April 2011
36 posts
11 tags
A Sustainability Mystique for Women?
The female perspective can provide leadership to the sustainability movement.
By Cynthia Figge
In a recent study by the White House on the status of women, its first since 1963, women now make up 57% of college enrollment. Yet in 2009, at all levels of education, they earned only 75% as much as their male counterparts. How far have we come, and where are we going?
1963 was the auspicious year...
10 tags
Water, Water Everywhere And Not A Drop To Drink
Can better water governance between citizen, state and business solve the scarcity crisis?
By Philip Monaghan
Water is essential to our survival. It makes up between half and three quarters of the human body weight, needs to be topped up on a regular basis and we cannot go without it for more than about week. As well as drinking it, we also use water for cooking and sanitation, not to mention...
3 tags
Water Needs Curtail China's Coal Gasification to...
In a desert province in western China, there are six massive coal-conversion plants putting strains on the region’s water supply.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue
When it was approved in 2003, the Shenhua Group’s $US 4 billion refinery was seen as the vanguard of the world’s largest program for converting coal to new products...
13 tags
Solar Power To The People
Bringing affordable solar power to the masses is a critical piece of protecting the planet.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Talkback Managing Editor Francesca Rheannon
When I take a walk through the woods from my house in the Hamptons, I pass several homes along the path with large solar arrays on their roofs or installed in their yards. I had to laugh, therefore, when...
9 tags
5 Nuggets of Wisdom for Bullying in the Workplace
“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me!”
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By Jackie Humans, Ph.D.
Children are often taught words can’t hurt them, but grown-ups know better. Sometimes words inflict the biggest scars we carry, especially if they come from a bully—and the bully happens to be your boss.
Office bullying is a growing...
12 tags
Learning From The Biosphere
Can “interlinked self-reliant regional economies” replace globalization?
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
My favorite definition of life comes from evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis: “Life is matter with the capacity to choose.”
The intricate self-organizing structure of Earth’s biosphere is the product of life’s extraordinary 3.5 billion year evolutionary quest to...
11 tags
Is Our Green Build Compass Broken?
Efficiency is the greenest path for the built environment.
By Martin Brown
Sustainability: it’s good for the planet, good for business and should be good for the built environment. Yet, known as the 40% sector, the latter continues to be responsible for 40% of material production and use, of waste, of transportation, of energy use and for 40% of global CO2 emissions.
We have many stunning green...
12 tags
Save the World, Not the Planet
We need to act as citizens of the world to save it.
By Sophie Constance
With Friday marking the 41st anniversary of Earth Day, we need to stop being consumers of the planet, and start being citizens of the world.
“Save the planet,” we hear endlessly. But a planet is just a rock orbiting a star. It’s a self-correcting system and it will be here for a long time after we’re gone. The...
6 tags
How Effective is Earth Day?
How can we make Earth Day more effective? Add your voice by taking the survey.
By Sophie Constance
Ask people about environmental celebrations like Earth Hour and Earth Day and you’ll get surprisingly lukewarm reactions: “What’s switching your lights off for an hour a year going to achieve?”; “Maybe, but…”; “We can’t do much.” Yes, it isn’t much, and awareness alone won’t get us far – but that...
11 tags
Innovation from the Inside Out
Want a culture of innovation? Start from within.
By Mitch Ditkoff
These days almost all of my clients are talking about the need to establish a culture of innovation. Some, I’m happy to report, are actually doing something about it. Hallelujah! They are taking bold steps forward to turn theory into action.
The challenge for them is the same as it’s always been - and that is to...
10 tags
To Create a True CSR Culture, You Have to Start...
Some CEOs are bucking the Wall Street trend to move the needle on CSR.
By Ann Charles
It’s impossible to discuss the role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in today’s business without acknowledging the elephant in the room. The economic collapse that began in 2007 was largely the result of a colossal failure of leadership in both the finance industry and U.S. government. The...
11 tags
We Need A Fruit-Seller On Wall Street
Job satisfaction is plummeting, along with workers’ fortunes.
By John Nirenberg
The Conference Board, a business sector research organization, reported in January 2010, that job satisfaction of Americans reached its lowest level in 20 years. Based on a survey of 5,000 households, it found only 45 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with their jobs. In 1987, that figure was 61.1...
