Consensus on Standards That Matter: Global Footprint Releases 2009 Footprint Standards and Comments on Stigliz Report

Global Footprint Network, our collaborator on the Summit of Ecological Creditor Nations, has just released its 2009 Ecological Footprint Standards, building on the 2006 standards (the first set of internationally recognized footprint standards), and including more than five substantial revisions.  You can download the Ecological Footprint Standards 2009 but be advised that the report is not for a general audience, lacking extensive, introductory material on analysis or communication.  Reading the report, however, is not necessary for non-experts to get excited about the evolution of consensus not only on Footprint standards themselves but on their increasing importance to sustainability and thrivability.  Good standards matter.  We agree with Global Footprint Network on why standards are important to calculating Footprint:

A growing number of government agencies, organizations and communities are adopting the Ecological Footprint as a core indicator of sustainable resource use. As the number of Ecological Footprint practitioners around the world increases, different approaches to conducting Footprint studies could lead to fragmentation and divergence of the methodology. This would reduce the ability of the Footprint to produce consistent and comparable assessments across applications, and could generate confusion. The value of the Footprint as a trusted sustainability metric therefore depends not only on the scientific integrity of the methodology, but also on consistent and transparent presentation of results across analyses. It also depends on communicating results of analyses in a manner that does not distort or misrepresent findings. To meet these goals, Global Footprint Network initiated a consensus, committee-based process for the development of standards governing Footprint applications, and for an ongoing scientific review of the methodology. Ensuring that Footprint results are both credible and consistent will encourage even more widespread adoption of the Ecological Footprint, increasing its effectiveness as a catalyst for a sustainable future.

Consensus on emerging standards has also been an important issue in corporate social responsibility for decades.  There weren’t always organizations like Global Footprint Network or B Corp to help shine light on which standards really matter, which practices really result in the intended goals instead of, for example, simply green washing.  And building this consensus has been a slow process.  Debate about the inadequacy of Gross Domestic Product as a standard by which the wealth of countries is judged is also decades-long, although today it’s much harder to successfully argue that money spent on things like building prisons and alarm systems actually adds to a country’s wealth–but the debate on standards had to actually (and painfully slowly) penetrate to the level of a collective questioning of what wealth really is for consensus to begin to swing toward new standards.  And such a debate is meaningless unless set in the context of consensus about the physical limits of our planet’s ability to regenerate itself and to therefore sustain our quality of life.

Which is why Global Footprint Network’s response to the Stiglitz report from the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which has focused on one challenge–how we can move beyond GDP to broader measures of a nation’s economic, social and environmental well-being–merits significant attention:

The report synthesizes the complex field of economic performance and social progress indicators and substantiates the voices of early pioneers like Hazel Henderson and Hermann Daly. With this report, there is now wide agreement that humanity’s success in the 21st century depends largely on robust navigational tools. The report has built a productive platform for further discussions. However, there is still much work to do. The report points out that there is no consensus yet as to which indicators provide the greatest value, and how they should be applied in guiding public policy.

First, it is crucial to build on the important work of the Commission – and perhaps its most significant finding is the need to track distinct policy goals separately: economic, performance, quality of life, and environmental sustainability. We agree that combining these various aspects of well-being would dilute clarity and provide numerical results with little practical utility. However, there still remain some misconceptions about the Ecological Footprint and the overall significance of ecological constraints, as reflected in the report.   Environmental sustainability is an area that we believe affects all others – from the well-being of a nation’s economy to the well-being of its people. For this reason, we believe it is important to directly address some of the issues about the Footprint raised in the report.

The Commission created by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economists Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University and Professor Amartya Sen of Harvard, has opened a debate about human well-being in the 21st century. To succeed, we must ensure that the debate remains open, comprehensive, and relevant to emerging trends.

We’re strongly encouraging the Commission to work with the Global Footprint Network to build on this work, so critical to creating and accelerating the consensus that can lead to widespread adoption of standards that matter.

Download the Stiglitz Commission Report
Download Global Footprint Network’s Response to the Report

State of the World Forum Launches in Brazil: 2020 By 2050

SEE END OF POST FOR EVENT LIVE BROADCAST LINKS

NextNow Collaboratory is an organizational partner of State of the World Forum, launching the global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign today in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.  This Forum marks the first time people will be coming together from around the world at this scale to strategize plans of action to reduce carbon emissions globally by 80% by 2020 (instead of 2050, widely accepted by governments but acknowledged by scientists as “too late”) not just through a change in behavior (which can be difficult to sustain) but by re-aligning our relationship to ourselves and to our values, to each other, to Earth and to Life itself.  It also marks the first time a major media company launches a national public education campaign on global warming intended to mobilize a nation to take action– from stopping clear-cutting of the Amazon to creating sustainable lifestyles.

