Keep an eye on myEcoCost

Project leader Rob Mostyn writes:

"We are now 7 months into the myEcoCost project. It has been quite challenging building up a momentum and aligning the thoughts of so many contributors but the progress we are making is sound and I am very pleased with the foundation work.

We have an official website now, we have completed our requirements gathering and the system architecture is starting to take very good shape. We are also starting to write papers for academic conferences later in the year.

Several weeks ago one consortium partner addressed a cleaning industry conference. The topic was about the 200 or so eco labels in use around the world and the challenge consumers face in making sense of it all. In brief he said "it isn't going to work". He went on to mention his involvement in myEcoCost and some of the big industry players expressed an immediate interest in the idea. So word is starting to get around.

It would be wrong to think of this as "our" project. With the Commission's financial support it is now a European project and I would like to express my gratitude once again to the Commission and its reviewers who rated our application so highly.

Here is an overall summary of what the project is up to:
*  The theme of the EU Commission's funding call was "Innovative resource efficient technologies, processes and services".
*  The tag line for the project is "Forming the nucleus of a novel ecological accounting system".
*  The ultimate objective of the concept is to inform individual consumers on a day-by-day basis whether they are living sustainably or not, with the intent that people will modify their consumption in order to lead one planet lifestyles.

We believe this is the beginning of society finding its way to living sustainably and ensuring there is a habitable planet for us in 500 years time. Thank you so much for your interest in it to date.

And now I have a favour to ask.

The best way to keep informed is to receive our project newsletter and so I would like to invite you to register on the website to receive it. This will keep you abreast of the achievement of the project in a more timely fashion, with a newsletter being sent every 2 months or so. It will always be brief and to the point and there is no risk of email addresses being passed on to third parties. If you go to www.myecocost.eu (drop the "www." if you are on a Mac using Safari) and then click on "subscribe" in the lower right corner of the window underneath Project Newsletter. And in case you don.t want to register for yourself. you could do it for us! The more people registering for the newsletter has our dissemination statistics look that much better. ;-)"

Only a touch of summer

In 'my' England sunny days have been rare this year.  Fortunately two have fallen on a Sunday or bank holiday Monday. All gardens from Kent to Shropshire are behind what most regard as 'normal'.  A friend in Kent who records the date of his first daffodil said they were later by a month this year.   Sometimes the interactions of temperature and daylength (that can control flowering) produce effects I have not seen before - such as daffodils still flowering among the bluebells at Chirk Castle last week-end.  At Hodnet Hall a day later the lilac, rhododendrons and other flowers were further along.

Does George Osborne know?

Readers of this Blog have perhaps become aware of the critiques I and others offer regarding mainstream economics.  The latest imposition that economics has made on our lives is not based in theory (so it seems) but appears to have been due to a failure of spreadsheet management and arithmetic. 'Eminent' Harvard economists whose work has been used by many for the wave of austerity programmes around the world have been shown to have made a mistake with serious implications:

"in their Excel spreadsheet, Reinhart and Rogoff had not selected the entire row when averaging growth figures: they omitted data from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada and Denmark. In other words, they had accidentally only included 15 of the 20 countries under analysis in their key calculation.

When that error was corrected, the “0.1% decline” data became a 2.2% average increase in economic growth."

I wonder if this was an example of practice to support a pre-held theory?

Canada shows up 'spineless' Australia on Sri Lanka

In the words of Frances Harrison, today in London 'The Commonwealth has failed its first major test since it strengthened its Ministerial Action Group in 2011 to renew its commitment to human rights and democratic values.'

Australia's stance in this situation is shameful - and the shame crosses party lines.  In contrast Canada has shown moral courage, as evidenced by the actions of the Canadian Foreign Minister when leaving the London meeting:

"Asked about what the Commonwealth Secretary General Kamlesh Sharma says is positive engagement with Sri Lanka, Mr Baird [Canada's Foreign Minister] replied that he would rather accept the judgement and conclusions of the Commonwealth Journalists Association, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, The Commonwealth Lawyers Association, the Commonwealth Legal Education Association, the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges, Human Rights Watch and the UN Human Rights Council. All of these have pointed to a deterioration of civil liberties and human rights in Sri Lanka after the end of the civil war.

