Plain text version:

Motor vehicle manufacturing has changed beyond recognition in the last few decades. Consumers once bought a simple chassis with four wheels and an engine attached; now they purchase a highly sophisticated motoring solution which has several computer systems working together to make the driving experience more reactive, productive and efficient. At the same time, cars have become an everyday necessity for households and the estimated number of vehicles on the roads worldwide is set to quadruple by 2050.

Sensors are the first link in the data communication chain

The computer systems which are embedded in today’s cars rely almost exclusively upon sensors, which give the driver a greater insight into their vehicle’s performance and status. This is because sensors are the first link in the data communication chain, sniffing out raw data and passing it on to systems to analyse and report upon. Many of these revolve around increasing safety for the driver, such as ABS systems, bumper radars to help parking, driver behaviour monitors and light and rain sensors which automatically switch headlights and windscreen wipers on and off.

From sensor-based monitoring to semiconductors

Many of these sensor systems include components which are based upon IEC International Standards. These range from ISO/IEC 24753, which defines RFID protocols for sensor-based monitoring, to IEC 60747-14-1, Semiconductor devices – Part 14-1: Semiconductor sensors – Generic specification for sensors, which describes sensors made from semiconductors and is additionally applicable to dielectric and ferroelectric based sensors. In between there are a whole host of other standards detailing crucial aspects of sensor deployment, such as wiring, batteries and electrical connections.

However, as the world of vehicle management has expanded, so has the sophistication of the sensors involved, and so too the extent of relevance of IEC work to help ensure a car’s safety, no matter where in the world it’s being driven.

Charging the EV through the Smart Grid

One example of this is through the growth of Smart Grids to charge electric vehicles. IEC 62196-2, which is currently in final draft form, defines the plug/socket connectors for one and three phase electric charging and the more sophisticated of these include sensors to communicate information between the car and the charging point to ensure the correct power supply is used and that overcharging doesn’t occur.

As smart grids grow, it will become increasingly important to have standards governing sensors so as to ensure an EV (electric vehicle) manufactured in one country, but driven or sold in another, can still be recharged safely. This can help manufacturers increase their geographic reach while also helping them achieve regulatory and industry body compliance.

However the ambition for on board sensors goes much further than with single sensors such as those envisioned for Smart Grids. The SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) project has been running since 2009. It’s currently conducting trials of a system for use on motorways whereby a car could automatically set its pace and distance to the car in front and, in effect, follow it. Such a system would require the use of sensors that are aware both of the vehicle being followed and of all the other vehicles in close proximity to the car. SARTRE is currently undergoing field trials; one consists of a four car road train traveling at up to 90 km / hour.

Multi-entity sensor systems such as SARTRE build upon the broad move to use sensors to make energy efficiency an integral part of our day-to-day lives. Some of these were highlighted in the June 2011 edition of e-tech, which looked at how multi sensor systems are being applied in the busy environment of an office building, with applications ranging from variable elevator speeds to networked solutions that analyse data from around the building and adjust power availability accordingly.

Communicating between vehicles

However what SARTRE relies upon most of all is the ability of different manufacturers’ cars to be able to communicate with one another. It will only gain widespread acceptance if it’s underpinned by a common standard defining the sensors’ interfaces, irrespective of the technology, country or make of car involved.

Speaking at the recent Mobile World Congress, Ford’s executive chairman, Bill Ford, embraced this when setting out the company’s “Blueprint for Mobility”.

“We need to think of vehicles on the road the way we think of tablets, laptops and phones – as pieces of a bigger network,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense that Fords can only talk to Fords and Peugeots can only talk to Peugeots. There needs to be a standardization of that tech.”

Standardizing mobility for safe driving

Creating the International Standards to underpin this mobility and ensure car safety is just one of the areas in which the IEC is active. The IEC members, the NCs (National Committees) in each country, are always happy to hear from new experts who are interested in helping set down new standardization work and further this fast growing area of automotive safety.

(co-authored with Audrey Mandala — distributed at Mobile World Congress 2012)

Plain text version:

