Down to Earth

Greening the city with ecological street art

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:46:58 +0200

Evian recently launched an amazing curation platform for “wonder” contents called “The Source”. The idea behind the source is to create this place where you can revive, experience, share your sense of wonder by exploring content that’s inspirational, energizing, entertaining, surprising and moving. Can Green be wonder? These pieces of street art curated by evian the Source show us it can!

Reblogged from Evian The Source :

What if street art and graffiti could add a touch of green to the city? The artist Edina Tokodi and her collective, Mosstika, have come up with a way to make it happen! Using moss like paint, they cover the gray walls with nature’s wonders adding an unsuspected ecological dimension to street art!

Check out the rest of these amazing pictures on Evian the Source !

@laurencefoucher

Danone: why carbon reduction is key

Thu, 31 May 2012 17:42:58 +0200

Danone was very honoured to be shortlisted as a finalist for the Guardian Sustainable Business Awards in the “Carbon” category. Therefore, Danone’s entry has received a write up on the Best Practice Exchange which was launched earlier yesterday:

Danone, the French food company behind Activia yoghurts, Evian water and Cow&Gate baby food, has left few stones unturned in an ambitious bid to cut its carbon footprint by 30% in the four years to 2012.

Firstly, it has put carbon reduction above all other sustainability goals, believing that, if done right, this will help achieve other environmental targets on water use, packaging, agriculture and biodiversity.

Secondly, it is working on a comprehensive and diverse agenda of initiatives across its value chain. These range from appointing a nature sponsor to its main board of directors, to renewable energy and packaging initiatives, transferring freight from road to rail, planting 70m trees across Africa and Asia through offset schemes, and testing a system that helps farmers boost the nutritional value of milk while also controlling the methane produced by their cows.

Danone frames its business and environmental mission in a particular way. It seeks to promote health through its food and says that the health of the planet, therefore, remains a priority.

Read the full story on The Guardian Sustainable Business

Nicolas Gausserès: “Danone is part of the solution to new nutritional issues”

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:09:27 +0200

Nicolas Gausserès is Nutrition Director at Danone Research. His job is to anticipate the public health concerns, understand local nutrition and eating contexts, and monitor the nutritional quality of Danone’s products and their contribution to a healthy diet. A meticulous, scientific job that calls for co-creation, and the constant invention of new tools. Nicolas Gausserès tells us all about it.

What exactly is your job at Danone Research?

My job is to create competitive advantage for Danone, its subsidiaries and its brands through the reinforcement of several strategic directions. Our first objective is to make Danone more and more relevant in regards the public health issues. In each of “our” countries, we work to be aware of the main nutritional concerns and to develop relevant products and solutions. Our second objective is to build coherence in what Danone is doing around nutrition between the divisions and subsidiaries and over time. Thirdly, we want to create differentiation between Danone and its competitors: through the nutritional superiority of the products but also through the way we partner and co-develop relevant solutions with local and scientific authorities. Since what we do is closely linked to public health issues, we want to be seen as a potential ally in addressing certain concerns, and not the one creating the problem.

How does this work fit into Danone’s strategy?

Danone’s goal is “to bring health through food to as many people as possible”. Today, this goal is highlighted by a public health context that is getting more and more worrying: what we call non-communicable diseases (obesity, diabetes, etc.) are spreading in the developing world, where nutritional habits have changed dramatically over the past 50 years. We aim to be seen as a company that is aware of these issues, and hence that can be a part of the solution and not of the problem.

How do you work day to day?

Our job is about interface and interaction, both outside the company – through scientific partnerships, which I will explain later – and inside the company – through collaboration with a lot of the local and global departments (R&D, regulatory, marketing, health affairs). The nutrition team also works intimately with the Nutrition Masters who are the people dealing with nutrition in the different divisions (fresh dairy, water, baby nutrition, medical nutrition) and in the different countries.

Let’s go a bit deeper into your activity. What are your main roles and how do you achieve your goals?

We have three main roles. The first is to understand the nutritional habits everywhere around the world, to help each subsidiary develop products that are relevant locally, and also to help them demonstrate the role our food categories can play on dietary balance and health. For instance, in collaboration with Tufts University we have showed that children eating yogurt regularly are more likely to reach their recommended calcium intake, even more than those eating other types of dairy products. Another example is the “Petit Gervais” brand which has a different recipe depending on the country, and the deficiencies and needs of the population. To achieve that, we have built a unique database called NutriPl@net to map the intelligence we have on almost 40 countries. But we do not stop at knowing what populations need: we also try to strengthen our knowledge of what they like and how they relate to diet culturally. The tool we use for that, which we developed with the CIRAD (Centre of agronomic research for development), is called FoodStyle. Last year, we led a pilot project in Algeria and are now developing other projects in Indonesia and India. In France also we use the FoodStyle to understand how low income populations eat and their relation to food. In the future, we aim to go a bit further by providing ready-made analysis tools to our subsidiaries, so that they can integrate these dimensions and the knowledge in their product innovation process.

What is your second role?

We measure the impact of our products or services on the diet quality and on the nutritional status of consumers. To do this, we need to be able to measure precisely what people eat and drink, and also to identify sub-groups of the population with specific dietary habits. For example, a very precise fluid intake method is now used by the water division to understand what and how much people drink in the different countries; this is the foundation for new recommendations regarding water intake. We also worked alongside the US team to further understand dietary habits and patterns in the US 45+ population, showing that we can identify very distinct groups having specific dietary and health status And this is also key to understand dietary habits and food pattern in children or elderly people.

We also develop programmes, such as Health@Work which are running for Danone’s employees for over 4 years. In Palaiseau for instance, in the research centre, we provide staff with physical activity courses, services that make life in the workplace easier, and information and coaching on their diets. We have built the evaluation of the program with the help of INSERM (French national institute for research on health and medicine). This initiative has raised the interest of the public health authorities, and they have interviewed us to inspire the new charter for the “Entreprises Actives PNNS” (to come soon).

How do you see the future regarding this particular field of your work?

In the future, we will develop new tools for example with INRA (National institute of agronomic research) and Agro Paris Tech (Paris institute of technology for life, food and environmental sciences) to refine our measurements. We are also working more and more on what we call “nutrieconomy”: our actions can have a positive impact on the quality of the diet and on the nutritional status and thus on health and public health costs. In the future, we will have to be able to demonstrate this scientifically.

And finally, your third “job”?

It is to reveal the superiority of our products and our product ranges in terms of nutrition composition. Thanks to the NutriProgress tool, each year we monitor 90% of our products to check their evolution in terms of nutrients to limit (fat, sugar and salt), and nutrients to favour (calcium, protein, iron, essential fatty acids, etc.). It helps us visualize where we are compared to our own guidelines and more important in comparison with our competitors. But I have to say that, since we are already offering healthy products on which we already run some renovation programs, our objective is not to make spectacular reductions in the proportions of fat, sugar and salt they contain but rather to demonstrate that they are likely to help balance the diet compared to other products or categories. For that for example we work with the INRA to simulate the proportion of our product ranges in the average diet in France. The idea is to come up with recommendations that will help people to adopt healthier diets without completely disrupting their eating habits. In this case, we show that people have to increase their intake of certain products (vegetables, fruit, yoghurts). This work shows the legitimacy and importance of our product range in a balanced diet.

I am sure you already have future projects for this aspect of your work as well?

Yes. We are currently setting up a new scientifically robust method to precisely define and compare to the competition, and to be able to quantify our contribution to the improvement of the consumer’s diet. There is also a lot of work to conduct on the links between nutrition and pleasure: pleasure is key to a better diet, and we must understand how it works. For that, we have set up a partnership with Agro Paris Tech, through the creation of a chair called ANCA (“Aliment, nutrition et comportements alimentaires” : Food, nutrition and dietary behaviours).

You mentioned a lot of leads for the future of your team’s role. To conclude, what would you say is the overall most important next step?

To make our work known outside of Danone and to demonstrate with scientific research the impact of our actions and products on diet and health. Because our job is not only about Danone, it is about the way people take care of their health through food.

Picture of the day: what does this make you think of?

