the collective genius of what it is that makes the human species so special. And we have confidence, once again, in our shared ability to make a better world for all those who come after us.
David Bent is Director, Sustainable Business at Forum for the Future.
time. How can you all have gone on, election after election, voting in people whose principal quality seemed to be denial about what was going on under your noses – on climate change, corruption, poverty, species extinction, and so on? J: That’s a bit unfair. We weren’t all stuck in denial, as it happens. A: Really? From what you’ve told me, you yourself spent your entire working life trying to get people interested in living more sustainably – with next to no success. How do you feel about that? J: That’s definitely not how I’d put it! Campaigning groups such as Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth (as well as the Green Party in a different sort of way) did an amazing job stopping more bad things happening – it would all have been infinitely worse without that. What we never did, I have to admit, was get people excited about a different model of progress. We failed to make the idea of sustainable living aspirational – not just necessary (which is what all the science kept on telling us) but desirable. A: And the only aspiration that really mattered was the desire for more stuff? J: Pretty much.
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IT Took explosions of rage to restore fairness to economies
In 2050, 40% of the food we eat is grown in cities
A: And your point is? J: I’m just testing the bounds of optimism.
A difficult dance: collaborating with competitors
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Photo: Seymourpowell
A: Look, I’m a historian. And though The World We Made isn’t a formal history (there’s quite a bit of stuff about me in there), I worked really hard to stick to the facts: what happened, when, and why. Photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
In my ten years at Forum for the Future, I have seen a shift in mind-set among senior executives at leading companies. In the early 2000s, their attitude was summed up by the word ‘responsibility’. Companies had a responsibility to minimise their bad impact on the world. But it turns out that unsustainable development has a bad impact on business, with resource shortages affecting the long-term viability of supply chains. That’s why leading companies talk in terms of ‘sustainability’. Doing nothing presents real risks. Acting now opens up opportunity. Executives in leading companies are realising that long-term value creation requires a dynamic, successful society. And creating this means the global economy must operate within environmental limits, as well as ensuring people have the capability to act through skills, institutions and other social foundations. But creating these conditions is too much for one company alone. That’s why, when I look at leading companies, I see them exploring the next frontier. They are learning a new dance, which I call #theBIGshift two-step of ‘shape and innovate’. They are both shaping the context around them, and at the same time innovating their core business offer for commercial sucess. Look at Nike. The Road to Zero coalition will shape the supply chain so there are no more hazardous chemicals in its products by 2020. This is a good thing for everyone. Internally, Nike is training designers and developers so it can produce the best apparel and shoes without hazardous chemicals. This is a good thing for Nike’s shareholders. Change agents in companies tell me that learning this new dance is difficult. The ‘shape’ step often means collaborating with competitors, and finding leverage points in a complex, confusing world. Usually big companies are adept at incremental improvements
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that the value of oil companies could fall sharply, with a knock-on effect on pension funds – and thus on the fortunes of the workers and pensioners which rely on them. “It can take a long time for financial markets to recognise something as big as this but, when they do, they act as a herd, and bubbles pop when they should deflate.” The Forum’s Big Shift recognises the urgent
J: But you’re not really claiming to be neutral, are you? It seems to me you’re quite judgemental about some people – particularly politicians! A: Actually, I’m not critical of our politicians in 2050; on the whole, they’re doing a reasonable job. The ones I do judge are those back in your era – and I’m just as critical about the electorates at that
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Solar flair: in 2050, 80% of total energy comes from renewable sources
J: That’s good to hear. But can you imagine what it was like trying to advocate that approach earlier in the century? We were caught between a self-serving establishment of business-as-usual zealots and an equally extreme zero-growth movement for whom growth itself (and technology, by the way) was the root of all our problems. A: We picked that up in our research. And it wasn’t until 2029 that GDP was finally replaced by different measures of economic wellbeing. But we now know that it was all that green growth that created the space for a more intelligent debate about progress, about wellbeing, quality of life and real security. I don’t mean the travesty of ‘security’ in your time, measured solely by the trillions of dollars wasted by nations on weapons of war – even as the physical foundations of life on Earth were just eroding away. J: 2029? Even by the turn of the century it was apparent to a lot of people that permanent economic growth on a finite planet was just about the stupidest idea we’d ever come up with – but the majority of people still believed that without constant economic growth, year on year, society would collapse.
Green Futures October 2013
A: So guess when the ‘peak meat’ moment came – the point when global meat consumption started to decline? J: Er, 2035? A: Close: it was 2031, as it happens. Health concerns were the biggest factor, but it was greatly helped by the growing acceptability of artificial meat, as it became both healthier and cheaper than the ‘real’ stuff. And global population growth had slowed so much by then.
J: Interesting. That’s just not how people characterised sustainability in my day. It was all about pollution, climate change, biodiversity and so on. A: It is all about those things! But whoever supposed that it would be possible to find solutions to those challenges without addressing equity at the same time? You know that – in one of your earlier books, you pointed out that if you’re up to your neck in a crocodile-infested swamp, the last thing you worry about is the quality of the water!
J: I was wondering when you would get onto that! If ever there was a taboo subject, population was it! So many environmentalists in my day just couldn’t stomach the logic that if you’re talking about per capita footprints (in terms of CO2 emissions and so on) you need to address both the size of the footprint and the number of feet! Talk about systematic denial… A: We never did get to the bottom of that in our research, especially as there were already sizeable majorities of people in most countries that wanted to see population reduced – through non-coercive family planning and better education. But as just about everything got scarcer and more expensive, the penny finally dropped. Funding for family planning increased massively from 2018 onwards, which is why our population today is just 8.6 billion, and will almost certainly stabilise below 9 billion before the end of this century.
J: Yes, well a few of us… A: You do keep banging on about ‘the few’ don’t you? Politics has always been about winning majorities, not minorities – which is where you seemed to be stuck. The breakthroughs only came when outright majorities of people, in both the once-rich world and the newly-rich world, realised where their own interests lay – and that wasn’t with the super-rich, that was for sure! J: But people were so locked into that old model of progress. There must have been some massive shocks to the system along the way? A: Of course – who’s being Pollyanna-ish now? Famine, cyber-terrorism, climate catastrophes and species extinctions: there’s been no shortage of shocks! And that’s what made things change at the end of the day. J: But we had plenty of those shocks to the system even before the turn of the century. People just adapted, as if that was somehow ‘the new normal’. So what happened on food security, for instance? A: Well, those little shocks in your day became ever more frequent, with food shortages and food riots all over the place. But exactly as you say, most people were still surprised when a combination of factors (including a horrendous outbreak of black rust fungus in wheat crops across the Middle East, India and China) led to that long-predicted famine in 2025 –
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J: You could just about detect the early signals of those changes from 2010 onwards, although most government policy-makers were blind to that direction of travel – just to confirm your rather trenchant criticism of poor political leadership in our day! But there were so many taboo subjects in those days – such as excessive meat consumption, for example.
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J: That’s amazing! A: It guess it helped a bit when the Pope reversed decades of largely ignored doctrine by declaring artificial conception to be just fine in the eyes of God. J: Now that’s some deus ex machina! A: Actually, it was no big deal at the time. By 2020, pretty nearly all the world’s mainstream religions and major spiritual organisations had woken up to the insanity of continuing to trash ‘God’s Earth’, as it were, becoming some of the most potent forces for change.
Photo: Mark Edwards
in 2029, gdp was finally replaced by different measures of economic wellbeing
J: I suppose you’re going to tell me that GM crops came to the rescue? A: Not really. They helped a bit on the margin, but nothing like as much as much safer ways of increasing yields, as well as reducing food waste, and getting communities back into the business of growing their own food. As it happens, 40% of the food we eat today is grown in our cities. And there are no food shortages!
Photo: Seymourpowell
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A: Hang on a minute – aren’t you just a little bit conflicted here? J: What do you mean? A: Well, we’re only where we are today because of roughly 20 years of full-on economic growth between 2015 and 2035, with literally trillions of dollars of economic value created in transitioning from your hopelessly inefficient, carbon-intensive economy to our near-zero-carbon, ultra-efficient economy. OK, it’s very different now, in that economic growth (as measured by conventional GDP) is just one small part of what we mean by progress. But we’d never have got here without that period of ‘green growth’, as I think you called it then.
with at least 10 million dead. From then on, it was very different.
A: But there was something deeper than that going on, wasn’t there? That obsession with growth was partly because they couldn’t cope with the idea of a more equitable economy. The growth was necessary to mask ever deeper levels of inequality – as the super-rich kept on getting richer at the expense of everyone else. J: You’re big on all that stuff, aren’t you? One of the promotional lines for The World We Made is “A world in which there are still rich and poor, but the rich are poorer but happier, and the poor are richer in so many ways.” What exactly does that mean? A: Well, there are still lots of rich people today, but there are no super-rich. And even those that are still poor in money terms enjoy a very reasonable quality of life. J: That really does sound Utopian! A: Really? Well, we find it almost impossible to explain how you guys put up with things year after year. It was clear for all to see that the super-rich kept on getting richer precisely because they had the politicians in one pocket and the global media in the other. So it took some world-shaking explosions of rage in 2018 and the late 2020s to restore fairness as the foundation of any genuinely sustainable economy.
J: I’m beginning to see how this all adds up: shocks to the system, massive investment in clean technology, an emphasis on fairness as the foundation stone of sustainable economics, a better quality of leadership… I suppose we did dream a bit about all those things coming together to usher in a period of genuinely disruptive transformation. But whatever optimism was
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around at that time was usually drowned out by the impending horror of accelerating climate change. A: And with good cause! It’s unbelievable to people today that you just let things drift for nearly 25 years – from the 1990s onwards. And to be honest, we still don’t know for certain that we have avoided the horror of runaway climate change. We think we have: concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are falling rapidly, with 80% of total energy from renewable sources and 30% of all electricity from solar technologies of one kind or another – including artificial photosynthesis. J: I’m not sure I know what that is? A: You should do: Green Futures covered it back in 2011! It’s just one of countless technology breakthroughs that allowed us to ‘decarbonise’ our economy very quickly. But we do still have to implement expensive schemes to get billions of tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere through direct air capture, ocean fertilisation and other relatively low-risk technologies.
Family planning: the global population will stabilise below 9 billion
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in 2031, global meat consumption began to decline
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A: So why The World We Made? Why conjure me up as your spokesperson? J: To help break that deadlock. The science was all on our side, and the technology breakthroughs started coming thick and fast in the first decade of this century. But our politicians just couldn’t break free of the old orthodoxies. They were obsessed with the illusion of permanent economic growth, whatever the social and environmental consequences.
J: I wondered if all that stuff would become a necessity. A: It wouldn’t have if you had got your act together sooner! J: Well, you have made that abundantly clear on a number of occasions now. And the really tragic thing is that most clear-headed people knew we needed to change, but it looked like such a big leap of faith at the time that it just never happened. A: Yes, I can certainly sympathise with that. I guess we’re just better at all that visioning stuff these days. J: In fact, there were so few visions of what a genuinely sustainable world would look like at that time, and why it would be such a good place to live for the vast majority of people, that… A: That you just had to write The World We Made? J: Exactly! Jonathon Porritt is Founder-Director of Forum for the Future. ‘The World We Made (Alex McKay’s Story from 2050)’ is available from theworldwemade.com
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Worldly reflections These ghostlike figures are hardly visible: what we see is the way they change the flow of light, casting shadows and reflecting the world around them back at the camera. What a contrast to the many pictures we share, in which our own lives are front and centre, and the ‘backdrop’ remains just that... We are nothing if not part and parcel of that backdrop, this piece by the artists Maslen & Mehra seems to say. Their collaborative practice compares and contrasts the natural and human dimensions of the world in which we live. Here, the location is Shark Bay World Heritage Area, Australia, where ‘living fossils’, rich seagrass beds, migrating birds, humpback whales and endangered turtles make it a site of immense significance.
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Photos: xxxxx
Photos: xxxxx
Photo: Shell Beach Shark Bay Western Australia 2006 MASLEN & MEHRA www.voidgallery.com
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As growers look for protection from an unpredictable climate, has the time come to take food production indoors? Tess Riley reports.
