“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.
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.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
The Dieter Rams ‘Less And More’ exhibition at the Design Museum in London
(18 November 2009 – 09 March 2010).
When visiting that exhibition last Sunday I was stunned by the sustainability avant-gardism of Dieter Rams.
Rams is a German designer who served as head of design for Braun from 1961 till his retirement in 1995 and is today considered as “one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products.”
More than twenty years ago, the icon designer has established “10 Principles of Good Design”. His innovative vision of design makes him one of the precursors of industrial sustainable design. Indeed Rams’ products integrated sustainability and durability years before these issues became inevitable and essential for industrial designers (?)
I think sometimes you’ve just got to get out from under the pile of e-mails and overbearing work schedules to mobilise yourself and generate awareness through mass protest for the issues one cares about. I often think of the quote by Martin Luther King Jr who said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that happen.” I did wonder how easy it would be for people to show any sort of freedom of expression in the Square Mile with so much regulation, control and overbearing protectionist systems in place preventing the public from diverting from their ‘acceptable’ forms of behaviour, dress and actions. The closer I got to the centre your’e reminded that we’re in a society where we’re being denied some of our basic freedoms with CCTV cameras everywhere and roadblocks herding us through predefined routes. One of my favourite books is the Traveller by John Twelve-Hawkes which muses over a battle in society between randomness and one driven by systems. It’s quite frightening to realise Britain has more surveillance than any other state in Europe. And as communication is a cornerstone to civilization it’s worrying that more people are more institutionalised than ever, armchair-ridden followers of fashion and not willing to stand-up and fight for what they believe in. Anthony Robbins neatly puts it that were immersed in and deluded by this ‘all pervasive hypnotic culture’. Even though we’ve all been very institutionalised and our ideas homogenised as citizens,if it’s a debate between nature and nurture I think we all have the inbuilt capacity to get out there sometimes and shout as loud as we can. I suppose that’s why football matches play such an important role in society as they provide an outlet for people to reconnect with their tribal roots of solidarity and group expression. If we don’t mobilise now as the earth faces the catastrope of a 2 degree temperature rise we’ll be all responsible for the slow suffication of our innate communications skills and more worryingly witness to the slow degredation and further exploitation of our planetary scarce resources. We must maintain a voice and wake up! On a more positive note this week it was good to see docu films such as ‘Who Killed The Electric Car’ aired on national TV last night. And by the way, it was a sunny, chilled out, peacful and positive day on Bishopsgate today. I’m definately off to the next Climate Camp. So how is it that The Evening Standard showed the front page like Armageddon. Oh yes…of course the state apparatus having it’s say.
We all know on some level that in order for there to be any true, definitive shift in how humans live more sustainably, we must address consumer decision. Purchase decisions target the issue of desire and production: what people seem to want and the processes used to provide those wants. But focusing on green consumption is appealing for another reason: it is well within our comfort zone. Making and selling products is what we are good at in the developed world; it’s part of the ethos and ideology that makes our market-based society motor along.
Recently, however, we are starting to see a movement – slow, quiet, but there nonetheless – that is arguing for a different, deeper approach than green consumption. This approach, most recently articulated in the WWF-UK report, Weathercocks & Signposts, suggests that instead of focusing on what individuals can do, or more specifically, what products they can buy, that we need to target the underlying values and beliefs that drive our lifestyles. When considered in full, this is a powerful critique against remaining in our comfort zone of the market, and instead asking people to radically rethink who and what we are, or more simply, what makes us happy and satisfied.
This is not a new concept, nor is it naïve. In the first book on green marketing in 1998, Toby M. Smith wrote in The Myth of Green Marketing, “In buying the environmentally safer product one is making sense of the world, because the act domesticates that which is threatening and unfamiliar by attaching it to what is comprehensible” (23). In other words, buying green makes environmentalism a lot more palatable. For Smith, consumer choice is not necessarily conscious, but rather driven by discourses “that structure identity and understanding of our relationship to the world” which are almost always latent (23). In focusing on green consumerism, we are basically smoothing over any potential rupture or radical critique of what we are doing in the first place. That is, what does it mean to be human, and to live on a finite and precious planet?
Identities, values, and beliefs – as with attitudes – are not nearly as fixed or static as we assume. Rather they are fluid, shifting according to contexts and influences. Call it consciousness, call it subjectivity, call it values-based approach. This emphasis is the direction the WWF-UK report is (courageously) moving us toward. In suggesting to the environmental movement at large – and most saliently, environmental communicators – that we shift our focus from attitudes and behaviour to values, beliefs, identities, what is being presented is nothing less than a radical re-conceptualization of how we approach environmental marketing and advocacy. This means working in an interdisciplinary way, alongside psychologists, cultural anthropologists, cultural and social theorists: anyone who may shed some desperately needed insight into what it takes to shape and inform a revolution of values. Thankfully they are not alone: a team at Yale just published a new report to signal this shift. To learn more about WWF-UK’s work and be part of the debate, visit http://www.valuingnature.org. Renee Lertzman
