In a recent international conference on ‘Climate Change: Technology Development & Transfer’ held in Delhi, the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh began his speech by stating that climate friendly and environmentally sound technologies should be viewed as global public goods.

The panel, also chaired by the Maldives President after his country’s recent underwater stunt, called for the Northern countries to do (much) more than just emissions reduction. The statement also comes shortly after media reports suggest India could change its national position on climate change to drop the ‘deal-breaker’ tag put on it by the West.

The BIG question: Will India change its official position ahead of Copenhagen?

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Al Gore and Dr. R.K. Pachauri (IPCC) under the Mahatma’s words!

Today is the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi - regarded as ‘Father of the Nation’ by the Republic of India and a ‘Global Peacemaker’ by the United Nations; so much so that this day is also celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence. The Mahatma has also been the inspiration for US President Obama who believes that America has its roots in Gandhi’s India because the teachings he shared with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. helped change U.S. society through the civil rights movement.

Now, with the world facing a climate crisis and already on the crossroads of equity and/in development, it is time to resurrect and revive the Gandhian principles of simple living-high thinking, participatory governance, etc. at the global level.

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When development starts taking on the “more is better” mantra, some communities opt to take a breather, declaring a moratorium on development until county and municipalities can get a handle on what its residents want and what the environment can handle. That’s exactly what almost happened in 1996 in Wisconsin’s Door County, one of the most scenic and alluring places in the state with over 300 miles of scenic shoreline.  The then Door County Chamber of Commerce called for a development moratorium for all townships (except the City of Sturgeon Bay) in Door County until careful study was made as to exactly how new large-scale construction development would impact the quality of life for all those who reside in the county.  Surprisingly, it never gained traction, and the initiative died.

Yet years later, on a recent trip with my family and friends, we savored an authentic “fish boil” prepared with white fish caught just off the tip of the peninsula, hiked in one of the many state parks, sampled plenty of Door County’s famous cherry juice and pie, and meandered through postcard perfect small towns with names like Fish Creek, Sister Bay and Baileys Harbor.  As a credit to its natural beauty and cultural richness, the county was among the original pilot communities for Travel Green Wisconsin, having earned somewhat of a reputation for being green before green was the thing to be.

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Gender concern in water resources management is globally seen as instrumental in
achieving greater efficiency, effectiveness and equity in the sector. The role of women in water management has long been recognized by the Indian administration. One of the reasons for this is the importance of women in terms of their numerical strength and the significant contribution they make to the agricultural labor force.

In the primarily agricultural Indian setup, there is a strong need to encourage participation of women in even greater strength. Consequently, at least one of the states in India (and a drought hit one) has now declared reservation for women in all local water governing bodies at all levels.

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The Indian government released a report recently which predicted a fourfold increase in carbon emissions output in the next two decades. According to the government report, India’s carbon emissions would increase to 4 to 7 billion tonnes from last year’s level of 1.4 billion tonnes by 2031.

India’s environment minister, however, preferred to point out another finding in the report. The report predicts almost 100 percent increase in per capita emissions but the minister noted that even with a 3.5 to 4 tonnes per capita output it would remain below the global average. The globally agreed limit of per capita emission for sustainable development is 2 tonnes.

That is the argument that the Indian government has put forward frequently in order to dodge international pressure to reduce its carbon emissions. India maintains that its per capita carbon emissions are way below those of the developed countries and thus it would be unfair to ask it to set mandatory emission reduction targets.

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‘Kids for Tigers’ Aerial Art with the President of India’s House in the vicinity

It was the famous cricketer Sachin Tendulkar who declared that he now bats for the tiger. It is the former Indian cricket captain Saurav Ganguly who is referred to as the Bengal Tiger. But it was another ace Indian cricketer and a favorite of many, Rahul Dravid, who took part in the 5th Bengal Tiger Consultation and Tiger Rally. And as someone who was there to learn and do something about the drastically reducing tiger numbers in the country.

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I have been in Sao Paulo this week at Sustentavel 2009, perhaps the premiere Sustainable Development event in Brazil, if not all of South America. At the opening I represented the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and then on the first day of presentations I participated in the main climate change panel session.

What is clear is that there is a passion in Brazil for sustainability – from the huge issues they face in the Amazon region to the road congestion in Sao Paulo. Talking with delegates at Sustentavel, it is also clear that the country faces an interesting future in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

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Wales has launched one of the world’s most ambitious sustainability strategies, and aims to be “self-sustaining in renewable energy” by 2025, and waste-free by 2050.

