AtKisson, Inc. a Sustainability Leader

AtKisson Inc., a sustainability leader since the mid 1990s,

From the beginning, the company has been a sought-after source of fresh ideas, well-tested experience, and best practices, for a wide variety of clients ranging from cities, to Fortune 500 corporations, to small non-profit groups. The Group's early projects were in support of the sustainability leaders of their time, and they built our competency in indicators and assessment, organizational development, initiative design, training, strategic planning, meeting facilitation, communication, and other critical skill areas. 

How TNS Drives Sustainability

How Our Network (The Natural Step) Helps Drive Change in Sustainable Communities - A Letter From Regina Hauser, Executive Director.

Sustainability Champion Bob Willard

The newly released *(March 2010) Sustainability Champion's Guidebook is a practical, easy-to-follow guide which helps sustainability champions at any level in a company lead a transformation to a smarter, more successful, and more sustainable enterprise. Read the article. 

The Sustainability Champion's Guidebook
144 pages/ 6 x 9”�
ISBN 978-0-86571-658-2
US/Can $19.95

Available in bookstores or from the publisher at: www.newsociety.com or 1-800-567-6772

GlobeScan Opinion & Research

From the About Page:

GlobeScan is an international opinion research consultancy. Companies, multilateral institutions, governments and NGOs trust GlobeScan for our unique expertise in reputation research, sustainability, and issues management. We provide global organisations with evidence-based insight and advice to help them build strong brands, manage relations with key stakeholders, and define their strategic positioning.

GlobeScan conducts research in over 90 countries, is certified to the ISO 9001-2008 standard for our quality management system, and is a signatory to the UN Global Compact. GlobeScan is an independent, management-owned company, with offices in Toronto, Canada, London, England, and San Francisco, USA.

Global Pulse 2010

Global Pulse 2010 is a 3-day, online “virtual” collaboration event, that will bring together thousands of individual socially-engaged participants and organizations and companies from around the world. Registration is FREE and participants can join from any computer with internet access. The event will be live, over the span of 3 days:

Launch: Monday, March 29th
Close: Wednesday, March 31st
Location: register at: https://www.collaborationjam.com/minijam3/globalpulse2010/registration/

Gap Wins 4th Ethical Business Award

Gap Inc. Recognized As One Of World's Most Ethical Companies For 2010 for the Fourth Year In A Row

"Gap Inc.'s promotion of a sound ethical environment shines within its industry and shows a clear understanding that operating under the highest standards for business behavior goes beyond goodwill and 'lip-service' and is linked to performance and profitability," said Alex Brigham, Executive Director of the Ethisphere Institute.

Watershed Management Award 2010

Bolivian project wins 2010 International ReSource Award for Sustainable Watershed Management

Mar. 22 /CSRwire/ - A project to maintain drinking and irrigation water supplies and to conserve upper watershed forests in the Santa Cruz valleys in Bolivia has won the 8th Swiss Re International ReSource Award 2010. The project will receive prize money of USD 150 000. The award ceremony was held today at the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue in Rüschlikon.

Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development

ABOUT: Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development

http://igsd.org/

Promoting just & sustainable societies
The Institute’s mission is to promote just and sustainable societies and to protect the environment by advancing the understanding, development and implementation of effective, accountable and democratic systems of governance for sustainable development.

Strengthening environmental law
The Institute brings together professionals from around the world who are committed to strengthening environmental law and institutions to promote sustainable development.

The Institute advances:

• Understanding of governance through research and education
• Effective implementation of policies through capacity building
• Change on key issues through advice and advocacy
• Cooperation through networking
• Enhanced public awareness through film and television

Professionals from around the world
The Institute has a broad range of projects in a variety of regions. Its members include practitioners and scholars from a variety of developed and developing countries – including lawyers, political scientists, economists and others – representing a diversity of geographic regions, and a wide range of cultural, legal and political traditions.

Working with leading international organizations
The Institute collaborates with leading national and international and academic organizations including:

• United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
• United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD)
• Basel Convention on Hazardous Wastes
• University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

The Institute provides the secretariat to the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (INECE), a network of over 4,000 environmental professionals in around 150 countries.