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the greenest farming isn’t always done outdoors
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allows for year round food production in previously unsuitable climates. Horticultural business consultant John Hall also points out that this kind of technology opens up opportunities to those who want to grow veg, specialist herbs and young plants. Trials sponsored by Dutch company Philips Lighting and British company CambridgeHOK in Yorkshire explored the potential benefits that LED technology could have for the future of vertical farming: enhanced yield was one of them. Where a normal lettuce grower might produce five crops a year, this system can produce 15, according to Graham Ward, CEO of Stockbridge Technology Centre (STC), where the LED4CROPS trials took place. Martin McPherson, Science Director at STC, predicts that as this technology is developed it will offer increasingly good returns on investment: “The technologies and costs associated with LED lighting in a multi-tier environment are anticipated to change over the next few years to make it increasingly attractive to growers and investors. Early indications from our work suggest that there are considerable opportunities to improve yield and crop quality through manipulation of the light spectrum. In the case of vertical farming, it’s important to think inside the box.” Another technology gaining traction from China to Chile, and already dominating agriculture in the Netherlands, is hydroponics. These soilless systems offer crops just the right amount of water and nutrients, and recycle these, without any nutrient leaching (a concern for traditional outdoor farming in which chemicals contaminate groundwater reserves). Simon Billing, an expert on sustainable food at Forum for the Future, says: “The hydroponic system is the
Photos: Flickr; Flickr
Sundrop Farms, Australia: solar-powered desalination provides water for crops all year round
It’s commonly accepted that record food prices were one of the key triggers for the Arab Spring. This year in Zimbabwe, critical levels of crop failure put over two million people at risk of chronic malnutrition. Even a prosperous state like Singapore, which imports over 90% of its produce, is starkly aware of its food security risks. Water scarcity, erratic weather conditions and a burgeoning global population, with rising expectations of living standards and an increasingly carnivorous diet, is driving pressure across the food chain. As food producers look for ways to boost productivity and safeguard their crops from an unpredictable climate, has the time come to take agriculture indoors? Fly over Holland and you’ll find yourself looking down on a sea of glass; here, hydroponic greenhouses account for 50% of the value of all fruit and vegetables produced in the country – a practical response to soil depletion, disease and salinisation. Making plants less vulnerable to soil degradation and unpredictable weather is just one advantage of indoor cropping; it also offers horticulturalists more control over the conditions, allowing them to drive efficiency, reduce waste and expand production beyond seasons. The potential environmental benefits of this are significant: the assumption that the greenest farming is done outdoors needs to be challenged. The variety of cultivation and irrigation technologies available – as well as ways to harvest key resources, from water to light – makes indoor cropping a diverse practice. While it’s not a given that every indoor project will be high tech, the enclosed environment lends itself well to bio-control technologies. The exceedingly efficient LED lighting new to the market, for example,
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energy use, particularly in Northern Europe. According to Billing, the European greenhouse sector consumes as much energy as Sweden. It’s all very well enjoying a local tomato but if the carbon footprint of what you’re eating is higher than its imported equivalent, something’s not right. To date, some efficiency gains have been made, but the predominant indoor scenario still sees massive losses as heat is pumped into glass or plastic. The good news is that the rush to tackle this problem is on and innovative solutions are being put into practice, from making use of renewables, like ground source heat or biomass, to combined heat and power systems (Thanet Earth uses such a system to generate electricity, feeding excess back into the National Grid). Later this year, Lufa Farms is set to open its second rooftop urban farm just north of Montreal, Canada, spanning 43,000 feet above a commercial property, which enables it to make use of the heated building below to keep crops warm. This means it will require only half the energy per square foot to grow food compared with a conventional farm on the ground. The Dutch Government is also investing in efforts to reduce energy costs and use: it currently subsidises its gas market to support growers, with horticulture its biggest export. Will future generations look back and ask us why we didn’t move crops inside sooner, in a world of ever more extreme weather events and critical food security concerns? Simon Crichton, Food and Organic Farming Relationship manager at Triodos, remarks that many growers in the UK would have gone out of business in 2012 without the advantages of protected cropping. “The focus globally now has to be on eliminating the use of fossil fuels”, he adds. “I’m pleased to see people starting to innovate with sustainable heat sources. If we can tackle this energy question, protected cropping will be able to play a role in sustainably extending seasons, increasing the number of available crops and protecting against variable climates to the benefit of food supply worldwide.”
Lufa Farms, Canada: heat from the building below warms the crops
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a farm in singapore stretches thirty feet into the sky
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Crops take shelter
nearest thing to a closed loop system that I have seen in agriculture. Most of the systems use virtually no pesticides and biological controls; green waste is reused and there’s no water or nitrogen loss. It’s amazingly efficient – and yet you can’t currently register it as organic in the UK, as it’s not in soil.” Farms have traditionally been a significant contributing factor to global problems of water pollution and scarcity, but now innovation is turning the tables. In the arid desert outside Port Augusta, South Australia, Sundrop Farms are working on a project which uses solar energy to desalinate seawater for irrigation, enabling them to grow cheap, high-quality vegetables without pesticides all year round. Head over to Singapore and you’ll be able to visit Sky Greens Farms, the world’s first commercial vertical farm, which stretches 30 feet into the sky to produce crops sold in local supermarkets. In Chicago, the FarmedHere urban farming company puts derelict warehouses to good use, growing more than one million pounds of herbs and micro greens per year using a combination of aquaponics and aeroponics. Much of the industrial-scale indoor production of fruit and veg goes on in colossal glass complexes. Thanet Earth in Kent is the UK’s largest and most high tech. Here, row upon row of salad crops are meticulously grown under 55 hectares of glass using hydroponics. A central computer system determines optimum light and heat levels, energy is generated on site, and an army of bees and ‘good’ bugs ensure pollination and adequate pest control. The result? Thanet Earth is expected to increase UK salad crop (cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes) production by 15%. It harvests 700,000 cucumbers, 750,000 peppers and millions of tomatoes every week during the crops’ impressive growing seasons. In the case of tomatoes, that growing season just happens to be all year round, indifferent to the bitter winters, Indian summers and intense rainy periods making their presences felt outside. Whatever the scale, these projects aren’t cheap. Thanet Earth, for example, has planning permission to build a total of seven greenhouses at a projected cost of £135 million; stakeholders include the UK’s largest privately owned fresh produce supplier, Fresca Group Ltd, and specialist grower companies, the majority of which are Dutch. By contrast, in the Mediterranean city of Almería, southern Spain, sweet peppers, aubergines and other vegetables thrive under unheated plastic structures installed by the likes of Enza Zaden, an international plant breeding company. Costly glass structures and the high energy demands to heat them just aren’t necessary in places like southern Europe and Africa, where the future of much indoor cropping appears to lie. The critical question is whether this trend will help or hinder sustainable food production at scale. Kevin Price, Corporate Marketing Manager of the crop protection company Certis Europe, says: “Protected cropping, if done well and with foresight, will be an important contributor to a sustainable food system. It will prove important for food security in providing a range of nutritiously rich crops while protecting the crop against a variable climate.” Why the need for foresight? The main concern is
Tess Riley is a London-based journalist writing about the environment, communities and society.
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it’s not hard to find examples of ambitious local leadership
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Merkel: opening minds to the future?
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When announcing his plan to kickstart the US economy in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt famously declared that the country had “nothing to fear but fear itself”. In just 100 days, through a flurry of legislation and investment, his Government dragged the country up off its knees – a towering political achievement. Today, this kind of bold political leadership seems in short supply, particularly when it comes to dealing with environmental challenges. Many politicians seem unable or unwilling to look beyond short-term electoral concerns to the long-term wellbeing of the planet – something that becomes acutely clear whenever world leaders gather at climate change summits. Even the immediate impacts of a warming climate on food and water security are treated as isolated crises, rather than prompting action to tackle the root causes. By contrast, it’s not hard to find examples of ambitious local leadership on climate change. In the US, for instance, state government has been “much more proactive in taking action on climate change than the federal government”, observes Dr Hu Tao, Senior Associate at the World Resources Institute. He points to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative – a cooperative effort by several Northeast and Mid-Atlantic US states to cap CO2 emissions from the energy sector – as well Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to improve New York City’s environmental sustainability by 2030. Many other cities, states and counties across the world are also pressing ahead with innovative solutions to sustainability challenges. For example, Ontario, Canada’s largest province, has installed 4.7 million smart meters and its Smart Grid Fund provides financial support for innovative Smart Grid technologies. While in southeast Queensland, local government and utilities worked together to reduce
Green Futures October 2013
water use among 80,000 ‘high volume’ households, implementing solutions such as rain capture bins and low-irrigation lawn covers [see Special Edition ‘Water Works’, p6]. So what role can national leaders best play today, given a very different political, social and economic landscape to the one Roosevelt faced? Decentralisation, grassroots initiatives and the internet have radically altered power structures, creating more space for bottom-up leadership. An approach to tackling sustainability challenges that combines a clear mission from the top with devolved power to implement it therefore seems like the way forward. Such an approach has arguably been key to Angela Merkel’s success. Germany’s regional communities are at the heart of the ‘Energiewende’ (Energy Shift), which Merkel helped to kickstart when she decided to abandon nuclear power completely in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. She has continued to support this transformation, which aims to have the country producing 80% of its power from renewables by 2050, despite its spiraling costs. More than half of Germany’s renewable energy capacity is now provided by individuals, co-operatives and farmers. This rapid growth in small-scale renewable energy production is largely due to a generous feedin tariff that guarantees a fixed price for surplus energy for 20 years, and priority access to the grid – a great example of top-down governance prompting local action. National governments must provide the framework to allow such changes to happen. According to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development paper ‘Cities, Climate Change and Multilevel Governance’, the potential of local bodies to act on climate change is “nested” in legal and institutional frameworks at higher scales. At the same time, devolution of power from national to local government can drive action on climate change, allowing cities and regions to shape policies on energy, land use, transport and waste to suit local contexts. In a recent #SustLiving Twitter chat, Unilever’s Chief Sustainability Officer Gail Klintworth even said: “We believe that Unilever should play an active role in shaping legislation and regulations that enhance positive social and environmental outcomes.” The company is also encouraging its brands to engage with local governments and other organisations to help inform public policy. National governments can also view local initiatives as test-beds for national policy, sounding out business and public support for new regulations
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a clear mission and devolved power has been key to merkel’s success
Duncan Jefferies is a freelance journalist and Assistant Editor, Green Futures.
Photo: SOEREN STACHE/Getty
National leaders can learn from collaborative governance for sustainability at a regional level, and should encourage it, says Duncan Jefferies.
potential to deepen public engagement in securing the resources on which they depend. Governance has a role here: an engaging communications campaign on the benefits of home energy saving measures could ramp up the impact of the UK’s Green Deal initiative, for example. Traditional forms of communication can also be supplemented by gamification techniques, which tap into people’s desire for play and reward. One successful scheme, Recyclebank, tracks how much recycling households are doing, and offers vouchers for reaching targets. Three hundred cities in the US and UK have now adopted it. Windsor and Maidenhead Council says it has increased recycling rates to 50%. As Recyclebank, the Energiewende, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative demonstrate, social and environmental challenges are best tackled collectively, through multilevel governance. “Understand this is not just a job for politicians”, said Barack Obama in his long-awaited speech on climate change, which was praised by many environmental groups. “What we need in this fight are citizens who will stand up, and speak up, and compel us to do what this moment demands.” The true test of his leadership, and that of other global leaders, will be whether they can empower more individuals, communities and organisations to find solutions and act on them. After all, actions speak louder than words.