Over 200 scientists, political leaders, business executives, academics, civil society activists and artists from 20 nations and across Brazil are in attendance.  But this initiative is about everyone becoming a climate leader, because that’s what it will take. We’re all part of this movement to build a future in alignment with our most deeply-held values, with the natural systems of Earth and all Life.  Increase your awareness by visiting the State of the World Forum 2020 Climate Leadership Media and Resources page, and join us for the next Forum in Washington D.C. February 28 – March 3, 2010.

Below is the press release for this historic meeting in Belo Horizonte:

PRESS RELEASE
August 4, 2009

Globo TV launches unprecedented national public education ads on global warming to support the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign

The Globo Organization, the largest media company in Brazil and the fourth largest in the world, will premiere its national public education ads to support the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign at the State of the World Forum in Belo Horizonte, Brazil August 4 – 7, 2009. The aim is to educate the public about the escalating dangers of global warming and to encourage “climate leadership” in reducing carbon emissions and developing sustainable lifestyles.

This action is unprecedented and marks the first time anywhere in the world when a major media company has taken up the issue of global warming and begun a sustained public educational effort in support of a national mobilization on global warming. “We are delighted at this demonstration of climate leadership,” said Jim Garrison, President of the State of the World Forum. “ We believe it will serve as a model for other major companies to join Globo and begin to educate their constituencies about the escalating crisis of global warming.”

Albert Alcouloumbre, Director of Planning and Social Programs at Globo, said, “We consider our support for the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign to be part of our responsibility to our viewers. Globo has a long history of social responsibility going back to the founder Roberto Marinho, and we are proud of this tradition.”

Ricardo Young, President of the Ethos Institute, said, “Brazil is ready for a national 2020 mobilization on this critical issue.”

The Globo ads support the launch of a global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign and a Brazil 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign in Belo Horizonte August 4 – 7, when scientists, government leaders, business executives and civil society activists from around the world and Brazil will meet to begin planning 2020 campaigns.

Says Garrison: “The urgency of global warming mandates that each and every one of us become climate leaders. For the first time in our lives, indeed for the first time in history, all of us must take responsibility for our climate, whether at the individual, community, company, institution, state, or national level. We are all responsible for global warming. We must all share in the leadership required to solve it, for nothing less than the fate of human civilization is at stake. The crisis is that stark, the choice is that clear, the leadership required is that urgent.”

At the heart of the Climate Leadership Campaign and the purpose of the Belo Horizonte conference is resolving the contradiction between what our governments are negotiating and what our scientists are asserting about the accelerating pace of global warming. Our governments are negotiating as if the world has another forty years to solve global warming. The Copenhagen negotiations call for an 80% reduction of CO2 by 2050.  But the more our scientists know, the more urgent the crisis becomes and the more urgently we must act. The current world situation with regard to climate change is worse than the worst cast scenario of the IPCC in its 2007 Report.

It is for these reasons that when he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri said “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Thousands of scientists around the world agree. Lester Brown, who will keynote the Belo Horizonte Forum, states “The situation is so urgent it has come down to mobilizing to save civilization.”

Says Garrison:  “Climate leadership must be based on what is scientifically urgent, not on what is politically expedient. Thus our strategic intention and call is a very simple one: ‘2050 by 2020.’ What our governments are negotiating for 2050 must be accomplished by 2020 and we must all be prepared to demonstrate the climate leadership required to accomplish this.”

For further information: Leandro Grandi at FSB Communications at leandro.grandi@fsb.com.br or Jim Garrison at jgarrison@worldforum.org

For further information on the State of the World Forum in Belo Horizonte:
http://brasil2020.com.br

For further information on the State of the World Forum:
http://worldforum.org

TO WATCH LIVE BROADCASTS OF THE BELO HORIZONTE STATE OF THE WORLD FORUM:

