Sam Lakha, Manager, Volans Outreach.
Volans Launches ‘The New Opportunity’ Game!
Volans launches an innovative game on understanding the collective mindset of where Public and Private Finances should be allocated. The areas for allocation are Education, Energy, Finance, Food, Health, Transport, and Water & Sanitation.
The game gives a player $100 million dollars (play money, of course!) and asks the player to allocate based on his or her priorities.
Click here to Play >
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2008/11/volan-launches-%e2%80%98the-new-opportunity-space%e2%80%99-game/.
- Smita SircarSocial Entrepreneurs of the year
India and South Africa had reason to celebrate as The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship announced its Social Entrepreneurs of the Year.
In India, Arbind Singh, Executive Director, Nidan, is the winner of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008. Montek S. Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, India, conferred the award on Singh at the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit. In India, the Social Entrepreneur Year of the Award is an initiative of The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation and The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in collaboration with the UNDP.
Nidan is developing sustainable businesses, cooperatives, trade unions and “people’s institutions” led by the most excluded categories of the poor in Bihar. It has promoted and built 20 independent profit-making ventures governed and owned by the urban poor including waste workers, ragpickers, vegetable vendors, construction labourers, domestic helpers, micro-farmers, street traders and other marginalized occupation groups. As legitimate competitors in the mainstream economy, the collectives negotiate with the government for their rights and entitlements.
In South Africa, the Social Entrepreneur Award was presented to Patrick Schofield, Chief Executive Officer of the Streetwires Artists Collective - which is revolutionizing and formalizing the informal wire and bead market. Schofield was recognized not only for growing the social business of Streetwires and its craftsmen and craftswomen, but by lifting the status of these crafts into art forms, giving them true aesthetic and economic value.
By creating innovative and formal systems of craft development, team cooperative manufacturing, quality control and marketing to local and international audiences, Streetwires ensures the producers a fair price for their art, making it the first fair trade craft organization in South Africa. Through government-certified training programmes, its member wire artists and students trained in outreach projects empower the individuals with qualifications and skills to create their own enterprises in the industry. The Streetwires approach has become best practice for the craft industry in South Africa, with their systems and designs taken up by many in the industry.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2008/11/social-entrepreneurs-of-the-year/.
- John ElkingtonGlobal Trends 2025 report paints grim backdrop
While we are increasingly optimistic about the potential for a broad range of innovators and entrepreneurs to help shape a better future, with a new Phoenix Economy likely to take flight in the decade 2010-2020, we keep a wary weather eye out for evidence of countervailing trends. And if that’s what you’re looking for, look no further than the latest report from the U.S. National Intelligence Council. Entitled Global Trends 2025, much of it makes bleak reading indeed. Among its key conclusions:
- The whole international system - as constructed following WWII - will be revolutionised. Not only will new players - Brazil, Russia, India and China - have a seat at the international high table, but they will bring new stakes and impose new rules of the game.
- The unprecedented transfer of wealth roughly from West to East now under way will continue for the foreseeable future.
- The potential for conflict will increase, owing to political turbulence in parts of the greater Middle East.
- And, the part that relates most closely to what Volans plans to work on, unprecedented economic growth, coupled with 1.5 billion more people, will put pressure on resources - particularly energy, food, and water - raising the specter of scarcities emerging as demand outstrips supply.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2008/11/global-trends-2025-report-paints-grim-backdrop/.
- John ElkingtonLearning from the experts — and they’re not who you think!
Pamela blogs on Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership about how social entrepreneurs invest and partner with local communities for the long-term to address social needs; this runs counter to how international development gets “delivered” to these communities by international aid agencies and NGOs.
Full details of blog can be found here.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2008/11/learning-from-the-experts-%e2%80%94-and-they%e2%80%99re-not-who-you-think/.
- Kevin TeoPamela Hartigan blogs on the Harvard Kennedy School’s site.