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Taking the lead
or solutions. The data generated and lessons learned can provide useful models for wide-scale change programmes: California’s vehicle emissions standards, for example, have now been adopted nationwide in the US. In China, growing anger at the health problems caused by the choking smog that blankets cities has also spurred the Government to introduce a carbon-trading scheme, starting in Shenzhen, which will be rolled out in six other municipalities before 2014. If successful, it could provide the basis for a national system. By contrast, the Transition Towns movement, which began in the UK and has since spread to more than 40 countries around the world, is a real grassroots initiative. It shows what local communities can achieve through community energy initiatives, food hubs and local currencies – small steps that could add up to wide-scale action on sustainability issues. The Community Energy Coalition, a group of organisations with over 12 million members convened by Forum for the Future, is also aiming to increase UK community energy projects by 2020. National governance can still have a big influence on the success of grassroots energy projects. For example, local residents of Lewes, another UK Transition Town, helped to raise more than £350,000 for a community-owned solar-power station in 2011. The initiative was a response to feed-in tariffs for solar projects generating more than 50kW – but such a project wouldn’t be economically viable today, as the tariffs were subsequently cut. As the Transition movement shows, there is
www.greenfutures.org.uk
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As social behaviour changes, so do the physical elements of the city
Ljusterapi (light therapy) while you wait in Umea, Sweden
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Green Futures October 2013
to pursue engineering studies at the college, exploring alternative approaches to urban infrastructure. Nader Tubbeh, Digital Marketing Coordinator at UTEC, hopes that, by perfecting such innovations, young engineers could “help undermine the water crisis currently affecting the world”. Seven thousand miles away, the residents of Umea, a city 300 miles north of Stockholm in Sweden, spend six months each year with little access to another precious natural resource: sunlight. This can take its toll on the mental and physical health of the population. What the city does have, however, is plenty of busses and bus stops – popular winter destinations for people seeking shelter from the elements… Local energy company, Umea Energi, saw an opportunity in the intersection of the need for sunlight and for shelter. It replaced the lights in the shells of 30 bus stops around the city with UV light therapy tubes powered by solar energy, transforming the bus stops into “therapy saloons…to give the people of Umea an extra energy boost when they needed it the most”, as the company said in a video about the project. While waiting for the bus, residents are invited to face the lights for a few minutes to soak up the equivalent of natural sunlight rays before continuing on their journey. After the installation of the light therapy bulbs, the use of public buses in Umea increased by 50%. The motorways in and around Los Angeles may not seem like the most fertile ground for this kind of urban repurposing, but for artist Stephen Glassman, they have a unique potential. Glassman is the creator of Urban Air, a project that aims to replace the advertisements atop the structures that line and extend over some of America’s most polluted roadways with miniature bamboo forests to cool and clean the air. The project, explains Glassman, “recontextualizes what we’ve seen to this point as a blight of advertising”. Instead, these sites become “an infrastructure for service and inter-connectivity”. Time is a great decider of what stays and what disappears from the urban landscape. As technology and social behaviour changes, so do the physical elements of the city. Changing media habits led to the disappearance of newspaper boxes. Phone booths and emergency call sites have given way to the mobile phone – but these skeletal structures offer a space
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Photos: Stephen Glassman / Urban Air
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Across the world, innovative solutions to urban needs are emerging from new uses for existing structures and systems. Officials are joining hands with engineers and corporate R&D teams to improve access to essential resources like water, energy and sunlight, and increase social and environmental wellbeing, by reimagining the potential of the resources they already have. They are reprogramming the city. Take Lima. For those living on the edges of Peru’s capital, access to clean drinking water is a problem. Small wells supply most of the water, which one resident describes as “unpleasant and polluted”, and in the summer “there isn’t much available”. Engineers at the local University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) decided to tackle the issue by making innovative use of two of the city’s more abundant resources: its humid air (which can reach 98% humidity), and the billboards that reach into it. They installed a humidity collector and water purifier into the top of one advertising structure in the village of Bujama, creating the UTEC Water Billboard. It can produce 96 litres of clean drinking water a day for local residents, which flows down a pipe to a tap at the base of the structure. Resident Francisco Quilca says it has provided him and his neighbors with a new, pure water source, and wishes it could exist “on the door of every house, in every village.” Funded through the college’s ‘Ingenuity in Action’ initiative, the project aims to inspire children in the area
Photo: Ola Bergengren / Umea Energi
To unlock the full potential of our cities and solve pressing problems, we must re-imagine the existing urban infrastructure, says Scott Burnham.
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very pragmatic additions to these otherwise mundane structures, but the impact they’ve had so far is pretty tremendous in terms of how people react to them. Everyone loves it, because you are transforming a eyesore into a community asset.” This citizen-led transformation of scaffolding structures into platforms for public events, street trading or pop-up dining could be a model for more public engagement with existing urban structures. It could even encourage the authorities to add a new chapter to the New York City Street Design Manual to nurture these interactions. At present, this fairly standard municipal catalogue offers few surprises in its detailing of the “policies and design guidelines…for the improvement of streets and sidewalks throughout the five boroughs”. Yet deep within the guide is a section titled ‘Infrastructure: Do It Yourself Repairs’, complete with ‘Specifications for Residents Installing their Own Sidewalk’, and guidelines for ‘Sidewalk Maintenance and Repair’ by the public. The notion of DIY Infrastructure Repair begs the question: if residents are encouraged to install and repair their own sidewalks (within certain guidelines), what other pieces of urban infrastructure could be opened up by the city within a framework of repair and improvement? Cities are celebrated as terrains of infinite possibility – a perspective mostly applied to their human potential, but also true of the structures, systems and services that underpin urban lives. But cities also face tough challenges: from population growth and congestion, to emissions targets and economic competition. As existing resources come under pressure, there will be rewards for innovators who can stretch their applications in new directions.
Los Angeles: breathe in the billboards
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Parking machines are next on the list of ‘endangered structures’
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Reprogramming the city
for innovation, bringing new social and economic value. With the rise of the Internet of Things – in which everyday objects are embedded with sensors and wifi-enabled – there’s no end to the potential of urban objects to network and exchange data. In New York, a partnership between the City and two telecommunications companies, Cisco and City 24/7, has seen 250 phone boxes repurposed as information point touchscreens. The business model replaces advertising for coins: a person might tap on the screen to find the way to the nearest park, and also be alerted to a few offers from local shops and restaurants, which can be stored on their smartphone. The information points can also act as communication tools during emergencies. If this pilot is successful, all of the city’s 12,500 payphones could be replaced. In Vienna, Telekom Austria has found another use for hundreds of its disused phone booths – by converting them into electric car charging stations. Drivers have the option to pay from their phone via SMS. Parking payment machines are next on the list of ‘endangered’ structures, ripe for reprogramming. These iron sentinels are rapidly being replaced by smartphone apps that allow GPS location-specific payments. Yet look inside any parking payment machine and you will find a networked wifi system, a computer, printer, GPS locator and a payment authorization system – all powered by a solar system and storage battery. That’s a tremendous amount of capability that could be used for more than just issuing us with bits of time on pieces of paper. City Tickets, by designer Mayo Nissen, is one idea that seeks to expand the functionality of parking pay machines. Earlier this year, at the Boston Society of Architects BSA Space Gallery, Nissen demonstrated a prototype of a Boston parking payment machine, reprogrammed to connect to the city’s 311 incident reporting system, creating a street-level communication platform between residents and the city hall. Residents can now pay for their parking and print out a list of all the faults or incidents reported in the area – potholes, broken streetlights – as well as a report from the city authorities detailing how they are responding to each issue, making governance more transparent. A separate ticket, which allows residents to report incidents in the area or offer suggestions for improvements – perhaps benches for sitting on, or a weekly local market, can also be printed. Back in New York, numerous scaffolding structures, aka ‘sidewalk sheds’, can be left standing for years – the result of a local law that requires regular inspection of building facades. The law states that the structures must be erected for the inspection, but it doesn’t clarify when they must come down. Brooklyn designers Bland Hoke and Howard Chambers saw an opportunity to rethink these structures, having been inspired by the way the city was rethinking its streets. “We recognized how New York City streetscapes were changing with the addition of chairs and tables, and how the city was turning streets into pedestrian plazas”, says Hoke, “so we took that concept and grafted it onto sidewalk sheds.” The result was Softwalks, a kit of seats, benches, counter tops and planters that bolt onto existing scaffolding structures to transform them into spaces for social gatherings or personal relaxation. The various elements that make up Softwalks, says Hoke, “are
Scott Burnham has created and directed design and urban initiatives in major cities worldwide, including Boston’s ‘Reprogramming the City’ exhibition.
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the way, backed by a small army of 54,000 employees operating from 31 markets. For Lundgren, good tourism doesn’t mean treading so lightly you don’t leave a mark. It means finding ways to ensure that the destinations, and the lives of local communities, are better off with tourists than without them. “It’s very easy to be idealistic and ask, ‘Why doesn’t everybody just go on holiday to small cottages, or travel somewhere slowly and stay there for three months?’ – advocating ecotourism in a niche kind of way. But the truth of the matter is, you’re talking about one of the world’s largest industries, where millions and millions go on holiday. And that can be a good thing, if you see tourism as something that [can be] actually good for the destination.” I prompt him to clarify what he means by ‘good’, and am met by a blast of ambition. “We want to be the industry leader, the spokesperson for the sustainability agenda, and we can only be that if we actually do the actions that are right – if we prove that we are lessening our impact on the environment; that we are enhancing the lives of the people at certain destinations; that we can engage with customers in a way that makes them feel that this is a company that I want to travel with because they are doing the right thing; that we can engage and train our colleagues in the organisations, in a way that they feel ‘Actually, this company I’m working for is the leader in this area…’” But where does such a journey start? As set out in the Group’s Sustainable Holidays Plan, TUI Travel is beginning (appropriately) with carbon emissions. The Group has set the target of operating Europe’s most
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Photo: TUI Travel
More people globally are travelling to foreign destinations for their holidays, and doing so more times per year. One summer break is no longer the norm: those with a mind to see the world and the budget to spare book four or five short get-aways each year – a trend spreading from Europe to Asia, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. The phrase ‘I need a holiday’ is becoming at once more common and more qualified: with more choice, a proliferation of service providers and greater access to local information, there also comes a more discerning approach. Any ‘dream’ destination will not do: people also want to experience it in a particular way. The impact of ever more adventurers on the world they want to see spells trouble. Top of the list, there are the carbon emissions of travel and the impact of this upon an already changing climate; global tourist arrivals in 2012 topped one billion, despite a shortfall due, in part, to a spate of (so-called) natural disasters. Related to this, water supplies in areas attractive to sunseekers are becoming ever more fragile – and the expectations of plentiful showers and swimming pools can add extra strain. Tourism can bring much needed funding and the impetus to develop essential infrastructure for water and sanitation, transport and telecommunications, boosting local economies – but there’s also the risk that profit stays in the hands of multinational hospitality providers, if they fail to involve host communities in the provision of goods and services. Not least, there’s the need to ensure local ecosystems aren’t thrown out of kilter by a sudden rise in footfall and demand for resources. This is the context in which TUI Travel has set out to become the world’s biggest leisure provider, in a way that is sustainable and responsible. I met Johan Lundgren, Deputy Chief Executive of TUI Travel PLC: the man charged with leading
Photos: TUI Travel; Fuse/Thinkstock
The future of tourism isn’t zero impact, Johan Lundgren of TUI Travel tells Anna Simpson: it’s about creating benefits at every stage.
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may simply not understand why the targets are so important to TUI Travel. If they really don’t get it, the company has the option of not signing the contract – but this isn’t a solution either, says Lundgren: “If we don’t work with them, the hotel will simply sell to someone else. We would rather work with everybody to make sure we hit our targets. We offer further support, in terms of tools, workshops, consultancy and education: 600 hoteliers and other stakeholders trained with us in the years 2011-12. It’s not a ‘go away and do it on your own’ approach!” This discrepancy in approaches to sustainability, from one source market or destination to the next, puts the need for international targets on carbon emissions into focus. TUI Travel engages with national governments, the EU, and with the travel association ABTA, in efforts to promote regulation. Lundgren would like to see all European countries working to the same standards; he points out that legislation like the Package Travel Directive – which requires the organisers and sellers of package holidays to provide greater protection to purchasers through information, financial protection and repatriation, and contractual liability – has remained unchanged since 1990, despite the advent of game-changers, from low-cost carriers to the internet, to independent players, like Airbnb, who can be reluctant to offer financial protection for customers, says Lundgren. “We are not doing what some of these independent companies are, by saying that ‘I can provide you with a hotel room, but I can’t find a flight for you, so you’ve got to get yourself to the hotel by this time – and by the way, if it all goes wrong, you’ll have no one to turn to’”, says Lundgren. “That’s not the type of company we are, or that we want to be.” He believes TUI Travel’s size and brand recognition also comes with “great responsibility, because we also have the ability to influence, from the hoteliers to the airlines. I like to see my role as making sure that that whole chain is working; the weakest link has to be strong enough to make the whole chain hold.” Anna Simpson is Editor, Green Futures.
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if you don’t set targets, what are you going to aim for?