Black Carbon Mitigation Could Buy Global Warming Time

From: Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development
Published March 16, 2010 04:42 PM

Scientists to U.S. Congressional Committee: Time for Serious Action on Black Carbon Aggressive mitigation of second largest contributor to climate change can provide significant environmental and health benefits

Black carbon soot, produced from incomplete combustion of diesel fuel and biomass, is one of the largest contributors to climate change apart from CO2, as well as a danger to public health, and should be a prime target of policymakers according to scientists and experts testifying at today's hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming chaired by Congressman Edward Markey.

"Black carbon packs a powerful punch when it comes to climate change, absorbing solar radiation while in the atmosphere and also darkening the surfaces of snow and ice, contributing to increased melting in vulnerable regions such as the Arctic and Himalayas," said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD). "The good news is that it only stays in the atmosphere for up to a few weeks, making it an ideal target for achieving fast cooling through aggressive mitigation measures."

Over Fishing Capacity--Institutional Idiocy?

What does the market creation of this overfishing capacity say about the efficiency and effectiveness of markets or policy or both? At the very least, it says nothing good, except this is a lesson from which we should learn quickly if we are to acquire the intelligence to manage our economy and its effects on the biosphere for continued prosperity and security, i.e., sustainability. See what Professor Pomeroy has to contribute based on “Managing Overcapcity in small-scale Marine Fisheries.”

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THE STOCKHOLM SEMINARS:  FRONTIERS IN SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE AND POLICY

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We have the great pleasure to invite you to the seminar: “Managing Overcapcity in small-scale Marine Fisheries,” Professor Robert Pomeroy, Principal Scientist, The WorldFish Center, Penang, Malaysia; Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Conneticut, US, Thursday April 8, 2010, 11.00–12.00, PLEASE NOTE THE LOCATION!, Room 251, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Kräftriket 2B, Stockholm University. Download the seminar announcement as a pdf-file at: 

http://albaeco.se/sv/images/stories/File/pomeroy_100408.pdf

Please, post or circulate the announcement among your colleagues or put it on the note board. The seminars are open for all interested and free of charge. No registration needed.

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ABSTRACT:  Garcia and Newton (1997) estimated that in 1989, the world’s fishing fleet reflected an overcapacity of 25 to 53 percent with respect to maximum economic yield. Over the period, 1970-1990, world industrial fisheries harvesting capacity grew at a rate eight times greater than the rate of growth of landings from world capture fisheries (Greboval and Munro 1999). A report published by the World Wildlife Fund (Porter 1998) stated that the world fleet was two and a half times (150%) in excess of what the world fish stocks could sustain. FAO research shows that tuna fisheries worldwide have an average harvesting overcapacity of about 20 percent, although this varies from region to region. Similarly, a recent government study in the United States found that overcapacity exists in 55 percent of 73 important fisheries (FAO 2004). This presentation will discuss the concept and assessment of overcapacity in small-scale marine fisheries, and the appropriate and integrated approaches to facilitating the exit of overcapacity from small-scale fisheries. The recommendations presented in the presentation will assist governments and fisheries managers to prepare national and fishery-specific plans of action for the management of fishing overcapacity in the small-scale fishery. 

ABOUT PROF POMEROY:  Robert Pomeroy’s areas of professional interest are marine resource economics and policy, specifically small-scale fisheries management and development, coastal zone management, aquaculture economics, international development, policy analysis, and seafood market¬ing. Dr. Pomeroy has worked on research and development projects in over 40 countries in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Prior to joining University of Conneticut he worked at the World Resources Institute in Washington DC from in developping a marine program. Prior to that, he worked at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM) in Manila, Philippines. Dr. Pomeroy has his PhD in Resource Economics from Cornell University.