It’s no secret that Europe’s largest mobile
operators — Vodafone, Telefónica,
Orange, and T-Mobile — have long been
keen investors in some of the telecom
sector’s hottest start-ups.
Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital
subsidiary T-Venture, for example, has
been active since 1997, and is one of the
most significant corporate venture capital
companies in the world. Innovacom,
France Telecom-Orange’s venture arm,
started investing in early-stage startups
in 1994. It currently manages a fund
worth 400 million euros, and has supported
innovative telecom and information
technology start-ups such as Business
Objects, Gemplus, Infovista, Intershop,
Kelkoo, and LastMinute.com. Vodafone
Ventures has been on the scene since
2000, specializing in investments in seed/
start-up, early-stage, and mid-stage in
wireless and Internet sectors. (See table.)
But recently these mobile operators
have started to look beyond traditional
venture investing to find new ways to get
closer to the innovators that are creating
new services and new markets, and
in some cases disrupting the operators’
core businesses.
Take Telefónica Digital, a relative newcomer
in this space. The Digital business
unit was set up in September 2011; its
mission is “to seize the opportunities
within the digital world and deliver new
growth for Telefónica through R & D,
venture capital, global partnerships and
digital services.” In November 2011, Matthew
Key, Chairman & CEO of Telefónica
Digital, told a London conference crowd:
“…we’re not going to be able to keep, own
and build all of that capability internally,
so we have to partner with people to do
joint ventures and equity investments
with different companies that have different
capabilities….We have to move into
the future rather than protect the past.”
Over the holidays, Telefonica Digital
agreed to take a stake in U.S.-based cloud
computer experts Joyent, which counts
LinkedIn, THQ, Gilt Groupe and Kabam
among its customers. “We all felt pumped
at the prospect of moving forward with
our global domination strategy,” says David
Young, the company’s CEO.
Telefónica was not the lead investor in
the round, though; it terms its investment
in Joyent as “strategic: the operator will
use Joyent’s technology expertise in cloud
computing to help Telefónica enhance
its own product offering. The relationship
will also help Joyent with its “global
domination” plans, given Telefónica’s
multinational reach.
Telefónica also recently launched a
seed capital fund for Latin America with
co-investors, called Amerigo. The most
interesting move Telefónica has made in
the start-up arena, however, was the creation
of the Wayra incubator/accelerator.
Wayra, which means “wind” in Quechua,
started in Latin America, as a way
to help local start-ups establish and grow
their businesses in their home markets.
Wayra provides financing of between
$30,000 and $70,000 in exchange for a
small stake, depending on a start-up’s
level of maturity and need. Wayra then
works with these small players, mentoring
their leaders in business and technical
skills, providing co-working space, and
helping them access further financing
when required.
Wayra supported more than 6,000 startups
in Latin America in 2011.. The initiative
was considered so successful that hubs will
be rolled out across Europe in 2012 from
Spain to the UK and Germany.
The benefits for start-ups in partnering
with mobile operators are amply demonstrated
by a T-Ventures success story,
6wunderkinder. This German-based
company produces productivity tools that
reside in the cloud and are accessed from
smart phones, tablets and computers, allowing
distributed teams to stay in sync.
After the company’s first nine months of
operation, 6wunderkinder had produced
a free-to-use task manager and garnered
nearly one million users. It then partnered
with T-Venture and in less than a
year its app had been downloaded more
than 5 million times. The T-Venture funding
also helped 6wunderkinder develop
its second product, a pro version of the
task manager that incorporates private
workspaces and social networking tools.
“We are looking for companies who are
scaling up and going global, because that’s
when we can help them the most,” says
Heikki Makijarvi, Deutsche Telekom’s
Senior Vice President of Business Development.
“[When we find them] we will
work very closely together with them.”
Vodafone is another mobile operator
that recently took its start-up activities
up a notch. In September 2011, the
mobile operator created Xone, a Silicon
Valley-based R&D center that will help to
identify and assess potential investments
for the Vodafone Ventures group. Xone
will also provide incubator services for
roughly 25 companies at a time. Start-ups
in the Xone will be able to test their services
on the Vodafone network, and work
closely with Vodafone’s own engineers
and R&D team to roll their solutions out
to the market more quickly.
Another Vodafone innovation is the
Vodafone Mobile Clicks contest. One
of the biggest start-up competitions in
Europe, the initiative is designed to accelerate
innovation in the mobile Internet
sector across Europe.
Last year was a very busy investment
year for all four of the mobile operators,
and 2012 is starting to look the same.
Vodafone kicked off the year by participating
in the second phase of the Series
C private equity fundinground in VOSS
Solutions, a cloud fulfillment technology
company. T-Venture also started 2012
strongly, with an investment in the online
video content provider, clipkit.
Some carriers are even launching
new funds to give them better access to
the next big thing. In November 2011,
for example, France Telecom-Orange
announced plans to launch a new venture
capital fund focused on the digital
economy. FT-Orange and Publicis Groupe
have committed to jointly investing 150
million euros in the new fund, and have
invited other investors to join them, to
reach a target of 300 million euros. This
activity is in addition to France Telecom’s
18-year-old Innovacom VC fund, and the
fairly recent Orange Ventures Investment
Fund, which seeks to invest across
the wireless value chain, from network
infrastructure, hardware, and equipment
through to middleware, devices, software,
applications, and services.
European mobile operators’ venture
investments, accelerators, and contests
will undoubtedly help mobile-focused
start-ups around the world develop more
quickly and efficiently. For the operators,
the start-ups could help them find new
revenue streams, run their own businesses
more efficiently, and, perhaps,
avoid being blind-sided by the disruptive
innovation generated by start-ups.

Plain text version:

Earlier this year the government published its proposals for decarbonising the economy through electricity market reform (EMR). These proposals will affect all businesses in the UK. The first, and most significant, is due to come into force in less than 18 months.

EMR’s overall goal is to ensure at least 15% of the UK’s energy comes from renewable sources by 2020. However, because this means lifting the price of carbon emissions the combined effect of the proposals means that energy unit costs could double in the same timeframe.

UK energy consultancy Ener-G believes this is the right time for businesses to start planning for EMR’s impact. They have released a report, A Quick Guide to the Energy Market Reform, which describes how EMR is intended to work and gives businesses advice on the measures they can put in place to both mitigate its effects and take advantage of them.