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Tread lastingly
fuel-efficient airlines [see ‘Winging ways’, p38], and saving more than 20,000 tonnes of carbon from its ground operations – including major premises, retail outlets, brochures, hotels and fleets of vehicles – by 2015, against a 2011 baseline. Another very important thing, Lundgren explains, is what the company does in its destinations: he points out that one of TUI Travel’s core values is responsible leadership. “We have hundreds of local projects with communities to make sure that they see it as better that we’re there than not. If you look at some Caribbean destinations, for instance, there wouldn’t be jobs, there wouldn’t be employment, and there wouldn’t be infrastructure if it wasn’t for tourism. I think we have proved that this industry can provide growth for destinations – for people. We try to stimulate local hotels to buy locally produced food, for example.” Good intentions, but I wonder how they correlate to the growth of TUI Travel as a business. Of course, marking yourself out as a leader has reputational benefits, but realistically, the majority of people planning their holidays won’t have this in mind. What difference, if any, does a more sustainable holiday make to the actual experience of the average tourist? Does it have any role in another of TUI Travel’s ambitions – in which customers feel that ‘travelling with TUI Travel is better than travelling with everybody else’? “Definitely, it will enrich the whole holiday experience – partly because people like to see different things. When hotels offer local produce, that’s something people are interested in. And more people are going on sustainable excursions, which bring benefits to the local communities and biodiversity. If you go to Gran Canaria, 20 years ago everybody wanted to see the mountains – that was the fantastic ‘new’ thing. But since, there have been a lot of repeating customers to Gran Canaria, and they have all been on that excursion. So, I think there is an opportunity to create different types of excursions, based around environmentally friendly and communitybased projects that can have an impact.” When it comes to delivering environmental benefits at scale across TUI Travel, collaboration is both the key and the challenge. No one company, however extensive its scope, can be effective without bringing others along with it. I ask, how is TUI Travel engaging the other service providers who play a part in holidays? Is there a selection process? “No, we set targets, and then we ask our stakeholders – the airlines, for example – what they can do to help us, and bring people together to share best practice: the good ideas are already out there. Each airline has appointed a fuel conservation manager, so their full-time jobs are engaging with pilots and with stakeholders, to come up with ways of saving money through efficiency. We have a number of similar engagements with our hoteliers: we ask the local management to bring in experts, whether that’s to reduce electricity and air conditioning, or to heat up the pools using solar panels. Setting targets is very important: if you don’t, what are you going to aim for? Yes, we meet resistance, but that’s as it should be. If you don’t, then the target is too low.” Sometimes, Lundgren admits, the targets are also too high – because awareness of the issues, and the solutions, varies from one place to the next, as does regulation. Some hotel managers
Top left: A walk to benefit the wildlife Below: Does local produce enrich the holiday experience?
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SallyUren
Forum for the Future’s Network is a global community of leaders, united by their ambition and capacity to create real and lasting change. For more information, visit www.forumforthefuture.org Sony Europe www.sony-europe.com
Jaguar Land Rover Fran Leedham, fleedham@jaguarlandrover.com
Swire – China Navigation Co www.cnco.com.hk
John Lewis Partnership Moira Thomas, +44 (0)20 7592 4413
Target www.target.com
Johnson Matthey Sean Axon, +44 (0)20 7269 8400
Tata Global Beverages www.tataglobalbeverages.com/
Kimberly-Clark Europe Tom Berry, www.kimberly-clark.com
Taylors of Harrogate Simon.Hotchkin@bettysandtaylors.co.uk
Kingfisher becky.coffin@kingfisher.com
Thomson Reuters www.thomsonreuters.com
Kyocera Document Solutions Tracey.Rawling.Church@KyoceraMita.co.uk
Technology Strategy Board www.innovateuk.org
Lafarge Tarmac Ltd Emma Hines, www.lafargetarmac.com
Technology Will Save Us www.technologywillsaveus.org
Levi Strauss & Co www.levistrauss.com/
Telefónica UK Simon Davis, simon.davis@O2.com
Lloyd’s Register www.lr.org
Tesco Plc Helen Fleming, +44 (0)1992 806 790
L’Oréal USA www.lorealusa.com
Tetra Pak Ltd Gavin Landeg, +44 (0)1978 834 018
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) James Simpson, +44 (0)20 7811 3315
The CarbonNeutral Company www.carbonneutral.com
DNV www.dnv.co.uk
Marks & Spencer Plc Rowland Hill PlanA@marksandspencer.com
The Coca-Cola Company April Crow, www.coca-colacompany.com
DSME www.dsme.co.kr/epub/main/index.do
Maersk Line www.maersk.com
eBay Inc Lorin May, lmay@ebay.com
Mondelez www.mondelezinternational.com
Ecover Philip Malmberg, +32 3 309 2500 www.ecover.com
Namura www.namura.co.jp/en/index.html
The Crown Estate Sustainability@thecrownestate.co.uk www.thecrownestate.co.uk
Nike Inc sarah.severn@nike.com
The Jordans & Ryvita Company Ltd David Webster, +44 (0)1767 319 415
OgilvyEarth +44 (0)20 7309 1226 kathleen.enright@ogilvy.com
Thomson Reuters www.thomsonreuters.com
3M Pip Frankish, www.3m.com ABF Plc Rosalyn.schofield@abfoods.com ABN AMRO www.abnamro.com
ClimateCare +44 (0)1865 591 000, business@climatecare.org www.climatecare.org Colep UK Limited grant.coupland@colep.com, +44 (0)1427 858491 www.colep.com
Aimia www.aimia.com
Crest Nicholson Plc Dr Elizabeth Ness, +44 (0)1932 580 555 www.crestnicholson.com
AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, +44 (0)1928 511 695
Cultura Technologies Ltd. www.culturatech.com
Alliance Boots Ltd Richard.Ellis@allianceboots.com
Delhaize Group mhellstedt@delhaizegroup.com www.delhaizegroup.com
AMEC Francesco Corsi, +44 (0)1912 726 128 Arjowiggins Graphic Jeremy Taylor, jeremy.taylor@arjowiggins.com ARMOR SA Sean.LOFTUS@armor-group.com Ashden Kinga Várnai, +44 (0)20 7410 7023 Aviva Investors Steve Waygood, +44 (0)20 7809 6000 Azaria International priyanka.kripalani@azaria.in, +91 22 2285 6161 www.azaria.in Bank of America Merrill Lynch Matt Hale, +44 (0)20 7996 2054
Delphis Eco Mark Jankovich, +44 (0)20 3397 0096 www.delphisworld.com Diageo Plc Carolyn Panzer, carolyn.panzer@diageo.com
Barclays Bank Plc Lauren Iannarone, www.barclays.com
EDF Energy Darren Towers, +44 (0)7875 110 289, darren.towers@edfenergy.com
Benchmark Software Simon Harvey, +44 (0)1458 444 010
Ella’s Kitchen and Earth’s Best Sarah Bright, sarah@ellaskitchen.co.uk
Blue & Green Tomorrow alex@blueandgreentomorrow.com www.blueandgreentomorrow.com
EnergyDeck Benjamin Kott, www.energydeck.com
Bowman Ingredients www.bowmaningredients.co.uk
Energy Saving Trust +44 (0)20 7227 0398 www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
BP Shipping www.bp.com/shipping
Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, +44 (0)20 7802 3239
BSkyB Daniella Vega, daniella.vega@bskyb.com
Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227 802 435
BT Plc +44 (0)7730 426 189 Eric.Anderson@bt.com
FirstGroup Plc Kate.Broome@FirstGroup.com
Bunge www.bunge.com Bupa Andrew Smith, +44 (0)20 7656 2343 Burberry Limited Jocelyn Wilkinson, +44 (0)20 3367 3100 C&A philip.chamberlain@retail-sc.com Cafédirect Wolfgang Weinmann, +44 (0)20 7033 6056
Food and Drink Federation Nicki Hunt, +44 (0)20 7420 7132 FoodTrade Ed Dowding, ed@foodtrade.com Gearbulk www.gearbulk.com GlaxoSmithKline Claire Griffin, www.gsk.com Green Ink s.chater@greenink.co.uk www.greenink.co.uk
Capgemini Ltd James Robey, +44 (0)870 904 5761
GrowUp Kate Hoffman, +44 (0)7862 259 566 www.growup.org.uk
Cargill Fiona Cubitt, +44 (0)1932 861 916
Hammerson www.hammerson.com
Carillion Plc Louise Perry, +44 (0)1902 316 258
Heineken UK Richard Heathcote, +44 (0)1432 345 277
Carnival www.carnival.com
HSH Group Natalie Chan, www.hshgroup.com
Certis Europe www.certiseurope.co.uk
IGD Dr James Northen, +44 (0)1923 851 919
Chi Group www.chigroup.co
Ingersoll Rand www.ingersollrand.com
City of London Simon Mills, +44 (0)20 7332 1431
Innovia Films Lucy Cowton, +44 (0)1697 342 281
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Panasonic UK Ltd Simon Eves, +44 (0)1344 853 325 PepsiCo UK & Ireland Andrew Slight, Andrew.Slight@pepsico.com PHS Group emmawood@phs.co.uk, www.phs.co.uk
The Converging World wendystephenson@theconvergingworld.org
Triodos Bank William Ferguson, +44 (0)117 980 9770 Tsakos www.tsakos.net TUI Travel Plc Jane Ashton, +44 (0)1293 645 911 Twin jessicafrank@twin.org.uk www.twin.org.uk
Pret A Manger Ltd Nicki Fisher, +44 (0)20 7827 8888
Twinings Maxine Shields, www.twinings.co.uk
Pureprint Group Richard Owers, +44 (0)1825 768 811
U-Ming www.uming.com.tw/
Quintain Estates and Development Plc rbeeson@quintain.co.uk
Unilever Plc Karen.Hamilton@unilever.com +44 (0)20 7822 5917
Rexam Plc John.Revess@rexam.com, www.rexam.com Rio Tinto www.marine.riotinto.com Royal Dutch Shell Plc Elfrida Hughes, +31 610 974 798 RSA Insurance Group Plc Peter Collins, www.rsagroup.com RWE npower Anita Longley, +44 (0)1793 892 716 Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd helen.ireland@sainsburys.co.uk SC Johnson www.scjohnson.com Shell Foundation www.shellfoundation.org Skanska Jennifer Clark, +44 (0)1923 776 666 Small World Henry Rawson, +852 2799 3998 www.interiorsourcing.com
‘I’ve tried everything, my boss just doesn’t get it.’ The big ‘it’ is sustainability, and the boss is just that – or someone of significant influence in an organisation. If that person got ‘it’, they could remove barriers to sustainability, and, even better, speed up the organisation’s journey. The list of reasons (or excuses) for not taking sustainability seriously are endless and well documented. The business case is perceived only to deliver in the long term. The short-term benefits are considered dubious. For many, ‘It’s just not the right time’, and this bland statement covers all manner of perceived realities, from ‘We’ve got bigger problems to fix’ (well, sustainability can often help here) through to ‘We’re all just too busy’ (sigh). The reality is that efforts to try to persuade important individuals don’t reflect the motivation of the person in question, and so the ask just doesn’t land. Experiencing the need for change is the first step towards mainstreaming sustainability. If individuals, or entire organisations, haven’t experienced the need for change, only half-hearted, incremental progress will follow, if at all. It’s really important to get this right, but there is a way. Here, first of all, are four rational archetypes of resistance to change. For each one, I offer you the story that could be used to help that influential somebody experience the need to act.
The Co-operative Group Chris Shearlock, www.co-operative.coop
Plexus Cotton Limited Peter Salcedo, +44 (0)151 650 8888
Rail Safety and Standards Board Shamit Gaiger, +44 (0)20 3142 5380
How to help someone experience the need for change
‘Show me the money’ This person who responds really well to the cost savings and value creation potential sustainability can offer. Numbers published by Walmart, General Electric and, more recently, Marks and Spencer show the very clear business case for sustainability. They form the beginning, middle and end of the story that will sway this archetype.
United Biscuits Alice_Cadman@unitedbiscuits.com United Coffee Hazel@unitedcoffeeuk.com www.unitedcoffee.com University College London s.chesters@ucl.ac.uk Veja Aurélie Dumont, aurelie@veja.fr Virgin Unite www.virginunite.com Volac Andy Richardson, +44 (0)1223 208 021 Wärtsilä www.wartsila.com Whitworths www.whitworths.co.uk Willmott Dixon Ltd Rob Lambe, +44 (0)7814 003 046 WWF-UK Dax Lovegrove, +44 (0)1483 412 395
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Photo: Nick Woodford
Since the last issue of Green Futures, ABF Plc, Blue & Green Tomorrow, Bowman Ingredients, Diageo Plc, Kimberly-Clark Europe, Plexus Cotton, SC Johnson, Technology Strategy Board, Thomson Reuters, Virgin Unite and Whitworths all joined the Network.
‘Show me the future’ This is the long-term thinker who, when shown how global macro-economic, social and environmental trends might play out, immediately sees that addressing these trends today will help future-proof the business. Working with big players from Levis to Pepsico, the team at Forum for the Future has seen first-hand the power of futures tools and techniques to help key individuals experience the need for change. ‘Show me the strategic fit’ The strategy die-hard knows all too well that an organisation struggles to deliver one strategy, and will
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never manage to deliver two. For them, sustainability has to be positioned as a strategic driver, which can be integrated into existing structures, process and job descriptions. The story focuses on implementation and may require homework, but these are all issues that need thinking through at some point. ‘Show me the edge’ This person is motivated by winning, from market share to brand equity. Even in an era of collaboration, sustainability still offers competitive edge through product and service innovation in particular. Clearly, this archetype has much in common with Show me the Money, but is more interested in awards and knocking competitors off the top-slot of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. They know the business benefits will follow. But rational arguments don’t always work. Plenty of sustainability managers have confessed to be flummoxed as to why the above stories, promising anything from cost savings to award-glory, just haven’t worked. That’s because, for many, the emotional argument is the one that will land.