6:00- 8:00 PM EST ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 4

9:00 AM- 5:00 PM EST ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5

nef’s (un)Happy Planet Index 2.0: US 114 of 143

Thanks to Dr. Paul Ray for distributing this through our State of the World Forum discussion list: www.happyplanetindex.org As the G8 prepare to meet in Italy this week, the second global ranking of the ecological efficiency with which the world’s nations deliver long and happy lives for the people who live there – the ‘Happy Planet Index’ – reveals a surprising picture of the relative wealth and progress of nations. Latin America tops the Index with Costa Rica the ‘greenest and happiest’ country.  Nine of the ten highest-scoring nations are Latin American The USA, China and India were all ‘greener and happier’ twenty years ago than today The World’s richest plummet from 1960s to late 1970s, with scores still lower today than 1961 The UK comes 74th, USA 114th out of 143 nations surveyed. The report, The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why good lives don’t have to cost the earth, published today, Saturday 4 July 2009, by nef (the new economics foundation) presents the results of the second global compilation of the Happy Planet Index (HPI). The new Index is based on improved data for 143 countries around the world, representing 99 per cent of the world’s population. The report, with a foreword by the ecological economist, Herman Daly, shows that globally, we are still far from achieving good lives within the Earth’s finite resource limits. And, although there are signs of hope, overall we are still heading in the wrong direction. The HPI provides the first ever analysis of trends over time for what are supposedly the world’s most developed nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The results are not promising: OECD nations’ HPI scores plummeted between 1960 and the late 1970s. Although there have been some gains since then, HPI scores were still higher in 1961 than in 2005. Life satisfaction and life expectancy combined have increased 15 per cent over the 45-year period, but it has come at an earth-shattering cost – an increase in ecological footprint per head of 72 per cent. Of a group of 36 major nations it was possible to track over time in detail, around two-thirds increased their HPI scores marginally between 1990 and 2005, but the three largest countries in the world China, India and the USA (all aggressively pursuing growth-based development models) have all seen their HPI scores drop in that time. “As the world faces the triple crunch of deep financial crisis, accelerating climate change and the looming peak in oil production we desperately need a new compass to guide us. Following the siren’s song of economic growth has delivered only marginal benefits to the World’s poorest whilst undermining the basis of their livelihoods. What’s more, it hasn’t notably improved the well-being of those who were already rich, or even provided economic stability. Now we must use the Happy Planet Index to break the spell and chart a new course for a high well-being low-carbon economy before our high-consuming lifestyles plunge us into the chaos of irreversible climate change” says Nic Marks, founder of the centre for well-being at nef. By stripping the economy back to its meaningful outputs (lives of varying length and happiness) and the ultimate inputs (the Earth’s finite resources) the HPI is the definitive efficiency measure. It provides a clear guide to what ultimately matters to us – our well-being in terms of long, happy and meaningful lives – and what matters for the planet – our rate of resource consumption. But the Index also provides clear signs of hope. Overall, the HPI reveals that the world is heading in the wrong direction, but nations that perform well on the Index provide valuable insights into how we could do things differently: Costa Rica tops the Happy Planet Index 2.0. Costa Ricans report the highest life satisfaction in the world, have the second-highest average life expectancy of the New World (second only to Canada) and have an ecological footprint that means that the country only narrowly fails to achieve the goal of ‘one-planet living’: consuming its fair share of the Earth’s natural resources. Latin America tops the Index. Nine of the top ten nations on the Index are in Latin America. The highest-ranking G20 country in terms of HPI is Brazil, in 9th place out of 143 nations. Island nations perform well. Five of the ten small island nations included in the HPI are in the top 20 per cent of the HPI rankings. Middle-income countries, like those in Latin America and South East Asia tend to be the closest to achieving sustainable well-being. Our current development model performs best at middle-income levels, but even at its optimum, it is unable to deliver good lives that do not cost the Earth. In fact, the countries that are meant to represent successful development are some of the worst performing in terms of delivering well-being within the Earth’s limits: Rich, developed nations fare poorly. The highest placed Western nation is the Netherlands – managing only 43rd out of 143. The UK still languishes midway down the table – 74th, well behind Germany, Italy and France. It is just pipped by Georgia and Slovakia, but ahead of Japan and Ireland. The USA fares particularly poorly, in 114th place out of 143. No one country listed in the HPI 2.0 achieves all three goals of high life satisfaction, high life expectancy and one-planet living. But the differences between nations show that it is possible to live long, happy lives with much smaller ecological footprints than the highest-consuming nations. And there may be other positive pay-offs. For many in the West, the struggle to increase incomes has come at the expense of our social capital and mental health. The challenge for the West, the report says, is not to continue increasing our monetary incomes, but to ensure meaningful lives, and strong social ties. Often, achieving these aims means reducing the focus on consumption, and freeing up time for other pursuits. The HPI shows that good lives that do not cost the Earth really are possible. Comparisons show that long, happy lives can be achieved with far lower levels of resource consumption: People in the Netherlands live on average over a year longer than people in the USA, and have similar levels of life satisfaction – yet their per capita ecological footprint is less than half the size (4.4 global hectares compared with 9.4 global hectares). The Netherlands is over twice as ecologically efficient at achieving good lives as the USA. Costa Ricans also live slightly longer than Americans, and report much higher levels of life satisfaction, and yet have a footprint that is less than a quarter the size. “The economy, communities, lifestyles and aspirations of a happy planet will be very different to those that lock us into our current ecological inefficiency. The Happy Planet Index suggests that the path we have been following is, without exception, unable to deliver all three goals: high life satisfaction, high life expectancy and one-planet living. Instead we need a new development model that delivers good lives that don’t cost the Earth for all. We should look to the Happy Planet Index to guide us in that endeavour” says Saamah Abdallah, nef researcher and the report’s lead author. The report sets out a ‘Happy Planet Charter’ calling for an unprecedented collective global effort to develop a new narrative of human progress, encourage good lives that don’t cost the Earth, and to reduce consumption in the highest-consuming nations as the biggest barrier to sustainable well-being. The charter calls for: Governments to measure people’s well-being and environmental impact consistently and regularly, and to develop a framework of national accounts that considers the interaction between the two so as to guide us towards sustainable well-being; Developed nations to set an HPI target of 89 by 2050 – this means reducing per capita footprint to one planet living, increasing mean life satisfaction to eight (on a scale of 0 to 10) and continuing to the gradual increase in mean life expectancy to 87 years; Developed nations and the international community to support developing nations in achieving the same target by 2070. In times of great crisis, come great opportunities. According to the Happy Planet Index, now is the time for societies around the world to speak out for a happier planet, to identify a new vision of progress, and to demand new tools to help us work towards it. The HPI is one of these tools. But if it is to be effective it must also inspire people to act. Click here for the entire 64 page report. Visit the Happy Planet Index website to measure your own HPI and to support our Charter for a Happy Planet.

