UN Panel On Global Sustainability Created

Press Release:

Examiner Article:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on August 9, 2010 appointed a panel on global sustainability that is tasked with finding ways to lift people out of poverty while tackling climate change and ensuring that economic development is environmentally friendly.

The 21-member High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, to be co-chaired by Finland’s President Tarja Halonen and South African President Jacob Zuma, brings together representatives from government, the private sector and civil society in countries rich and poor.

The panel is charged with promoting low-carbon growth and enhancing resilience to climate change’s impacts, as well as to tackling the challenges posed by poverty, hunger, water and energy security.

The new body is expected to deliver its final report by the end of next year, ahead of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development scheduled for 2012 in Cancun, Mexico, as well as annual conferences of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Climate change, global warming, desertification and environmental degradation, and the attendant natural disasters such as flooding, and drought are the major challenges facing the world today. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is enlisting the cooperation of transnational corporations (TNCs) in efforts to achieve sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In its 2010 world investment report – ‘investing in a low-carbon economy’ – UNCTAD noted that while TNCs are major carbon emitters, they are also a source of ‘green’ investments and can play a crucial role in propelling the world towards a low-carbon future.

California Sustainability Alliance

About The California Sustainability Alliance
The California Sustainability Alliance was designed to help meet the State of California's aggressive energy, climate and resource and environmental goals by increasing and accelerating energy efficiency in combination with complementary green measures and strategies. Founded in 2006, The California  Sustainability Alliance is a program managed by Navigant Consulting, administered by Southern California Gas Co. (The Gas Company), and funded by California utility customers under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission. For more information about The California Sustainability Alliance, visit www.sustainca.org

Certificate Program in Sustainable Community Planning & Development

 University of California, Irvine Extension today announced the launch of its new “Certificate Program in Sustainable Community Planning & Development,” developed to meet the needs for interdisciplinary planning and development continuing education training that focuses on incorporating sustainability into community environments. The first of its kind, this program is designed to provide leaders and emerging leaders with the skills necessary to guide smart growth, identify sustainability best practices, implement public policy applications, and enhance collaborations for commercial, mixed-use, residential, civic centers, and parks from small to large metropolitan sites. Interested parties may register in August and begin taking courses for this program starting this Fall. To learn more about the Certificate Program in Sustainable Community Planning & Development, please visit www.extension.uci.edu. To register for the Fall courses, call 949-824-5414 or e-mail sustainability@uci.edu.

BioPlastics!

An emerging part of the next-generation biologically-inspired economy of natural capitalism, and economy with ecological integrity, as Buckminster Fuller used to say.

Ecospan is a leading bioplastics company providing Fortune 500 companies with bioplastic solutions for products and packaging.

EcoImagination Challenge

$200M for Smart Grid Innovation

• http://ecomagination.com/challenge
• Sci & Business Blog Article

Agenda 21 Dissent?

Apparently, sustainable development is a U.N. plot for commutarinaism and a major threat to Napa County, Seattle, etc.

Population Studies Heat Up

It's not population, per se, that's the problem, at least within some upper limit, it's the destruction of the primary economy, nature, with it's nonsubstitutable environmental stocks, sinks, resources, and service inputs to the human economy that is at the heart of every moment of human economic activity, and that systematically increases with output as well as population, that is the problem. Fix that, which has been a problem for the past 50+ years, and you might fix the population problem, within some extreme limits of course. In any case, we'll see whether these studies can pop out of the polarized, single issue "it is" or "it is not" the problem" framing of such population studies to date.

BBC-Royal Society Study

The Independent - UK

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.

•  
  • Wikipedia
  • BBC -Social Bookmarking Links

ActionAid - Eliminate Poverty

ActionAid: Our Vision is a World Without Poverty

Our mission is to work with poor and excluded people to eradicate poverty and injustice.

Our Values

• mutual respect
• equity and justice
• honesty and transparency
• solidarity
• independence
• courage of conviction
• humility
• effectiveness

ActionAid: Who We Are

We’re ActionAid. We’re people who are dedicated to ending the extreme poverty that kills 28 children every minute of every day. We’re a non-profit and much more. We’re a partnership between people in poor countries and people in rich countries – all working together to end poverty for good.

International Society of Sustainability Professionals

"ISSP is a professional society that connects sustainability professionals from around the world to help us share resources and learn from one another. Go to www.sustainabilityprofessionals.org. Join the international community of sustainability professionals who are transforming the world."