Tue, 29 May 2012 16:29:00 +0200

Reblogged from Design Boom:

Nishan Jethi: the “clenoscope”

Littering is a hard-to-change habit. the challenge was to make people throw waste into the trash. turning to the kaleidoscope for reference,

The act of throwing garbage is now fun. when you place the unwanted objects into the container, it creates a beautiful pattern.
Experimenting with user interaction, the product was placed in a public setting in a children’s park in Mumbai, India.

Click on any of these images to be redirected to the orginal article on Design Boom.

UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme is 40 years old

Fri, 25 May 2012 16:00:00 +0200

In 1971, UNESCO launched the Man and the Biosphere Programme to study our impact on nature and how it could be minimized. 40 years later, the programme continues to shape the future of sustainability and contribute to new global governance on ecology.

In 2011, the MAB celebrated its 40^th anniversary at an international conference “For life, for the future, biosphere reserves and climate change” in Dresden. MAB is short for the Man and the Biosphere Programme, an intergovernmental scientific programme launched by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1971. Not only was it a landmark for international efforts on sustainability, but it has also contributed to the emergence of a “world government” on these issues. Let’s see how.

The genesis of MAB

In 1968, UNESCO, together with FAO, WHO and the United Nations, organized the “Biosphere Conference”, a Paris-based intergovernmental gathering of experts who were called to reflect on “the scientific basis for the rational use and conservation of the resources of the biosphere”. At the time, it was the first worldwide meeting, at a governmental level, to address environmental issues and to adopt a series of recommendations. The late 1960s, and to an even greater degree the early 1970s, were a time of growing awareness – and concern – regarding mankind’s impact on the environment. In 1972, the first Earth Summit was held in Rio, as public concern started to build regarding the pressure that a growing world population was putting on the planet’s resources. While some advocated a reduction in our demographic growth, others claimed that the main problem was in fact how much the developed world was consuming, and the means of production it used to satisfy consumerism’s appetite. In any case, it was now obvious that something had to be done to curb biodiversity loss. The “Biodiversity Conference” and its recommendations, and the International Co-ordinating Council that was formed afterwards, advised that panels of experts should be convened in the member States and biosphere reserves established in various places around the world, all of which prepared the ground for the MAB programme, officially inaugurated by UNESCO in 1971.

40 years of work on biodiversity

Originally, the aim was to establish biosphere reserves, areas that would host the planet’s main ecosystems so that they could be studied and protected. 40 years later, 563 biosphere reserves in 110 countries worldwide constitute a World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR). But the overall objective has progressively widened to “reconciling the conservation of biological diversity with socio-economic needs and cultural integrity – in short, sustainable development”. In other words, the MAB programme works for better cohabitation between man and biosphere. To achieve that, it leads scientific and international research programmes that tackle “the ecological, social and economic dimensions of biodiversity loss and the reduction of this loss” in many different countries. It is a science-based Intergovernmental Scientific Programme drawing on several disciplines, such as natural and social sciences, economics and education, and also leads communication work on sustainability to make people aware of their own impact. For 40 years now, MAB has been promoting “interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration, research and capacity-building”, on different scales: local, sub-national, national, regional and global. The MAB today brings together 34 member States, each of which has a MAB National Committee implementing the programme nationally. And the biosphere reserves ensure its presence in 110 countries worldwide.

Towards a world government?

For all these reasons, it is fair to say that the Man and the Biosphere programme, 40 years ago, had already chosen values that are today at the heart of sustainability initiatives: transversality, co-creation with many different actors, dialogue on a global level between the North and the South, etc. In that respect, the MAB has remained valid and pertinent through the decades. But it also focuses, by essence, on the future, which makes it all the more necessary: “it predicts the consequences of today’s actions on tomorrow’s world and thereby increases people’s ability to efficiently manage natural resources for the well-being of both human populations and the environment.” Science with conscience… Alongside other international entities, the MAB also contributes to creating a “world government” for sustainability issues: from the Kyoto Protocol to the Rio +20 Summit (taking place in June), from the recommendations of the Brundtland Report to the Millennium Development Goals, an international governance of ecology has been shaped over the last four decades. We can only hope for more and more integration in the future, so that one day the entire world can unite to face the challenges of our relationship with the biosphere.

Emmanuel Faber: “We cannot build a sustainable food business without sustainable agriculture”

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:52:00 +0200

Picture: Emmanuel Faber

This year, the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform will be 10 years old. Emmanuel Faber, Deputy General Manager of Danone, explains how the initiative was born and what issues it must address for the future.

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform is a non-profit “food industry organization aiming to support the development of sustainable agriculture, involving food chain stakeholders”. It was created by Danone, Nestlé and Unilever in 2002 in order to facilitate sharing of knowledge and initiatives to support sustainable agriculture practices, while developing a productive, competitive and efficient way to produce agricultural goods. Today, it has over 40 members^* and is still the only global food industry initiative for sustainable agriculture.

Here are a few words that Emmanuel Faber, Deputy General Manager of Danone, shared at the 10^th anniversary of the SAI Platform, which was celebrated in Evian from 2 to 4 May.

A crucial issue for the future

“The question of sustainability in agriculture is absolutely crucial for the food industry. Over the past 50 years we have built a system that has delivered a large quantity of food to a growing number of people, with, overall, significantly enhanced food safety. But if we look at things going forward, there is no doubt that we need to rethink the sustainability of our model. Feeding 7 billion people is a different story to feeding 5, and feeding 9 will be a different story again. This, in a nutshell, sums up the entire sustainability question.”

An inclusive approach

“Ten years ago, Danone, Nestlé and Unilever started the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative as a way to address the question of sustainability in the food industry because we are absolutely convinced that the food business has a critical role – even though it may not be absolutely aware of that role – to play in how it transforms the upstream part of the business. We cannot build a sustainable food business without sustainable agriculture upstream. This is the SAI’s fundamental goal: to ensure that more and more food industry players become aware of the issues that are embedded in their business models, in the food chain related to agriculture. The purpose is really to share this awareness, share the knowledge and progress, as an industry, in our ability to manage the upstream issues that we do not necessarily see on a day-to-day basis.”

Challenges to face

“Several approaches to achieve a sustainable model must be considered. Danone’s one would be to say that sustainability deals with the economic, social, nutritional and natural issues that are embedded in agriculture. Addressing these challenges together is critical, because we have designed the food chain as a sum of large entities which, to some extent, have been desynchronized – essentially because of the economies of scale that we have reached in the various steps of the transformation from agriculture to food. So, the essence of sustainability is to work out how we resynchronize each of these steps, working backwards and yet understanding how the four parameters that I mentioned (economic, social, nutritional and natural – ed.) will be influenced. And how do we manage and govern the way each of these parameters contributes to creating a different model of agriculture? The geographic, social and cultural realities are so different, from India to China, from Europe to the US or Latin America, etc., that there cannot be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. One of the key challenges, then, is to work with the appropriate level of granularity on these issues.”

Danone’s mission for sustainability

“Danone is executing this sustainability agenda for agriculture based on our core mission, set 40 years ago by our chairman, Antoine Riboud, which is to bring health through food to as many people as possible, and with a clear, dual economic and social agenda. Consequently, we have created initiatives and policies that match this agenda. One of the latest ones is the Danone fund for the Ecosystem, which is working on capacity building for our farmers. But there are many other initiatives, and I think each SAI member has its own way of interpreting this demand for sustainability.”

How SAI members transform agriculture

“It is critical that SAI members are engaged on the path to sustainable agriculture, simply because we are, because of the size of our businesses, the ones that are transforming it. Our cumulated sales amount to 500 billion euros… this shows the level of impact that we can have if we work together on organizing this agenda. It means that without us, things will not change in the same way. We definitely have a role to play, we can point the way for the rest of the industry.”

You can watch the video made to celebrate the 10 years of the SAI platform here: http://www.saiplatform.org/videos .