Ecological Creditor Nation Brazil Mobilizes: State of the World Forum moves to February 2010 (Washington, D.C.) and August 2010 (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

In February, NextNow Collab helped launch the Ecological Creditor Nation Summit initiated by the Global Footprint Network.  Brazil is one of the approximately 20% of nations studied that maintains Ecological Creditor status.  Now NextNow Collab partner State of the World Forum is moving its Washington D.C. conference from November 2009 to February, 2010, largely due to the extensive involvement of Brazil, which is launching a Brazil 2020 campaign in partnership with the Forum in August 2009–the developments of which will go far in informing the subsequent Forum in Washington, D.C.– and which we plan to attend.  All of these efforts combined act to energize the emerging global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.  We’re really excited by these developments and inspired by Brazil’s commitment.

Below is the announcement from Jim Garrison as it appears on the State of the World Forum website.

Dear Friends of the State of the World Forum,

We want to inform you that the upcoming State of the World Forum has been rescheduled from November 12-14, 2009 to February 28 – March 3, 2010. This has come about due to the extraordinary success of our endeavors and the fact that what was originally an intent to convene a conference has morphed into a global strategy to develop a 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.  Allow me to explain.

A year ago, we decided to convene the 2009 State of the World Forum in November 2009 to address the escalating crisis of global warming.  We decided to do so using an integral framework, a perspective that was unique to the debate and which would allow for very synergistic cross sectoral dialogue. In early March of this year, I was invited down to Brazil to give some lectures on climate change and to speak about the integral approach we were taking on the issue.  What took place can only be described as phenomenal.  Each place I went, the response was not only an affirmation of the urgency of the crisis global warming represents but a willingness to begin working to develop a national mobilization in Brazil to support our efforts to mobilize action by 2020. Similar responses have been forthcoming in Australia, Holland, and Mexico and from a range of organizations and companies around the world.

To make a long story very short, four months later, we are launching a global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign as well as launching a national Brazil 2020 campaign in Belo Horizonte, Brazil August 4 – 7 with over a hundred international specialists in climate change and several hundred activists from all over Brazil.  The decision has also been made to convene the 2010 State of the World Forum in Rio de Janeiro August 30 – September 3, 2010.  The emergence of a global strategy and such dynamic movement in Brazil has necessitated a reframing of the 2009 State of the World Forum in Washington.

There are four main reasons we are changing the date:

1) By moving to the 2010 February 28 – March date we will have much more space available to us at the Washington Hilton hotel to accommodate more people and to design a more interactive event with more breakout rooms.

2) The new dates for the Washington Forum will place this event equidistance between the two other Forums, giving us the opportunity to respond to the developments from Belo Horizonte in August 4 -7, 2009 and incorporate the work from Washington February 28 – March 3, 2010 into the Rio Forum August 30 – September 3, 2010.  This Phase One plan is in keeping with our overall orientation as a  global Campaign as opposed to a single event.  Our intent is to convene State of the World Forums in major cities worldwide over the next ten years, through 2020, as we building support for our 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.

3) We have recently established an important partnership with Globo TV, the largest media company in Brazil and South America, and are in the process of developing programming ideas, including the production of at least one special in conjunction with the Washington Forum.  This gives us the opportunity to create other global television distribution deals and give the rescheduled Forum world-wide exposure.  The new February dates will give us the time necessary to make these arrangements.

4) The new dates will place the conference in Washington at a time when the Congress is in session, thus providing us with an opportunity to involve members of Congress in the Forum and include some lobbying activity concerning the overall Forum 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.  As you may know, the United States is essentially acting like a failed state in the climate change domain and so there is a serious and urgent need for further education and lobbying in the Congress.

We sincerely hope that you appreciate the logic of our need to reschedule the Forum and that this change of dates has not inconvenienced you in any way.

We would invite you to peruse our website, which as been transformed from featuring an event to describing an entire global strategy: http://www.worldforum.org/

The urgency of global warming mandates that each and every one of us become climate leaders. For the first time in our lives, indeed for the first time in history, all of us must take responsibility for our climate, whether at the individual, community, company, institution, state, or national level. We are all responsible for global warming. We must all share in the leadership required to solve it, for nothing less than the fate of human civilization is at stake. The crisis is that stark, the choice is that clear, the leadership required is that urgent.

