It was 2008, and Julius Brinkworth had a problem. As Head of Energy and Environment at Sainsbury’s, he had created an investment programme which could make the retail giant’s stores massively more energy efficient. It would save large amounts of carbon – and money, too. There was just one snag. The upfront costs, which ran to hundreds of millions of pounds, had to be signed off by the Capital Investment Committee. Would it get the green light? It seemed touch and go. But then Julius discovered something surprising.

He looked into how the committee calculated the net present value (one way of measuring whether an investment is worthwhile). He discovered that this completely ignored the Carbon Reduction Commitment and Enhanced Capital Allowances – two UK government schemes which reward companies for becoming more energy efficient. This may not sound that exciting – but for Julius, it was a real breakthrough moment. He realised that, by failing to take these rewards into account, the committee was in danger of turning down what would otherwise be a demonstrably sound investment. Once the monies available from those schemes were added into the pot, the decision was straightforward. Sainsbury’s made the investment.

The principle that sustainability saves money is nothing new, of course. There are plenty of examples out there. Take BT. What’s interesting, though, is how often the financial upside comes as a surprise. When Marks and Spencer launched ‘Plan A’ in 2007, its budgeted cost was £200 million. Within a couple of years, it was breaking even; and by 2009-10, the various initiatives which made up Plan A had actually added £50 million worth of net benefit to the company.

With rich pickings like these on offer, you would imagine that finance departments would have become adept at identifying savings from sustainable development. In practice, this is often far from the case. Instead, many SD specialists have similar problems to Julius Brinkworth. They want their companies to succeed through sustainability, but they struggle to express the business case for the particular product, programme or strategy. And that means they struggle to convince their colleagues that there is one.

Why is this? In essence, it’s because sustainability is both complex and uncertain. And that puts it outside the comfort zone of most corporate financial decision makers. For the most part, the tools they use to calculate costs, risks and benefits assume that tomorrow will be more or less like today (’today plus 2%’, as the phrase goes). That is fine for many of the decisions the tools are used to make. But these are often either blind to the wide array of potential financial dividends from sustainability initiatives – as with the Sainsbury’s example above – or they simply cannot cope with its inherent uncertainty.

A new, more sustainable product, for example, might be hugely successful in the coming years, as energy and resource prices spiral, as tighter regulation kicks in along with generous incentives for green innovations, and as consumer preferences shift and markets realign. But when it comes to capturing the value of those advantages, there is inevitably an element of conjecture. The numbers are much ’softer’ than financial decision-makers are used to. As a result, the sustainable innovation looks less well developed, less mature – essentially, less of a good bet – than an unsustainable alternative.

So when faced with a choice between the familiar and the fuzzy, decision-makers often play safe – as they see it. But in so doing, they take what may well be a bigger risk of missing out on future opportunities. As a result, companies get stuck in a vicious cycle: they want a cast iron business case before they will act, but they can only get the data they need by going ahead and taking a punt on innovation, which many will understandably be reluctant to do. Changing this pattern means finding ways to make what looks ‘fuzzy’ solid and important: making it show up on the spreadsheets, as it were. Often, this means expressing it in terms of shareholder value. At Forum for the Future, we’ve developed a toolkit to help do just that [see 'Making it count', below]. It is clear that specific sustainability challenges are already hitting value drivers. Any company with an agricultural supply chain is worried about security, quality and cost of supply. The Climate Act in the UK and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme are affecting the cost of energy use. Customer expectations and purchasing behaviour are shifting – just look at the rapid mainstreaming of fair trade. And as the Carbon Disclosure Project demonstrates, investors, too, are already asking tough questions of management. These and other factors are all shifting the future landscape in which companies will operate. Sustainability professionals are well placed to map out its contours, identifying opportunities to create real value for their business.

By David Bent, Head of Business Strategies at Forum for the Future

The United Nations designated the year 2011 as the International Year of Forests not only to highlight the importance of forests, but also to remind us that we are at the precipice for change.  This year’s theme is a continuation of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity, seeking the protection of the habitat of some of the most important and diverse ecosystems.  Launched under the banner ‘Celebrating Forests for People,’ the UN is giving us the opportunity to reflect on the intrinsic relationship between healthy forests and our own prosperity.