Pamela Hartigan has just launched the first of a five-part blog on the Harvard Kennedy School’s Centre for Public Leadership site. The first post is about her recent visit to Joe Madiath of Gram Vikas and the impact of their work on rural poverty in India.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2008/11/pamela-hartigan-blogs-on-the-harvard-kennedy-schools-site/.
- Smita SircarGreen New Deal promises bonanza - but who will benefit?
Yes, I know it’s tempting fate ahead of the US election results, but I couldn’t resist summarising a couple of recent announcements on green jobs and Green New Deals. Whoever wins the White House is going to face FDR-worthy challenges, so it’s appropriate to speak in terms of greening any new New Deal, as Al gore already has in relation to green electricity.
Now the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched its Green Economy Initiative with a call for reinvestment in natural infrastructure. Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, argues that the benefits of combating climate change include “new green jobs in clean tech and clean energy businesses up to ones in sustainable agriculture and conservation-based enterprises.” Interestingly, too, he backs up his business case with an in-house financier. Recognizing that “the economic models of the 20th century are now hitting the limits of what is possible,” Pavan Sukdhev, a senior banker from Deutsche Bank currently seconded to UNEP to lead the research, comments that, “Investments will soon be pouring back into the global economy - the question is whether they go into a new green economy.”
According to UNEP, “The Green Economy initiative has three pillars - valuing and mainstreaming nature’s services into national and international accounts; employment generation through green jobs and the laying out the policies; instruments and market signals able to accelerate a transition to a Green Economy.” The sectors seen as most likely to lead the transition to economic returns, environmental sustainability and job creation are clean energy and clean technologies, renewables and sustainable biomass, sustainable agriculture, ecosystem infrastructure, reduced emissions, and sustainable cities. Within 18 to 24 months, UNEP expects to deliver a comprehensive assessment and tool kit for making the transition to a green economy.
Separately, the Worldwatch Institute has published it report, Green Jobs: Working for People and the Environment. It also summarizes the state-of-play of sustainable employment in the following sectors: renewable energy, buildings, transportation, basic industry, recycling, farming, and forestry. This publication is based on a larger report commissioned for the joint Green Jobs Initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme, the International Labour Organization, the International Trade Union Confederation, and the International Organization of Employers, released in September 2008.
Worldwatch’s own summary of the report runs as follows:
The pursuit of so-called “green jobs” - employment that contributes to protecting the environment and reducing humanity’s carbon footprint - will be a key economic driver of the 21st century. “Climate-proofing” the global economy will involve large-scale investments in new technologies, equipment, buildings, and infrastructure, which will provide a major stimulus for much-needed new employment and an opportunity for retaining and transforming existing jobs.
The number of green jobs is on the rise. The renewable energy sector has seen rapid expansion in recent years, with current employment in renewables and supplier industries estimated at a conservative 2.3 million worldwide. The wind power industry employs some 300,000 people, the solar photovoltaics (PV) sector an estimated 170,000, and the solar thermal industry more than 600,000.More than 1 million jobs are found in the biofuels industry growing and processing a variety of feedstocks into ethanol and biodiesel.
Construction jobs can be greened by ensuring that new buildings meet high performance standards. And retrofitting existing buildings to make them more energy-efficient has huge job potential for construction workers, architects, energy auditors, engineers, and others. The weatherization of some 200,000 apartments in Germany created 25,000 new jobs and helped retain 116,000 existing jobs in 2002-04.
The transportation industry is a cornerstone of modern economies, but it also has the fastest rising carbon emissions of any sector. Relatively green auto manufacturing jobs - those in manufacturing the most-efficient cars currently available - today number no more than about 250,000 out of roughly 8 million in the auto sector worldwide.
Modern rail and urban transit systems offer a greener alternative, but they need fresh commitment and investments to reverse the job erosion of recent decades. In growing numbers of cities, good jobs are being generated by the emergence of bus rapid transit systems. There are also substantial green employment opportunities in retrofitting old diesel buses to reduce air pollutants and in replacing old equipment with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) or hybrid-electric buses. In New Delhi, the introduction of 6,100 CNG buses by 2009 is expected to create 18,000 new jobs.