If we rise to this challenge, if we take climate leadership, we will generate climate justice and climate prosperity because it is precisely our capacity to solve our greatest crisis that affords us our greatest opportunities for growth within the context of sustainability and alignment with natural systems.

NextNow Collaboratory Joins with Strategic Council on Plastic Pollution–Please Add Your Support (UPDATED)

This post now includes 3 new links:  June 12, 2009  Mother Nature News (see comments for Capt. Moore’s insights re this innovation), June 9, 2009 U.N. Official Calls for Worldwide Ban on Plastic Bags, and the April 2009 U.N. report ‘Marine Litter: A Global Problem.’

Last week, NextNow Collab joined with the new Strategic Council on Plastic Pollution at Google in Mountain View to help raise awareness of the rising threat plastic pollution poses to the health of the world’s oceans and all life that depends on them–that is, all life.  The day started with a presentation to Google by Captain Charles Moore, the founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, the man who discovered the Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997 (that was 12 years ago!!  Where have we been?), and an environmental hero (who won an Environmental Hero Award from the California EPA). I attempt to summarize the conversation in this post, but the following February 2009 clip from Captain Moore’s TED presentation is a must-see.  (Please also see the video from 2001 at the end of this post, filmed during an actual expedition.)

After the presentation at Google, a group of us retreated to a conference room with Captain Moore to arrive at the (almost) final wording of the official statement issued by the Council for the United Nations-designated World Oceans Day (June 8).  Manuel Maqueda, one of NextNow Collaboratory’s social media gurus, collaborator on ISDE5, and founder of the Trash Island project, a NNC collaboration project, convened the meeting and opened it with the perfect mixture of gravitas and grace.  I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of everyone present; these were not only among the people most committed to raising plastic awareness through their own lives, but also can be considered among the theoreticians of the movement.  Captain Moore had to leave early but left us with a strong directive:  our statement must not be directed at progress, but at the transformation of our relationship to plastic:  “This is about the complete redesign of the entire system, not putting more trash cans on the beach.  Massaging the old paradigm won’t work.  We need a new language, new concepts..”–a new consciousness about plastic, which he rightly says is both a symptom and a symbol of the crisis of over-consumption, of the unsustainable nature of our culture.

This is how Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish describes Captain Moore’s position:

The plastic pollution problem is the visible manifestation of the crisis of our civilization. (There’s so much more that is invisible.) Progress is not what we’re after here. Everything has to be redesigned. We need a new paradigm that subtracts from the consumer lifestyle rather than adding to it. We’re after difference. The Great Refusal.

How did we get here? I remember reading a quote once attributed to, I believe, Harry S. Truman, who told our nation after World War II that it was patriotic to be a “consumer,” to “consume as though it were our religion.”  (If anyone knows the actual quote I’m referring to please comment.)  Why would he say this?  Because we had a huge production capacity that threatened to stand idle after production for the war ended.  Captain Moore reminded us that it was our considerable production capacity as a nation that created the manufacturing concept of planned obsolescence–and from there, the cultural concept of “waste saves time,” or “throw-away living.”  Context is everything, and whatever wisdom those concepts may have held when they were birthed make them a leading threat to all life on this planet in the context of today. Our hope is that by raising awareness of the seriousness of plastic pollution, we can tap into what people are already becoming instinctively aware of:  that we are collectively coming up against the physical limits of our consumption, the mental models this casual consumption represents, and the level of consciousness that accepts them.

Some of what we discussed:

• Only 5% of our plastic in the waste stream is recovered–that’s recovered; even less is recycled.
• Plastic isn’t really recycled, but downcycled (a term popularized by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things), or turned into a lower grade plastic, meaning that a plastic milk bottle never ends up as another plastic milk bottle, at least not without another layer of virgin plastic.
• Plastic never biodegrades, it just breaks down into smaller pieces, mimicking food in the environment.  Photodegradation causes disintegration, not final biodegradation.  Further, bioplastics, which many of us have placed our hopes on, don’t break down in the marine environment.
• In other environments, volcanic lava melts over plastic debris and incorporates it, making plastic a new substrate.
• More people work in plastic and related industries than in any other single industry.
• It’s not just consumers that supply the glut of plastic debris; plastic pellets which serve as the raw material for consumer products (and which look like fish eggs in the ocean) escape en masse from factories and rail cars each time connections are made and broken.  Think of all the other ways plastics get into our environment.
• The density of the plastic in the North Pacific Gyre has doubled in the last ten years.  The North Pacific Gyre is only 1 of 5 in the world.
• Toxic chemicals from plastics register in dangerous quantities in the blood streams of humans and animals.
• We must leave the age of extraction, and fully enter the age of reuse.
• If people are given the tools to collaborate in order to transform their use of plastic, they will use them.

For those who say, “what about the discovery of plastic-eating microbes?,” we note that this is an important scientific discovery but, as the article in Mother Nature News says, it’s not a panacea or current workable solution, and while working fervently to make it a reality, we must not be seduced into inaction by possibility.