Silence of the Bees - A disappearing "keystone" species

Silence of the Bees Documentary. It's not about the bee per se, as nice as bees are; it's about the potential failure of the global ecosystem pollination service.

In the winter of 2006, a strange phenomenon fell upon honeybee hives across the country. Without a trace, millions of bees vanished from their hives. A precious pollinator of fruits and vegetables, the disappearing bees left billions of dollars of crops at risk and threatened our food supply. The epidemic set researchers scrambling to discover why honeybees were dying in record numbers — and to stop the epidemic in its tracks before it spread further.

Silence of the Bees is the first in-depth look at the search to uncover what is killing the honeybee. The filmmakers of Bees take viewers around the world to the sites of fallen hives, to high-tech labs, where scientists race to uncover clues, and even deep inside honeybee colonies. Silence of the Bees is the story of a riveting, ongoing investigation to save honeybees from dying out. The film goes beyond the unsolved mystery to tell the story of the honeybee itself, its invaluable impact on our diets and takes a look at what’s at stake if honeybees disappear. Silence of the Bees explores the complex world of the honeybee in crisis and instills in viewers a sense of urgency to learn ways to help these extraordinary animals.

Food Inc. -- A Key Systemic Political-Economic Sustainability Problem

Drinking one soda per day doubles your risk of type 2 diabetes compared to drinking a soda occasionally. That increased risk is attributable to high-fructose corn syrup, a manufactured product that is ubiquitous in our modern food system and that did not exist prior to 1970. Why? How did this toxification of the food system occur?

It all started in 1973 with Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz's reversal of U.S. agricultural policy, from paying farmers not to produce to paying farmers to over produce corn.

Do you want to understand the political-economic nexus of one key dimension of unsustainability? Then go to http://www.pbs.org/pov/foodinc/.  The film, Food Inc., with its simple inquiry into the source of supermarket food in America today, unwittingly unveiled the power dimension of the food economy. The resulting big business assault on the free market is revealed with the U.S. tax payer subsidy of corn at prices below production costs for the big fast-food producers, to Monsonto's cornering of soybean related food market with it's patented gene and associated strong-arm investigations against farmers who may or may not save their own seeds, to the market dominance of a few key firms and the astounding amount of power that they have leveraged through a 25-year cross-fertilization of government regulators and industry executives and lawyers. The net result is a massively efficient high-yeilding system of extremely profitable toxic food production. The public corn subsidies led to market distortions, which in turn bred new strains of e-coli and introduced it into the food system, the collapse of corn production in Mexico and associated recruitment of illegal labor by the big food producers, and an addiction to oil and oil-based fertilizer input that kills the soil that will only increase in price to unaffordable levels. Then, the food bubble will collapse. The irony is that the subsidized corn is uneatable; it is feed stock for the larger food production process that adds flavor, texture, etc. Food, Inc., is a must see/know documentary for anyone who thinks they are alive and wants to stay that way.

Food, Inc., Synopsis:

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli — the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation"), Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore's Dilemma") along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms' Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc.reveals surprising — and often shocking truths — about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Food, Inc. will be accompanied by Notes on Milk, a short variation of the 2007 feature documentary Milk in the Land: Ballad of an American Drink. Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum, whose Hybrid aired on POV in 2002, take a quirky and poetic look at some lesser-known aspects of America’s favorite drink: the industry’s spiritual underpinnings, politics and the struggle of independent farmers.

Companion Book:  Food, Inc.: How Industrial Food Is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer - And What You Can Do About It, Karl Weber, Ed. (New York: Public Affairs, 2009)

Other Links:

http://michaelpollan.com/

http://journalism.berkeley.edu/faculty/pollan/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan

Notes on Milk documentary

Independent Lens: King Corn
Two recent college grads discover where food in the United States comes from when they plant a single acre of corn and follow it from the seed to the dinner table. With the help of government subsidies, genetically modified seeds and powerful herbicides, the country's most subsidized crop becomes the staple of its cheapest — and most troubling — foods. On the website for the film, lean how corn farming has changed and find alternatives to high fructose corn syrup. (February, 2008)

GRI Training

Global Reporting Initiative training partners are being certified to offer GRI training. See ISOS Press Release.

Sustainability Learning & Training

The Sustainability Learning Center describes itself as the "learning and networking hub for sustainability."

They seem to have concisely packaged the powerful strategic approach to sustainbility of The Natural Step with other content and tools, such as industrial ecology, so that one can easily understand the benefits and acquire the concepts, tools, and training programs required for any particular firm.