During the launch ceremony at the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), Secretary–General Ban Ki-Moon stated that “By declaring 2011 as the International Year of Forests, the United Nations General Assembly has created an important platform to educate the global community about the great value of forests – and the extreme social, economic and environmental costs of losing them.” The UNFF, which is made up of all 192 members of the UN, has the mandate to promote the sustainable development of all types of forests.

One of the objectives of this UN initiative is to unite everyone to recognise the vital roles that forests play in every aspect of our lives and emphasise how dependent we are on them for our well-being and survival.  As Jan McAlpine, the Director of the UNFF said in a statement, “every one of us, all seven billion people on earth, has our physical, economic and spiritual health tied to the health of our forest ecosystems.”

Some statistics are shocking!  For instance, according to the WWF, 5,000 trees are destroyed every hour in the Amazon.  Moreover, forests are home to over 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and deforestation is responsible for 15 percent of global CO2 emissions – more than the entire transport industry.   Forests provide shelter to people, food, medicine, clean water and they are vital in maintaining a stable climate and environment.  Unfortunately, they are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate for commonly known reasons such as logging, conversion to agricultural and cattle-grazing land, and urbanisation.  According to the Global Forest Resources Assessment, 13,000 hectares of forests are lost each year globally.

This UN-sponsored celebration therefore calls on governments, civil society and the private sector to use this global platform to commemorate actions that have been taken to sustainably manage and conserve the world’s forests.  It is a unique opportunity to celebrate forests through a year-long series of events that showcase success stories, highlight innovative solutions and stirs up public awareness and participation at all levels.

To celebrate the International year of Forests, various activities will be organised.  Member states, international organisations and civil society are expected to create national committees and choose focal points for the purpose of facilitating organising activities supporting forests.   The UN created a website serving as a forum for discussion and interaction as well as to promote events organised throughout the year.  In addition, the UNFF Secretariat is collaborating with the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival to organise the International Forest Film Festival (IFFF).

At Green Awards, we are very exciting to be supporting the International Year of Forests.  We appreciate the real value they hold and call for the international community to focus necessary attention to forest protection and conservation.  In this year’s awards, with forests as the highlighted theme, we are moving beyond recognising ‘communication’ focused initiatives towards ‘best-in-class’ examples of sustainability outcomes, with one of our new categories honouring the ‘Best Conservation and Biodiversity’ efforts.  We believe it is an important celebration as 2011 could be the year which will determine whether or not the world is successful in our fight against deforestation.

Video Source: http://unep.org/forests/

By Jessica Wettstein

During the infancy of the Internet Age, several years before the launch of iTunes, a young British entrepreneur had the idea to create an online music download store. The concept was simple; create a virtual store, hosted on the web that enabled music lovers worldwide to order the latest releases at the click of a mouse. Today we’re all very familiar with this concept, but back in the early Nineties the idea was revolutionary. Having bought together a team of developers to build the platform and set-up shop in a small studio down a backstreet in Brixton, the music entrepreneur quickly realised the value of his concept. Within weeks of launching the Beta phase of the start-up, interest had been expressed worldwide and orders were coming in from as far a field as Russia and the United States. Meetings to pitch the concept to executives in the London offices of some of the world’s biggest music groups followed. Despite giving some lip service to the idea, not one of the music majors came aboard; indeed they attached so little value to the online music store concept that they wouldn’t even proceed with a trial of the technology. Under-pinning their lack of foresight was an assumption that business could and would carry on as usual and do so indefinitely; to imagine that the music majors could fall from grace and see their profits nose-dive any time soon was simply unimaginable for many music executives. However, nose-dive they did, as the Internet’s popularity spread like wildfire, enabling disruptive models to displace traditional music formats.