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I’ve tried everything, my boss just doesn’t get it
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Interface Europe Ltd Ramon Arratia, +44 (0)20 7490 3960
New to the Forum Network
‘Show me a legacy’ Individuals often reach a point in their career when they want to leave their mark; they want to be remembered for something other than a marvellous rebrand. Spot this person, tell the story of how they could lead a transformational change journey (what sustainability done well is) which will go on making waves long after they have moved on. Show me the purpose This person understands that, in our hyper-connected and ever more transparent world, a well-articulated organisational purpose, with clear benefits for people and planet, is one way of demonstrating authenticity. Asking ‘What is our contribution to a sustainable future?’ can put purpose under the spotlight. Of course, we humans don’t neatly fit these archetypes. Our motivations are both rational and emotional. The trick is to identify which is the dominant one in your influencer, and craft your story accordingly. Be prepared to have supplementary chapters which speak to their secondary motivations. If you can land the right argument with the right archetype, then experiencing the need to change will follow. Sally Uren is CEO, Forum for the Future. @sallyuren
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High flyer
Energy debate
Aviation is fraught with challenges for sustainability. Matt Gorman tells Katie Shaw how he is tackling them.
UK coalition aims to turn public anger over energy bills into energy efficient action.
Class of: ’98-‘99 Individual leaders I most admire: Martin Luther-King and Mahatma Gandhi, for their commitment to non-violent, direct action on social issues Organisations I most admire: Marks and Spencer, for their internal and external communications around sustainability
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Price carbon to tackle the problem
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We must collaborate with local communities There are relatively few businesses in the UK that are so big (76,000 people clock onto work every day at Heathrow) and yet so deeply rooted in their local community – half of those people live in the five boroughs around the airport. We’ve focused hard in recent years on being more responsive to, and engaging better with, local communities. We’ve listened to their concerns regarding noise pollution and climate change impacts and, through initiatives like alternating early-morning flight patterns and even
Understanding technology is crucial Tracking trends in how planes are built and what they might be fuelled by in years to come is crucial to reducing the sectors’ impact. Biofuel development is rightly scrutinised – there are enormous complexities to consider. But the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group is doing good work to assess the impacts of various biofuel options, and companies like British Airways and Virgin are doing research into fuel production. Let the market decide The Sustainable Aviation ‘Carbon RoadMap’ effectively says that the industry can continue to grow until 2050 without increasing emissions. But we know that’s not enough. We need to decarbonise the economy by 2050. So what the UK aviation industry is looking at is how we can trade emissions at a global level. If you put aviation into a robust global emissions trading scheme, then what you’re doing is promising that whilst aviation may be growing, you’re paying for cuts to happen in other sectors. Reducing emissions in aviation is more expensive than in other sectors, so it is cheaper to pay for cuts elsewhere. Putting the price on the enemy – carbon – is the economically efficient way of tackling the problem. If people are still prepared to pay for the resulting rise in the cost of travel then, effectively, you’ve let the market decide.
Tomorrow’s leaders Forum for the Future’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development has shaped the career of some of the most ambitious and influential people working for a desirable future. www.forumforthefuture.org/masters
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Photo: Pixland/Thinkstock
Currently: Sustainability Director, Heathrow and Chair of ‘Sustainable Aviation’ the UK industry’s sustainability strategy
looking at changing the angle at which planes descend into an airport, are becoming more nimble at responding to their problems.
Every rise in energy prices is accompanied by a spike of public indignation. The big six energy companies are duly pounded by the press. Government ministers scramble to announce measures that will bring down bills, while their opposition counterparts demand ‘action’ on energy costs. Ed Miliband has even announced plans to freeze gas and electricty prices for two years if Labour win the 2015 general election. Meanwhile, the practical steps people can take to reduce their energy consumption are forgotten or ignored. Behaviour Change and Forum for the Future aim to tackle this situation by changing the conversation about energy. A coalition of business, Government, NGOs and communities will be formed to shift the debate on domestic energy from anger to positive action, helping consumers to control their energy bills and insulate themselves against future price rises. The project will develop clear, unified messages to encourage people to look at their energy use throughout their home, from generation to consumption. It will encourage a more conscientious approach to the energy demands of existing devices, and motivate people to invest in energy efficient retrofits of their homes, building a market estimated to be worth £10 billion/year. It will also advocate energy efficiency technologies, such as smart meters and new boilers, that could help to combat fuel poverty. It’s an ambitious plan, given how disempowered energy customers currently feel. While 36% of people are more worried about energy bills than any other household expense, 63% currently think there is not very much or nothing at all they can do to reduce them, according to research by Behaviour Change. There is also a widely held belief that energy companies need to stop making excessive profits from their customers (65%), and that the Government needs to force them to charge less (48%). “There are a lot people worried about their energy bills, which in a rational world would lead to lots of energy efficiency”, says David Hall, Executive Director of Behaviour Change. Despite the fact that there are now a range of policies and technologies available to help households improve their energy efficiency, from smart meters and solar panels to the Energy Companies Obligation (ECO) and Green Deal, only 8% of people are currently planning to make energy efficiency improvements to their home. This is in part due to the piecemeal way new home energy efficiency policies are presented to the public, and mixed messages from Government on the environment. For example, DECC is encouraging people to take advantage of the Green Deal, while the Treasury throws its weight behind fracking.
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There’s a trust issue to contend with too: messages from energy companies and politicians are often treated with scepticism. Pioneer businesses hoping to change the energy conversation believe a consistent voice on all in-home measures to reduce the waste of energy and money, from a broad range of stakeholders, could help to tackle these problems. As Giles Bristow, Head of Energy at Forum for the Future, says, the aim is to build a coalition that will not solely consist of “people with the greatest embedded investment in energy efficiency”, but will also involve community groups and organisations from a range of different sectors. This should ensure it gets a fair hearing. The initiative builds on previous campaigns to shift behaviour. Fire Kills, for example, helped to raise the number of homes with fire alarms from 9% in 1987 to 86% today. In Japan, when the shutdown of the country’s nuclear reactors cut its electricity capacity by a quarter following the Fukushima disaster, its Government launched a national campaign called the ‘Setsuden’ (Energy Saving) which helped to reduce Japan’s electricity demand by 15%. Without a similar catalyst, can an initiative that aims to change the UK energy conversation engage the public in the same way? “With the energy of our partners, the pioneer coalition, we think we can have a successful pilot and roll it out national scale”, says Bristow. The true measure of success will be whether or not the campaign captures the attention of working class families in Newcastle as much as it does the chattering classes in Notting Hill. “The whole point is it [the conversation] has to go national for it to work”, Bristow explains. “If this is a conversation that only happens in the square mile, or only happens in Westminster, then it has failed.” – Duncan Jefferies To help drive the conversation on domestic energy efficiency, email Ben Ross: b.ross@forumforthefuture.org
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In a rational world, high energy costs would lead to efficiency
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Matt Gorman
I passionately believe in international travel as a force for good in the world I had my environmental ‘coming of age’ back in the ‘80s, in the context of the Chernobyl disaster, concerns over climate change and the ozone layer, and the [UK] Green Party doing well in European elections. I went onto study languages, but I knew I’d end up working in this sector. Doing the Forum Masters, with its fast-track network into the sector, helped me realise that ambition. I’ve always been passionate about international travel, and genuinely believe it can be a force for good in the world. So now I’m working to bring my two passions together, and trying to figure out how we can tackle the huge environmental challenges facing the aviation sector. My work at Heathrow has provided me with the leadership opportunity to do that – both within the company, and also in the wider political context in the UK and global aviation industry.
The home retrofit market could be worth £10 billion/year
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Ambitions to bring down aircraft emissions face a tough climb.
UK should embrace waste-to-energy plants.
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efficiencies saved the group £16 million in 2012
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The travel industry doesn’t exactly have a clean slate in terms of sustainability. Flights are one of the most notorious contributors towards carbon dioxide emissions, at 2% and rising of the global total. Last year, the UK-based multinational leisure travel group TUI Travel challenged itself to operate Europe’s most fuel-efficient airlines, while also reducing the carbon emissions of its holiday packages on the ground by 20,000 tonnes. These ambitions, set out in its 2012 - 2014 Sustainable Holidays Plan, not only raise the bar for the industry: they also make sound business sense. Environmental efficiencies brought the group a saving of £16 million in the 2012 financial year, while responding to rising interest in responsible holidays from consumers. TUI Travel Environment Manager James Whittingham explains: “From research we conducted in 2012, we know there is definite interest in greener holidays. Twothirds of respondents said that they would change their holiday behaviour if they felt it would help the environment, and two-thirds stated that issues like climate change and carbon emissions were very important to them.” Four years ago, TUI Travel airlines set a sixyear target to reduce absolute and relative carbon emissions by 6%, which has been met two years early; it now aims to cut relative emissions by a further 3% by 2015. As part of this commitment, it has overhauled its aircraft fleet for both short and long-haul flights. The 787 Boeing Dreamliner will replace the Boeing 767: the new aircraft is lighter and estimated to be 20% more fuel efficient and up to 60% quieter. According to the latest report, the Group’s airlines are up to a third more efficient than the average scheduled carriers. TUI Travel recently announced the decision to procure a further fuel-reducing innovation, known as a Split Scimitar Winglet system, which TUI will retrofit to its fleet. It will be the first airline in Europe to use the winglets, which complement the existing blended winglets widely used by the industry. “These are wing
Green Futures October 2013
TUI Travel is a Forum for the Future partner. www.tuitravelplc.com
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When you hear the phrase ‘renewable energy’, what technologies come to mind? Wind and solar power, certainly; perhaps hydro and tidal energy, too. Often excluded from the energy conversation in the UK, however, is another source of cheap, abundant and renewable power: waste. The reason it’s not foremost in our thoughts is simple: society’s attitude towards waste has long been ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But it’s time we paid closer attention to the power potential of trash. In many northern European countries waste-toenergy plants are ubiquitous: Sweden, for example, burns 50% of its waste and landfills just 1%. But in the UK, public perception has played a major role in preventing refuse-derived fuel (RDF) and its more rigorously processed cousin, solid-recovered fuel (SRF), from taking off. “In the UK, we consider waste-to-energy plants to be bad neighbours”, says Linda Ovens, Associate Director at AMEC, an engineering consultancy and project management specialist. “We have a history, way back, of city smog - thick dark skies from soot emitting industrial chimneys.” Today, waste-to-energy plants operate under strict environmental regulations, meaning they produce cleaner emissions than many everyday activities. Yet anachronistic concerns about the health implications of harvesting waste have helped prevent the UK from capitalising on its potential benefits, says Ovens. While the UK and Ireland generate over 26 million tonnes of municipal solid waste each year after efforts to recycle have been exhausted, they currently have the capacity to burn just 28% of it – barely half what countries like Sweden and the Netherlands manage. New plants are under construction, but the UK and Ireland will remain more than five million tonnes under capacity once all planned facilities are built. This outcome wasn’t quite what the UK Government had in mind in 1996, when it implemented an escalating tax on waste to landfill. By making landfill waste disposal more expensive, it hoped to encourage councils and companies to develop alternative recycling infrastructure. But while the tax, which reached £72 per tonne in 2013, has indeed discouraged businesses from dumping their refuse, the UK shortfall in domestic waste-to-energy plants means companies are shipping their waste overseas to countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany, which have more waste-burning capacity than material to feed their power plants. From an energy security standpoint, says Ovens, this arrangement makes little sense. “Why are we shipping materials for other countries to produce energy when we could be producing energy ourselves?” she asks. The finances of waste export are equally dubious:
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at £50 per tonne, gate fees – the charges levied by facilities receiving the waste – cost the UK and Irish economies over £40 million in 2012. And by shipping waste abroad rather than burning it at home, the UK and Ireland also incurs an unnecessary £34 million per year purchasing coal. In addition to negative public perception, wasteto-energy plants have to overcome their own financial challenges. Ovens acknowledges that frequently changing government policies on waste and energy have contributed to investors viewing these plants as ‘high’ risk. But greater support, brought about by acknowledging the role waste can play as an alternative energy source in the longer term, could provide a degree of certainty. And while some environmentalists fear that wasteburning plants devour recyclable materials, Ovens points out that only materials that would otherwise end up in landfills get incinerated. “There’s a perception that once you build a wasteto-energy facility, you have to keep ‘feeding the beast’”, she says. “But in actuality, waste prevention, reuse, and recycling can still be prevalent.” Germany and the Netherlands, for example, have some of Europe’s highest recycling rates and highest waste-to-energy capacities. Ultimately, says Ovens, the UK and Ireland stand before two potential paths. One leads to the continued export of a valuable fuel source, consequent economic losses and a continued reliance on fossil fuels. The other leads to a scenario in which we accept waste as an alternative to coal, and governments provide financial support. “If we had adequate and affordable domestic facilities,” says Ovens, “we’d absolutely choose to use the ones in the UK.” – Ben Goldfarb Amec is a Forum for the Future partner. www.amec.com/ukenvironment
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Why are we shipping materials for other countries to produce energy?