They characterize sustainability as the key driver of innovation as follows:

Sustainability delivers an abundance of organizational and technical innovations that yields both bottom-line and top-line returns. Less waste generates more profit. New “green” and “greener” products open new markets and drive market share

The Sustainability Learning Centre is a training, networking and technology transfer hub designed to unlock sustainability innovations and “green” profits by:

• reducing energy, water, waste and emissions
• creating competitive advantage through sustainability
• launching authentic “green” products
• attracting loyal “green” customers
• activating meaningful “whole” employee engagement
• decreasing climate change, energy and resource scarcity risks

The Centre drives innovation and develops practical Green Core Competencies® through the eco-efficiency, eco-effectiveness and eco-restorative practices of sustainability.

Simple Green Solution for Gulf Clean Up?

Check out at least 4.5 mins of this vid. Rather amazing. It doesn’t plug the leak, but . . . why aren’t they doing this/don’t’ they know this, and other options, after 50+ years of off-shore and deep-sea drilling? How challenged is our institutional and organizational intelligence and capacity?   https://www2.ucar.edu/news/oil-spill-animations

BuildingGreen.com Design-Build Resource

Their About page says, the following:

We are an independent company committed to providing accurate, unbiased, and timely information designed to help building-industry professionals and policy makers improve the environmental performance, and reduce the adverse impacts, of buildings.

We offer both print and electronic resources to help you design and build construction projects from a whole-systems perspective and take an integrated design approach that minimizes ecological impact and maximizes economic performance.

The corporate mission of BuildingGreen, LLC is to facilitate transformation of the North American building industry into a force for local, regional and global environmental protection; for preservation and restoration of the natural environment; and for creation of healthy indoor environments—while promoting the well-being of the company and its employees, owners, and associates.

Check them out at: http://www.buildinggreen.com/?

Livable Streets Initiative

An inspiring grass roots initiative. Also StreetsBlog, StreetsFilms, and Education projects.

Also the umbrella Open Planning Initiative:  OpenPlans informs and engages communities through journalism and open source software.  

About the Livable Streets Initiative

With the majority of the world's 6.5 billion human beings now living in cities, building healthy, livable and affordable urban environments is critical to the mission of today's global environmental movement.

The Livable Streets Initiative is an online community for people working to create sustainable cities through sensible urban planning, design, and transportation policy. We provide free, open source, web-based, resources to citizens working to create a greener economy, address climate change, reduce oil dependence, alleviate traffic congestion, and provide better access to good jobs in healthy communities.

We believe that people make a city great. Yet, so many of the world's great cities dedicate too much of their precious, limited public space - their streets - to motor vehicles rather than people. We are working to redesign our communities around public transportation and walkable, bikeable streets. We are transforming parking lots into public plazas, busy intersections into town squares, and congested highways into bike paths. We are taking back our cities, one street at a time. We invite you to join us!

Strategic decisions: Trust your gut?

See, McKinsey Quarterly for the article and and packet of related articles on strategic decisionmaking.

Also: How to test your decision-making instincts.

Climate Change is Still Real - End of BAU

The National Academy of Sciences released three reports on May 20th, reporting to congress that climate change is still real and that U.S. industries are threatened by the business as usual (BUA), no-change scenario. The SF Chronicle covered it with a tag line: "End of Business as Usual." The reports can be found at http://www.nationalacademies.org/morenews/20100519.html.

Natural Capitalism - 10 Years Later

A remarkable book for comprehending the real problem and solution. Natural Capitalism--Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, illuminates a powerful understanding of the sustainability challenge, which in turn provides a new, and likely the only, path to enduring economic prosperity and security.

One of the book's strengths is that it is not heavy on theory, but heavy on engaging stories about path-breaking innovation that is already blazing the trail the book illuminates. These current events are very much off the radar screen of main stream media and society, unfortunately of course because they represent such a hopeful, just-in-time response with the potential for ultimate success. If we could only learn its lessons! Well, that's the point of the book. Probably the easiest most valuable read you'll find on a topic of true importance, individually and societally.

A second 10th-anniversary edition, available only in England now, 

features a new Introduction by Amory B. Lovins and Paul Hawken which updates the story to include the successes of the last decade. It clearly sets out the path that we must now take to ensure the future prosperity of our civilisation and our planet. 

On its first publication 10 years ago, Natural Capitalism rocked the world of business with its innovative new approach - an approach that fused ecological integrity with business acumen using the radical concept of natural capitalism.

See also:

• a synopsis from the Rocky Mountain Insitute
• the 1st edition.PDF.
• The pre-publication Harvard Business Review summary article (1999).