ABOUT THE STOCKHOLM SEMINARS - FOCUSING ON THE DYNAMICS AND STEWARDSHIP OF SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. The Stockholm Seminars cover a broad range of perspectives on sustainability issues and are focused on the need for a sound scientific basis for sustainable development policy. The seminars are given at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and are visited by a large audience, including scientists, students, media and policy makers in the public and private sector. The lectures are free of charge and open for all interested. For more information contact Albaeco: 08-674 74 00, e-mail: info@albaeco.com, or visit www.albaeco.se/stockholmseminars

 ARRANGED BY:

- The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

- The Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University

- The Stockholm Environment Institute, SEI

- The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, IGBP, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

- Albaeco (Albaeco 2009, http://www.albaeco.se)

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Hydrologic Cycle - Basics

Earth Portal - Environment In Focus Topic of the Week - Hydrologic Cyle.

The Truth About Global Warming (i.e., burning!)

Finally, an irreverent article that begins to tell the truth about climate change and the unwittingly duped or intentionally evil climate deniers: 10 Ways Mother Earth Will Strike Back If We Don't Stop Our Wanton Destruction of the Environment,  By Scott Thill (AlterNet).

Here's how the article starts.

Thanks to perfectly timed, premeditated reality assassinations like so-called ClimateGate, nearly half of Americans may now believe that the various threats of climate change are exaggerated. That's the highest quotient ever since polling on the issue commenced. But there is good news: They're on the wrong side of history and science, and Earth will still get the last laugh on all of them, and us for that matter.

Welcome to our existential nightmare. From rising seas and runaway droughts and storms to the outer limits of dystopian catastrophes like the fart apocalypse -- I'll explain later -- our planet has no shortage of ways to bitch-slap us back into our dangerous reality, whether we want it to or not.

Unfortunately, aside from the turn of the phrase, the good news is still really bad news! By the time the effects of climate change slap enough sense into enough people it will be too late to reverse course. Absent that, if there were to be future historians, they would note the paradox of humanity's last epoch, that industrialization created the most prosperous material 200 years in human history (at least for approximately three-fifths of the population) while simultaneously reversing 3.5 billiion years of evolution that created the benign ecosystem upon which human life depended.

Read the article. Check the links. Get educated. Get real. Get active. It ain't gonna be pretty. You thought the financial crisis was ugly. Watch the accelerating natural capital crisis of climate burning unfold.

Sustainability MS - Columbia University

 From the About the Program Webpage:

 Program Objectives

The M.S. in Sustainability Management will be co-sponsored by The Earth Institute and the School of Continuing Education. It will include new and existing courses at the University, taught by faculty and researchers who are leaders in the fields of earth science, engineering and environmental management. The program utilizes environmental and sustainable development research to provide practical training to a new generation of professionals who will address critical interdisciplinary issues.

The M.S. in Sustainability Management  is based upon years of experience in bridging research and practice. In response to the increasing global challenges all organizations face, from limiting their carbon emissions to managing their water resources, the program melds academic leadership, scientific rigor, and professional practice to form a unique interdisciplinary community dedicated to making lasting advances in global sustainability practice.

The program takes a bold and innovative approach to sustainability that prioritizes the protection of Earth’s systems and resources as well as the spread of social and economic opportunities for all people. To achieve sustainable development, the Earth Institute is conducting and applying interdisciplinary scientific research to address many cross-cutting issues while training a new generation of problem solvers to tackle these issues in all areas of society. Finding solutions to one problem, involves tackling other related challenges. This is at the core of sustainability management. This new generation of problem solvers need to be able to appreciate complex systems of water, environmental services, climate, waste and energy to be able to maximize efficient usage and minimize their negative impacts.

OECD's Societies' Progress Project

From OECD's Civil Society Newsletter - March 2010:

Wikiprogress - A new interactive site for societal well-being invites civil society to the community

The Global Project for Measuring the Progress of Societies fosters the development of economic, social and environmental indicators to provide acomprehensive picture of how the well-being of a society is evolving. It also seeks to encourage the use of indicators to inform and promote evidence-based decision-making, within and across the public, private and citizen sectors. The project is open to all sectors of society and particularly invites members of civil society to get involved, building both on good practice and innovative research work. In October 2009 at the The 3rd OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy” Busan Korea, the Global Project announced the launch of www.wikiprogress.org, which provides a unique forum for sharing data and analysis on the measurement of environmental, social and economic well-being and communicating these tools to policy makers and the wider public. Developing better indicators and awareness is not enough. We also need to ensure that the measures become widely used, and widely understood – not just by statisticians, but by all those interested in societal progress. We invite civil society to go to wikiprogress and become a part of the community for societal progress by sharing in initiatives, best practices and data. Wikiprogress.stat has also just been launched which is bringing together progress-related data into one place. Examples of such data currently include The Happy Planet Index and the Global Peace Index. For further information, please contact angela.hariche@oecd.org.