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TUI Travel’s fleet will be retrofitted with wing tip extensions to induce lift and reduce drag
tip extensions which help to induce lift and reduce drag”, Whittingham explains. “They massage the aerodynamics of the aircraft to reduce fuel burn.” TUI Travel estimates that each winglet will save up to 200 tonnes of jet fuel and 630 tonnes of carbon per aircraft annually. Whittingham likens such innovations to the technical advances in cycling. “You will have heard [the British cycling coach] Sir Dave Brailsford talking about ‘marginal gains’. This is exactly what we are trying to do across our airlines: make small incremental improvements that add up and put us ahead as one of the most fuel efficient operators in Europe.” Thomson Airways, TUI Travel’s UK airline, has also conducted experiments with sustainable biofuel on its aircraft, carefully sourcing those that are either second or third generation (which are derived from waste or industry byproducts). However, biofuel is still three times the price of kerosene. So a switch from fossil fuels isn’t imminent; rather, it’s part of a medium to long-term carbon reduction strategy. Could a combination of these innovations lead to genuine low carbon holidays? Not yet, says Rupert Fausset, transport lead at Forum for the Future: “Flying is one of the toughest sustainability challenges. Although planes have got better, there is no truly ‘low carbon’ flying in prospect. This means that the biggest challenge is the future growth of the industry, which can swallow up the best efforts of airlines and aircraft manufacturers to cut emissions incrementally.” Whittingham confirms that there is a long way to go towards sustainable holidays: “The largest component of the CO2 emissions of a holiday is the flight. This means that, even if you have everything from water saving to thermal solar energy at the hotel to heat your water, there is still going to be a carbon impact.” Another difficulty the company faces – as a multinational – results from varying approaches to carbon reduction across Europe. “We have 31 different source markets”, explains Whittingham, “and each of these countries are all at different places on the sustainability journey. Some, like the Nordics and UK, wish to run ahead and continue to innovate. It has been a challenge to keep pushing the leaders while offering appropriate support to those that are at the start of their journey.” One solution could be found in the reported appetite of consumers to change their travel behaviour. TUI Travel is calling for an industry standard on reporting fuel and carbon efficiency for UK airlines to enable customers to make more sustainable airline choices. – Will Simpson
Photo: WRAP
Power to waste
Photo: TUI Travel
Winging ways
Harvest time? The UK generates 26 million tonnes of municipal waste a year
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New impact investment methodology demonstrates the social value of carbon offsetting.
Sustainability awards can drive change, but there are no quick wins.
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The best offsetting projects have always had social benefits
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Green Futures October 2013
project, on the other hand, helps combat waterborne diseases. Around 17 million people in Kenya don’t have access to safe drinking water, and many suffer from waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea – the third leading cause of death in Kenya. By distributing nearly 900,000 gravity-fed water filters, the project offers an alternative to boiling drinking water over a fire, saving money on fuel, reducing carbon emissions and protecting local forests. Through annual surveys of the families and communities benefiting from these schemes, ClimateCare and Aviva can now see not only the exact carbon savings achieved through these programmes, but also their positive social effects. One example is described by Joel Kuyo, a clinician at the Bushiri Health Center, in the west Kenyan town of Kakamega. For many years, diarrhoea has been a major problem for his patients. “Unsafe water is the main cause, the way they collect it”, he explains. But since the distribution of LifeStraw water filters in the region, he has noticed that presentations of diarrhoea at the clinic have begun to decline. Although the LBG Framework used to assess the Envirofit stoves and LifeStraw filters schemes has previously been applied to other social projects – such as Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer’s ‘Ready for Work’ programme, which helps the homeless gain employment skills – this is the first time a carbon offsetting scheme has been assessed in this way. One benefit of using this existing framework is that the results from the offsetting programmes can be compared with those of other community projects. “The very best offsetting projects have always had social benefits, but quantifying these has often been tricky”, says Iain Watt, Principle Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future. “The LBG Framework tackles this head on. And by providing big investors with the information they need to evaluate funding decisions, it will hopefully help channel new investment to projects that save lives as well as carbon.” Following the successful assessment of Aviva’s offsetting efforts, ClimateCare is now applying similar evaluations to some of its other projects. Robert Stevens, who oversees client relationships at ClimateCare, says the organisation’s other clients are also showing interest in the LBG methodology. It seems identifying the social benefits of carbon offsetting, as well as the environmental ones, is clearly something many companies aspire to achieve. – Ian Randall ClimateCare is a Forum for the Future partner www.climatecare.org
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Each year, more award schemes add the word ‘sustainable’ to their criteria. In doing so, they could drive leadership and promote best practice. At worst, though, they could endorse companies that do little more than keep up with regulation, failing to sift those showing the way from those with time to shout about it… Prizes and profile-raising aside, award schemes can shape the way businesses think afresh about what they do and why. The application process itself can be a tool to prompt candidates to take a step back, reconsider their targets, benchmark their progress, and explore best practice in their field. It can also prompt innovation in communicating sustainability: in some cases, this isn’t a form-filling exercise, but a creative, multimedia one. The merit of the award itself depends on the rigour of the application process, as much as on the judges’ discernment. Take the Queen’s Awards for Sustainable Development, says Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director of Forum for the Future, singling out a UK scheme which aims to recognise companies that have integrated environmental, social, economic and management aspects of sustainable development into their business. “I take these Awards very seriously. It’s a really intense process that everybody has to go through, and nobody gets it unless they really are deserving in all sorts of different ways.” Longevity sets the Sustainable Development category of the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise apart from many others in the space. Not only has it been running for 20 years, but it seeks to recognise efforts sustained over a number of years. This means that the rapid, dramatic cuts in carbon footprints that can result from low-hanging fruit aren’t good enough per se. Businesses can apply for an award either based on “an outstanding advance in sustainable development, sustained over not less than two years”, or “continuous achievement in sustainable development, sustained over not less than five years”. A company could not evidence such a claim lightly. The scheme has public prestige, partly through association with the Queen herself as its ultimate judge, with a reception at Buckingham Palace for winners, and also thanks to a rigorous assessment process. A shortlist made by a panel of experts is presented to the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee, which makes further recommendations to the Queen. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs advises the Prime Minister for the Sustainable Development award, bringing its own agenda: to reward enterprises which grow
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the rural economy; proactively safeguard animal and plant health; and reduce waste and inefficiency. The Queen’s Awards also performs checks to ensure proper reporting, hires expertise to verify commercial data, and screens the shortlist for due diligence. Of course, the reputational risks and benefits of an award scheme cut both ways. Checks safeguard the prestige of the award, and its own brand also stands to gain through association with well-reputed winners. Among them, in 2013, is Pureprint, which was the first CarbonNeutral printer in the world and was the first ISO 14001 and EMAS accredited printer in the UK. Pureprint also won a Queen’s Award in 2008, and a second award shows that it didn’t then rest on its laurels. The Queen’s Award may be able to claim some credit for its subsequent achievements: a survey of applicants revealed that 61% felt that applying for a Queen’s Award was a useful process to benchmark the progress of their business. One missed opportunity is that the scheme has yet to mainstream sustainability throughout all three categories. The other two – International Trade, which rewards “substantial growth in overseas earnings and in commercial success”, and Innovation, which recognises “substantial improvement in business performance and commercial success through innovative products and services” – fail to make the point that longterm growth and success depend on a sustainable approach. Does the Queen’s Awards assess its own practices and purpose with the same rigour it requires of winners? – John Eischeid Pureprint Group is a Forum for the Future partner. www.pureprint.com
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awards can shape the way businesses think about what they do
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Healthy cooking: stoves that cut toxic emissions are funded through offsets
Aviva and ClimateCare are applying a new methodology to their projects in India and Kenya, which measures the benefits of carbon offsetting for society as well as the environment. The LBG Framework, a peerreviewed international standard for measuring corporate community investment which started life as the London Benchmarking Group, has allowed the organisations to identify that Aviva’s involvement in the projects has improved the lives of over 200,000 people, as well as offsetting 126,555 tonnes of carbon emissions. “All our projects measurably improve people’s lives”, says Edward Hanrahan, Director of ClimateCare, which has offset 15 million tonnes of C02 since it was founded in 1997. “Many are centred around people and vulnerable communities – providing safe water, improving health, creating jobs and stimulating local economies. Our clients see the value of taking an integrated approach to sustainability and we are always keen to help them talk about the full impacts of their actions in a robust and recognisable way.” In 2006, Aviva became the first insurer to go carbon neutral. It has maintained this approach through participation in ClimateCare’s carbon offsetting schemes, as well as the use of renewable energy sources and energy-efficient technologies to minimise its impacts in the first place. Dedication to managing and publicly reporting its environmental impact “adds value to Aviva”, says Zelda Bentham, Head of Environment and Climate Change at the company. She explains that customers and investors often ask how Aviva handle its environmental footprint, and believes that carbon offsetting is simply “something that responsible companies should do”. Aviva has invested in two ClimateCare ‘Climate and Development’ schemes: Envirofit Efficient Stoves, in India, and the Kenya-based LifeStraw Carbon for Water project. The former project reduces dangerous smoke put out by inefficient cooking stoves, which kills over 400,000 people a year in India alone; safer stoves which cut toxic emissions by up to 80% and produce 60% less CO2 are now being installed in households. The LifeStraw
Photos: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Prize potential
Photo: Climate Care
Living proof
Which way for a Queen’s Award?
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Bee protection drives customer engagement in-store and online.
Contractor aims to help urban sectors come together.