Mr Baird said Canada cared passionately about the issue of Sri Lanka and it wasn’t just going to “go alone to get along”. He added it wasn’t about accommodating evil, but about combating it."

Why is 'joined-up' governance so difficult?

This example from the UK leads me to ask yet again: why is it so difficult to do 'joined-up' governance?  This report's recommendations seem relatively simple yet, based on past experience, we could have little confidence that their enactment was feasible or possible.

"Cold Enough: Excess winter deaths, Winter Fuel Payments and the UK's problem with the cold

 Twitter hashtag: #coldenough

Around 25,000 preventable 'excess winter deaths' occur each year, and the annual cost of cold-related illness to the NHS has been estimated at £1.36 billion.

This report from the Strategic Society Centre provides a full strategic review of the government's response to this ongoing public health scandal, and what it should be doing in future.

The report identifies four government departments with policies that touch upon these issues:

• Department for Work and Pensions
• Department of Health
• Department for Energy and Climate Change
• Department for Communities and Local Government

However, despite progress achieved via policies such as the Cold Weather Plan, Winter Fuel Payments and the Warm Home Discount scheme, the report concludes the government's policy response is still characterised by:

• A fragmented, uncoordinated approach across different government departments.
• The domination of the issue of ‘fuel poverty’ over the health effects of the cold, and an over-reliance on incomplete government means testing data; and,
• The clear need to do better.

Recommendations of the report include:

• Introduce an annual public health campaign linked to the Winter Fuel Payment to further influence cold-related behaviour.
• Create a single national ‘at-risk’ register for the cold, integrating DWP, energy company, GP and local authority data.
• Give clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) responsibilities for excess winter deaths.
• Enable CCGs and Health and Wellbeing Boards to refer households for free home insulation under the government’s Energy Company Obligation (ECO).
• Make excess winter deaths and cold-related illness a Ministerial priority.

Download a copy of Cold Enough: Excess winter deaths, Winter Fuel Payments and the UK's problem with the cold
 

Author: James Lloyd, Director, Strategic Society Centre"

Education for Sustainability - UK study

Stephen Martin and colleagues have produced a timely paper based on a review of ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) in the UK.

Abstract:

"This paper discusses the current status of all aspects of education for sustainable development (ESD) across the United Kingdom (UK), drawing on evidence from its political jurisdictions (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), and setting out some characteristics of best practice. The paper analyzes current barriers to progress, and outlines future opportunities for enhancing the core role of education and learning in the pursuit of a more sustainable future. Although effective ESD exists at all levels, and in most learning contexts across the UK, with good teaching and enhanced learner outcomes, the authors argue that a wider adoption of ESD would result from the development of a strategic framework which puts it at the core of the education policy agenda in every jurisdiction. This would provide much needed coherence, direction and impetus to existing initiatives, scale up and build on existing good practice, and prevent unnecessary duplication of effort and resources. The absence of an overarching UK strategy for sustainable development that sets out a clear vision about the contribution learning can make to its goals is a major barrier to progress. This strategy needs to be coupled with the establishment of a pan-UK forum for overseeing the promotion, implementation and evaluation of ESD."

It is remarkable how many academics and thus Universities shy away from strategies that locate ESD as central to the overall curiculum and thus a key aspect of graduateness.

Creative way to explore food issues systemically

This article has just come through as part of The Wrap, an update of developments from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS (University of Technology Sydney).  It is a great way to explore food issues systemically.

"The Love Food Hate Waste short film competition, organised by the Institute and the City of Sydney, asked budding filmmakers to show the world in either 30 seconds, or 3 to 5 minutes, why it’s important to celebrate a healthy and sustainable love of food and highlight the growing problem of food waste.

According to the NSW Environment Protection Authority, which funded the competition as part of the Love Food Hate Waste program, NSW households are throwing away edible food worth $2.5 billion each year.

The judging panel, including Costa Georgiadis, host of ABC’s Gardening Australia, Jared Ingersol, founder of Danks Street Depot and Sarah Wilson, television presenter and author, awarded Ryan Diefenbach’s Rhythm of Waste best film in the 30 second category.