Key areas of the report include the following:

Understand the reforms

The carbon floor price (CFP) is the first EMR proposal to come into force, in April 2013. This is intended to work as an escalator tax, pushing the price of carbon emissions up from £16 a tonne in 2013 to £30a tonne in 2020. These prices currently represent a significant premium on the EU’s emissions trading scheme price, meaning the cost of carbon-based power generation is likely to jump when CFP takes effect.

Another EMR proposal, which also comes into force in 2013, is the emissions performance standard (EPS). This specifies a maximum amount of carbon that new power stations can emit for every kWh of energy produced. One effect of this is that new coal and gas power stations will be more expensive to build and some believe this too will lead to energy prices rising.

Strategic business planning

Businesses should recognise that EMR is predicted to cause energy unit costs to rise by at least 15% a year until 2020 and quite possibly beyond. Consequently, as a significant and rising cost to the business, EMR should be drawn to the board’s attention and strategic measures put in place to manage it.

These measures include: ensuring rising energy prices are part of both short and long-term financial planning; developing a robust procurement strategy to select the best energy provider and contract for the business; and implementing energy efficiency plans to limit the energy use of the business.

Understand your energy consumption

The development of energy efficiency plans will demand that a company gains a detailed understanding of what parts of its business consume the most power and when.

Smart meters and their associated energy management software are the best way of arriving at this understanding. These allow a business to keep a real time track of their energy consumption and identify areas where further energy efficiencies can be achieved through either new equipment or business processes.

In addition, some software packages, such as Ener-G’s E-magine, also help businesses comply with regulations such as the CRC energy efficiency scheme.

Generate your own power

Another major concern surrounding EMR is the potential volatility in energy supplies and prices as the transition to a low carbon economy is made. In order to try and minimise their exposure to these issues many companies are looking at generating their own energy.

Onsite energy generation has the additional advantage that any surplus could take advantage of EMR’s feed-in tariffs. These will start to be available from 2014 and will provide an index-linked tax free payment for the next 20 years. Furthermore any heat generated (for example, from combined heat and power generators) could also be eligible for support under the renewable heat incentive.

Ronan O’Regan, director of renewable and clean technology at PwC, said: “The carbon price floor will have a great impact from 1 April 2013 … quick wins will be all about implementing energy efficiency measures and enhancing business processes.

“However there is also movement towards hedging against prices with onsite energy provision and some organisations are seeing this as a way of increasing their overall sustainability.”

Plain text version:

When businesses address their workplace carbon emissions they often look at expensive projects, such as replacement heating and air conditioning systems or improving insulation.

What is often overlooked is the company’s day to day occupancy of the building and how efficiently they’re using the space, which is what drives their eventual use of the HVAC systems.

Low Carbon Workplace (LCW), part of the Carbon Trust and the UK’s only carbon based landlord, has developed a unique method to create a Whole Building Carbon Regime. A recent report – cutting workplace carbon, not competitiveness – outlines measures for the carbon regime.

Create a carbon league table across all premises

Collate information about company premises . This should include the properties’ Display Energy Certificates (DECs), the buildings’ orientation and their occupancy. Balance these against the notional carbon emissions derived from energy consumption; for example, a building with high occupancy may be more efficient, or a south facing building may need less heating.

Examine space utilisation from a carbon-only perspective

Conduct a space utilisation study from a carbon point of view, ensuring a member of staff walks each office floor every 30 minutes for a couple of weeks. The study will give very different results in terms of space efficiency than those based on financial needs, including how meeting rooms are used and which teams are co-located.

It’s vital to keep these studies based wholly on carbon emissions without taking HR or operations into account.

Link carbon to personal energy consumption

Many offices use a third of their peak energy use overnight when there are only a handful of employees on site. A LCW study has found that employees have on average 10 electrical items plugged in, including PCs, fans and mobile phone chargers. Significant carbon emission reductions can often be made through simply asking employee to turn off or unplug the items they use every day before leaving.

Co-ordinating improvements by MACC priority

In order to understand which measures will bring the best results, use a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC). This is a complicated calculation which plots the capital cost per year per kilogram of CO2 saved alongside the number of years over which a measure will pay for itself financially.

It’s important to perform MACC studies based on premises, as both occupancy and location can change the priorities.

But MACC considerations should not be seen as an overriding technical solution. A new lift could take decades to pay off under MACC criteria, but the effect a new lift could have on morale is a different matter.

Use enhanced benchmarks alongside DECs

DECs calculate a building’s emissions per square foot and then rate that building against others of a similar type. This means offices with a low occupancy could have a higher DEC rating simply because they use less energy even though that usage may be wasteful.

A number of benchmarks are being developed to address these issues, including LCW’s low carbon workplace standard which measures CO2 emissions per person per year. Employ enhanced benchmarks to give a more rounded view of office carbon emissions.

Embed communication within carbon management schemes

It is vital that full stakeholder engagement is employed as part of a carbon management scheme, including landlords.

Establish a governance structure with landlords and other external suppliers: sign a memorandum of understanding and agree KPIs for both parties to work towards.

However keeping momentum is equally important to ensure all stakeholders are kept fully informed and involved in the progress on a regular basis.

John Alker, director of policy at the UK Green Building Council said “[Carbon emissions are] as much about how a building is managed and occupied as it is about technical solutions, because energy savings of 5 to 30% can be made through simple no and low cost changes.