The saying goes ‘history repeats itself’. When Radio Caroline took the to seas in 1964 the music industry bosses of the day did everything within their power to shut the station down. Their attitude to pirate radio was only marginally less scornful than that of their counter-parts attitude towards the Internet in the early Nineties. Such poor foresight and judgment is not reserved to the music industry, nor even to the private sector. Consider for a moment Royal Mail. Surely upon the launch of email at least one bright spark suggested to the Royal Mail executive board the potential benefits of investing in the new technology; after all it would make sense for the leading British postal service to at least take a crack at becoming the leading British electronic mail service. How different Royal Mail’s profit and loss sheet could look today if such an opportunity had not been overlooked in the past.

There are two types of fear of loss: fear of losing what you have and fear of losing what you could have. Decision-makers in the public and private sector embrace the former at their peril, yet do so surprisingly often, as illustrated in the examples given above. The psychology isn’t complex; when we put our hearts, minds and souls into creating something the last thing we feel like to doing is dismantling, disrupting or destroying it. Our natural urge is to protect that which we have built, be it a career, a business or industry.

The scale of change required to build a sustainable society makes the impacts of the Internet look like piecemeal. The Internet enabled the creation of a faster-moving, better-connected and more democratic world. The way we work and the way we communicate has been revolutionized. However, on the whole the Internet has not challenged the way we source commodities, manufacture goods, build towns and cities, travel from A to B, produce energy, treat waste, grow food and keep livestock. Sustainability challenges all of these things and more and yet, many organisations are taking a reactive, not a pro-active approach. Certainly there are exceptions to this rule, with standout examples including IBM, Nike and Marks and Spencer – each of which has made an ambitious commitment to building a truly sustainable business, to which they pay a great deal more than just lip service. However, the majority of private and public sector organisations are best described as laggards where sustainability is concerned.

While developing a model for a sustainable city able to withstand extreme weather and geological events, I’ve been researching how the Earth’s ecosystems build resilience to natural disasters. I’ve found that in the natural world destruction goes hand in hand with renewal, wherein there is symbiotic relationship in constant motion between the two, neither able to exist without the other. Take for example forests in fire-prone regions. When we see images of flames ripping through these forests on our television screens the picture can look very bleak. However, some tree species are reliant on these fires, for it’s only when forest scrub is cleared by fire that their saplings have the space, light and soil nutrients to grow. Forests and businesses aren’t so different. Businesses can only make space for the new if they are prepared to clear out the old every now and then. Just as you need to plant several acorns to grow an oak tree, a business needs to plant and nurture many new ideas to keep their metaphorical forest in good health.

It’s time for decision makers across both the private and public sector to feel a fear of loss; a fear of loss of what their organisations could miss out on.  Some of the sustainability ideas they will be presented with in coming months and years will feel maverick, perhaps even wacky. Most will have little, if any traditional infrastructure supporting them. The odds stacked against their success will be huge. The majority will fall over at the first or second hurdle. When being presented with such ideas keep Radio Caroline in mind  (if you don’t know story hire the film ‘The Boat That Rocked’, as it will give you the general picture) and as they say in the States “Face the Fear”.

Melissa Sterry, Founder of Societás and NEW FRONTIERS

Over the past few days, the global GREEN AWARDS confirmed the participation of some of the most influential personalities from the sustainability field , ensuring  the Awards move forward with the best possible advice and expertise available.

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“The Global Green awards reward companies which have made contributions to environmentally friendly or sustainable business practices, consumers can find out about the green business practices of previous winners or follow this year’s awards on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.”

Full Article: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-awards-celebrate-ecological-business-practices-2027988.html

Article reproduced from Speigel Online (Germany), 23rd June 2009

“Germany Takes Lead in Saving Ecuador’s Rainforest”

By Jess Smee

“Oil companies are salivating over the supply of black gold beneath Ecuador’s rainforest. The South American country is pledging to keep the oil in the ground — if the international community provides compensation. Now Germany has taken a leading role in raising the necessary cash.

There are many attributes which make the Yasuni National Park special: It is one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet, it is home to indigenous tribes which hunt and gather in its remote interior, and there’s a unique breed of small bat. But the national park also has a geographic curse: It sits atop Ecuador’s largest known oil reserve, thought to contain hundreds of millions of barrels.