Ryan, a UTS student studying journalism and law, said that he had never properly considered the issue of food waste before entering the competition. “I decided to enter for the chance to develop my filmmaking experience, but once I took a step back and understood the scale of the problem I realised it’s an everyday issue that we can all help tackle,” he said.

He enlisted his younger brother for Rhythm of Waste, portraying a child’s eating habits over a series of mornings contributing to bags of garbage. 

Rhythm of Waste was also awarded the People’s Choice Award after receiving the most votes in a public poll before the awards night on the competition’s facebook page.

The 3 to 5 minute category was won by director Fiona McGee for Supervalue, uncovering the lifecycle of a packet of fish fingers, from the life of the fish in the ocean to the leftovers thrown in the bin after a meal.

To see the winning films, visit www.lovefoodfilm.com/films "

Coal and gas - the new tobacco

We now know enough to say that coal and gas.....and, yes, oil are having the same negative consequences that we have come to associate with tobacco and asbestos.  In fact they are worse. Despite 'big oil' and 'big coal' pursuing similar strategies to 'big tobacco' we know that some form of tipping point is approaching when the front page of a UK morning paper reports:

"Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis – report

Trillions of dollars at risk as stock markets inflate value of fossil fuels that may have to remain buried forever, experts warn"

The article says:

"The stark report is by [Lord Nicholas] Stern and the thinktank Carbon Tracker. Their warning is supported by organisations including HSBC, Citi, Standard and Poor's and the International Energy Agency. The Bank of England has also recognised that a collapse in the value of oil, gas and coal assets as nations tackle global warming is a potential systemic risk to the economy, with London being particularly at risk owing to its huge listings of coal."

I agree with Chris Reidy when he writes that all subsidies to unused coal, gas and oil should go up in smoke. He points out that:

"More than half of global greenhouse gas emissions come from burning fossil fuels. Reducing and eventually eliminating fossil fuel use is a critical priority. Most of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground if we are to avoid dangerous climate change.

Yet governments around the world still pour billions of dollars into supporting fossil fuel production and use every year. Money utilised to prop up the fossil fuel industry dwarfs investment in renewable energy. This is a backwards policy that needs to change."

A tragedy that we have inflicted upon ourselves globally is how we have come to believe that natural gas is cleaner than coal and thus a transitional subsitute for oil. Who is it that sold us this discourse? In the process we are creating, or have created 'big gas' and distorted investment strategies so vital for our collective futures. Investment in renewables and more innovation in demand management are the only sure forms of energy security. As this revealing clip shows by turning to gas we are making things worse - it is a turning in the wrong direction.

We need to remove the social license to operate for 'big coal', 'big oil' and 'big gas' as quickly as possible - a good way to start is to remove all taxpayer subsidy.

A 'critical' press

One of the great things about being back in Britain is that there remains a strong, critical press within a diversity of press offerings. To my mind this has to be good for democracy as it is practiced at the moment.  By critical I of course mean the ability to formuate and present a critique.

Two articles last weekend stood out for me as exemplifying this tradition.  In Saturday's Guardian  Leo Hickman's interview with environmental philanthropist Jeremy Grantham was excellent reading.  It made me wish that Grantham would take time out to advise and support The Greens campaign in the forthcoming Australian Federal election. I would certainly like to see him in a staged debate with Tony Abbot, the climate-change-denying head of Australia's Liberal party. Leo Hickman's extended interview with Jeremy Grantham can be read here. This extract shows where Grantham stands:

".... this bubble, the "carbon bubble", is the biggest he's seen. "We're already in a bad place. The worst accidents are [only] 20, 30, 40 years from now." Such apocalyptic talk is often the preserve of deep-green doom-mongers – the kind of talk that has led many to reject environmentalism. But Grantham insists he's guided "by the facts alone".

I may not entirely agree with Grantham on his GMO (though I would say transgenic) position but I did find his position on the so called 'food crisis' refreshing because it was essentially systemic in nature. Unlike an article on the front page of The Observer the following day Grantham understands that the 'food crisis', so called, has to be understood from both supply side and demand side dynamics.  Any perspective that only focuses on supply-side action has to be held up to critical scrutiny as there is a great danger that it is a discourse pushed by vested interests.