“But to find these savings we need much better information about energy use in the first place, we need a common methodology for measuring it and we need partnership between landlords and tenants.”

A startling new report from the UK has demonstrated the impact food waste can have upon a country’s carbon emissions and water footprint.

The report, published by WWF-UK and the UK government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), says that potentially avoidable food waste represents up to 64 gallons of water per person per day and 727.5 pounds of CO₂ per person per year.

This means that around 6 percent of the UK’s water footprint and 3 percent of its carbon emissions come from food waste. That’s roughly equal to adding 25 percent more cars on the road!

The amount of food we waste is shameful. It’s among the most unsustainable aspects of our high-consumption lifestyle. Curbing it will have a significant impact in improving our overall environmental impact.

How do these figures stack up against the rest of the world?  To answer that question I’ve looked at the US and China.

There are no directly comparable figures, mainly because the UK study is the first of its kind in the world.  However we can extrapolate some figures using published food and waste figures and water footprint and carbon emissions datasets.

United States

A commonly quoted figure is that 40 percent of US food is wasted.  That, by anyone’s measure, is a staggering amount.

The EPA has published a comprehensive set of figures for 2009 showing the CO₂ emissions of each sector, including embedded energy use. These show that 206 million tons of CO₂ come directly from agriculture, plus an additional 53 million tons from food waste in landfill (which is 20 percent of the total). Food waste in the US therefore produces a total of 260 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions ‑ 4.4 percent of the country’s overall carbon footprint.  This is equivalent 2,044 pounds of CO₂ per person per year, or a 41 percent increase in the number of cars on the road.

Only 58 percent of the US’ 696 billion cubic meters/year water footprint comes from agriculture, a relatively low proportion compared to other countries.  However because the rate of food waste is so high, 163 billion cubic meters of water, or 23 percent of the country’s total usage, is consumed unnecessarily every year. In terms of per person use, that amounts to a whopping 420 gallons per person per day.

China

According to figures published by the Laboratory of Organic Geochemistry (PDF), in 2009 around 62 million tons of food waste went to landfill in China.  Further figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (PDF) indicate total food consumption in 2004 was 905 million tons. Which means China wastes about 7 percent of the total food it produces.

A report prepared for the US Congress (PDF) in 2008 estimates that 14 percent of China’s overall carbon emissions come from agriculture. Combining these figures means that only 66 million tonnes CO₂, or 1 percent of its overall emissions is generated each year from China’s food waste.  However, this does not include energy emissions from agriculture or from food waste in landfill, which is a comparatively lower 115 pounds of CO₂ emissions per person per year. Agriculture accounts for over 85 percent of China’s 883 billion cubic meters/year water use, but because the rate of food waste is much lower than the US the amount of water wasted is also low: only 54 billion cubic meters of water, or 6 percent of the total. In human usage terms, that’s about 30 gallons per person per day.

I must emphasise these calculations are my own and don’t have any of the subtleties a proper scientific study will contain. In addition, the UK report differentiates between avoidable and unavoidable food waste but only total food waste figures are available for the US and China.

That said, it’s obvious that food waste has a significant impact upon a country’s carbon emissions and water footprint.  By taking greater care with the food we produce and consume, our environmental impact would be lessened much more than many of the industrial and energy solutions currently being proposed.

Plain Text version:

A revolutionary new initiative in African farming was launched earlier this year as part of the annual International Fair of Animal Resources (FIARA) in Dakar, Senegal. It draws together twelve rural women’s networks from across the west African countries of Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Ghana into a campaign entitled ‘Nous Sommes La Solution! Célébrons l’agriculture familiale’ – ‘We Are The Solution! A celebration of family farming.’

The campaign’s aims include gathering together the best in African farming knowledge and technology, acting as a bulwark against the needless industrialisation of the continent’s agriculture and facilitating the empowerment of women within rural communities.

It will run for three years during which it will focus on building capacity at grass roots level in both traditional agricultural knowledge and the ability of women to shoulder the responsibilities they’ve had to in recent years as effective leaders.

The need for a women-led agricultural campaign in Africa was first discussed during 2007 and plans for a west African organisation were formally laid out during a 2009 meeting of the Network of West African Peasant Producers (ROPPA).

Networks similar to ROPPA have been springing up across Africa recently, creating what Tanya Kerssen, Research Fellow at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy and a major international supporter of We Are The Solution!, describes as ‘a broad constellation of political alliances that form the growing African food sovereignty movement.’

New activism

‘What is astonishing,’ she says ‘Is the great convergence of these movements that has occurred over the past few years.’ We Are The Solution! is part of this convergence of small community based networks into larger campaigns, bringing a new activism to what was previously a higher level campaign.

However, despite this recent gathering of pace, the problems the movement seeks to solve date back nearly half a century. During the 1960s and 1970s the face of farming around the world was changed by a Green Revolution through which intensive farming, pesticides and fertilisers were introduced to countries in South America and Asia.

In the meantime, many African countries were encouraged to take out loans from the World Bank in order to modernise their agricultural economies and participate in the global commodity market.  This modernisation saw the diversity of traditional farming methods replaced with monoculture cropping and countries’ markets opened up to foreign food imports.

Danielle Nierenberg, co-director of the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing The Planet project, believes this approach was always going to be unsuccessful.

