There was a meadow and then people from all over came and the meadow turned into a bustling village. A month later the tents were gone and if he would not have seen it with his own eyes, he would never have known they were there..
photo by Flickr user: fireflies604
A few days ago on my way back home from vacation I sat next to another home-coming guy, who had just left 30 degree warm Finland, where he had spent close to a month at a Rainbow Gathering. What’s that?
Wikipedia describes it as follows:
“Rainbow Gatherings are temporary intentional communities, typically held in outdoor settings, and espousing and practicing ideals of peace, love, harmony, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism and mass media.”
Jean-Louis, the man from the bus, goes there every year. It’s back to a simple way of life for him and the place is full with good musicians. He told me that everybody finds a place in the community, be it entertaining or cooking or chilling or helping with other chores. Imagine a bunch of people preparing yummy food, being surounded by musicians and then when the meal is served a hat is passed around and you put in there what you like. Some will put 10Euros each meal others not a penny in four weeks. And it’s all good.
I went to visit the Royal Botanical Garden the other day. The garden is only open to public for a short time every year. I am generally quite reserved when it comes to tourist attractions, but this garden is just amazing and you simply forget about hundreds of people that are amazed by the flower paradise around you.
If you get the chance go and visit the place. Not just a nice thing to light up your weekend – we cannot take enough opportunities to admire the beauty and variety of life nature has created around us. Let me know if you know of similar places that you can recommend .
Cloud-computing and ICT technology as such has changed our society. A development of our Web2.0 culture is just one small part of the impact. The way we communicate, the way we interact, the tools we use.
Even if we often are not aware of the environmental impacts of our actions – it is evident, that our changed behavior with the availability of computing tools and new ways to interact has an impact on the environment.
Nothing to be afraid of – there are positive and negative impacts: Did you know that a modern laptop consumes less energy than an old light bulb?
As Jorge Zapico who is currently researching the intersections of ICT and Sustainability at the Centre for Sustainable Communications in Stockholm points out correctly, that there are many ways in which we can enhance the positive impacts. For example an open source approach to sharing information, using the net to mobilize the environmental movement and taking advantage of technologies that make our life more (energy) efficient.
Which does not mean we should neglect the negative ones like the hidden hardware in many data centers that is running our beloved Internet cloud (slide 13). Enjoy Jorge’s presentation on this topic:
Whilst the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Island has impacted the lives of millions of travellers over the last days and cost airlines over 200 billion Euros per day. Non-volcanologists do not spend much time on considering environmental impacts of this event.
This might sound a bit philosophical: Since Vulcanos were there before us – shouldn’t they consider us as a threat rather than the other way around?
More seriously: As David Mc Candless points out in his blog Information is Beautiful, the amount of CO2 emissions that were prevented by the volcano eruption is significantly higher than the CO2 that the Volcano emitted.
We surely need to keep in mind that the root of climate change is not CO2 emissions but our demands (in this case for means of transport). This event hopefully makes some of us realize this connection > Let’s not forget that it is not a greener aviation industry and well treated passengers that will solve the climate change issue.
BBC News has developed a guide showing some of the world’s key volcanoes:
Noone really seems to have grasped what sustainability really stands for. One of those concepts that is so broad that anything could fit in and so complex that noone really knows how to transform it into something practical.
Especially corporates seem to be struggling in making sense of it and putting the topic in a context that speaks to the individual, to management and serves the company purpose. Let’s be honest here – it’s a real challenge. There’s no off-the-shelf solution on how to turn a successful corpoate business into a successful sustainable one. And it’s surely not about the process but much more about the indivudual that drives change in the organization.
Boston University has built their concept around ‘Corporate Citizenship’. They recently released a report on Leadership Competencies for Community Involvement that shows what it takes to be a change agent in driving a big organization towards taking an active role in corporate citizenship. Have a look it’s an interesting read.
One of our contacts from EUROPEN recommended this video which reflects in a viral – web friendly way the purpose of packaging.
When it comes to discussing sustainability and product development, packaging is often seen as an easy target for policy makers. There’s a public perception that packaging equals waste. So the more packaging, the more waste is being created. Only few people take into account that packaging also prevents waste and keeps the product safe in a purposeful way (if designed smartly).
Have a look at the video clip below developed by Elipso (the French plastic & flexible packaging association) that addresses this topic.
I just read through an article on China Daily in which Marcos Fava Neves, professor of strategic planning and food chains at the School of Economics and Business, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, proposes to add another dimension to the model of sustainabiltiy. Normally we consider the economic, social and environmental perspective (triple bottom line) when assessing sustainability. Marcos Fava Neves proposes to add in the context of organizations that struggle to implement this concept as part of their planning and operations pro-activeness as an additional measure.
When reading the article I started wondering whether pro-activeness is really what we are missing. Companies do most of the time act in different ways. In my eyes the issue is rather a lack of ownership and leadership in the space of sustainability. In a traditional company structure sustainability is not assigned to any specific department and therefore it is unclear who should be taking the lead on this.
It’s not just about what you do but also about how you link individual activites. Ideally an organization has an overall sustainability strategy and links activites to this strategy with the aim to create one real and coherent sustainability story. Transparency and involvement of internal and external stakeholders is key here. This involves HR, marketing, business development, and many other divisions.
Getting everyone on board requires not just pro-activeness but also smart leadership.
When was the last time you made a rational choice as part of a complex decision? Thinking about it seriously, I’m not even sure that I’ve ever made one.
How is it possible to consider all possible factors and anticipate what option might be best with our little brain that has a limited amount of knowledge?
The choice for the right study programme, the most promising job, the least polluting car, the relationship that will last forever or simply the greenest energy provider often bring us to the edge of our capabilities of making a rational decision.
James G. March wrote in his book ‘A Primer on Decision Making’ about the limitations of rationality. He identifies four factors that limit us in the way we make decisions while also considering challenges for organizations:
1. Problems of attention: Limitations in the time we can spend on considering all factors
2. Problems of memory: Capabilities to capture and process all the information we gather
3. Problems of comprehension: Capacity to grasp complex issues and interpret them correctly – this is especially difficult in complex situations that cover a wide field of knowledge areas
4. Problems of communication: Problems with sharing and communicating crucial information, factors that are not presented clearly and other limiting issues e.g. due to language and cultural differences.
All these issues make it quiet difficult for someone to make a decision that is solely based on rationality – this is probably not a good excuse for individuals and businesses, but it might explain certain behaviors and put off pressure of people that think they should always make rational and fair decisions.
Especially in organizations that have been around for a while decision making processes are extremely long and complex. In todays fast changing world, this limits and blocks the organization in making the right choices.
In today’s environment the biggest challenge is not anymore to make the right choice, but to adapt to the changing environment.
A lot of flexibility is demanded from individuals and organizations. It’s not a surprise that young organizations with less structure and processes seem to cope with this much better than multinationals that are following a model which is already many years old.
Kanal Consulting Group a US-based management firm has developed a 12 step guideline to Implement sustainability accross an organization.
As reported on greenbiz.com, they propose the list of steps to implement sustainability in order to improve the “bottom line and the environment”.
The list covers: Be coherent in what you do, have a proper strategy & model, get everyone on board and roll this out across departments.
Employee engagement seems to be one of the key components that are still perceived as challenging when it comes to implementing sustainability.
In a way it makes sense – we are dealing with individuals on whose motivation the success of the project depends. Coming up with a really motivating internal campaign to get everyone on board, opening up the plan so employees can propose their own ideas requires not only a lot of preparation but also a rethinking of the current thinking that is being done around sustainable development. Is it time for an open source approach for global companies?
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