Future threads will discuss how NextNow Collaboratory can continue to support this movement as a community.  In the meanwhile:

PLEASE SHARE THE BELOW STATEMENT ISSUED BY THE STRATEGIC COUNCIL ON PLASTIC POLLUTION AS EXTENSIVELY AS YOU CAN.

Add your name to the bottom of the statement and be counted among those supporting it.

The press release follows this short clip of Wallace J. Nichols, who was present at the meeting, reading the statement.  (Those are his daughters opening the clip.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

World Oceans Day Brings Warnings from Plastic Pollution Council

June 8, 2009, San Francisco, California

Following a presentation to Google employees by Captain Charles Moore, an oceanographer who pioneered the study of plastic debris, the Strategic Council on Plastic Pollution convened at the Google Campus in Mountain View, California on June 4, 2009. It was the first meeting for the council on plastic pollution, which was recently formed to raise awareness of this rising threat to the world’s oceans. Said council member and marine biologist Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, “We are finding plastic in the stomachs of sea turtles, birds, and fish all over the world.  I find this extremely disturbing.” In honor of World Oceans Day, the council has issued the following statement regarding this increasingly urgent threat to wildlife and human health:

Do you know where our plastic goes?

Did you know that our oceans are filling up with plastic pollution?

Plastic fragments contaminate even the most remote locations on earth, and harmful chemicals leached by plastics are present in the bloodstream and tissues of almost every one of us.

Plastic pollution harms people, animals, and the environment.  Plastic is not biodegradable. In the marine environment, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller particles that absorb toxic chemicals, are ingested by wildlife, and enter the food chain that we depend on.

Consumption of throwaway plastics, such as bottles, containers, bags, and packaging, has spiraled out of control.

Recycling is not a sustainable solution. The reality is that most of our plastic waste is landfilled, downcycled or exported to other countries. And tragically, millions of tons of plastic are poisoning our oceans.

Businesses and governments need to take responsibility for new ways to design, recover and dispose of plastics.

Plastic pollution is the visible symbol of our global crisis of over-consumption.  Let’s pledge to shift our societies away from the disposable habits that poison our oceans and land, eliminate our consumption of throwaway plastics, and begin embracing a culture of sustainability.

Our health, our children, and the survival of future generations depend on us.

Captain Moore on Ocean Plastic Pollution:  “Synthetic Sea,” 2001:

The “Phoenix Economy,” State of the World Forum and Global Coherence Initiative

“A new economic order is rising from the ashes—and a new generation of innovators, entrepreneurs and investors is accelerating the changes essential for delivering scalable sustainable solutions to the world.”

The Phoenix Economy:  50 Pioneers in the Business of Social Innovation

Global Footprint Network has been named one of the “Phoenix 50,” a new list generated by Volans, an organization that describes itself as “part think-tank, part consultancy, park broker and part incubator.”  They are in the business of helping develop and scale social innovations to financial, social and environmental challenges.

They distinguish between four types of markets instead of the usual two we’re used to hearing about–Bull and Bear markets.  The Dragon characterizes markets like China, where social cohesion is just strong enough to keep the double-bottom line economic engine roaring, while the Phoenix is the kind of market we have to do more than hope we’re destined for–a market that “blurs across national borders and works to integrate the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental value added into its DNA—as a triple helix of change and new growth.”

From the website:  “From the ashes of the downturn, a new Phoenix Economy is self-assembling—focused on providing social and environmental solutions, where markets and governments have failed. If the pioneers of the Phoenix Economy are to succeed, they will still need substantial assistance from governments, foundations, investors and businesses, and we identify urgent opportunities for facilitation, collaboration and support.”

Volan’s Phoenix Economy report was supported by The Skoll Foundation, SustainAbility, NetImpact, and the United Nations Environment Programme.  It’s a market intelligence report of scale solutions leading into a Phoenix economy, and ends with a “Phoenix Agenda,” detailing how different sectors can help enable this paradigmatic shift.  The Phoenix 50 are organizations–for-profit, non-profit, and NGO’s–that are, in the authors’ opinions, among the best currently doing this work.  (Heartening to see the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley on the list, since I was there pioneering socially and environmentally responsible curriculum for corporations during most of the 90’s, when awareness of the need for this kind of work was quite low–except among the student body in the form of the self-organized Students for Responsible Business, which has since become NetImpact.)

The report quotes the same”everyone a changemaker” remark from Bill Drayton that I quoted in an earlier post on his presentation at the Tech Awards last year.  Drayton is convinced that we’re about to hit the “awareness tipping point” in which “the public at large will engage.”  This is one of the functions of collab partners like the 2009 State of the World Forum–to move the momentum towards a tipping point in which the public is not just aware, but is also motivated and empowered to act; that is, where a critical mass feels sufficiently networked into solutions capable of addressing the challenges we face in transforming ourselves and our societies.