‘World Bank projects set up people to fail by focussing on cash crops and commodities rather than traditional crops,’ she says, explaining that small African farmers could never have competed on price with the heavily subsidised agro-industrial complexes elsewhere in the world.

The market liberalisation also meant traditional foods were undercut in price by cheap imports.  So, when communities’ crops failed to sell because they were too expensive, they were left with no food to eat and no income to buy food.

International aid agencies stepped in but food sovereignty, the ability of a community to be in control of its own food and nutrition, had been lost.  Rural communities became locked into a cycle of poverty compounded by climate change, unable to farm for a living and dependent on aid to survive.

Population growth

However, the fact that Africa faces by far the largest population growth in the next 50 years has now led to a desire to reverse the chronic underinvestment in agriculture caused by market liberalisation. This will help to provide food security for the continent and therefore the world.

We Are The Solution! has the specific aim of re-establishing Africa’s food sovereignty through the traditional agricultural species and techniques which have been sidelined for decades.

When it was launched in February, the campaign published a statement of intent, known as The Dakar Declaration, which outlines the initiative’s aims and ambitions.

Chief among these is the rejection of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in favour of an agroecological model of farming.

AGRA is global initiative funded by the Gates and Rockefeller foundations which has become one of the main players in this new push to develop African farmland. It takes its name from the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. However, while the original Green Revolution certainly increased production there is deep concern about whether it is the model Africa should be following.

‘The Green Revolution was never meant to be a long term solution,’ says Danielle Nierenberg. ‘It definitely saved a lot of lives but the over use of pesticides has led to millions of deaths and the contamination of groundwater.’

Tanya Kerssen agrees: ‘Farmers’ organisations are very concerned about the long-term negative effects,’ she says, giving ecological degradation, contamination or loss of local seeds, farmer indebtedness and the concentration of land and resources into fewer hands as examples.

Rejecting GM

In addition, a new technology has since emerged which is also being championed by AGRA: genetically modified (GM) seed.

Like fertilisers in the original Green Revolution, GM seed is being hailed as a ’silver bullet’ which will cure all Africa’s agricultural problems.  Many believe it was the over reliance on such cure-all technologies which led to the destruction of ecosystems and rural communities seen today. This is why The Dakar Declaration ends with the ringing cry ‘No to GMOs, No to the patenting of life. No to agribusiness!’

However, We Are The Solution! is not a technology or investment free zone.  The difference between AGRA and the agroecology The Dakar Declaration embraces is not what you use to improve farming, but how it’s used.

Agroecology is a science driven blend of agronomy and ecology.  Its foundation is the understanding that farmers gain specific knowledge through the generations about how to use their local ecosystems improve soil quality and combat pests.

It is this knowledge which is then used to drive technology and investment, in contrast to AGRA where the technology is used to drive farming practices.

An example Danielle Nierenberg cites is the ability of communities to store grain from one harvest as seed for the next crop. Some communities have perfectly adequate methods of seed storage, while in others they are prone to attack from mould and fungi.

One solution would be for the farmers to buy GM seed every year which had been made resistant to these mould and fungi. However, an alternative would be to invest in modern seed storage facilities within which the grain could be protected.

New business

Danielle Nierenberg goes on to point out how this would have a profound impact upon local economies. ‘Investing in these kinds of things brings better resilience both in agriculture and economics’ she says. ‘It creates new businesses, such as selling and storing seeds, and leads to a professionalisation of the agricultural community.’

Many of these arguments are highlighted in a recent report by Olivier de Schutter, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.  In Agroecology and the Right to Food he argues that agroecology is the solution for Africa because it fulfils all three key objectives for food production:

–    Meeting escalating needs: while both industrial agriculture and agroecology can be scaled up to produce more, cutting down on waste and redirecting food crops away from livestock feed and biofuels are likely to have a bigger impact;
–    Increasing the benefits to smallholders first: agriculture is twice as effective at reducing poverty as any other industry, but only where local farmers are able to purchase from local suppliers;
–    Preserving the ability to produce food from the same land in the future: avoiding, for example, the destruction of biodiversity, the pollution of soil and water sources, and the destabilising of markets.

The report concludes by recommending that countries should support decentralised organisations which are focussed upon the exchange of sustainable practices.

This is precisely what We Are The Solution! has been set up to do. The Dakar Declaration isn’t just about protecting and enhancing the diversity of African farming practices. It also strongly emphasises the need to nurture and encourage the growing empowerment of women in rural Africa.

Empowering women

Rural communities in Africa have been traditionally male dominated and women have often struggled to have their voice heard. This is now changing, sadly through the devastation AIDS has wrought and the way poverty is driving many men from their villages to seek work in the cities.

‘Women are forced to take on more responsibilities,’ explains Tanya Kerssen, ‘While wielding little control over the land, resources and the products of their labour. So women do a lot with very little to feed their families and communities, and as such their empowerment is paramount to advancing African food sovereignty.’

Between 70 and 80 per cent of food produced in rural Africa is produced by women. We Are The Solution! seeks to bring networks of these women together, not only to share agricultural knowledge but also to share advice on gaining resources, influencing communities and becoming effective leaders.