^*The members of the SAI Platform are: Anglo Beef Processors, Agrarfrost, Agroterra, Arla, Aviko, Barilla, Bord Bia, Cayuga Marketing, CIO Parma, Coca-Cola, Danone, DeLaval, EISA, Farm Frites, Fonterra, Friesland Campina, General Mills, GFRAS, Heineken, illycaffè, Inalca, Innovations Center US Dairy, Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, Lamb Weston - Meijer, Land O’Lakes, LMC, Mars, McCain, McDonald’s, McKey, Nestlé, Novus, OSI, PepsiCo, QMS, Sara Lee, Tchibo, Unilever and Vion.

How 15th May made history The main event of the Global...

Wed, 23 May 2012 16:59:58 +0200

Muhammad Yunus and Franck Riboud

A cloud of meaningful words

A workshop

Muhammad Yunus's book

How 15^th May made history

The main event of the Global Communities Meeting Tour hosted by danone.communities took place in Paris last Tuesday. Here is an account of this special day, packed with ideas and enthusiasm.

On Tuesday 15^th May, at la Mutualité in Paris, danone.communities hosted a very special event for social business. An event that resonated as an anniversary for danone.communities, which is celebrating 5 years of existence in 2012, in particular with a grand tour: the Global Communities Meeting Tour, which was launched on 8^th February and will end in November at the Global Social Business Summit in Vienna. An international tour, all year round, with numerous partners, to reach as many people as possible and promote social business. Tuesday’s function at la Mutualité was one of the major events of this tour: first, an entire day gathered over 200 social business experts to co-create in workshops. Then, a large-scale conference welcomed over 2000 attendees including, among others, Prof. Muhammad Yunus and Franck Riboud. Here is the story of that special day.

Getting to work

It is 7.30am at the Maison de la Mutualité, a beautiful art déco building situated in the heart in Paris, close to Notre-Dame Cathedral. The entire danone.communities team, assisted by a handful of volunteers, is already busy setting up the venue: in about 90 minutes, 200 social business experts will gather here to spend the whole day in workshops, with the intention of co-creating new solutions to scale up social businesses in every field, everywhere in the world. “Scale up”: a phrase that will often be heard throughout the day. Because “in social business, there is business”. And so many other things…

9.00am – The experts have arrived: academics, entrepreneurs, members of NGOs, students, representatives from Danone and other companies, bankers, etc. Emmanuel Marchant, Deputy General Manager at danone.communities, delivers a welcome speech: “After 5 years, and 10 active projects, we are here to take stock but also to share our do’s and don’ts, to work together, to co-build. Today’s event is a first edition, and we dream that it is the beginning of something.” Olivier Maurel, Social Innovation & Animation Manager at danone.communities, agrees: “We are starting a process. We are the social business wave.” He asks the crowd why they are here today. Unanimous reply: “to share and to learn”. To pollinate ideas. Olivier Maurel reminds the attendees that on 15^th May, 123 years ago, the Eiffel Tower was inaugurated: “The sky is the limit!” Later in the night, he will also recall that a year ago, on 15^th May, people in Spain gathered in the streets to start the “Indignés” movement. 15^th May is a special date. “And today, we may also make history”. Arielle Genton, HR Director at danone.communities, now calls the members of the ten workshops that have been organised in advance: Nutrition, Sustainability, Finance, Access to Water, Measuring Social Impact, Proximity distribution, Co-creation, Developed countries, New Technologies, and a special workshop for the danone.communities SICAV, with the bank LCL. “We are here for a serious game.” Let’s play then.

10.00am – The workshops have all started. The atmosphere is studious. Walking from room to room, from group to group, we discover a different ambiance each time, sometimes quiet and concentrated, sometimes voluble and agitated, but always involved. On the paperboards, the lists of do’s and don’ts get longer by the minute. We run into Marine Plossu, a student at ESCP business school and a member of Make Sense, a network that “challenges people for social business” by connecting social entrepreneurs with individuals who are ready to take up their challenges. There are a lot of Make Sense members here today. Marine tells us about one of their projects, SenseSchool, that“conducts case studies on social challenges that companies or NGOs are facing, and then sets up programmes in the field thanks to design thinking tools, so that these entities can include social impact in their priorities.”

12.30pm – Everyone is gathered in the foyer for lunch and a networking session, before the workshops start again at 2pm. A participant enthuses: “They are facilitation geniuses, words come easily here.” Another says that she used to do her job not knowing that it was a “social business”, and that she recently discovered the “label”. She says that she is afraid the expression might draw scepticism from “classic business”, which could be expected to tag all these initiatives as being “marginal”. “But at least it gets people discussing the subject.” We spot known faces: Camilla Burg, Communications Director at Wiser.org. Mélanie Nowik, project manager at Isomir (see her interview on that project: http://bit.ly/danoneDTE21052012I). François Colomban, Director of the Food Design unit at the Danone Research Center.

2.00pm – All the participants are back in the workshops. We meet a young engineer who works in a Danone factory in South-West France. He is a volunteer today. He tells us that as an intern, he worked on the Lemateki project. Thrilled by the challenge (helping to come up with a new product and new packaging, and working on a project with no pre-defined process), he spent most of the afternoon in the Co-creation workshop. A lead for his future? Another volunteer, a business school student, has taken the opportunity to attend the Nutrition workshop. She is passionate about social business and regrets that to most people, it still sounds a bit “alternative”. She spends a great deal of time explaining it to her friends. In the foyer, the danone.communities team sits down to prepare what’s coming up. The walkie-talkies go off regularly. There will soon be a briefing for all the volunteers. The calm before the storm.

Feedback, “craziness and generosity”

5.00pm – It is “restitution” time. As the room fills up with participants, we notice that more and more are wearing the white “GCM” t-shirt, distributed at the door. It is now impossible to tell the difference between the danone.communities team and the experts. Muriel Pénicaud, General Manager of Human Resources at Danone, takes the microphone first to award a prize to “somebody who has done something extraordinary”. To be eligible to compete for this Social Business Youngsters Award, held on Facebook, participants had to be students, under 25 years old, leading an innovative social business project. The winner? Nazia Zebin and her team, from Bangladesh, for The BookWorm Revolution. A project that “makes specially-designed story books available to the poor children of Bangladesh who do not have access to many reading materials at affordable prices, with the aim of increasing the overall quality of education in the country.” Nazia will receive $3000, meet Muhammad Yunus, work with Danone’s Marketing Manager in Bangladesh who will mentor the project, and benefit from danone.communities’ network to make it reality. Long live the BookWorm Revolution!

5.30pm – Each group shows the rest of the participants the results of the discussions in its workshop. One minute to convey an idea with humour and interactivity. The teams vie with each other in terms of creativity: the Nutrition people give the perfect recipe for a social business; the Proximity distribution team presents a sketch to highlight the need to train saleswomen in developing countries; the Developed countries workshop mimes the three main words of the day and asks the crowd to replicate: convergence, solidarity… and joy. Olivier Maurel congratulates everyone: “Thanks for your craziness and your generosity”, and asks the audience to share with the person sitting next to them what new desires this day has brought them. The same words keep bouncing back: learning, sharing, energy, people.In less than an hour, the big event of the night will start. The volunteers bustle about: they have been here for ten hours, but there is still a lot to do.

Increasing tenfold

6.45pm – Outside la Mutualité, the queue swells: over 2000 people are expected to attend the large-scale conference which is about to start in la Mutualité’s théâtre, in presence of many of those active in social business and of Pr. Muhammad Yunus and Franck Riboud. As soon as the theatre is full, Emmanuel Marchant takes the stage, wondering: “Why are there 2000 of us here? Because we all share a dream. For the past 5 years, we have fought to make this dream a reality. The answers we bring are small, but they keep growing.” He takes stock of the achievements of danone.communities’ first 10 projects. The very first, the project that started it all, is Grameen Danone, created in Bangladesh in 2006 by Prof. Muhammad Yunus and Franck Riboud. The latest is Jita, and Emmanuel Marchant calls Saif, its manager, onto the stage to explain the project: a programme designed to help empower women in Bangladesh by giving them work as saleswomen. Currently, none of the projects is perennial because they still do not make enough money to finance themselves. But this is coming.