The standard-setting targets are laid out in a new strategy called One Wales: One Planet - and immediately place the nation at the forefront of global green efforts, making it one of only three countries worldwide with a legal obligation to develop sustainably.

Commenting on the report Jonathan Porritt, Founding Director of Forum for the Future and Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission said, “Wales will set an example for the rest of the world to follow.”

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Edited by John C. Derbach and featuring articles from a powerhouse team of forty environmental law and policy experts, scientists, public health experts, and leaders from business and government, Agenda for a Sustainable America examines trends in 28 areas of American life and evaluates recent U.S. performance from a sustainability perspective. Beyond providing a report card across the metrics of sustainability in the U.S., the book also provides a valuable roadmap for sustainability for the next 5 to 10 years.

In Agenda for a Sustainable America, Derbach and company suggest that the U.S. has, in fact, made significant progress in at least six areas: local governance, brownfields redevelopment, business and industry, higher education, K-12 education, and religious organization. But the authors also suggest we have a long way to go:

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Pope Benedict XVI added to his growing reputation as the “green Pope” on Tuesday with the release of a new encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). A call for sustainable development in the broadest sense, the Pope’s letter addressed the human and environmental costs of “business as usual,” and established “doing well by doing good” as the business philosophy most consistent with Church doctrine and Biblical teaching.

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As a brand marketer, I was disappointed at how little we’ve progressed in the last year in terms of being able to move mainstream market behavior towards more responsible product and services adoption.  But the first rule of marketing is to demonstrate authenticity and we all know that marketing is not a cover for product value.   So besides the Clorox Green Works and Sun Chips story, I’m going to give us collective group of marketers a hall-pass this year.

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Market Facilitation in Ecosystem Services; Contemporary Developing Cases in the UK

Is there reason to believe that there maybe profit to be made by investing in eco investments while conserving the environment?

There does exist some scepticism about the market’s involvement in green initiatives. Even though research conducted by Frost & Sullivan about the telecom industry, which is yet to be published, next month (but was mentioned in The Guardian in late April) apparently shows that there is no measurable link between a company’s share price and investments in green initiatives. However, if pursued they could reflect an improved brand value for a company with an environmental focus.

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 Hopefully, the future will record that we had a crisis, but sized the opportunities afforded by the mounting promises of renewable energy and rode them to success. Hopefully, the future will not record that we were bogged down by the narrow interest of lobbyist and missed this golden opportunity.

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New Orleans has produced its share of celebrities over the years but since Hurricane Katrina, musicians and celebrities have been keen to give something back to a city that has given and lost so much. Taking their personal passions to a new level, these celebrities are lending their name and fundraising support to create safe and affordable communities with a long-term view of economic redevelopment and poverty eradication.

New housing programs target specific populations or neighborhoods that have been dislocated by the sequence of events initiated by Hurricane Katrina and which are critical to getting the New Orleans economy thriving again.  This article looks at three different visionary approaches to re-building neighborhoods filled with newly empowered home-owners educated and dedicated to preserving a safe and healthy environment for their children.

Keeping the city safe

In 1980, Dan Aykroyd turned his love for blues music into the cult comedy “The Blues Brothers”.  And now, nearly 30 years later, he is lending his financial and fundraising support to get first-responders back into the city that created the blues.

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Van Jones is a rising star in the green economy.  As the founding President of Green for All, he is a doer.  As the author of  “The Green Collar Economy” he is a spokesperson and advocate.  But he is actually much more than that. He’s actually Innovation 3.0.

Nancy Pelosi calls him a “magnificent disrupter”.   If she means that he eloquently navigates new paths (job creation) and connects new ideas (environmental consideration) to age-old issues (populations in poverty), then she is right.

In a recent interview with David Gottfriend, CEO of Regenerative Ventures, Van spoke of the need to revision the way we do things.  He spoke of soul level redemption.  And he spoke of the need for human recovery.    Listening to him you can’t help but be caught up in his articulate passion and belief that there is a better way out of this mess we’re in.

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The world suppliers can do better for us. The latest technology, smart grids or “SmartGrids”, provides a far more attractive 60% efficiency. How it works? “A smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability,” explains Wikipedia.

My state, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is theoretically on board. MA electricity providers responded to Governer Deval Patrick’s request for smart grid proposals. The Boston Globe’s interview with Stephen Connors, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative, explains the attraction. Environmentalists and others have been pushing for smart-grid technology for over a decade because it will enable consumers to use less electricity and benefit the environment. “Eventually, smart grids will also incorporate renewable energy - such as wind and solar power, and even electric cars - and feature software applications that reduce consumption during peak-demand times, as well as help power companies identify outages.” For example, the technology will note when you are not home and shut down nonessential components.