One of the most interesting parts of the report is the “Pathways to Scale” model, which is described as 5 stages:

1. Eureka!, in which growing dysfunctions of the current order reveal emerging opportunities
2. Experiment:  trial-and-error responses to those opportunities
3. Enterprise:  building responsive business models that support new value creation
4. Ecosystem, in which critical mass is achieved through alliances and imitation
5. Economy:  the system transcends to a new equilibrium.

These stages remind me of what Belgian chemist and Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine said about a system in balance and functioning well.  Such a system is difficult to change, but as that system falls into disorder, change becomes more and more feasible and finally inevitable.  At that inevitable point the least bit of coherent order (or critical mass) can usher in a new higher form of order.  We are clearly at that inevitable point.  Now we need to facilitate the critical mass that will usher in a higher-functioning order out of the “ashes of the downturn.” Reports like the Phoenix Economy, and organizations such as those that comprise the Phoenix 50, are helping to get us there.  And for an example of an initiative working to create critical mass on the level of being to complement the doing, see the Global Coherence Initiative.

Read the full report, or watch for the second half of this post which will summarize remaining highlights.

Ecological Footprint Calculator Covered by CNN

“Have you ever figured out your Ecological Footprint?  Do you even know what that is?”  That’s how the CNN anchor introduces the story.

NextNow Collab Helps Launch First Summit of Ecological Creditor Nations

Lynne Twist, Mathis Wackernagel, and Freddy Ehlers. Photo courtesy of Simone Bastianoni.

NextNow Collab helped launch the first Summit of Ecological Creditor Nations (to be held in 2010) by stepping up in October of last year as the Summit’s first financial contributor.  The Summit is a project of Global Footprint Network, Pachamama Alliance, and CAN (Community of Andean Nations).  The first formal gathering to benefit the Summit was earlier this month, hosted by Bill and Lynne Twist (Pachamama).

Ecological creditor nations are those with biocapacities greater than their ecological footprint.  In other words, the bioregion regenerates itself faster than it is consumed.  Only 20% of the world is in this category; the rest are ecological debtor countries, regions whose ecological footprint exceeds the regions capacity to regenerate itself.  Most of the developed world is in this category.  For example, according to Global Footprint Network 2005 research data, the United States has an ecological footprint of 2,810 million global hectares, and a biocapacity of only 1, 496 million global hectares.  China’s footprint is 2,787, with a biocapacity of 1,133.  Contrast this to Chile whose footprint (at 48.9) is still less than its biocapacity (67.4), or, dramatically, to Madagascar, with a footprint of 20.1, but a biocapacity more than three times greater, at 69.7.  (Someday, “Escape to Madagascar” may be a newspaper headline instead of a movie title.)  It’s disheartening to see the data, including for the Amazonian Rainforest country of Ecuador, which only a few years ago saw its biocapacity fall below its ecological footprint.

As developing nations pursue their development goals, a conversation of what constitutes real wealth is necessary to avoid the train wreck that is “ecological debt.”

The point is to create education, communication, and cooperation.  According to Mathias Wackernagel, executive director of Global Footprint Network, “By promoting negotiation between nations that have a surplus of ecological assets and those that do not, we can shift 21st century economic thinking from “developing versus developed countries” to ecological debtors and creditors.”  This is a necessary shift in awareness to create a necessary shift to One Planet Living.

For at least 20 years many of us in the sustainability movement have been working with corporations to help them embrace new definitions of wealth creation, ones in which the creation of real value–as reflected by how their activities advanced the health and well-being of communities they served–took its proper place.  (I still remember the first time I learned that new prisons and alarm systems increased our nation’s “wealth” as reflected by GDP.)  With the launch of the Summit of Ecological Creditor Nations, the whole world will have the opportunity to re-examine the concept of wealth, on the most critical scale, and not a moment too soon. If you’re a NextNow member and would like to offer resources, please contact me cwelss@nextnow.org.

U.S. Senate Committee on EPW Press Blog Post: NASA’s Theon on Global Warming

THIS is an important reason why I favor focusing attention on the concept of Ecological Footprint vs. man-made global warming.  So far I have seen no debate around the science showing that the developed world is using Earth’s resources faster than Earth is capable of regenerating them.  (See Global Footprint Network and numerous posts in this blog, including yesterday’s.)  Whether the causes of global warming are man-made or not, science shows that our carbon footprint represents half of our total ecological footprint, which is unsustainable.  From the Global Footprint Network website:

Global Footprint Network

Ecological + Carbon Footprints

“Global climate change is one of humanity’s greatest challenges and one of the most important indicators that we are in ecological overshoot. Since the carbon footprint is 50 percent of humanity’s overall Ecological Footprint, reducing our carbon footprint is essential to ending ecological overshoot.

Today the spotlight is on carbon, but climate change is happening as we approach other critical limits in fisheries, forests, cropland, and water. Unless we focus on ending overshoot as a whole-systems problem, some of our solutions to global warming could cause large, unintended impacts. In the rush toward biofuels, for example, we are in many cases shifting pressure to cropland and forestland.”