8pm – On the stage now, 5 people who lead some of danone.communities’ projects: Corinne Bazina, General Director of Grameen Danone Foods (Bangladesh); Bagoré Bathily, Founder and General Director of La Laiterie du Berger (Senegal), Manoj Kumar, CEO of the Naandi Foundation (India), Dr Zhu Zonghan, Professor at the Capital Institute of Pediatrics who worked on the NutriGo programme (China), and François Jaquenoud, co-founder of 1001 Fontaines (Cambodia). Each and every one of them dedicates their business activities not only to improving health and nutrition around the world, but also to transforming this concern into real and viable businesses which are perennial because they provide those who carry them with an income, and because they do not need subsidies to exist. François Jaquenoud explains that the main challenge is to turn the local populations into genuine entrepreneurs, with the competence and mindset to run a business. Baghoré Bathily evokes his concerns on the distribution of his products, in a country where 90% of shops are not on concrete roads. Dr Zhu Zonghan’s main problem is to make Chinese parents aware that good nutrition is crucial in the first years of their babies’ lives, when they mostly feed them noodle soup. Corinne Bazina hopes that soon, Grameen Danone will be able to sell Shokti Doi fortified yoghurt at a price of 5 ta ka - it costs 7 ta ka today, and inflation in Bangladesh is swelling, which of course impacts the price of milk. Manoj Kumar explains that he does not run one company but 250, one for each villager that the Naandi Foundation has helped become a water supplier: his aim is to find more efficient ways to manage this crowd. Challenges for the future that point the way for other social businesses.

8.40pm – What about social business in France? Emmanuel Faber, Deputy General Manager of Danone, explains that of course, it must fit a context: poverty is not the social norm, which means social businesses address minorities. And there is already a string of public policies and social assistance that must be taken into account. On the stage, Didier Piard (Director of Social Action at the Red Cross) and Didier Lamblin (General Director of Bledina) present a project they have been working on together: Malin, that aims to provide better nutrition to young children whose families live below the poverty line. As Didier Piard puts it, “in France, we do not have a culture of co-working and co-creation. We therefore must learn to acculturate, in order to come up with new solutions.”

Martin Hirsch, President of the French agency for community service, reminds the audience that social businesses have existed for many years and that, in his own way, Abbé Pierre launched one when he created Emmaüs. For Mr Hirsch, the main challenge is to “stop excluding those who are a bit “less” than others: less productive, less efficient or less resourceful. We must find a way for them to play a useful role in society that gives them decent means of existence.” To achieve that, Martin Hirsch calls for a radical change in the way our society produces goods, and in the way companies define their goals, so that no one is ever thrown into poverty again.

9pm – It is now time for Prof. Yunus and Franck Riboud to share their thoughts. Prof. Yunus recalls that he met Franck Riboud in a restaurant, that he talked about what he did and suggested to Danone’s CEO that they create a joint venture which would be a social business. Franck Riboud said yes immediately. “I thought we had not understood each other! Who says yes that quickly?” Today, five years later, Franck Riboud states: “It is all about business. Now I wonder: if Danone did its job to perfection, could it be part of the social business world without needing danone.communities? - Finally, that’s what I have been waiting for!” Franck Riboud insists, directly addressing the students who make up a large part of the audience: it is all about business, and you should not choose “social” business over “classic” business, or the other way around. For a business to be social, it must be perennial, hence profitable, hence use all the tools of classic businesses. If a business does not make its own living, it can never be sustainable. Prof. Yunus agrees: “that is the difference between charity work and social business. Charity work is great. But it cannot be replicated. To start again somewhere else, you need more money each time.” And he concludes with a word on creativity, which is the main tool to “create the world that we want, that we will be proud of.” The crowd is enthusiastic.

10.30pm – End of a day packed with ideas and people. 2000 attendees are gathered at the interactive cocktail party, where they can meet all the people that were on stage during the conference, and many more. All are eager to find out more about the projects, presented on colourful boards in a big “marketplace”. Time to take a few more pictures, and to leave la Mutualité. It has been a profitable day.

James Lovelock: Gaïa: A New Look at Life on Earth

Tue, 22 May 2012 15:26:00 +0200

Focus on one of the founding works of modern ecology: the Gaia hypothesis, unveiled to the world by scientist James Lovelock at the end of the 1970’s.

In 1979, British scientist James E. Lovelock published Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, the first in a series of works in which he would tirelessly expose the discovery which was his life’s work: the Gaia hypothesis. His theory came as a shock to many scientists and to the public, and durably framed the ecological approach to environmental issues. Flashback on a book, and its author, that created a new way of looking at the world that we live in, and of how to interact with it.

From Mars to Gaia

James Lovelock warns his readers: “This book is about a search for life, and the quest for Gaia is an attempt to find the largest living creature on Earth.” He explains that this quest started while he was working, in the mid-sixties, as a consultant to a team in the Jet Propulsion Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology, whose goal was to “devise ways and means of detecting life on Mars”. This job led him to wonder what the real nature of life was, and how it could be recognized – and to discover that there was almost nothing in scientific literature which resembled “a comprehensive definition of life as a physical process, on which one could base the design of life-detection experiments”. This lack of understanding of life itself was an issue, given that a scientific process needed to be defined to evidence the presence of life on Mars, or lack thereof. Lovelock then thought of life detection by atmospheric analysis, which was especially pertinent since Mars has no oceans: if there was life there, it certainly had made use of the atmosphere to establish itself. Lovelock started to dig into how it all worked on Earth, and how the study of the atmosphere could lead to the scientific and unquestionable conclusion that there was indeed life on our planet. Conclusion: “the only feasible explanation of the Earth’s highly improbable atmosphere was that it was being manipulated on a day-to-day basis from the surface, and that the manipulator was life itself.” In other words, that life was maintaining the conditions of its own subsistence by manipulating and regulating the atmosphere. Lovelock’s mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories then ended, but the idea had taken root deep inside his mind – where it had first been planted by the conquest of space!

A planet-sized organism

Lovelock, in the introduction to his book, defines his hypothesis in these terms: “a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.” A “super-organism”, more powerful than the sum of its parts, that looked out for itself. A “planet-sized entity” named Gaia, after the Greek mother goddess. In 1979, Lovelock presented Gaia to the world, and completely upset the understanding of the biosphere which existed at the time: “Our findings and conclusions were, of course, very much out of the step with conventional geochemical wisdom in the mid-sixties.” At the time, it was commonly agreed that “life merely borrowed gases from the atmosphere and returned them unchanged. Our contrasting view required an atmosphere which was a dynamic extension of the biosphere itself.” Gaia thus immediately drew as much criticism as it raised enthusiasm, and certainly did not leave anyone indifferent. Ecologists would be thrilled by the implications that the Gaia hypothesis had for our relationship with nature and for environmental concern. Sceptics would see it as a “New Age” theory, deeply rooted in a mystical, religious and theological vision of the world. Some scientists would criticize the lack of serious scientific bases. And neo-Darwinists such as W. Ford Doolittle and Richard Dawkins would maintain that nothing in the genome of organisms can provide retroaction mechanisms that are profitable to the Earth. In Dawkins’ words, “J. Lovelock’s ideas are inconsistent with everything we now think we know about the evolutionary process” and the planet as a whole has little to do with a living organism. Nonetheless, Lovelock imposed a new way of seeing life on Earth, that had never been thought of before, and as such the Gaia hypothesis has a powerful legacy.

The heirs of Gaia

James Lovelock is not only a scientist. He is also considered to be one of the main figures of ecology. But a surprising one, to say the least. In the seventies, Lovelock took a stance against political ecologists because he thought they were fighting for an anthropocentric vision of the world: rather than being concerned with the Earth and working from a scientific perspective, they were concerned about themselves. Notably, Lovelock refuted opposition to nuclear energy and supported ecological associations for nuclear energy because he believed that it was far less dangerous for Gaia than the use of fossil energies. On the other hand, he issued warnings about the urgency to act to redefine our relationship to Nature, which would otherwise kill mankind in “retaliation” for what it had been made to suffer. He also criticized growing demography, which causes pollution and over-exploitation of natural resources, stating that if the world population amounted to 500 million people none of the environmental problems that the world was then (and still is) facing would exist. This again led many to criticize him, this time for being a neo-Malthusian. But the main inheritance of Lovelock and Gaia is that they imposed on us the idea that we inhabit a vast yet fragile ecosystem, which we impact constantly: “If Gaia exists, the relationship between her and man, a dominant animal species in the complex living system, and the possibly shifting balance of power between them, are questions of obvious importance.” That was in 1979, years before the explosion of concern around global warming, when we still knew little about our own planet and the effects we had on it. Thirty-three years later, these questions are more valid than ever.