The steel, aluminum, cement, and paper industries are highly energy-intensive and polluting. But increasing scrap use, greater energy efficiency, and reliance on alternative energy sources may at least render them a pale shade of green. Worldwide, more than 40 percent of steel output and one-quarter of aluminum production is based on recycled scrap, possibly employing more than a quarter million people.
Recycling and remanufacturing jobs worldwide number many millions, but incompatible definitions and a lack of data gathering make a global tally impossible. China alone is thought to have some 10 million jobs in this sector, and the United States has more than 1 million. In developing countries, recycling is often done by informal networks of scavengers. Brazil, which boasts a high rate of aluminum recycling, relies on some 500,000 scrap collectors. Cairo’s 70,000 Zabaleen recycle as much as 85 percent of the materials they collect.
Agriculture and forestry often still account for the bulk of employment and livelihoods in many developing countries. Small farms are more labor- and knowledge-intensive than agroindustrial farms are, and they use fewer energy and chemical inputs. But relatively sustainable forms of smallholder agriculture are being squeezed hard by energy- and pesticide-intensive farms and by global supply chains. Organic farming is still limited. But because it is more labor-intensive than industrialized agriculture, it can be a source of growing green employment.
Afforestation and reforestation efforts, as well as better stewardship of critical ecosystems more generally, could support livelihoods among the more than 1 billion people who depend on forests, often through non-timber forest products. Planting trees creates large numbers of jobs, although these are often seasonal and low paid. Agroforestry, which combines tree planting with traditional farming, offers significant environmental benefits in degraded areas - including carbon sequestration. Some 1.2 billion people already depend on it to some extent.
There is additional job potential in efforts to adapt to, and cope with, climate change. Building flood barriers, terracing land, and rehabilitating wetlands is labor-intensive work. Efforts to protect croplands from environmental degradation and to adapt farming to climate change by raising water efficiency, preventing erosion, planting trees, using conservation tillage, and rehabilitating degraded crop and pastureland can also support rural livelihoods.
The potential for green jobs is immense. But much of it will not materialize without massive and sustained investments in the public and private sectors. Governments need to establish a firm framework for greening all aspects of the economy, with the help of targets and mandates, business incentives, and reformed tax and subsidy policies. It will also be critical to develop innovative forms of technology transfer to spread green methods around the world at the scale and speed required to avoid full-fledged climate change. Cooperative technology development and technology-sharing programs could help expedite the process of replicating best practices.
To provide as many workers as possible with the qualifications they will increasingly need, an expansion of green education, training, and skill-building programs in a broad range of occupations is crucial. Resource extraction and energy-intensive industries are likely to feel the greatest impact in transitioning to a low-carbon future, and regions and communities highly dependent on them will need assistance in diversifying their economic base, creating alternative jobs and livelihoods, and acquiring new skills. This is known as a “just transition.”
Green jobs need to be decent jobs - offering good wages and income security, safe working conditions, dignity at work, and adequate workers’ rights. Sadly, this is not always the case today. Recycling work is sometimes precarious, involving serious occupational health hazards and often generating less than living wages and incomes. Growing crops at biofuels plantations in countries like Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, and Indonesia often involves excessive workloads, poor pay, exposure to pesticides, and oppression of workers. These cautionary aspects highlight the need for sustainable employment to be good not only for the environment but also for the people holding the jobs. Still, an economy that reconciles human aspirations with the planet’s limits is eminently possible.
If you are interested in a full electronic version of Green Jobs: Working for People and the Environment, or interested in purchasing bulk copies for a special price, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org or +1 202-452-1999 x594.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2008/11/green-new-deal-promises-bonanza-but-who-will-benefit/.
- John Elkington