10 tags
Circle of Blue's China Tour Finds Strong Reception...
Circle of Blue and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum present at 17 events in four cities over 16 days.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue
Since mid-February, in probing weekly reports from our Choke Point: China series, Circle of Blue and the China Environment Forum of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for...
9 tags
Sustainability Reports While-You-Wait
Gaia Metrics’ CSR QuickStart™ can dramatically reduce the time and cost of assembling a sustainability report.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Contributing Writer Elaine Cohen
Gaia Metrics claim the cost of aggregating data for sustainability reports can be reduced by 90% using their new CSR QuickStart™ product, enabling many more companies to report quickly and ...
16 tags
The World of Our Dreams
The roots of happiness lie in richer soil than money.
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
In 1992, I participated in the civil society portion of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It involved some fifteen thousand people representing the vast variety of humanity’s races, religions, nationalities and languages. It was at the time the largest and most diverse global...
7 tags
Impact Investing 2.0 – time for a new approach!
Impact investing is a hot topic, but Version 2.0 would improve the odds.
By Dr. Matthew Kiernan
“Impact Investing” is generating an enormous amount of “buzz” these days – even if it is talked about much more than it is practiced. It has become particularly popular among foundations, endowments and high net worth individual investors. While the precise meaning of the term is still being defined...
11 tags
Positive Black Swans
Unexpected shocks can open the door to sustainability opportunities.
By David Wilcox
There are no black swans in the Northern Hemisphere, so whiteness was assumed to be an essential quality of swanness. When a Dutch explorer spotted a black one on an expedition to Australia in 1697, that concept had to be restated. It is a simple but useful analogy for how fragile a system of thought actually can...
12 tags
Whose money is it, anyway? Try the “Universal...
Corporations are using our money to trash the environment.
By Hank Boerner
Let’s ask ourselves, whose money is it, anyway? In a recent CSRwire Talkback blog post, I wrote that, in my opinion, the highest test of true corporate responsibility is to see how the corporate board and management respect the concept of managing other peoples’ money (OPM). That set me thinking: as the billions and tens...
12 tags
How to Kick the Coal Habit
Low interest loans for solar could break the country’s dependency on coal.
By Ezra Drissman
Getting off coal won’t be easy. Many states are dependent on coal-produced electricity, which means real problems in moving away from this dependency. Identifying the problems will clarify the solutions.
This is not meant to be an attack on carbon taxing, or a defense of the use of coal. But the question...
14 tags
CSR Means Opening Up A Dialogue
CSR encompasses many things, including communication.
By Joe Siblia
One of the major issues affecting corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability is opening a dialogue with those who may not have the greatest track record in these areas. Our job as sustainability leaders is to push the envelope and encourage companies to do what is just and fair.
CSRwire is the leading global...
11 tags
A Bevy of Books for Earth Day
Several new and recent books exploring environmental issues are reviewed.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Talkback Managing Editor Francesca Rheannon
Earth Day is coming up fast. Writer’s Voice, the weekly radio show and podcast I host and produce, is celebrating Earth Month, featuring interviews with authors of a terrific crop of new and recent books on the...
1 tag
Q&A: Ma Jun on China's Economic Development and...
China is still on the track of a highly energy- and resource-intensive model, with the need to de-couple economic growth from the expansion of resource consumption.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By Nadya Ivanova and J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue
Ma Jun, who directs the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs, which in 2006 developed the Pollution Map Database,...
7 tags
Our Human Nature
What makes us distinctly human is our highest moral self.
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
The successful function of mature democracies, caring communities and living economies requires caring, mature and responsible citizens who care not only for their own well being, but for that of their neighbor, as well. Given the experience of human history, many will ask with good...
5 tags
Food Price Crisis Should Drive Sustainable Supply...
Why we shouldn’t wait until the last minute to switch to a sustainable supply chain.
By Mitchell Beer
A global supply chain worth $26.3 billion per year in the United States alone may soon become a working example of how established industries cope with rising food prices.
For the network of vendors behind every successful conference, adaptation will largely depend on bedrock sustainability...
11 tags
Frack! Can The Energy Giants Learn From...
Shareholder activists are pointing the way to greater environmental responsibility by gas drillers.