The two specific Massachusetts electricity service providers serving the highly populated eastern MA region have proposed the following pilot programs:

1. National Grid’s two-year pilot proposal installs approximately 15,000 meters that read energy consumption almost in real-time. “Customers could access the information via the Internet, by a thermostat readout, or through text messaging, and use the data to change their consumption patterns,” reports the Boston Globe. The cost of the program for the 1.3 million customers would be approximately $ 57 million dollars, which represents less than a dollar per month cost to customers, but an approximate savings of $70 dollars per year.

2. “NStar’s plan, meanwhile, calls for partnering with Tendril Networks Inc., a Colorado energy-efficiency company, to provide nearly 3,000 customers in Newton and Hopkinton [Boston area cities] with energy-consumption information - accessible on the Web - gathered from electricity meters every 15 seconds. Two-way communication between NStar and consumers will also allow the company to eventually ask customers to help reduce electricity consumption during peak-demand periods.”

Obviously, the application of smart grid technology is sustainable on several levels, so we can hope that it is adopted in MA and worldwide pronto. For faster progress, call or email your local legislator to encourage this positive corporate behavior.

In the transport sector, ethanol and now bio-diesel use is continuing to grow. Between 2000 and 2006 oil demand was flat despite a nearly 20% increase in both GDP and overall energy demand. Brazil still has a formidable potential for increasing ethanol and bio-diesel production, even as it grapples with the issue of deforestation.

Brazilian ethanol also has a very low CO2 footprint owing to the use of bagasse as a fuel in the ethanol plants, many of which also produce electricity for the local community. But Brazil is also on the verge of becoming a new petro-economy. Offshore discoveries now amount to some 70 billion barrels of oil equivalent. If consumed this will result in emissions of 25 billion tonnes of CO2 or the equivalent of an additional 1-1.5 ppm in atmospheric CO2. In addition, there may be further CO2 emissions after removal from contaminated offshore natural gas.

What solutions lie in Brazil’s future? The first priority is of course to address deforestation, but one option that doesn’t immediately jump out of the page but could be pivotal for Brazil is the application of carbon dioxide capture and storage. Whilst Brazil is a low CO2 economy, CCS could help it remain so whilst letting the country make best use of the resources it has. For example, CCS applied offshore is a potential solution to the CO2 that will be removed from any contaminated natural gas.

Longer term, CCS could be tied in with the nations huge biomass potential (even after deforestation is addressed) to possibly deliver a negative CO2 economy by 2050. Gasification of biomass is a technology gaining ground today. As in the gasification of coal it produces syngas, which can then be used for electricity generation, with a high purity CO2 stream remaining. When sequestered, with biomass as the original feedstock, the process is effectively removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Most biofuel processes (e.g. manufacture of ethanol) also produce bio-CO2 that could be captured and stored. These approaches may be pivotal in the quest for atmospheric stabilisation at safe levels.

So although Brazil has real sustainability challenges ahead, particularly in the area of deforestation and the further expansion of hydroelectricity, it also offers tremendous opportunity for managing emissions on a very large scale. Certainly the willingness is there, you could feel it at the conference. Now that needs to be turned into regulatory action to drive the solutions forward.

The report, published in Chinese, highlights case studies of exemplary leadership in low carbon development in 12 Chinese cities - including innovation and deployment of solar energy, LED lighting, and electric cars technology - in what appears to be a rally cry for support from China’s power base and attempt to broaden understanding of the issue. The tone of the report is set out in its first paragraph: all countries should be viewed as equals, and developing countries’ policy choices for tomorrow shall be given equal respect as the advances that industrialized countries have already made in this area.

Why cities? The report’s Executive Summary argues that cities, responsible for a higher proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions than the percentage of the world’s population they support, have a responsibility to lead the way in addressing climate change issues. It also refers to energy insecurity and a heightened threat of natural disasters as two results of climate change that particularly affect cities.

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The 63-page study focused on 136 cities around the world, cities with current total population of approximately 40 million, that are considered at risk of a one in 100-year coastal flood event. By the 2070s, the population is expected to be as high as 150 million who will be affected by sea-level rise and storm dangers heightened by climate change.

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In order to capitalize on the up-and-coming ecotourism business, Bonaire agreed to the installation of a 11MW wind farm, 14MW biodiesel plant and a 3.5MW backup battery in 2007 with the end goal of completely unyoking itself from fossil fuel dependence.  Spearheading this project are Ecopower Bonaire BV, a consortium of Dutch-German companies, Evelop, Enercon, and the local Bonaire water and energy company. 

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