Mélanie Nowik from Isomir: “We help build innovative new projects in local economies”

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:06:00 +0200

Isomir is one of the projects supported by danone.communities, Danone’s fund for social business. We met Mélanie Nowik, its project manager, who explains how this innovative project helps farmers to keep control over their businesses.

Isomir (“Industrialisation solidaire en milieu rural”, which means social industrialization in rural areas), is a social business that helps farmers to widen their range of activities in order to remain economically stable. Danone.communities was one of the first shareholders to join the Isomir project when it started in 2010. Two years later, Mélanie tells us about this initiative, which offers a new way of reconstructing and strengthening the social and economic network in rural areas.

Farm to table

It all started with Adie (a business initiative support association), which realized that small producers needed business stability solutions and thus began working with FNCUMA (the national federation of agricultural equipment users’ cooperatives) to find these solutions. “To be able to survive long-term in a distribution channel, you have to be big. However, it is currently difficult for new farmers to set up: there is not much land available so they often have to start on a very small scale. New strategies must be found to allow them to take control of their businesses”, explains Mélanie. The idea is simple: to allow these farmers to work on “farm to table” distribution channels and thus widen the scope of their businesses. Isomir was created to achieve this. Firstly, it provides farmers with on-site processing units that are entirely adjustable. These units allow milk producers to make their own cheese, animal breeders to transform meat into marketable products, vegetable growers to produce cooked dishes, all in perfect hygiene conditions. Farmers then become combined producers, food processors and shopkeepers, and gain some control over the destiny of their produce, and in particular how much they earn from it. But Isomir goes a little further. It also provides these farmers with tailor-made help and coaching at each stage in the development of their businesses. Its third role is to fund or help fund the projects, which often have little equity capital and struggle to secure bank loans.

Social businesses in rural areas

Isomir has already helped to start two projects. The first one, in Deux-Sèvres, allowed an entrepreneur couple who had decided to follow a new career path to install their own processing unit to make and sell pâtés from the poultry and pigs they raised.

Here is a video that presents their project (in French):

The second was launched in January 2012 and is quite different, bringing together four vegetable growers from the Yvelines in a cooperative to process their vegetables into marketable goods for local school meals providers. They share equipment but each retains ownership of his production.

When asked about Isomir’s main values, Mélanie explains that it aims to “contribute to the emergence of new projects in the context of a local economy. The ongoing success of these farmers’ businesses has a social and economic impact in rural areas, it helps to curb rural depopulation and maintain variety in local production, and therefore biodiversity. It also promotes social bonding between producers, and with consumers who are increasingly interested in the origins of products.” A case study on building social businesses? Of course, says Mélanie, because for a business to be socially successful, it must attain economic stability and be profitable for all stakeholders. “The founder of Isomir was a businessman, to him profitability was essential. But the social dimension was also a part of the project from the start, because we reach out to small producers whose long-term survival is threatened unless they can add additional value to their production.”

Isomir has already contributed to two promising social and local businesses, and expects to support five more before the end of the year, with another ten being studied at the moment. “On average, one farmer contacts us every two days” - proof that Isomir is meeting a growing need, and is destined to become a successful social business itself.

Isomir is one of the projects supported by danone.communities, a fund created by Franck Riboud and Prof. Muhamad Yunus to select, fund, promote and support innovative social business projects. These projects are chosen according to a series of criteria: they must commit to a social issue, be innovative to create “new types of businesses”, focus on local communities and on co-construction. Danone.communities defends the idea that “social impact can be achieved through economic sustainability” and that “social business offers a new economic and social balance”. Among others, the fund supports projects in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Senegal and France. For more information, you can visit Isomir’s dedicated website: http://www.danonecommunities.com/project/isomir .

Editorial by Franck Riboud, CEO of Danone

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:19:00 +0200

We are pleased to provide you with the editorial written by Franck Riboud, CEO of Danone, on the 2011 Annual Sustainability Report.

“People often ask me why Danone’s sustainable development action places such importance on social innovation projects. For example, why did we include this focus in the individual targets of the company’s 1,400 managers? Why have we set up investment funds like the Danone Ecosystem Fund and, more recently, the Livelihoods Fund? What economic benefit can a major corporation like Danone expect in return? And should we continue in this way despite the difficult and uncertain global context?

My answer to those who might be tempted to turn back is simple: in sustainable development more than any other area, we can only rise to the challenges if we are able to develop radically different approaches. This requires the ability to explore and try out new ways. It is therefore more vital than ever that Danone’s eyes and ears be wide open to the world, to meet current expectations and make the necessary changes to prepare the company for those of tomorrow. Our approach of being an open-minded company seeking to co-design new solutions with our stakeholders is firmly rooted in Danone’s culture and model and contributes to our overall long-term performance.

The credibility of a global food company like Danone hinges on our capacity to be consistent in our mission and to adjust to local conditions. In 2011, Danone continued efforts on the strategic priorities* defined in 2008 and I would like to mention a few examples here:

- In inventing new models to bring health through food “to as many people as possible,” 2011 was marked by the creation of a production and R&D unit in India dedicated to low-income populations. We also launched Fundooz, a first nutrition product for children. The experience in India will enhance action we have been taking for five years in Bangladesh to develop products and distribution channels that meet the needs of a greater number of consumers. These new approaches prompt us to question ourselves and they drive innovation in countries where the group has long been established.

- On the “Nature” priority, we share the conviction that production methods and consumption patterns seen in the past fifty years cannot be generalized across the planet; we must bring about profound changes. From this perspective, the ambitious goal of reducing the group’s carbon emissions by 30% between 2008 and end-2012 is on target, since we achieved a 27.5% reduction by the end of 2011. This goal demanded a lot of the teams but it also accelerated the move towards a low-carbon “circular economy” in which materials will be recycled infinitely. This revolution also leads to significant cost reductions.

- In 2011, Danone created the Livelihoods Fund, establishing a link between food security and climate change. After testing the concept in Senegal where, since 2008, 10,000 hectares of mangrove forest have been restored to provide fish resources, protect rice fields, and store significant amounts of carbon, we asked other companies to join us in creating Livelihoods. This shared platform has already invested in other major projects in Africa and Asia and contributes to the carbon offset programs of these companies.

- The quality of the raw materials Danone uses for its products, such as water, milk, cereal and fruit, is a key focus for the group. The Danone Ecosystem Fund established in 2009 progressed tremendously in 2011, supporting 35 projects in total, primarily in agriculture and water resource preservation. From Ukraine to Indonesia, via France and Mexico, these programs provide a testing ground to foster farming models that meet our economic, social and environmental requirements.

-For Danone employees working in countries with no welfare system, the highlight of the year will be the introduction of the Dan’Cares program for basic healthcare coverage. The program benefitted 28,000 employees in 2011 and will be rolled out to the entire workforce in 2012.

Despite the global economic upheaval that prevailed in 2011, Danone continued to forge ahead with the double objective of delivering annual financial performance while developing our capacity to shape the future.

Franck Riboud

Danone’s CEO”

* Health, For All, Nature, and People

Infographic: what's wrong with our food system?

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:52:00 +0200

Reblogged from Good.is:

Click on the picture to enlarge this infographic.

Around the world every night, one in seven people go to bed hungry—that’s almost one billion people. People are hungry not because there isn’t enough food produced but because our food system is broken. In fact, 80% of the world’s hungry are directly involved in food production. We can address this hunger if we support small-scale food producers, tackle climate change, and reduce food waste. Check out our latest infographic to learn about some of the ways that the food system can be fixed to improve the quality of life for millions.

