There seems little point banging on about biodiversity conservation when we live in such an high intensity consumer world. If we think we can wait for events like COP-10 to solve our issues on their own then we deserve to fry and be the only species left.
The world now lives in cities: water (if you are lucky) comes out of a tap, materials are mined and refined (with lots of heat) into shiny objects and food comes out of the factory, not farm, gates. How is anyone going to care or understand the value of natural capital when the view out of their window not the onset of autumn but a wall, motorway or advertising hoarding? We live in a world where a resident of Manaus is less likely to have visited the Amazon jungle on his doorstep (or be bothered about its existence) than the suburbanite 5130 odd miles away in London’s commuter belt.
Speeding up understanding of social and environmental issues is going to be pretty hard if all the good info is imprisoned in tables. The three trends of data being more open, everything being more visual and life being on-demand/always-on should mean that numbers are no longer just for the analysts and ratings agencies.
How to realign behaviour to tackle big challenges in a world that is on the edge of a nervous breakdown?
In an age of fluid information flows and ridiculous interconnectivity, I’m on the look out for neat, smart things that can have a big impact, fast, taking the sustainability message out into the wild and engaging with the seemingly unreachable.
Collaborative consumption has a huge role to play in shifting attitudes to owning more ‘stuff’ and showing up those who talk about sustainable consumption and shifting more units in the same breath.
Corporate efforts so far have mainly dealt with work around reducing waste, reducing resource use in production, raising labour standards, promoting certification standards and adding socioeconomic benefits to products and services. All good but, at its heart sustainable consumption must mean buy/use less stuff.
Before the internet went social and we still lived in an age of push, companies that wanted to engage with big issues through their CR programme would pump out mega treatises on their approach to dealing with their social, economic and environmental issues.
There is no contest in a footrace between a well-oiled, just-in-time-schooled car maker, looking to shift as many units as possible in a new market, and a decision-by-committee megacity administration trying to put in place an urban infrastructure fit for the 21st century. Handily, the auto maker also gets to socialise the losses (more gridlocked roads, fuel dependency, air pollution, deterioration of public space etc) and move on.
Have you seen the app which takes your photo and makes it look like you’re really fat? Yes. And the game where you land all the planes on the runway? Yes, that too. Hey, how about this thing with the funny red monster that repeats everything you say? Please leave me. Please just leave me here to die. (C Brooker)
The above clip from Futurama and the article by Charlie Brooker in today’s Guardian, add a dimension to the e-waste/toxic mineral/assembly line debate which I think points to a smarter future for the consumer electronics industry. If you add together conflict minerals, e-waste, toxic chemicals used in production, and the now well-documented unrest among Chinese assembly line workers, the satisfaction footprint of our gadgets is miniscule.
The wonderful site from this Sao Paulo group combines good storytelling with loads of info and a simple idea to inspire people to make (mega)city life more liveable.
Off to see Clay Shirky talk tonight about his new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Lots of ideas about human potential in the 21st Century and living in a world that is moving to being less about consuming and more about doing.
I’ll be intrigued to find out how far down this road he thinks we are. Does the Foxxcon assembly line worker in Shenzen or the Mcjobber in the suburbs of Sao Paulo get to be part of this creative rebalancing? Or are they just allowed to be the last targets for growth hungry legacy companies of the 20th Century and an easily forgotten part of our own personal supply chains?
This is a short research note prepared for a conference in Mozambique. It explores post-crisis opportunity in really going for a water tight approach to sustainability across the board in tourism development.
Companies that get the vision thing and embed sustainability into their strategy often fall down on stage three: engaging and communicating with stakeholders. Without engaging effectively with stakeholders there is no way to improve their approach to defining and refining the issues that matter most (materiality).