By Sanford Lewis, Attorney
Natural gas often is touted as a bridge fuel, leading a transition to cleaner energy sources. But recently it also has a lot of attention for the extraction practice known as “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking,” which has stirred environmental controversy and threatens...
9 tags
The Ark of Taste: Eating Well to Save Species
Joining good food with sustainability is one organization’s recipe for saving America’s food traditions.
By Aaron Kagan
Slow Food International reminds us it is possible to consume a resource – happily, along with a glass of wine – without exhausting it.
Sustainability is one of the organization’s chief goals, and one of its more colorful ways of promoting that goal is the Ark of Taste....
9 tags
A Low Carbon Diet For Construction Boards
Using social media can help boards be better on sustainability.
By Martin Brown
I’ve got a question for you:who on your board is championing sustainability and the low carbon agenda?
Board members, as Lucy Marcus reminded us at construcTALKs, need to balance continuity with change, to embrace the changes in technology.
From my experience in (small-medium) construction organizations, boards are...
10 tags
Radiation is Harmless; Heck, It's Even Good For...
There is no safe level of radiation.
Part Two of a two-part series from CSRwire.
By CSRwire Talkback Managing Editor Francesca Rheannon
Yesterday, I wrote about the difference between exposure to external radiation - radiation that is in the air, water or soil - and internal radiation, the stuff that gets inside you. I explained why the natural phenomenon of bioaccumulation means, when...
7 tags
A Militarized Economy Cannot Balance the Budget
We can’t afford our bloated military budget and still have democracy.
By John Perkins
“Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.” -Eisenhower, 1961 Military Industrial Speech
While we send our love and support to those so horribly impacted by the earthquake...
12 tags
Radiation is Harmless; Heck, It's Even Good For...
The media - and some environmentalists - have got it all wrong on radiation hazards.
Part One of a two-part series from CSRwire.
By CSRwire Talkback Managing Editor Francesca Rheannon
OK, OK, I know it’s a little late for an April Fools’ headline, but the real joke is on the media. From NPR to Fox, the media appear to be swallowing the nuclear power industry’s soothing ...
9 tags
Water Pipeline Could Open China's Northern Coal...
Proposed long-distance desalination project seen as a must for modernization.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue
Sixty-year-old geographer Huo Youguang, a professor in the Center for Environment and Modern Agriculture Engineering at Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xhanxi Province, thinks he has a solution for China’s geographic mismatch:...
13 tags
Greed is Not a Virtue
Exploring elements of Wall Street’s moral perversion.
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
We humans are living out an epic morality play. For millennia humanity’s most celebrated spiritual teachers have taught society works best and we all enjoy our greatest joy and fulfillment when we share, cooperate and are honest in our dealings with one another.
For the past few decades...
8 tags
Ethical sourcing: how it can change society
CSRwire CEO calls for cultural shift after experiencing random violence.
By Emily Drew
It was supposed to be an hour-long, shop-talk keynote, but upon hearing the news his mother had been attacked in her home that morning, CSRwire’s CEO instead gave a five-minute, off-the-cuff talk at the 2011 Intertek Ethical Sourcing Forum during lunch.
Joe Sibilia spoke passionately to the audience as he...
17 tags
Blue Sky Thinking for Sustainability
Physics might hold the solution to lightening human impacts on the planet.
By John Elkington
So why would you want to give away £20 million – over $30 million – even if you had it? In the case of hedge fund superstar David Harding, part of the answer on why he has just made the biggest gift ever to the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University was, he said, that it was a form of compensation...
16 tags
Consumer Demand: Driving the Green Transition
The Green Transition Scoreboard tots up $2 trillion in consumer green demand.
By Maria Olga Pinochet
In 2009, The Green Revolution, a survey by Grail Research, found that 85% of US consumers buy green products. Growing consumer demand for greener products and company practices is influencing business plans worldwide. The UN Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study 2010 confirms sustainability is...
10 tags
Three reasons why we should not arm the Libyan...
Perhaps it’s time to scale back military talk and give diplomacy one more try.
By Stefan Wolff
1. The legal foundations for doing so are shaky. UN Security Council Resolution 1970 (2011) of 26 February 2011 unequivocally states “that all Member States shall immediately take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”...