And this potential fortune threatens its very future. In response, Ecuador has come up with an unusual plan to safeguard the UNESCO biosphere Reserve. The cash-strapped South American country has pledged to leave the oil in the ground forever — something unheard of among oil nations — if the international community compensates for some of the lost income.

The scheme, which was first mooted by Ecuadorian President Raphael Correa more than a year ago, got off to a slow start. By the end of the year the country extended its self-imposed deadline, in a last ditch bid to rally international support. Meanwhile, international oil giants were queuing to exploit the supply of black gold.

But now, all of a sudden, the ball seems to be rolling. Following a two-day visit by the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Fander Falconí to Berlin, Germany had positioned itself at “the forefront of the initative,” the Ministry for Economic Cooperation said.

However, officials urged caution on a newspaper report which said Germany would pay $50 million (€36 million) into a yet-to-be-established international fund. “There will be emphatically no financial promises. The conversation in the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development focused on the framework of the project and also on the efforts that Ecuador itself has to make,” Stephan Bethe, spokesman for the ministry, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

He stressed that Ecuador’s idea had caught Berlin’s imagination: “It offers a new approach to rainforests and, from the perspective of development politics, it is very promising,” Bethe said. “Combining climate protection and fighting poverty will play a growing role in the future.”

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Falconí told the German daily Die Tageszeitung that Germany had pledged “the first significant contribution” to a yet-to-be-created international fund. The paper reported that Ecuador was pushing Germany to pay up within one month.

Hat in Hand

Ecuador estimates that by leaving the oil untouched, some 410 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be averted. Oil is Ecuador’s most important export, generating around a third of its income. With the value of the untapped supply under the Yasuni National Park estimated at some $6 billion, the country argues it has little option but to approach international donors, hat in hand.

Environmentalists welcomed the plan as a way to save Ecuador’s rainforest from destruction. Preventing forests from disappearing is a vital element in the fight against climate change as they absorb huge quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Still, doubts lingered about the Ecuador model. Tobias Riedl from Greenpeace Germany’s Forest Campaign warned that the scheme was far from perfect. “It is a double-edged sword. While we welcome moves to save this unique environment, the fact is that all rainforests need to be saved, regardless of whether they lie on valuable natural resources or not,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

“There needs to be a broader move with industrialized nations paying money into a fund to save these forests. Preservation of these bio-diverse areas comes at a price.”

Meanwhile, environmental groups are looking to the Copenhagen Climate summit in December which aims to hammer out a new United Nations accord to replace the Kyoto Protocols which expire in 2012. Riedl remained upbeat, despite mounting signs that worldwide climate negotiations are stalling: “We expect to see how the preservation of forests can be brought into a new climate protection framework,” he said. “That is a step in the right direction.”

But there is a long way to go. Greenpeace estimates that €30 billion are needed to secure the future of the rainforests worldwide. And with 80 percent of all ancient forests (including rainforests) worldwide already gone, the clock is ticking. And Ecuador knows it.”

Original article Spiegel Online, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,631994,00.html
Author Jess Smeem Spiegel Online, 2009

The GREEN Consultancy will be exhibiting at the first Global Business of Biodiversity Symposium, next Tuesday (13/07) at Excel, London, UK.

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Today is the 3rd European Maritime Day, co-organised by the European Commission, the Spanish Presidency of the European Union and the Principality of Asturias.  European Maritime Day is the annual occasion in which Senior European politicians focus on the maritime world.

The agenda includes political sessions and more than 50 workshops focussing on sustainable economic growth, employment and innovation, cross-cutting policy tools, sustainability and the governance of sea basins.

The Surf Rider Europe Foundation* will participate in the debates and will ask major European institutions to reaffirm at a European level their intention to defend the natural heritage of our environment and the values of ocean users.

They regularly launch campaigns to raise awareness of Ocean pollution and the need for sea life protection which are always supported by brilliant creative posters and ads, as preview below.

Shortly before Christmas, Graham Lewis, Creative Partner at GREEN, was asked by the newspaper to produce some speculative political posters for the forthcoming General Election: “to get a flavour of the political parties’ possible tactics, the Independent on Sunday asked six leading advertising agencies to produce these exclusive posters to give readers a sneak preview of how an election campaign might be fought.”
The result is a series of trenchant yet creative posters pre-empting the tone of the current campaign.