Amongs the millions of words that poured forth following the death of Margaret Thatcher - most of which I avoided - I found this article by Will Hutton the most insightful. As is fitting for a systemic journalist of Hutton's ilk, he will be a keynote speaker at this year's UKSS conference in Oxford.

11th European Farming Systems Symposium 2014

Message just recieved.

Dear Farming Systems Researchers in Europe and Worldwide,

the IFSA Europe steering committee is very pleased to announce the
11th European IFSA Symposium, 1-4 April 2014 in Berlin, Germany, on

Farming systems facing global challenges: Capacities and strategies

The official conference website is now open! 

 

The IFSA community has a long-standing tradition of engagement and self-organisation. It is in this realm, that farming system scientists are invited to build small teams and to become convenors of workshops. Please find the call for workshops attached. It is  available via our website including an online form to submit workshop proposals. 

And don't forget to invite your friends and colleagues to participate!

 

Looking forward to seeing you in Berlin next year! 

On behalf of the steering committee and the local organising committee

Our guts: taking a systemic perspective seriously

For many years now I have challenged medicos whenever the opportunity arose about why medicine has never taken seriously the systemic nature of our guts - our intestines.  Very few medical practitioners in my experience understand our guts in ecological, or ecosystemic terms, preferring reductive use of drugs or medical interventions.  Having reached the age I am I would claim that the ecological status of our guts is one of the most significant contributors to daily and long-term wellbeing but also one of the most neglected in terms of mainstream science. I refer to the systemic interactions between diet, infection, bacteria, fungi, parasites and our own physiology and anatomy.  But perhaps things are changing? This article in The Observer suggests that some researchers and medicos are beginning to experiment.

My friend and colleague David Waltner-Toews has taken these matters seriously for a long time.  He also knows a lot about them having just produced a new book called: The Origin of Feces

London landings

Having just made the transition from the record high temperature of Melbourne to the record low temperatures of the UK  I was pleased to have my overcoat here in London despite the hastle of carrying it.  Not that it is that cold in London it is just that it is particularly cold for this time of year. These temperature extremes are to be expected within the growing understanding of climate change science.

Despite the weather, returning to London is always  a tonic. The Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was absorbing.  I woke early Sunday morning and by chance caught Profile on BBC Radio 4; this episode was devoted to Rev'd Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James's Piccadilly and former Canon of St Pauls Cathedral.  The Profile brief says: 'Many inside the Church see her as favourite to become the first female bishop of the Church of England, if the rules change.'

On the basis of what I heard I headed off to breakfast at Inn the Park thinking that it might be interesting to experience the Easter service at St James's.  From my sun-drenched table adorned with early daffodils (very expensive at the moment because the cold has delayed flowering) and an excellent breakfast menu I had views of the FCO, Horseguards, assorted towers of Whitehall Court, and the MOD building and, to my left, the Mall. The spray of the fountain drifted to my right gently blown by an east wind (the bearer of cold weather).

By the time the 11am service began at St James's the church was full. It was a mixed congregation but not as ethnically and socially mixed as I had expected.  Perhaps my perception is a product of experiencing a Melbourne compared to a London crowd? My motivation for attending the service was to find out, if I could, what the service might tell me about a key UK institution (the Church of England) in transition.

There was a good vibe and good singing well organised.  Love - the acknowledgment of others as legitimate others - was present in various ways from greetings to devices to support congregation participation in the service. Concerns for social justice were obvious along with LGBT...but I was disappointed that there was no discourse about human relations with the non-human world, although Lucy Winkett's sermon could be interpreted in that way if one so chose. It was an impressive sermon, and for me the highlight of the experience.

Without being presumptious (I hope) let me draw on Lucy's sermon to elaborate my point above - of how the sermon could be used to draw attention to the breakdown of human love for the non-human world - and to make a link to an earlier posting. My starting point is the insightful claim that 'the news of resurrection is news of a disappearance - he is not here!'  If we reframe 'he' (though it could be she) as the biophysical world and/or other species, or 'nature' (though this has limitations) than this 'he' is missing too in most of what we humans do.