‘We Are The Solution! is a political call to action to engage in the structural transformation of local, national and global food systems,’ says Tanya Kerssen. ‘There is a spirit of discontent across the continent about African governments that are unaccountable to their people and beholden to foreign interests,’ she continues. ‘In sub Saharan Africa there have been numerous large-scale protests that threatened the political legitimacy of governments .. these rebellions were cast as “food riots,” but in fact they indicate a much deeper dissatisfaction that is being expressed in various democratisation movements, of which food sovereignty is very much a part.’

So We Are The Solution! is more than a straightforward anti-agro-industrialisation campaign. It is all about Africans taking back their sovereignty as well as their food from western politicians and investors. And should it take hold, who knows how the next chapter of African history will unfold?

Plain text version:

One of the biggest problems for businesses looking to increase their energy efficiency is the large, upfront spend initiatives can require. Typically, these focus on projects such as large-scale building refurbishments or replacing equipment across the board.

A new report from the sustainability consultancy Verisae, entitled Ten Ways to Slash Energy Cost & Reduce Budget Uncertainty, has highlighted several techniques companies can implement without making a large capital commitment.

Although the report is focused upon the retail sector and North American grocery stores in particular, its discussion of low-cost solutions is useful for any business with one or more moderately sized premises.

The report also contains ten key strategies a company can use to improve its energy efficiency in day to day operations. These cover the following areas:

Metering and monitoring

Many companies rely upon having a single meter for each of their premises. This can be too blunt an instrument with which to measure energy consumption, and these meters don’t give any insight into what energy is being consumed when and by what.

To gain this understanding, businesses ought to consider installing submeters in their premises. These will help identify the relative consumption of different aspects of the business, for example, by lighting, kitchen use or IT.

Businesses can also benefit from installing real-time energy monitoring. This will help the company discover spikes in usage which may not otherwise be identified.

Peak consumption planning

Energy consumption can vary dramatically at different times of the day and different times of the year. For example, heating usage will vary throughout the year, while kitchen-energy consumption will peak in the middle of each day.

As smart metering and real-time energy buying is introduced, identifying these peaks and implementing strategies to overcome them will become a key part of a business’s strategy. Such strategies can include changing business processes or storing cheap electricity onsite, both of which will improve a company’s overall energy efficiency.

Facilities maintenance

A lot of facilities energy saving initiatives revolve around the installation of efficient heating, ventilation, air conditioning and lighting systems. While these can deliver good long-term savings, it is just as important to keep on top of the maintenance of existing systems to ensure they are running as efficiently as possible.

It is, therefore, especially important for businesses to monitor these systems’ consumption and identify when usage starts to climb. This can indicate whether a service has increased energy efficiency or can point to fundamental problems.

Consumption analysis

As well as focusing upon the energy consumed by different parts of the business at different times, it is also important to take a long-term view and establish a mechanism for comparing energy consumption data every day, week, month and year. This will help to identify long-term trends and indicate equipment or business processes which are either failing to meet – or outperforming – their expected energy efficiency.
Benchmarks and best practice

A final way multi-site companies can produce energy efficiencies is through introducing a companywide system of benchmarks. Often similar equipment or business processes in different locations can perform with different energy efficiency, depending upon a variety of factors. Once benchmarks have been established, further analysis can be used to produce identify variations and produce companywide standards and best practices.

“It is clear that companies should take a holistic view of their energy strategy,” said Hugh Jones, managing director of Carbon Trust Advisory Services. “Capital investment can deliver a positive return on investment, but there are numerous energy efficiency options for organisations to consider which do not require significant capital outlay up-front.

“For example, Sainsbury’s appointed an energy champion in each of its stores to encourage best practice amongst other staff, promote good facilities management and highlight how the store is doing in comparison with other outlets. This simple measure helped bring about a 5% saving on energy consumption across the group.”

In 2011 companies’ supply chains will gain greater importance, irrespective of the size of businesses involved.

The primary driver of this trend is taking recognised measurements for water consumption, waste and greenhouse gas emissions and applying them to a company’s supply chain.

But many businesses are finding this tricky for their overseas suppliers as the practical implementation of responsibility can vary from country to country.

Shirahime, a UK based ethical fashion consultancy, has published a guide to responsibly sourcing textiles and clothes from India.

Despite its narrow country and industry focus, the guide is packed with advice for any business looking to find responsible goods or services suppliers from overseas.

Key points

Be clear about the outcomes you want to achieve

Define aims clearly and build a strategy around the outcomes you want to achieve. Don’t try to do everything all at once: focus on what is important now.

Don’t look exclusively for suppliers who have certification. Certification is a costly process and may not guarantee the specific outcomes youwant.

Instead, visit potential suppliers and examine their operations for yourself. If you do this, make sure you have a suitable translator and cultural liaison who can guide your decision making process.

In addition, start networking, even if it’s with your competitors. If you do this up front it can vastly increase your chances of success in finding the right supplier.

Consider company size alongside business practices

There can be a correlation between a supplier’s size, the goods or services it provides, and its ability to operate responsibly.

As a broad rule of thumb, the larger the company the more comprehensive their offering will be. Yet the larger the company, the more likely it is that their business is focussed upon financial efficiency, not responsible practice.

Therefore, if you’re looking for a responsible supplier it may be worth choosing smaller producers rather than bulk providers as your partners.

To make this affordable, you should collaborate with other companies, including competitors. Effective purchasing partnerships can influence medium sized enterprises significantly, leading to a greater overall focus on sustainability.