OECD & Green Growth

From the OECD Civil Society Newsletter March 2010:

The OECD’s Green Growth Strategy team is setting up a protected website to gather views and inputs from a wide range of stakeholders. This initiative is part of the OECD’s broader efforts to promote an informed dialogue and enhance cooperation on key green growth issues. Country delegates, including non-OECD members, NGOs and other relevant stakeholders can participate in online discussion, collaboration and information sharing, as well as comment on the first draft of the Green Growth Strategy interim report (to be posted on this website in mid-March). To join this online community, please send the OECD Green Growth Strategy team (greengrowth@oecd.org) your title(Mr/Miss/Ms/Mrs), last name, first name, and e-mail address. For more information on the OECD’s work on Green Growth: www.oecd.org/greengrowth

Economist's Green Job's Debate

The Economist believes that creating green jobs is a sensible aspiration for governments. Van Jones defends the motion. Andrew P. Morriss is against the motion. (View the debate).

Is it? Sustainability 2030's response follows:

If one understands that the only possible future is a sustainable one and that current environmental, social, and economic trends and business as usual are leading in the opposite direction, to socio-economic and biospheric destabilization and possible collapse, then the only logical response to the Economist's challenge is affirmative. Of course creating green jobs would be a sensible government aspiration if they led in the direction of durable prosperity and security (sustainability) and away from collapse. However, the devil is in the details. A sensible aspiration does not a method make. So how can the government best execute this aspiration?

Most of the debate has occurred within the realm of either inaccurate ideological statements (over generalizations are always false) or policy incrementalism. Neither realm addresses the real issue--how to realize the aspiration--sufficiently.

Both debaters agree that the existing energy market is a dysfunctional case of political (special interest lobbying) and economic market failure (prices signaling the wrong relative valuations and risk), but disagree on the cure. Jones goes with traditional, albeit more intelligent policy prescriptions to correct market failure. Morris ascribes the dysfunction to an intrinsic government incapacity for good decisions--hence the answer is for no government action. However, Morris does not trace the causality back to the long, rich history of big-oil special interest intervention in the political system that was the precursor to many, possibly all, of those past bad government decisions in the energy market. Of course, it is more complicated than that, but those details will not change the situation.

Morris’s' argument leaves us with the do-nothing option (self-induced Armageddon) while Jones’s argument leaves us with traditional policy tools of economic development, which may create some green jobs but would not address the real issue. Creating a bunch of new green jobs in a new green energy sector will not bring about the needed systems transformation quickly enough for sustainability success—and the real goal of green jobs. After all, in a sustainable world, all jobs will be green. The goal is not green jobs per se, but a green or ecologically sustainable economy. Therefore, the "green jobs" goal is a proxy for the larger goal of a green or sustainable society that is the antidote to global warming as the front line of, but not the entire and more complex, sustainability challenge that society faces. If we lose sight of this ultimate goal in trying to achieve this instrumental secondary goal, we will not design the right response.

In addition, even if we were successful within the limited realm of traditional economic development policy applied to greening energy sector jobs, the policy “success” would be insufficient. Without expanding the frame of "green" energy sector jobs to encompass or harness the changes in the rest of the economy that are either required for or substantially support the creation of the wider ecologically sustainable, low-no carbon economy, the powerful policy and economic synergies available and required for success inthe clean energy sector will not be evident nor used. The result will be a few green jobs, but no green economy. The problem is that time is of the essence. We no longer have the option of “muddling through” with marginalist incremental problem solving, greening one subsector here, another there, with the systems transformation possibly occurring sometime in the future if and when the market price curve for “green” dips below those for current “red” practices.