plans include pulling three pesticides off the shelves
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Woe bee gone: B&Q’s initiatives have struck a chord with consumers
environmental expertise and credibility, scores of local FoE volunteer groups have jumped at the chance to set out their stall in B&Q garden centres. Customers who are impressed by FoE’s message can commit to help create suitable bee habitats in their gardens and stock them with pollinatorattracting plants. “It’s the best possible moment to motivate people we might not otherwise reach”, says James Cole, who leads FoE’s business engagement work. It’s the first time that FoE has worked with a corporate to such an extent – not offering a blanket endorsement, but embracing what Cole describes as a clear opportunity “to leverage each other’s strengths and move forward on these issues, where there is common ground”. The relationship with FoE has increased B&Q’s social media involvement: it has engaged customers at every level of awareness of the bee campaign, and its Facebook pages have received around 80,000 hits. Responses to bee-related postings also create spikes in traffic to FoE’s linked website pages. Along with the campaign’s in-store interventions and B&Q’s wider bee-related marketing efforts, the ‘buzz’ has helped to raise donations for FoE, has increased demand for BeeSaver kits, and added many signatures to its petition for a national bee action plan. In June, a ‘bee summit’ organised by FoE also won a promise from environment minister Lord de Mauley to produce a pollinator action strategy, which will address such fundamental issues as habitat and pollinator plant loss and pollution. FoE has called for this to be in place by next spring. Pro-bee initiatives in-store and online have struck a chord with B&Q customers and staff, observes Rachel Bradley, Senior Sustainable Business Manager for B&Q. “It’s a catalyst on biodiversity action,” she says, “allowing people to engage with sustainability in a more local and direct way. There’s a commercial upside for us in related product sales, but the thing that has lit everyone up is how much people can get involved, and the emotional impact.” Sarah Greenaway, Senior Brand Manager in charge of B&Q’s One Planet Home initiative, recognises that the campaign will be a “long-term build” when it comes to financial returns, but, she says, the wider business case is clear: “Action on bees has been a springboard to earn ourselves a stronger place on the biodiversity issue.” She is pleased to be in “the unique position” of being able to make more of a difference than any other retailer on bees. – Roger East Kingfisher is a Forum for the Future partner. www.kingfisher.co.uk
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“We have every ingredient to create smart cities, we just need a smarter plan”, says Jennifer Clark, Director of Environment at Skanska. She is discussing the construction company’s growing interest in cities as systems, exploring the interconnections between their component parts. For Skanska, this means projects that reach beyond property, considering the wider context for each development. “Many developers concentrate on building one property and meeting the minimum environmental requirements, but we need to consider community, infrastructure, power sources, surrounding buildings and bio-diversity”, says Clark. The smart cities movement has gathered momentum over the past three years as governments set carbon reduction targets, such as the EU’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, and the UK’s long-term goal of an 80% reduction by 2050. Proponents include IBM, through its Smarter Planet initiative, as well as Siemens, GE and other technology companies – which are excited about bringing big data analysis and systems thinking to the built environment. Skanska sees its role as connecting its diverse list of clients from the highway, rail, water, power, commercial building and domestic housing sectors, so they can collaborate. “Until now, these sectors haven’t needed to talk to each other”, says Clark. “Since we are a link between them, we can help build relationships.” As a starting point, Skanska is running events to bring together industry leaders, clients and government. This includes its sustainability masterclass series, which invites senior executives to envision future urban scenarios, and days that highlight the latest green thinking across industries. Skanska founded the Supply Chain Sustainability School, in collaboration with its peers, with the aim of improving the sustainability competency of the industry’s supply chain. This unites 2,700 unique members from companies that supply Skanska and its competitors, and teaches aspects of sustainable design and building. Clark recognises that this is the first step on a long road. “We need to get [people to connect] much earlier in the planning process, to take a bird’s eye view of how buildings interact with transport, power and communities.” Of course, there’s only so much Skanska can do: shifts in planning policy and strategy will be needed to make a difference at scale. Last year, President and CEO Mike Putnam became co-chair of the Green Construction Board, which was formed in 2011 as an interface between Government and industry. The Board’s co-chair is Michael Fallon, Minister of State for Business and Enterprise, while other members
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include Anglian Water, Arup, Barratt and Jones Lang LaSalle. “Being at that table with a holistic view of the industry is really important in gelling the different silos together”, says Clark. Martin Hunt, built environment lead at Forum for the Future, is enthusiastic about Skanska’s opportunity, but is waiting to see how much leverage it will gain with Government to influence planning policy. He recommends Skanska “makes the business case [for a systems approach to urban development] very clear”. For Clark, it is both compelling and straight forward: “If you try to add smartness after the design or development stage, it will cost more.” Whereas, she adds, if you begin with a joined-up approach, there will be long-term economic gains: “In the case of commercial buildings, smart and sustainable increases work productivity.” Skanska believes that the business world is moving into a new era of collaboration that we have not seen before. Fluctuating resource prices and availability will force a new way of design and construction in order to make one cubic metre of concrete go further than it has done before. Clark hopes that by engaging the next generation, we will not only attract the best talent, but find out what kind of cities they want to live and work in, in the future. “A smart city needs a smart plan and a lot of smart collaboration”, she says. – Emily Pacey
A bird’s eye view of planning processes is needed
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a smart city needs a smart plan and smart collaboration
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Forty-seven UK bee species are seen as endangered or threatened, and numbers of honey bee hives, solitary bees and bumblebees are all in sharp decline. Britain’s biggest garden retailer is taking action, spotting an opportunity for leadership, and recognising the dependence of its business on biodiversity. Its plans to help these beleaguered insects include pulling three pesticides off its shelves. B&Q adopted its stance based on evidence that neonicotinoids – a class of neuro-active insecticides related to nicotine – are damaging to bees. The move comes ahead of an EU regulation suspending their use for most purposes from December 2013 – although the manufacturers of the pesticides contest that they are causing a decline in bees and sudden colony collapse (where foraging bees apparently become disoriented or simply fail to return to the hive). The UK Government opposed the ban, but B&Q’s decision brought forward the impetus for its plant growers to stop using them on any plants they grow. Kingfisher, B&Q’s parent company, is also working to get its retail chains in other territories to adopt a similar stance. Beyond the removal of certain pesticides from its shelves, B&Q has also expanded its range of ‘bee-friendly’ products and ‘perfect for pollinator’ plants, and plans to release more of these next year. Educational packs have helped it to build a connection with schools around the country. And a programme of special classes has been launched, some 50 of which have been held so far. B&Q’s customer engagement on bees is supported by a pioneering relationship with Friends of the Earth (FoE). While the retailer gains
Photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
City vista
Photo: iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Biz and bees
Skanska is a Forum for the Future partner. www.skanska.com
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Material world Designers get closer to manufacturers, saving money and resources.
The minute someone visits a factory, a light-bulb goes on in their head
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Green Futures October 2013
Arjowiggins Graphic is a Forum for the Future partner. www.recycled-papers.co.uk
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June 2013, seven designers visited paper manufacturer Arjowiggins Graphic’s pulp mill, Greenfield, in France. Here, paper mostly sourced from sorted office waste is pulped, de-inked and whitened to return it to a serviceable material for paper-making. The resulting residue of de-inked sludge is used as fertiliser by local farmers and in the production of cement and bricks for the construction industry – a fine example of closedloop design in action. For Julian Long, National Key Account Manager for Arjowiggins Graphic, the benefits of direct contact with the designers are two fold. It allows the company to keep ahead of paper trends and adapt to designers’ needs. “A manufacturer’s environmental credentials are of increasing importance to designers”, says Long. “Following tours, designers often seek our advice on various areas of sustainability surrounding print.” This interaction enables the company to demonstrate the importance of, and its commitment to, sustainable manufacturing. For one, its pioneering methods for turning sorted office waste into high white pulp allows for the manufacture of very clean high white recycled paper, and by using recycled fibres the amount of water used is significantly reduced. The mill visit offered designers an insight into the resource issues surrounding paper production, as their blogs for The Great Recovery website testify. Sion Whellens, Client Services Director of Calverts, a design and printing company, says: “The powerful mental images have stayed with me and inspired me to come up with more interesting ideas.” Tara Hanrahan, Communication Designer at think/ do and a lecturer at University of the Arts London, found “the information on the transition from one paper-weight or stock to another really interesting”. The machines never stop, she explains, generating a “strange hybrid paper” as they rework the raw pulp. “I instantly wanted to do a project with that transitional substrate”, she recalls. For now, closed-loop design is a choice, not a mandate, but this could change. “We’re in a transition phase”, says Hunter. “All designers will have to adapt to thinking in product life-cycles – especially because of tightening EU regulations.” Connecting designers to the manufacturing process is a first step towards a closed-loop manufacturing. The next will be to help agencies and clients recognise the benefits. The financial case should make a difference: “People complain that sustainable design is not cheap enough”, Hunter says. “But as you reduce inefficiencies, you also reduce cost.” – Lizzie Rivera
Photo: iStockphoto/pureprint
Paper cut: designers took inspiration from recycling in action
You won’t find the words ‘ethical’ or ‘sustainable’ on the website for The Great Recovery. The project aims to create the kind of networks and partnerships that will drive a resourceefficient economy, by advocating closed-loop design. Its creators – the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) – believe the financial returns are incentive enough. Moving away from the current ‘take-makedispose’ manufacturing model to a more circular system could save UK business around £23 billion a year by 2020, estimates the Waste and Resources Action Programme. While the Ellen MacArthur Foundation/McKinsey report ‘Towards a Circular Economy’ predicts that the EU manufacturing sector could make up to £405 billion a year in resource savings. That should reduce the number of profit warnings issued by FTSE 350 companies – in 2011, nearly a third of them were attributed to rising resource prices. Designers are a good starting point for change. Often, they’re barely connected to the manufacturing process behind the materials in their products, designing these on 2D screens. Most print designers are unaware, for example, that a single A4 piece of white paper can require 10 litres of water to produce. It’s hardly surprising that around 80% of a product’s environmental impact is locked in at the concept stage, according to the Design Council. “The root is getting designers to think in cycles”, says Nat Hunter, Co-director of Design at the RSA. They need to design with longevity and the potential for leasing or service, re-use and material recovery in mind. “But they can’t do that until they get out of the studio. The minute someone visits a factory, it’s like a light-bulb goes on in their head. It’s an instant 180-degree turn-around in thinking.” As such, The Great Recovery places a big emphasis on trips to factories and end-of-life sites. In
JONATHON PORRITT, FORUM FOR THE FUTURE
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Feedback
Throughout history our money systems have worked on the assumption that Earth’s resources and services are so abundant they can be treated as infinite and excluded from the price function [see Jonathon Porritt’s column in GF89, p48, which argues that the carbon bubble will burst]. The basis of this thinking comes from the 18th century Enlightenment, when the human population was much lower: the assumptions on how we could use natural resources were workable then. A world population of 500 million using a resource at a rate that would appear to make it last 500 years can be forgiven for ignoring the impact on people 10 generations ahead of them. Unfortunately the same resource would be consumed by a population of seven billion in just over 35 years. The market system has delivered unprecedented human development, but built up an enormous ecological debt that should dwarf any discussion on sovereign debt. We simply must reform how money functions to make human economy and Earth’s ecology symbiotic. There can be no prosperity in a climate-wrecked world. – Harold Forbes
Did the 415 named individuals choose to be on the programme, or provide their consent? The reason I ask is because ultimately the target outcomes can only be achieved if the individual chooses to make
JonathonPorritt
The carbon bubble will burst. Bubbles always do
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Whenever I see ‘sustainability’ included in a long list of issues to be addressed by a company or a local authority, I find it difficult to avoid exploding with rage. Whatever else it is (and readers of Green Futures will have their own views about that), it is not ‘an issue’. You can see this attitude reflected in the different shades of corporate sustainability we see today. For the vast majority of companies, sustainability is simply added on: only a minority are seriously intent on mainstreaming sustainability into everything they do. Sustainability as “the central organising principle of everything we do” (the rallying cry of the Sustainable Development Commission before this frighteningly retrogressive Coalition Government axed it in 2011) is as elusive a big idea as ever. There has always been some tension about the hierarchy of big ideas in this space, going right back to the Brundtland Report (‘Our Common Future’) in 1987. Its authors argued passionately for strict equivalence between biophysical sustainability on the one hand (maintaining the life support systems on which all life depends) and social justice on the other. That was fine, but it all got much more divisive when they went on to extol the virtues of high levels of economic growth as the only way of securing social justice. Then, the preconditionality debate broke loose: some argued that there is no hope of achieving social justice without first securing the environment, while others maintained that there’s no way of protecting natural resources without first eliminating social injustice. And protagonists on both sides felt – and still feel – very strongly about this! Now, this debate has taken on a tragic new urgency, thanks to the growing threat of the carbon bubble at the heart of the global economy. Back in April, an organisation called Carbon Tracker, supported by the Grantham Research Institute in London, updated its analysis of how global investors are responding to accelerating climate change. It’s not a pretty picture. Every year, financial regulators allow the big oil, gas and coal companies to declare some of their existing reserves as new assets on their balance sheets. The share price of the companies is heavily influenced by the hypothetical value of those assets, with investors working on the expectation that they will be fully developed and have a long, and presumably profitable, production lifetime.
Unfortunately, as Carbon Tracker’s ‘Unburnable Carbon’ report demonstrates, were those expectations to be met, with the assets realised and the dividends duly paid out, the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from that production would push us way beyond the politicians’ comforting 2°C threshold – the upper limit for an average temperature increase before the end of the century if we are to have any chance of preventing runaway climate change. Yet every year we pump up that carbon bubble, to the tune of a staggering $624 billion of new investments in 2012. Bubbles always burst. Confronted with the increasingly traumatic consequences of a rapidly warming world (already a reality for many), politicians will be forced into panic policy responses. They will seek to do in a very short time what we should have been doing over the last 25 years, including putting a higher price on every tonne of CO2. When they do, all those oil, gas and coal assets will first become unviable and then completely stranded, destroying trillions of dollars of economic value in the process. It’s already too late to avoid that particular Hobson’s choice: either we burn the planet by crashing through the 2°C barrier and on to 4°C or even higher, or the bubble bursts, with very severe economic consequences. But we don’t have to go on making it worse – and we don’t have to further penalise the world’s poor in managing the outfall. The principal alternatives to fossil fuels (renewables and energy efficiency) are even more important in developing and emerging countries as they are in the rich world. If ever there was a preconditional imperative, this is surely it. Accelerating climate change, caused by the continuing emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, represents an existential threat to our species – by which I mean it threatens the stability and economic wellbeing of every society on Earth. This is the ‘inconvenient truth’ at the heart of the global economy today. It is recognised (although often set aside) by a minority of politicians. It remains totally unseen as far as the vast majority are concerned. But if we don’t move very rapidly indeed through programmes of radical decarbonisation in every sector of the economy, increased social justice will become a very distant dream. Indeed, the lives of billions of people will become too horrendous to contemplate. So can it still be done? I believe it can – which is the main thrust of my new book, ‘The World We Made’, to be published in October (see p35). But debates about whether social justice or biophysical sustainability ‘comes first’ are little more than a self-indulgent irrelevance. Some ‘issue’! Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. www.jonathonporritt.com
use of the services offered. Is there a risk in linking so explicitly the will of individuals to financial profits (which they will not part take in)? – Karin Malmberg Russ Bubley, a Social Investment Strategist at i for change, responds: No, the 415 named individuals did not choose to be on the programme. The complete cohort of 830 was chosen because they fitted an objective criteria, and were then split in half by geography across London. There is indeed the risk that some of them choose not to make use of the services offered, and that risk is borne in the first instance by the investors.