The family tree of ecology

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:48:00 +0200

Click on the picture to enlarge the infographic

Over the past century, ecology has become a main concern for mankind, and thus for governments, international organizations and companies. But where does the concept come from ? Who forged it, what events led it to acquire such importance, and how does ecology now belong to our collective unconscious ?

@Adeline_Bordot

Last week, we had the chance to observe a gorgeous phenomenon...

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:44:00 +0200

Cross of the Frauenkirche, Germany,May 4

Christ Redeemer in Rio, May 6, 2012

Papago Park in Phoenix on May 5, 2012

Mare shanty town complex in Rio, May 6

Manhattan, New York, May 6, 2012

Last week, we had the chance to observe a gorgeous phenomenon referred to as the “Supermoon” or “Perigee Moon”.

Here are some pictures made by The Big Picture on this phenomenon, click on the following link to see more photos.

Reblogged from The Big Picture :

The night sky on May 5 was animated by the once-a-year cosmic event of the perigee moon. Popularly known as the “Supermoon”, the moon appears much larger above us when the elliptical orbit brings it within 221,802 miles to Earth, the closest point. The effect is magnified during a full moon, when we see our nearest celestial neighbor appear roughly 20 percent brighter and 15 percent larger. Collected here are images taken just before, during, and just after the perigee moon of 2012.

When plastic becomes part of Nature's recycling system

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Plastic is widely acknowledged as an environmental plague, but replacement solutions are hard to find and it seems that we would never be able to live without it. But what if a revolutionary decision was taken at the 2032 Earth Summit?

2032. The Rio + 40 Earth Summit which has just ended was the scene of a surprising, courageous and visionary decision: to “eradicate all non-biodegradable and polluting plastics within the next 20 years”. A bold statement that immediately drew criticism from representatives of the petrochemical and plastic industries and oil-producing countries, who argued in a joint statement that a world without plastic was “inconceivable and simply impossible to attain”, and that this “utopia (would) soon die by itself”. However, with the exception of OPEC member countries and the United States, every country represented at the Earth Summit co-signed the declaration and committed to achieving quantifiable goals. An ad hoc international organizationis expected to be created within the next few months. A world without plastic seems to be dawning. Flash-back on how the need to eradicate plastic has become an imperative over the past 50 years, and how new solutions to replace it were found.

Why plastic must disappear

The decision to eradicate “traditional” plastic was fervently supported by the main global powers, led by China, India and Brazil, who chose at the turn of the 2020s to encourage the transition towards a world without petroleum. Even Brazil, then an oil exporter, decided to forego this activity and focus on more sustainable energies. At the time, Chinese president Xi Jinping declared: “If we, the nations still known in the Western world as “emerging countries”, want to maintain the economic leadership position we have established, we must free ourselves from dependency on oil and fossil resources as soon as possible.” Awareness was then growing over the catastrophe that plastic had become for the environment. The discovery of the Great Garbage Patch in the 1990s was the first and most visible sign of how it had invaded every part of nature: this Patch of plastic waste that floated in the North Pacific, between California and Japan, amounted to 3.5 million tons of garbage in 2012. The effects on biodiversity and wildlife were dramatic: countless birds found dead with their stomachs full of plastic, tortoises that mistook plastic bags for jellyfish and suffocated on them, fish killed by the tiny particles of plastic they ingested, etc. According to the NGO Oceana, in 2010, 675 tons of waste were thrown into the sea each hour!

With a lifetime of several hundred years and a useful life of as little as 20 minutes for plastic grocery bags, the material’s ecological balance is indeed disastrous. Further up the chain, results are little better: the production of plastic derives from oil (in the early 2010s, 4% of the world’s oil production was dedicated to plastic), the price of which has skyrocketed and which is likely to almost completely disappear within the next few decades, and also generates greenhouse gases. In the 2030s, in a world where environmental concern has become the centre of economic and political strategies, everywhere on the planet, plastic – once a wonderful and revolutionary “man-made material” with infinite possibilities – now seems to belong to prehistory.

The Glass, Steel, Wood and Rubber Age

But how could we live without plastic? It is everywhere. From food packaging to windmills, not to mention clothes, computers and phones, cars, planes, pipes, credit cards, etc. Those who oppose the Earth Summit’s decision warn that the disappearance of plastic would have a catastrophic impact on communications, transportation, energy and the economy as a whole. We would have no choice other than to go back to the Glass, Steel, Wood and Rubber Age and regress to 19^th century levels of comfort. It would be a shame, they say, to deprive mankind – and Earth – of a material that has facilitated such enormous progress. In the food industry, for instance, switching from glass to plastic to package liquids resulted in a tremendous reduction in the loads carried by trucks, thereby decreasing the number of trucks. In the car industry, 100 kilos of plastic replaced 200 to 300 kilos of other materials: thanks to the weight reduction, the fuel consumption of cars in Western Europe dropped by 12 million tons a year at the start of the 21^st century. In some respects, plastic did have a positive impact on the emission of greenhouse gases. It also enabled unprecedented developments in means of communication, notably telephones, computers and, of course, the Internet. When it comes to technology, how could we ever imagine living without polymers?

Mushrooms and bacteria to the rescue

The answer is not that complex and started to emerge in the 2010s: plastic must be replaced with itself. Or, more precisely, with materials that have the exact same properties with none of the drawbacks. Such materials already exist and just need political will – in that respect, the Earth Summit’s decision is the best that could have been hoped for – and economic support to develop fully. And soon, to resolve the plastic issue.

Twenty years ago, we started to hear about new polymers: bioplastics and agroplastics, created not from oil, but from renewable and agricultural resources (corn, sugar cane, potato, wheat, etc.). These plastics initially drew great enthusiasm because they are, per se, completely biodegradable, 100 % sourced from plants, and could even be used as compost at the end of their life. No more garbage cans bursting with plastic, no more plastic bags flying in the sky and floating in the sea, no more incineration of materials that would give off toxic smoke. And the agrobusiness giants soon started to integrate agroplastics in their products. Plastic could finally become part of the environmental chain, and no longer be a material, created by demiurgic humans, which is unable to fit into nature’s recycling system.

But there was also a string of disadvantages. The most important was that to be mass-produced, agroplastics needed to “take over” arable lands. This also meant huge water usage, while it was already obvious that too much water was being employed in food production. Agroplastics were not that “green” after all. They did, however, provide a crucial step towards new ways of manufacturing plastics. They established the idea that whenever we produce a material, we must have the end of its life in mind. That each new object must be designed not only according to how it is to be used, but also according to how it is to end – and biodegrade.

Quite simply, it now seems that the solution for a world without plastic – or at least without non-biodegradable and polluting plastics – will come from… mushrooms and bacteria. Today, this is the most promising lead we have to meet the goals recently set by the international community. In the 2010s, a young American entrepreneur, Eben Bayer, discovered that mycelium, the vegetative part of mushrooms, when put in the presence of crop waste (such as wheat, corn or rice pods), seed husks or woody biomass, starts to create polymers. It then acts as a glue, sticking the “waste” elements together to build a material that is as good as any other agroplastic. It has three main advantages: the plastic creates itself with almost no human intervention; it does not require any “new” materials that would have to be grown for the purpose; and it can be produced from many different feedstocks, according to local crops, and thus can be created anywhere in the world. The technique rapidly spread to developing countries during the second half of the 2010s, and by 2020 China had become the world’s leading producer of “mushroom plastic”, thanks to the rice crop waste that was piling up and to active government support.

Will our collective salvation come from mushrooms? It just may. It has now been twenty years since a group of scientists realized that an Amazonian mushroom was able to digest and degrade plastics. This discovery has enabled tons of plastic to be naturally destroyed and turned into compost each year ever since. But now, with the historic decision that was made at the Rio +40 Earth Summit, and the fact that suitable technology is now available, everywhere in the world, we can confidently look towards a future where we do not need to find new ways to destroy plastic, because it will have disappeared. It is not going to be like going back to the Glass, Steel, Wood and Rubber Age, it is not going to be like living in the 19^th century all over again. It will be a new era, an era where technological progress finally allows man and nature to cohabit better. An era where plastic is part of nature’s cycle.

