January 19, 2010 • 15:42 0
Just found this short presentation via @RTGit:
Paul Pollack’s advice to find solutions for social problems:
Filed under: entrepreneurship, leadership , video
December 27, 2009 • 16:42 0
Silke Helfrich and a few other German commoners have drafted a Commons Manifesto that explains the importance of the commons for the well-being of us and our societies. The manifesto also calls all of us to assume our responsibility and protect and nurture the commons:
Commons inspire and connect. To take them into account requires a fundamentally different approach in perception and action. Commons are based on communities that set their own rules and cultivate their skills and values. Based on these always-evolving, conflict-ridden processes, communities integrate themselves into the bigger picture. In a culture of commons, inclusion is more important than exclusion, cooperation more important than competition, autonomy more important than control. Rejecting the monopolization of information, wealth, and power gives rise to diversity again and again. Nature appears as a common wealth that must be carefully stewarded, and not an ever-available property to be exploited.
Read the full Manifesto in English (Strengthen the Commons: Now!), German (Streiten für Gemeingüter: Jetzt!), and Spanish (Fortalecer los Bienes Comunes: Ahora!).
Filed under: commons, leadership , initiative, publication
December 23, 2009 • 11:19 2
Monbiot just published his take on the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit, comparing this and future climate negotiations to the orchestra on the Titanic. As the reason for failure of the summit, he singles out the non-inclusive negotiation approach of the biggest emitters (notably China and the US) used to satisfy their domestic goals and audiences.
One hundred and two poor nations called for the maximum global temperature rise to be limited not to two degrees but to 1.5. The chief negotiator for the G77 bloc complained that Africa was being asked “to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries”.
His conclusion? What happens now
… depends on the other non-player at Copenhagen: you. For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people [...] have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn’t do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic. Demonstrations which should have brought millions onto the streets have struggled to mobilise a few thousand. As a result the political cost of the failure at Copenhagen is zero.
Is this music not to your taste sir, or madam? Perhaps you would like our little orchestra to play something louder, to drown out that horrible grinding noise.
It is up to us to take matters into or hands and start reducing our impact on our planet.
Update: a very interesting take from the closed debate on China’s role.
cross-published on Suficiente
Filed under: Climate Change, lifestyle , news
December 19, 2009 • 08:32 0
There is so much we all could do in our respective areas and sectors. Not only would this improve our carbon footprints, but it also opens up new economic opportunities.
Consider the example of How The Daiy Industry Could be Making Electricty and Reducing Emissions: By turning methane from cow manure into electricity. Not only do farmers seizing this opportunity end up producing more energy than they need (they can sell the access to the grid), they can (potentially) also gain carbon credits from reduced emissions.
What opportunities exist in your sector or area of expertise that you have not tapped into?
Filed under: Climate Change, local
December 13, 2009 • 12:20 0
The Wallace Center, a program at Winrock International,just published a report called Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in a Global Market Place.
My main takeaways from reading the executive summary and introduction of the report:
Triple Pundit published a more detailed summary.
Filed under: food, local , publication, research
December 1, 2009 • 15:30 0
Everybody is gearing up for December’s Climate Summit, COP 15, in Copenhagen starting next week. Just our governments seem to not want to deal with this reality.
A few weeks ago Google launched a site that visualizes different global warming scenarios with Google Earth:
Explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet Earth and find out about possible solutions for adaptation and mitigation, ahead of the UN’s climate conference in Copenhagen in December COP15.
Filed under: Climate Change, nature , tool
November 24, 2009 • 17:40 1
Great initiative to combat violence in whatever form (verbal, physical, emotional) it may appear, and a reminder that change starts with ourselves:
The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.
Here is the whole charter as a video:
And a link to the speech, in which Karen Armstrong explains the idea for this charter.
Filed under: diversity, lifestyle , initiative, video
October 15, 2009 • 09:19 3
I want to use the occasion of Blog Action Day to reflect a bit on how Elinor Ostrom’s work (this year’s Nobel in Economic Sciences) may help us deal with climate change. In short, many solutions will emerge from collective action at the local level that solve problems according to the different local conditions. One challenge will be to ensure that these local experiments and solutions will learn from each other.
Here are a few points from Lin Ostrom’s work that I think are relevant for the climate change discussions:
What does that mean for climate change?
For more on Lin Ostrom’s work go to IU’s Workshop on Political Theory that she founded and still directs and the website of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), of which she was the founding president.
Filed under: Climate Change, collective action, commons , Ostrom, research
September 29, 2009 • 08:07 0
A couple of days ago I went to a seminar by Leonardo Boff, a leading figure in the liberation theology movement and recipient of the Alternative Nobel “Right Livelihood Award” in 2001. He now thinks and writes about ecology and spirituality and calls for a paradigm shift for humanity to find back to living with nature instead of just using it.
His talk was very inspiring and underlined the need for an approach that is not just rebuilding our economic system, but that changes some fundamental characteristics of it. Given the extractive logic of the “maximize profit” model, an interesting comparison he made stuck in my head:
[Economic] growth behaves like cancer cells. They grow and grow until they have destroyed the whole body.
Filed under: leadership, lifestyle, sustainability , seminar
September 21, 2009 • 11:42 0
Amazing case for sustainability in business on TED.
Ray Anderson tells the story of how he set out to change the economic model that governed his company Interface (and still governs most businesses).
The dominant industrial model is extractive, linear (take – make – waste), abusive, focused on labor productivity, dependent on fossil fuels. In this model environmental impact (I) is generated by people (P), what they consume (their affluence – A) and how it is produce (the technology – T). Paul and Anne Ehrlich summarized this as:
I = P x A x T
Realizing that he had the power over the way his products are made, Ray started working since 1995 to change that formula for Interface to
I = (P x A)/T, so that technology decreases the impact instead of multiplying it.
Towards the end of his talk he then goes a step further to advocate that affluence expressed by a capital A denotes an end in itself, and should instead be a small ‘a’ that is a means for happiness, thus changing the formula to
I = (P x a)/(T2 x H)
Great vision! Watch the video to hear the numbers of how this model made his company not only reduce a lot of its impact (they aim for 0 impact by 2020) but also much more competitive.
Filed under: entrepreneurship, leadership, sustainability