Ethical textiles
Different supply chains are so different that their ethics are usually hard to compare. Cotton is an exception, however, and one of the few things that unites most of the clothing industry [see our Special Edition, ‘The Cotton Conundrum’]. I hope that smaller UK suppliers can catch-up here as well, weaving something that isn’t grown in Uzbekistan [where forced and child labour are used during the cotton harvest]. – John Robertson
Insect farming
An interesting read but also quite a scary concept [see ‘Edible insects to transform Western diets’ in GF89, pp12]. Besides from the nutritional benefits outlined in the article (ie protein-rich), I wonder if detailed environmental studies have been undertaken concerning the mass farming/consumption of insects. Is insect consumption really any better for the planet? – Tom Payne
My latest water bill (received twice a year) has reminded me to get in touch regarding your ‘Water Works’ Special Edition published in October 2012. The document is very good, and I completely agree that water can no longer be taken for granted. Realistic pricing is needed and industry should be persuading us to value this precious resource. What I would like to see for all homes with water meters is a complete change in pricing policy, so that standing charges are replaced with charging based entirely on usage. In 2012-13 I paid just over £71 for units used, yet had to pay £51 for water and wastewater standing charges, and another £71 for surface water drainage charges! After deducting my £5 Direct Debit discount, this totals £117 in fixed charges, andTheworks World Weout Made at more than 62% McKay’s Story from 2050 of my totalAlexspend on water. For 2013-14, my standing charges have been increased by another £6. A new book on our sustainable future from Jonathon Porritt. Available October 2013
Charlie Hilton, co-founder of Urban Times (which syndicated the article), responds: There are 1700 species of insects or more that humans can eat – quite a vibrant array of biology going on there. It also means that if we ramped up our consumption of insects, we would know pretty early on whether it was causing ripples in the food chains or if species were dying off quickly. The thing is, insects can be farmed with hyper-intensity: “The spatial usage and water requirements are only a fraction of that required to produce the same mass of food with cattle farming. Production of 150g of grasshopper meat requires only very little water, while cattle requires 3290 litres to produce the same amount of beef.” [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Entomophagy#Environmental_benefits]
GMO: climate hero? Modified microorganism captures and converts carbon In the search for solutions to cut atmospheric carbon dioxide, scientists at the University of Georgia’s Bioenergy Systems Research Institute think they could have a winner. A genetically modified microorganism in their lab not only captures CO2, but processes it directly to make a valuable chemical. A further tweak may even get it to make fuel. Pyrococcus furiosus normally likes it hot. This microbe lives in volcanic mud or around deep-sea geothermal vents, and feeds like fury at 95ºC, fermenting carbohydrates
and growing fast. But Michael Adams and his team in Georgia changed all that. Their genetic manipulations engineered a strain that will feed at somewhat lower temperatures: around 73ºC. When exposed to hydrogen, this modified organism gives up its rapid growth habit. Instead, it devotes itself to taking up atmospheric CO2 which it wouldn’t normally do, and reacting it with the hydrogen. The result is an acid, 3-HPA, with many industrial uses, notably as a feedstock for
Microbe moves from volcanic mud to a home fit for a hero
Anyone for crickets?
making acrylics. As Meredith Lloyd-Evans of Cambridge-based consultants Biobridge points out, “the starting materials for conventional production of 3-HPA can be toxic, so a biological route is very positive”. With more genetic manipulations, Adams and his colleagues believe they can get versions of P. furiosus to perform other chemical reactions, including the direct production of useable fuel. They’d be doing a similar job to the biocatalysts pioneered by California-based Carbon Sciences Inc. (see ‘Air supply’, GF76, p32) but with air-captured CO2 rather than power station emissions (see also ‘Better than trees?’, GF83, p9). Adams believes his route could prove both efficient and cost-effective. When plants or algae fix CO2 by photosynthesis, he points out, they store the energy as sugars, and further processing is needed to unlock this energy as ethanol fuel. He hopes to show a viable way to “remove plants as the middleman”. And what of the wider consequences of unleashing such organisms from the confines of the lab? Lloyd-Evans is fairly sanguine. The (still relatively) high temperature needed for optimum growth makes it unlikely that either the modified strain would develop outside lab conditions, he says. – Roger East
Radical ready meal
Insects to infiltrate Western menus Insect-eating, though familiar enough to two billion people, is largely confined to Asia, Africa and Latin America. Most Westerners see it as survivalist bravado in the ‘bush tucker trials’ of reality TV, where C-list celebrities gag on witchetty grubs. But are they losing sight of a valuable protein source? The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report, ‘Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security’, seeks to put that right. Besides adding them to the pot, it points to “potential new uses of insects for direct human consumption [and] farming them for food and feed”. Why not, for instance, use insect protein in fortified blended foods (FBFs) to target malnutrition, instead of imported soya, wheat and corn? The arguments are backed by an impressive weight of information on nutritional value. Locusts and termites can be as much as 28% protein by weight,
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as good as any meat or fish; crickets are almost as protein-rich; while the Mexican chapuline grasshopper can be as much as 48% protein. And because they are coldblooded, insects are very efficient feed converters: crickets, for example, need 12 times less feed than cattle, and four times less than sheep, to produce the same amount of protein. Should we be eating bugs instead of beef (see GF87, p20)? Yes, says Mark Driscoll, who heads up Forum for the Future’s work on food. “Insects could play an important role in providing alternative protein sources, if we can overcome current prejudices. Western diets do have to change if we are to feed an increasing global population within an increasingly resource-constrained world.” A shift from gathering to farming could spawn sizeable enterprises, like the South African fly factory which grows insects on animal waste and turns them into feed. It
has just won a $100,000 prize from the UN-backed African Innovation Foundation. For something more seductive, try Ento Box. Inspired by the marketing of sushi, graduates from London’s Royal College of Art and Imperial College are combining elegant presentation and cookery skills to give insects an image makeover. They are catering initially for supper clubs and festivals, and aim to open a restaurant in due course. Their ready meals are still in prototype, but they’re hopeful we could see them in supermarkets by 2020. – Roger East
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Standing order
Urban farming in Detroit, USA, 2050
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I therefore cannot take seriously any message from my water supplier to reduce consumption, and statements in their information leaflet like “It’s easy to shrink your bill” are laughable. My message to them is drop the standing charges. Only then will I have every incentive to minimise water use. – Toby Harling
Photos: iStockphoto/Thinkstock; Ento
prison find purposeful work opportunities. The Bristol Together project has demonstrated what can be achieved when people like Paul Harrod (founder of homeless charity Aspire) raise private money to create transformative projects that impact people’s lives. A vision of creating 200 jobs for ex-offenders over the next five years has to be applauded, and just look at the testimonials on the Bristol Together website. The Midlands Together Social Impact Bond seeks to raise private finance by using Government tax breaks to offer attractive returns to investors. This money has helped to create employment projects that tackle the 58% of adults serving short-term prison sentences who go on to reoffend once released. There is an increasing appetite for investment opportunities of this kind, which allow investors to back credible projects led by people who have a track record in working in challenging environments, and who also understand what can be achieved if people are given a second chance to make something of their lives. – James Caldwell
Second chance
Following on from the St Mungo’s initiative in London [see ‘Upside fund’, GF89, p43], similar projects have been launched in Bristol, and more recently the Midlands, to help young offenders leaving
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JonathonPorritt
Lula’s legacy is exposed to more scrutiny than ever before
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Green Futures October 2013
flex their muscles as both aspiring consumers and demanding citizens. For them, corruption is still a huge issue. The misuse of public money in building the stadium for the World Cup, presided over with maximum complacency by FIFA, was probably the crucial factor to transform a small-scale protest [provoked by a rise in transport fares] of fewer than 10,000 people, into the awe-inspiring reality of more than a million people out on the streets across the country – in just a few days. The ‘sleeping giant’ was awake. Lula’s legacy is now exposed to more scrutiny than ever before. The failure of his Government to invest in either education or health is widely recognised. Demands for a ‘FIFA education’ or ‘FIFA health service’ became popular refrains during the protests. Another concern is his Government’s failure to invest in infrastructure. Roads are in a terrible state beyond the Sao Pãulo/Rio de Janeiro corridor. The railways and ports are also suffering from underinvestment; China is the principal source of new funds, primarily so that it can ship out Brazil’s natural wealth (iron ore, soya beans and more) with greater ease. Productivity is also falling, inflation is rising and economic growth has declined from a regular 7-8% to little more than 1.5-2%. The best news is that unemployment rates continue to fall – a success story that many European countries would love to replicate. The clear beneficiary of the protests is Marina Silva, who stood for the Green Party in the last presidential election and has now created her own party for the next election. But opinions are divided on the relevance of a conventional Green agenda. Polls indicate very high levels of concern about the environment – higher in some surveys than in most European countries. But there’s a sense that Brazil’s new middle class is more concerned with better public services and accountable democratic systems than it is with the state of the Amazon, or with air and water pollution. So all bets really are off. With so many unforeseen events in just nine months, the idea of ‘predicting’ the state of Brazil in years to come is laughable. Still, for what it’s worth, I’ve got it down as an out and out success story in 2050… rainforests protected; 100% renewable energy; massive offshore reserves of oil and gas still in the ground; low average fertility holding down population growth; and an economy that is sparer, more inclusive and less environmentally destructive than any other in the Americas. Just don’t ask me to tell you where Brazil will be this time next year! Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. www.jonathonporritt.com
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A ‘slow travel’ air cruiser over Incheon Bridge, South Korea, 2041 image courtesy of SeymourPowell
The World We Made Alex McKay’s Story from 2050 Photo: Nick Woodford / Forum for the Future
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I’ve just had a crack at coming up with a vision of what the world might look like in 2050 (see ‘Conversation with the future’, p21), and am left feeling rather exposed. What kind of idiot must one be to suppose that it’s possible to predict what’s going to be happening in two or three years, let alone 35? In August I was in Brazil, exploring how Unilever’s much-vaunted Sustainable Living Plan is working out in Latin America’s economic powerhouse. Not a single person I met there had predicted the dramatic manifestation of social unrest that erupted onto the streets of Brazil’s major cities back in June. And not one felt confident enough to say how things would look in 18 months’ time, when the next election is due to be held. So I didn’t spend a lot of time talking about 2050! Before the unrest, there had been an indeterminate kind of consensus that went as follows: ‘Former President Lula may not have got it all right, but his social programmes defied the trend towards worsening inequality in every other emerging economy, and as a result secured some kind of social stability. The hundreds of millions of dollars that have been injected into the economy (distributed directly to families) have massively increased average purchasing power, and huge numbers of businesses – big and small – have benefited from this. Lula’s ‘anointed’ successor, Dilma Rousseff, has not a shred of his charisma, but can be counted on to secure the legacy. And lastly, winning the bid to host the World Cup for 2014 and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro confirmed Brazil as a world power – and what a party there will be!’ Like so much chaff in the wind, that consensus has now gone. All bets about what happens in Brazil are off; there’s an almost intoxicating sense of uncertainty and danger. This matters on a global scale. While Brazil isn’t quite in the same league as China and India, which are both deal-breakers for a sustainable world in the future, it is a massively influential country. It has around 190 million people, and the potential to become a real leader on sustainability. Social justice will make a difference. Although there are still more than 50 million people living in extreme poverty, at least that many have moved out of it over the last 10 years, and are beginning to
by Jonathon Porritt For the first time, a book that presents a credible version of a world that is fair, aspirational and genuinely sustainable A new book coming from Phaidon, October 2013 £24.95 / $39.95 / €35.00 / $39.95 CAN / $45.00 AUS We are offering Green Futures readers 30% off Purchase from www.phaidon.com/theworldwemade and enter code TW30WM at the checkout. Valid until 31 December 2013 www.greenfutures.org.uk
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Calling sustainable energy trailblazers Call for entries
Ashden Awards 2014
Are you part of a scheme – or know of one – that’s breaking new ground in renewable energy generation, energy efficiency and access to energy, or encouraging more sustainable forms of travel? If so, we’d love to hear from you. Why enter? — A global platform to showcase your work — Prize money of up to £40,000 — Broadcast-quality films and media materials — Tailored support to help you grow
“The Ashden Awards recognise some of the most important achievements in the field of sustainability. Everyone who works in this area will know the name and the high reputation of the Awards, and winners are rewarded for their originality and impact. Winners benefit from having this instantly recognisable ‘calling card’ when talking to the wider world.” Fiona Harvey Environment Correspondent, the Guardian
Four Award categories UK International Sustainable Travel Schools
Apply now at ashden.org Closing date: 5 November 2013