Consider supporting the Global Footprint Network and share this information to circumvent the debate on global warming. Urgent attention to our ecological footprint and to rallying for creative innovations towards “One Planet Living” will allow us to avoid costly delay’s caused by protracted debates on global warming.

Below is an excerpt from the Senate Committee blog post; here’s the full text. Note that it’s on the Minority Page.

Washington DC: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fears soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.”  Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of anthropogenic global warming fears. [See: U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims & See Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’ & Gore laments global warming efforts: 'I've failed badly' - Washington Post – November 11, 2008 ]

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man-made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained. [Note: Here are the results a Google Scholar search on Theon. - Theon's complete written correspondence to EPW reprinted at the end of this report. ]

2008 Living Planet Report, New Water Footprint Index, and the Direct Link Between Financial and Ecological Crises

Late last year, NextNowCollab was part of a conversation marking the launch of the Living Planet Report 2008 at Global Business Network in San Francisco. Conversation starters included Mathis Wackernagel of Global Footprint Network, Greg Searle, Executive Director of Bioregional North America (who gave a great presentation on “One Planet Living“), and Dr. Jean Rogers of Arup.

The 2008 report was released by Global Footprint Network, World Wildlife Federation and Zoological Society of London and offers a look at “nature’s balance sheet,” with new figures on how humanity is using resources, how that compares among nations, and how ecological debt is mounting.

An important development in this year’s report is the adoption of a new index created (finally!) to measure human demand on water: the water footprint, developed by University of Twente, Netherlands Professor Arjen Hoekstra, who also founded the Water Footprint Network, aimed at promoting the transition toward sustainable, fair and efficient use of freshwater resources by advancing the science and application of the water footprint.  The “Water Footprint” measures human demand on fresh water and complements the Ecological Footprint’s measurement of human demand on (other) living resources to give a much fuller footprint.

“The water footprint enables us to more clearly understand the role that global trade plays in addressing local water scarcity. By tracking the flow of water and living resources in our globalized economy through the water footprint and the Ecological Footprint, we are able to advocate for the effective management of these resources.”  Global Footprint Network Manager of Research and Standards Shiva Niazi

The mounting ecological debt data is relevant not only to crises such as climate change and shrinking biodiversity, but also to the current economic crisis:

Protecting the True Fundamentals

A Sustainable Investment Firm’s Response to the Financial Crisis

Environmental concerns tend to take a back seat in tough economic times. But at least one asset management firm is taking exactly the opposite tack – stressing that now, more than ever, sound investing means adequately valuing the underlying natural assets upon which all our economic systems depend.

“So far, the economic crisis we are facing has been explained by financial leverage,” said Carsten Henningsen, co-founder of the global sustainability fund Portfolio 21. “However, there is a direct link between the financial crisis and the ecological crisis. To the extent that ecological limits place limits on the growth rates of earnings, stock prices will fall.”
———————

Now that the Footprint of the world economy exceeds what the planet can regenerate, Henningsen said, “Investors need to readjust their return expectations, because the earth does not have the ecological or financial capacity to sustain unlimited growth” if that growth is linked to increased resource consumption. “Growth of real wealth is restrained by scarcity of natural resources like oil as well as the capacity of the planet to absorb CO2.”

Companies that understand the ecological crisis and are implementing environmental strategies to gain a competitive advantage are those that will be best poised in the long term, Henningsen said

But the issue goes beyond that, according to Henningsen and Portfolio 21 co-founder Leslie Christian. Ultimately, they say, protecting one’s 401K means safeguarding the very viability of the U.S. and world economies. And that means investing in a way that shifts these economies as a whole in a more resource-efficient direction. For example, Portfolio 21 has created investment vehicles to help localize economies, investing in “businesses based on local manufacturing and distribution as a healthy alternative to energy-intensive multinationals shipping goods around the globe.”

What the Meltdown Can Teach Us About Resource Debt

In a recent letter to shareholders, Henningsen and Christian drew a parallel between the financial industry meltdown and the dangers of our rapidly compounding ecological debt.

In the U.S. in the past few years, instead of a sound economy based on products and commerce, they wrote, “We have a financial economy evolving into a casino-like scheme, with money being used to make more money that has little or no connection to underlying functional economic transactions. Without self-imposed limits, the financial system has expanded beyond its means, making it vulnerable to seemingly insignificant disruptions that serve to topple the entire structure like a game of Jenga.”

Just like the financial markets, the world economy has expanded well beyond what the ecological bottom line can support. “Considering the damage that has occurred within an arguably superfluous element of our economy, it is difficult to imagine the severity of the situation as it relates to an absolutely essential element of the economy – the ability of the earth to provide critical ecosystem services like clean air and water, as well as natural resources like timber, crop land and, of course, food.”

That is more reason than ever, Henningsen and Christian say, why smart investing means addressing our underlying resource challenges. Says Christian: “For the planet, there is no Federal Reserve Bank, no lender of last resort unless we can figure out a way to borrow from another planet. The real bottom line is the ecological bottom line that supports the foundation of life and our livelihoods.”  Global Footprint Network blog post