Consider alternatives to your preferred goods, service or country

India is the largest organic cotton producer in the world. However it also produces other sustainable natural fibres and is the eighth largest wool producer in the world. Few people would think of India as a source of wool and if your intention was to buy textiles from India you wouldn’t immediately think of wool, would you?

In order to get the most responsible procurement deal, businesses have to change their mindset and be open minded about both the country of origin and the goods or service they’re looking to procure.

Be prepared to invest as well as purchase

This final point is possibly the most important in Shirahime’s report: the days of simply handing over the money to supplier are fading fast.

Instead, businesses need to think about how they can contribute long term value to their suppliers’ enterprise beyond a simple commercial deal.

This is where the value of being clear in your outcomes and partnering with other companies can yield substantial benefits.

For example, your business wants to reduce carbon emissions and you and your partners have found a suitable company. However, you know this company’s health and safety record is not desirable … what can you do to improve it?

As part of the commercial relationship with your supplier, you can offer health and safety training and leverage resources across the partner companies as appropriate.

This is not about financial gain. It’s about investing long term in the sustainability of both the supplier and purchasing companies: sharing skills and knowledge on a commercial basis for the benefit of all.

Richard Perkins, WWF’s senior commodities adviser, agrees with Shirahime’s approach. “You must be clear about the risks arising from your impacts and dependencies, that you’re trying to mitigate,” he says.

“It’s all about drawing up your own analysis and then speaking to stakeholders to place risk mitigation and identification of opportunities alongside other purchasing criteria.”

A huge argument over the future of forestry in the UK came to a dramatic end last week when the Prime Minister, David Cameron, publically backed down and admitted he was unhappy with his government’s policy.

But what was the fuss about in the first place and why was a government with a clear parliamentary majority forced into such a humiliating retreat?

The UK has embarked upon a round of severe public service cuts to try and reduce the country’s debts as quickly as possible. The government did its sums and discovered it could make up to $8 billion from selling publically owned forests.

These represent 44 percent of the forests to which the public has free access in England (Scotland and Wales are not involved).

In addition, and unlike many privately owned monoculture forests, they are managed in a sustainable manner where timber production sits alongside long term biodiversity planning and the preservation of ancient woodlands.

Furthermore, not all of the land is given over to forestry. Over 15 percent is open land, including heaths, bogs and grasslands.

This makes the publically owned forests invaluable, interlocking pockets of habitat, tucked into the landscape and forming an unparalleled network through which biodiversity can move and thrive.

England has the greatest population density in Europe and in the US only the State of New Jersey is more densely populated. This places exceptional pressure upon land use and the preservation of natural habitats often comes off second best.

The government’s plans included allowing ministers to sell the public forests without further consultation. There were promises to protect habitats and public access, but as the forests were to be sold as commercial ventures few believed this protection would be robust or long lasting.

So, quite simply, the people rebelled. It wasn’t as spectacular as Egypt, nor was it what David Cameron meant when he called for greater social engagement in the running of public services.

But it was effective and shows that the English understand some things are more important than just turning a quick profit.

Publically owned forests are still seriously threatened by simplified planning rules and the continuing deep cuts in public services. However the UK government now knows it will need to tread more carefully in the future.

Plain Text Version:

In November 2009, in a small room at the United Nations in New York, a group of the world’s most powerful financiers gathered to discuss something close to their hearts: stock markets.

However rather than talking about capital driven considerations, such as cash flows and profit maximisation, their focus was on promoting environmental and social considerations as criteria for sound investments.

This is because the meeting was hosted by the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI) and most of the meeting’s attendees were signatories to the scheme. Its focus was how signatories could fulfil the third of PRI’s six principles: to seek environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure from the companies in which they invest. ESG is the twin of the more widely known Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). While CSR is the disclosure of information by a company, ESG is the criteria against which investment decisions should be made. The two do not correlate exactly, but they certainly work hand in hand.

Many investors in the Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) community had previously thought CSR disclosure would happen through government regulation, but the meeting believed it had found an alternative: Sustainable Stock Exchanges, where the production of CSR data is part of the exchange’s listing rules, the hurdles a company has to jump over in order to be publically traded.

In September 2010 the group met again, this time in China. A survey of the world’s top 30 stock exchanges was presented, which showed that while only 21 per cent of respondents supported changing their listing rules, over 75 per cent accepted they had some responsibility towards society and the environment. The meeting ended with the initiative’s leader saying it would write to stock exchanges around the world ‘to demand that sustainability reporting becomes embedded within listing rules and that listed companies put a forward looking sustainability strategy to vote at their AGM.’

This leader isn’t one of the more recognisable ethical investment companies such as Triodos Bank and the Co-operative Group, who are nevertheless part of the initiative.
It’s Aviva Investors, part of the world’s fifth largest investment company and the largest UK-owned institutional investor. Why is this giant leading attempts to reform the global financial system of which it is such a vital part?