Newsletter Down to Earth #9

Fri, 04 May 2012 22:00:00 +0200

Returning to Rio to build a more sustainable future

Thu, 03 May 2012 18:53:00 +0200

Reblogged from the Guardian Sustainable:

Germany’s feed-in tariff guarantees that producers of electricity from wind, solar, biomass and hydropower will be able to sell energy at a reasonable profit.

In 1992, heads of state converged on Rio for the Earth Summit, a bright moment that seemed to herald a new era for sustainable development. Bold speeches were given, important treaties signed. Saving the planet was cast as a moral imperative. Multilateral institutions would lead the way.

Twenty years later, the world looks much different. The unipolar system of US domination that followed the end of the cold war is now multipolar. The locus of global growth and consumption has largely shifted to developing countries, especially in Asia. And for all the good intentions voiced in Rio, the health of our climate, water resources, and ecosystems has been deteriorating at alarming rates.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been progress in some areas, including in the private sector, which will be amply represented – along with governments and civil society groups – at the Rio+20 conference in June. With that in mind, it’s worth examining how businesses can build on that progress, even absent the ground breaking global agreements that emerged from the original Rio conclave, but are unlikely this year.

The first thing to recognise is that many businesses have already embraced sustainability, for the simple reason that it can be good for profits. Cutting back on hazardous waste saves on treatment costs and potential liability. Making products more efficiently saves on electric bills. Even regulations, when properly designed, can provide greater certainty for business and sometimes open new markets, as General Electric has demonstrated with its highly lucrative Ecomagination line.

Risk can be another motivating factor. In an increasingly interconnected world, multinationals have learned the hard way about the risks of environmental mismanagement to their image and profits. Investors, too, are becoming more sensitive to environmental risk in deciding how to allocate capital.

At the same time, we have to be realistic about how far businesses will go on their own. Companies are ultimately answerable to shareholders and most will embrace sustainability only to the degree that it helps, or at least doesn’t hurt, their bottom line.

That brings us to the role of government. As should be obvious by now, there is a range of sensible policies that can encourage businesses to do what they do best: innovate and create new markets. With the right mix of incentives and public investment, businesses can come up with cost-effective solutions to respond to environmental challenges and scale them up quicker than government ever could.

The US wind and solar industries, for example, have received a major boost from federal production and investment tax credits, as well as state-level requirements that utilities buy a share of their power from renewable sources. Such mandates are in force in 29 states, including California, which has set its renewable energy target at 33% by 2020. These incentives, in turn, helped drive more than $48bn (£29bn) in US clean energy investment in 2011.

Germany’s feed-in tariff is perhaps the best argument for bold government action on renewables. Now more than two decades old, the tariff guarantees that producers of electricity from wind, solar, biomass and hydropower will be able to sell it to utilities at a reasonable profit. Germany received 20% of its electricity from renewables in 2011, up from 6.4% in 2000. On some days, when the sun or wind is especially strong, Germany produces as much as half of its electricity from carbon-free sources during peak hours. The government’s renewable energy strategy, which includes support for research and development, training programs, and infrastructure investment, has enabled the development of a dynamic new sector that provided over 380,000 jobs last year, along with affordable power alternatives for its citizens.

Developing countries, too, are waking up to the possibilities of a vibrant green economy and government’s role in fostering it. Indonesia is the world’s leading producer of palm oil, reaching 23.6m tonnes in 2011. Yet, the government recently announced plans to curb the destruction of tropical forests for oil palm plantations. The strategy calls for shifting some palm oil production to land that has already been logged or otherwise degraded, which represents at least 70,000 sq km (approximately the size of Ireland) in Indonesia. If done right, this approach can help protect ecosystems and preserve jobs.

Of course, policy shifts come with trade-offs, and should not be imposed without a frank acknowledgement that there will be losers as well as winners. The key is to provide support to companies that may wind up on the outside, helping them move to longer-term stability.

In the 20 years since the first Earth Summit, we’ve seen that it’s possible to have robust economic growth together with environmental protection provided the right policies and incentives are in place. When business and government leaders return to Rio in June, they should take the opportunity to reignite an important dialogue, including spelling out concrete steps, on the urgent need to shift to a more sustainable future.

Event minutes: What if I dared to make my own way?

Wed, 02 May 2012 12:23:04 +0200

Last Tuesday, danone.communities and the student association NOISE brought together 400 people in Parisian business school ESCP to reflect on making professional life count. An inspiring dialogue with Emmanuel Faber, Deputy General Manager of Danone, and entrepreneurs Marie Trellu-Kane, Miora Ranaivoarinosy and Olivier Cueille on meaningfulness… and the urge to change the world.

As the room slowly fills with people, music plays. “Stand by me”, “Redemption Song”, “Imagine”… peaceful and friendly songs that provide the soundtrack to a spectacular video made by young French highliners: these students travel the world to push their limits and confront their fears in breathtaking landscapes. Their project bears the name “I believe I can fly”. The best possible introduction for last Tuesday’s conference, organised jointly by danone.communities and the student association NOISE (New Monitoring Centre for Social and Environmental Innovation). The theme of the night: “Sens dessus dessous. Et si j’osais tracer ma propre route?” “Sens” is “meaning” in French, and “sens dessus dessus” means “upside down”. What if I dared to make my own way? The event addressed a question that many young graduates face: how to make their way through a meaningful and fulfilling professional life. To many, finding their own place and utility will likely be related to social business and/or environmental concern. Which explains why almost all of the speakers, led by hosts Olivier Maurel (from danone.communities) and Makeba Chamry-Makhamat (founder of Mankai Factory), focused on these subjects.

Hunt down the fear

Emmanuel Faber, Deputy General Manager of Danone, presents his new book “Chemins de traverse” (Side roads), in which he reflects on his doubts, the questions he asks himself and the driving forces that he finds in his job. “I wanted to lay my cards on the table, for the people I work with. I did not want them to be mistaken about what I have in my heart.”

And looking back on his career, he finds that every turning point in his professional life was the result of having met someone – but that he had to be ready for it. Openness is key to finding your way, because it is crucial if you are to see new opportunities, and be able to grab them. “You must plan blank spaces, to leave room for the unplannable to happen.”

You must also leave room for doubt. Emmanuel Faber insists that we are constantly filled with doubt in our work lives. And that there is a permanent contradiction between that doubt and efficiency, between the will to give and the urge to take and between the thirst for victory and the duty to share. “There is no good or bad, it is not a question of angelic NGOs on one hand and evil multinational companies on the other. The limit between economic concern and social concern is crossed by each and every one of us, in our innermost contradictions.” Quoting Rûmî, a 13th-century Persian poet: “Out there beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” Emmanuel Faber also identifies fear as a very strong trigger: recognizing it is the first step to being free, “just like in the video of the highliners”. When you fear, you cannot communicate, you are unable to reach out to others and you remain stuck with your apprehensions and prejudices. “It is extremely important to hunt down the fear.”

It is OK to be wrong

Then three speakers who also chose to follow “side roads” take the stage. First, Olivier Cueille explains that in 2009, after eight fulfilling years at General Electric, he co-founded microDON, a “public-spirited company that works on the model of social entrepreneurship” to develop micro-donation in France. Miora Ranaivoarinosy is now in charge of the social innovations programs at La Ruche, a space at the heart of Paris dedicated to social entrepreneurs, after having studied at EDHEC business school and worked for 5 years at Utopies, a consulting agency in the field of sustainable development. And Marie Trellu-Kane, who also studied business, at ESSEC, created UnisCité, an association that promotes civic service among young people.

These three entrepreneurs chose to focus their professional lives on social business and public-spiritedness. As Marie puts it, the main debate is: “where do we go to maximize our impact?” All three of them answered that question by deciding to create their own opportunities, in a business that would provide new answers to tangible issues. Each makes their way through their career while being constantly torn between doubt and satisfaction – just as Emmanuel Faber explained. In Olivier’s words, “the life of every project initiator is sprinkled with doubt”, and only perseverance and tenacity can fight it off. Marie insists on the fact that French education fails to place enough emphasis on personal expression. “It is crucial to learn how to surpass oneself, to force oneself.” Miora, when asked to name her most satisfying discovery, replies: “That it is OK to be wrong, it is OK to make mistakes. You cannot know everything, all the time.”