When it comes to the sustainability challenge, part of the problem is that the market is likely not capable of signaling the required changes sufficiently at all or at least not signaling them soon enough. This is the case because many of the natural system changes that our human economy has set in motion are invisible to market signals and to human institutional intelligence up to the point where it is too late to respond sufficiently. Global warming is a classic example. Aside from being named to induce human complacency (it should be called global burning), the changes in average global temperature are so small as to be imperceptible. By the time the ensuing bio-geo-chemical and associated ecological changes are visible and comprehensible to our empiricist-based institutional market and political intelligence and instrumentation, the forces for catastrophic environmental changes have been set in motion and cannot be reversed. They will crush the human economy with the speed and impunity of a human swatting a fly. Thus, the tools of marginalist policy analysis, the arguments over the intrinsic idiocy of government etc., are really pointless and insufficient.

The real question is, can humanity defy the trends of its past performance, rise to the occaision, and get it right? I say yes, it can. After 50 years of environmental research, society has the understanding required for governments to be wiser with policy interventions that reset incorrect market parameters so that the resulting internal private market dynamics produce the real social welfare that is its only claim to legitimacy. Being an ideologic slave to failing dysfunctional "free" markets, is the idiocy of free market ideologic purity and fundamentalism. After 200 years of the human experiment with democracy, we have the expertise to counter the influence of special interests, economic or otherwise. After 300 years of a phenomenally creative capitalist socio-production revolution, we have the technology and organizational capacity we need to begin to create the green economy and the innovative capacity to invent the rest. We simply need the clarity of will and the strength of leadership to begin. This debate needs to be understood as a debate over the aspirations of creating a green economy and society as an antidote to the ever-accelerating trend towards global climate destabilization and human economic systems collapse (insurance industries will be the first casualties), as well as an antidote to the savaging of sustainability parameters that our economy counts as production instead of as the real costs they are(often unrecoverable). Only then will the near-term secondary goal of green jobs in a newly transformed clean energy economy be seen for, and defined as, what it really is, a needed component of a lightning-fast whole systems transformation for sustainability success. Only then will the real innovation challenge of sustainability be fully perceived—innovation to create policy instruments powerful enough for whole systems transformation and management, innovation to create smart institutions that will not be hoodwinked by system gamers and manipulators.

Of course creating green jobs is a sensible aspiration for governments, particularly when it is required for survival and economic betterment, and when it is done in ways that harness the power of functional free markets to the task.

Support Cleaner Air Campaign by 032210

Hi -- The EPA has proposed new rules to lower the amount of harmful ozone, or smog, in our air. But Big Oil and Dirty Coal are fighting to protect the dirty, unhealthy status quo, putting their profits before our health.
Fight back! Tell the EPA you support their efforts and ask them to implement the strongest proposed smog limit. Click Here to send letter.

Peak Coal & Oil - Status Assessment

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/39448

S-2030 Alert: Counter the Climate Deniers' Spin

Participate in the 1Sky and Green Amerca's 72-Hour Action Campaign. Go to the 1Sky site to send the letter below or your own version. It can take as little as 30 seconds (enter zip code, click send). 

Please vote 'NO' on Senator Lisa Murkowski's efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act.

Her self-interest-serving resolution would fatally compromise the US's public interest and the lightening-fast transition to a clean renewable energy economy, which is the only foundation for sustainable prosperity.

The resoluton would gut the EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate global warming pollution and crack down on dirty coal power plants, a key tool in the transition to a clean, renewable energy economy.

It would strip away one of the strongest tools we have to limit carbon pollution, transition to a clean energy economy that will create millions of jobs, and tackle climate change--setting the stage for an economy capable of sustainable prosperity.

Please protect our chance to build a clean renewable energy future of sustainable prosperity by voting 'NO' on Murkowski.

SRIs - an older critical perspective

Paul Hawkins on SRIs in 2005. His point is transparency not that SRI is not a good idea. The question is whether it puts its money where it's mouth is.