Failure of voluntary approach

Steve Waygood is Head of Sustainability and Investor Research at Aviva Investors and the man writing the letter to the leading stock exchanges. ‘[Aviva] recognises that sustainability is important and should be integrated into portfolio management,’ he explains, ‘The question is how to do this in practice?’ He lists three possible options: expecting companies to adopt CSR criteria voluntarily, changing company law or changing stock exchange listing rules. ‘Voluntarism isn’t working,’ he says, citing Aviva Investor’s experience when they wrote to 10,000 of the world’s listed companies to ask them to sign up to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), one of the less stringent CSR frameworks.

Only 150 of the 10,000 were prepared to take the step voluntarily, and only 10 per cent of the companies signed up to the UNGC are of interest to institutional investors, the rest being either state or privately owned. Of the other two options, he believes company law is reviewed too infrequently to be useful in the current environment, leaving changing stock exchange listing rules as the only viable solution for institutional investors. ‘Aviva Investors would prefer stock exchanges to change their listing rules to include a sustainability strategy from companies to be put forwards at AGMs,’ he says, likening the proposed situation to directors’ remuneration reports.

These have to be prepared every year and submitted for approval at the AGM. The vote is only advisory, but it is taken as a severe criticism of a company’s management it the board cannot get shareholders to agree with its overall strategy, as activist shareholders have shown in recent years. Forcing a vote on sustainability at AGMs will stimulate more discussion of sustainability within the boardroom than simply changing company law to make CSR reports mandatory.

Steve Waygood is realistic enough to recognise that this engagement on big markets is not enough to solve all the sustainability issues in the financial world. One reason may be that it excludes social enterprises.

The problems of social enterprises

Social enterprises are companies whose primary aim is to create a positive change in society. As businesses they need to make a profit but they are willing to sacrifice maximised profit in order to ensure the effect on the ground is as far reaching as possible. These businesses traditionally hit a glass ceiling and become disenfranchised from the investment world, according to Pradeep Jethi, a driving force behind the Social Stock Exchange project.

They receive good capital investment when they first launch, he says, because they are in a rapid growth phase and this fits with traditional investors’ aim of creating a large profit within a short space of time. However in later years investors are not so keen on the slower growth rates and the businesses themselves shy away from traditional investors who may ask them to compromise their core mission in order to maximise profits.

The Social Stock Exchange could change this by providing a market exclusively designed for impact investors to look directly at the opportunities provided by social enterprises. ‘What differentiates us is that our companies put social justice first,’ says Pradeep Jethi, explaining that there would be no need for mandatory CSR listing rules because only socially aware companies would be allowed onto the exchange in the first place. That differentiation could attract big money. Impact investment is a fast growing section of the finance sector and includes names such as JP Morgan whose impact investment fund is currently worth over $41bn.

Pradeep Jethi admits it will be difficult to keep the speculators out of the Social Stock Exchange simply because it’s up to the companies where they accept investment from, not the exchange. ‘When a company first IPOs (lists on the exchange) we will advise them to go to impact investors,’ he says, ‘And one of the things we would like to do is to ask that the share register should be published once or twice a year.’

The hope is that this additional scrutiny will keep away the gambling class of speculators who don’t like the wider world to know which companies they’re betting on.

Human rights a low priority

However reforming stock exchanges can never be a complete solution according to Scott McAusland, Advocacy and Communications Officer for the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. ‘Targets mean investors are committing on these issues,’ he says, ‘But investors will never be as good as NGOs at holding businesses to account for human rights abuses’. His issue is that human rights is still seen as a very poor cousin of environment issues and has far less emphasis placed upon it by reporting frameworks, companies and investors alike. This is because human rights abuses usually only come to light after a certain length of time has passed. Even where a link to a company is proved access to legal redress for the victim can be impossible without an independent organisation prepared to take action.

Investors are unlikely to be able to take on this role because they’re naturally more concerned with a company’s mitigation and preventative measures than ensuring the victim is receives proper remedy. ‘The thinking simply isn’t as well developed,’ he says citing the recent example of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), another CSR framework, deciding not to update its human rights indicators because the area is just too complicated.

In order to become sustainable, national and global financial systems will therefore need to take account of many factors and just one solution is unlikely to be able to embrace all the changes required. This is neatly summed up by Harry Morrison, General Manager of The Carbon Trust, who points to the difference between reporting upon a company’s operations and taking steps to change them for the better.

He suggests that investors may wish to use carbon as an example of how other impacts should be handled. In particular, he points to how the Carbon Trust has not just engaged with businesses in measuring their carbon footprint but also actively helped them to set targets to reduce it. However even here it appears that there is a mismatch between business expectations and their actions on the ground.  For example, a recent Carbon Trust survey found that three quarters of UK companies expect carbon reporting to become mandatory, yet almost the same number admit they don’t measure their carbon footprint.

Even more tellingly, the survey shows that less than half of the companies cited investor pressure as a reason to cut their carbon emissions, while over three quarters cited consumer expectations.

There is no doubt that sustainability has gained momentum within the financial sector. The volume of UK funds placed under SRI has increased by 19 per cent in the last two years and many markets are reporting that the value of SRI funds is growing faster than the market as a whole. The danger is that once this rapid expansion of SRI and impact investing has tailed off the money will move to the next high growth area.

To stop this happening investors and governments need to have well informed consumers telling them what to do and activist NGOs prepared to keep the pressure up and hold businesses to account. In other words, all stakeholders need to participate together in making CSR and ESG become everyday business and investment practice. Only this will ensure finance moves to a truly sustainable model.