Changing the world

Olivier and Makeba then turn to the audience, where many other social entrepreneurs are waiting to share their thoughts on doubt, action and the meaning of their commitment. Ideas and stories ring out, coming from every corner of a packed and attentive room. We hear the humanist story of Jean-Christophe Capelli, a former banker who created his own mutualist bank, FriendsClear. Jean-Denis Bour, in charge of corporate social responsibility at Air France, reflects on ways to bring environmental responsibility in transportation businesses. Nicolas Metro, founder of Kinomé, a company that leads reforestation programs, relates his life-changing experience, insisting that “a slight repositioning can change your life and change the world”. We share the enthusiasm of Jerôme, a 21-year-old entrepreneur who has just founded Attendee, a start-up that helps organize meetings: “each and every one of you can change the world, as long as you meet the right person.”

Changing the world. Encounters that trigger new things in your life. Dealing with doubt. These are the main ideas that Emmanuel Faber, and all the project initiators present in the room, stand up for. These are the main focuses for anyone who is willing to give their professional life a meaning, and a sense of depth, humanity, solidarity. Emmanuel Faber concludes the evening: “Changing the world starts with changing oneself, and maybe it stops there. Maybe that’s all there is to it. Above all other things, the main question is: “What is right for me?” Finding the answer to that one is a life-time project.”

Interview: Dr. Michael Mann, Climate War Veteran

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:57:00 +0200

Reblogged from Triple Pundit

If there was a medal for fighting the climate war, Dr. Michael Mann should probably get one. In the last decade he has been at the front lines of the fight over climate change, most noticeably as the researcher who created one of the symbols of this war, the hockey stick graph, as well as one of the heroes of the Climategate scandal. Now he has a new book coming out, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, describing his experience as a target of the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to sow doubt and thwart action on climate change.

Last week I met Dr. Mann for an interview at the Sustainable Operations Summit in New York. In an interesting coincidence, the New York Times(NYT) published an article two days earlier on a new survey showing that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter and last year’s blistering summer were likely made worse by global warming. One of the paragraphs caught my attention in its attempt to present the climate change debate:

“A large majority of climate scientists say the climate is shifting in ways that could cause serious impacts, and they cite the human release of greenhouse gases as a principal cause. But a tiny, vocal minority of researchers contests that view, and has seemed in the last few years to be winning the battle of public opinion despite slim scientific evidence for their position.”

Triple Pundit: Dr. Mann, what do thinks about this vocal minority?

Dr. Michael Mann: That’s what book is really about. It’s about this massive disinformation campaign that has been funded by fossil fuel interests, advocates for the fossil fuel industry, front groups and organizations that have sought to manufacture this fake debate about whether or not climate change is real.

3p: Is the fact that even the NYT seems to be a bit cautious when it addresses climate change part of problem?

MM: This article was written by Justin Gillis who is a really good journalist and I think he’s been covering this issue very well, but unfortunately it has been all too common for journalists to treat the issue of climate change as if there are two equal sides in the debate, when that’s not an appropriate way of covering issues that are fundamentally scientific in nature, when there is right and there is wrong.

I think in part that’s because there is so much pressure…there really is a machine, a very organized machine out there to make sure that when the NYT runs an article about climate change, you’ll be sure they will get thousands of angry emails from climate change deniers denouncing their (NYT) acceptance of the hoax of climate change. Ultimately their business model relies on advertising and so even the NYT is sensitive to that.

3p: Do you think what we have is more of a communication problem rather than a scientific one?

MM: Yes. Sometimes you’ll hear critics say we can’t act until we’re certain, until there’s proof, but science doesn’t work that way. In my book I note that proof is reserved for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages. Scientists are skeptics by nature – there’s never been such thing as proof in science, but there’s the weight of evidence and we act on the weight of evidence. Why is it that when it comes to climate change, where there is as much scientific consensus about the reality of human caused climate change as there is about any scientific proposition, critics demand absolute proof?

3p: Do you think that reframing the issue of climate change into terms people can better relate to like health can help?

MN: I think we should be honest with the public that if we want to preserve our climate for our children and grandchildren we do have to transition away from fossil fuel. The point that I do make though is that I think we can frame it in terms of certain larger issues like competitiveness because the rest of the world is moving forward on renewable energy and China sees that that’s the future, and by us not doing so ourselves, we’re falling behind the rest of the world in terms of competitiveness.

3p: Looking back, if you knew at the time you began your climate change research what you know now about everything you went through, would you choose to do something else?

MM: I would not. Despite the fact that I have been subject to attacks and efforts to discredit me and my science for more than a decade, it led to me being in a position to tell the story and that’s why I wrote the book, as a vehicle to talking about human caused climate change and the threat it represents. To be in a position where I can inform the public discourse on this vital issue, perhaps the greatest challenge that human civilization has faced…I can’t imagine anything more important that I could be doing with my life.

3p: What are the lessons readers will take from your book?

MM: There’s still time to solve the problem. Some people think that we passed the tipping point and they’ve reached this point of despair, and that’s a very dangerous way to look at the problem because despair and denial are often only little distance apart. And so I think it’s very important to people to realize that there is still time to avert dangerous changes in our climate, but there is urgency to it. So we do need to get on it now and we can’t tolerate this continuation of this bad faith debate about whether the problem is real. We need to move forward with the solutions.

Naandi Community Water Services "Quenching thirst in rural areas"

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:13:00 +0200

By Laurence Saquer, reblogged from Danone.Communities:

On Monday, one of the biggest information website in India has published an article about Naandi Community Water Services.

Why is it important? It is important because Naandi Community Water Services is one of our projects that are the most impactful. We are happy that the NCWS team is such highlighted, congratulations to their work ! Moreover, this article enters deeply into the daily life of the project, that is always much more meaningful that anything.

Read the beginning of this article just below.

“What better elixir than pure water? Thanks to Naandi, a safe drinking water programme, 390 536 households in rural areas across four Indian states are benefited.

Naandi, headquartered in Hyderabad, is a not-for-profit organization which works with governing bodies in rural areas, including Karnataka, to provide clean drinking water to the poor. So what really is their modus operandi? It is essentially a community-run programme where the local governing body or gram panchayat owns a water purifying plant, which is set up and run by Naandi’s water division field officers. Funds collected from donors go towards equipping each unit, replete with purifiers. Thereafter, beneficiaries are given a monthly card, which they produce at the unit while collecting their share of water. The cards are duly punched to keep a tab on the quantity of water consumed. The value of each card is equal to the total sum of money paid for the beneficiary’s monthly water consumption.

In fact, 575 families benefit from Naandi plants in Hebbagodi, Kamasandra and Thirupalya on the outskirts of Bangalore. Beneficiaries here shell out Rs 4 per day, per family for five members to procure 20 litres of water. What these beneficiaries are consuming is four times filtered water treated through colloidal filters, 10 and five micron filters. The water then undergoes a reverse osmosis process before being run through a UV lamp filter, ready for consumption. Each water treatment plant has a 5,000-litre capacity and villagers collect their share of water according to the time slots prescribed to them - 6am to 10am or 4pm to 10pm. There are 20 such plants in Karnataka alone; at Chikamagalur, Chitradurga, Yadgir, Gulbarga and Haveri districts. […]”

A few days ago was happening the Earth Day, here is a selection...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:15:26 +0200

The new Gemasolar solar power plant

Boy collecting recyclable materials

Accacia saplings planted to trap CO2

A few days ago was happening the Earth Day, here is a selection of pictures we thought were of interest!

Reblogged from The Big Picture:

April 22 will mark Earth Day worldwide, an event now in its 42nd year and observed in 175 countries. The original grass-roots environmental action helped spur the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act in the United States. Gathered here are images of our planet’s environment, efforts to utilize renewable alternative sources of energy, and the effects of different forms of pollution. — Lane Turner and Leanne Burden Seidel