Lucy goes on to say: 'In fact the resurrection is not so much a conclusion or an answer as a profound question........ But actually, if the question after the crucifixion is“what do we do now?” then it’s actually the same question after the resurrection; after this disruptive, counter intuitive, jolting resurrection, it’s not a question of nodding wisely because it helps us understand the suffering; far from it; it is the beginning of something else even more colossal and disturbing."  Acceptance that we have entered the Anthropocene raises the very same question: 'what do we do now'?  Do we follow a path of self-crucifixation by continuing to support greenhouse gas-producing resource use and patterns of consumption that maintain our historical carbon fix? Or do we open ourselves to exploring a path of resurrection in which what we have done before is no longer here, or at least no longer conserved unknowingly?  In my earlier posting I called for an abandonment of key foundations on which our business- as-usual approach is built accompanied by the creation of new foundations - a basis for a form of resurrection.

In this regard Lucy's sermon offers a key framing and invitation: 'Resurrection is totally disruptive; it is what there is the other side of nothing. It is the life we had not thought of, and despite our best efforts can’t imagine.''  The new foundations I speak of are not there for the choosing - they will require efforts we can't yet imagine... but first we must roll away the rock that blinds us to our current prediciment. Resurrection I would claim is of the living for eternity is what we live each day and which we conserve through our manners of living.

What of the overall experience? What light did it shine for me on the possible transformation of one of the UK's key institutions?  In this regard I was not moved.  For me the issues of primary concern to the established church whilst important socially do not focus on the key issues of our times.  I suspect Lucy Winkett is aware of this when she says:  "Before it became a message or a doctrine or a church’s creed, Christianity was simply contact. A relationship".  But to which relationships should we devote our time and passion? My own responses to this question are not in sympathy with the claims made by the new Archbishop of Canterbury in his Easter sermon though I do agree with his claim that 'a “hero leader culture” in which all trust was placed in one person only [leads] to false hope.'

The new UN Sustainable Development Goals

The following press release has just be issued by Monash Univerity reporting an important contribution that MSI (Monash Sustainabilty Institute) is making to the formulation and pursuit of the UN's new SDGs - sustainable development goals.

 

Development dependent on sustainable approach

22 March 2013

"Scientists taking part in a UN working group to develop a set of universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have warned that on our current trajectory, environmental degradation will reverse progress made in eradicating poverty.

Director of the Monash Sustainability Institute, Professor Dave Griggs and colleagues published an article in the prestigious journal Nature, setting out a new conception of sustainable development and six base goals that they argue must be implemented by 2030.

Professor Griggs delivered a keynote address based on the Nature paper at a UN-sponsored meeting in New York this week.

The meeting followed the decision at last year's Rio Earth Summit to develop goals to guide the process of lifting the world's rapidly-growing population out of poverty while ensuring that Earth can continue to support human life.

The SDGs are due to come into effect in 2016, adding an increased environmental emphasis to the Millennium Development Goals. Professor Griggs said their importance should not be underestimated.

"If these goals are not meaningful, measurable and achievable, we risk having gains made poverty reduction undermined by environmental impacts," Professor Griggs said.

"We are already seeing the damage that human development has caused to the Earth's oceans, forests, waterways, atmosphere and biodiversity. Our population is due to hit nine million by mid-century. To continue to operate the way we have until now will result in irreversible environmental damage, which in turn will undermine development."

Professor Griggs and his colleagues argue for six specific goals couched within a new conception of sustainable development.

"Until now, discussion and policy around sustainable development has been guided by three pillars - economic, social and environmental," Professor Griggs said.

"We argue that it is more beneficial, and indeed necessary, to think of these pillars as concentric circles - economy within society within the environment.

The six goals are: thriving lives and livelihoods; sustainable food security; sustainable water security; universal clean energy; healthy and productive ecosystems; and governance for sustainable societies.

"Since the Millennium Development Goals were introduced, we have seen a reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty in many developing areas of the globe. This success illustrates both the effectiveness of goal-setting on an international scale and the importance of this week's meeting for our future," Professor Griggs said."

Form my perspective this is an important initiative.  I hope that soon we will be able to critically learn from what did and did'nt work in the pursuit of the UN sponsored MDGs (Millenium Development Goals) and bring that thinking to the framing and pursuit of the SDGs.  Within a systems theoretical framing the pursuit of goal-seeking behavior has been found limiting - perhaps this learning could be applied to the praxis of pursuing SDGs before old ways of acting become institutionalised?