Graham comments on his poster as “A succinct one-word headline using a clever corruption of Dave Cameron’s surname. We want people to understand the simple message that he isn’t fit for No 10.”

Click here to read the article and see the series of poster.

You’ve probably came across Greenpeace last campaign “Kit Kat: give the orang-utan a break”.

If not here is the campaign’s video:Kit Kat: give the orang-utan a break

The campaign follows a report from Greenpeace which exposed that “the palm oil Nestlé uses in products like Kit Kat is sourced from what used to be rainforest in Indonesia, forest which is being destroyed faster than anywhere else on the planet. One of Nestlé’s suppliers, the giant Sinar Mas group, is responsible for a large part of this arboreal carnage and has a track record of appalling environmental and social practices, not only on its palm oil plantations but also, through its subsidiary APP, its pulp and paper ones.” Nestle has since published a press release on their website saying that they do “not buy palm oil from the Sinar Mas Group for any of our products, including Kit Kat” and that they commit themselves “to using only “Certified Sustainable Palm Oil” by 2015”.

It is noteworthy that Unilever cancelled its $30 million annual contract with Sinar Mas in 2009, when Greenpeace brought evidence of Sinar Mas’ environmental destruction, thus narrowly avoiding the wrath of Greenpeace and a likely boycott. Unilever and Sainsbury’s have both said they would get all their palm oil from “sustainable sources” by 2015.

Over 43 million tons of palm oil is produced every year worldwide, being used as a major component in the production of food, biofuel, cosmetics, soaps, shampoos and detergents. Most of the palm oil used in these products comes from tropical rainforests and peatlands in South East Asia which are being torn up to provide land for oil palm plantations. The environmental cost of the production of this oil is huge in terms of climate change and loss of biodiversity.

Palm oil is used notably in the composition of vegetarian food to avoid using animal based products.  If today more and more consumers are aware of the damages palm oil causes to the environment, it is quasi impossible for us to detect the presence of palm oil in everyday life products. Indeed rather than using the word “palm” oil, retailers and producers label it as “vegetable” oil (which can include palm or others type of oil such as soy oil).

The palm oil debate highlights the recurrent issue of intentionally misinformed consumers. And it seems that on this topic we can hardly trust big corporations to take the urgent actions required in order to halt irreversible environmental damages.

Sustainable Palm Oil?

“Palm oil from sustainable sources” refers to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification created in 2008 to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil.  RSPO’s aim is to help reduce deforestation, preserve biodiversity and respect the livelihoods of rural communities.

According to the WWF* Palm Oil Buyers’ Scorecard 2009: “Despite being available in sufficient quantities, only a small portion of the available CSPO has actually been bought [19%].” This fact balances the apparent goodwill of top world food producers. By 2015 the damages caused to the Rain Forest will be irreparable (if they aren’t already today) and the expression “sustainable palm oil” will be completely void of any sense.

So what’s the solution?

The boycott implied by the Greenpeace campaign may be part of the solution to urge the food industry to action the issue rapidly.  You can easily do without a Kit Kat for one week or a lifetime but what about shampoo, soaps, cereals etc. So practically what can we do to reduce our consumption of palm oil? The solutions are quite the same as per any responsible consumption approach:

* Read the label: so you know what’s inside!
* Choose  as far as possible, local and unprocessed food
* Be an informed consumer: consult website and blogs to find lists of palm oil free products.

Palm oil free products (the listed products are not all available in the UK)

http://freeofpalmoil.blogspot.com/

http://www.orangutans.com.au/Orangutans-Survival-Information/Helping-you-buy-responsibly-Palm-oil-free-alternatives.aspx

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15724828/Palm-Oil-Free-Shopping-List/

To  learn more about the environmental cost of palm oil plantations in South East Asia you can watch BBC’s documentary “Dying for a biscuit” here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r4t3s/sign/Panorama_Dying_For_a_Biscuit/

*WWF is member of the RSPO