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By Jessica McGlyn

In response to the groundswell of pledges from multinational corporations, the Forests Dialogue launched its first of a series of field dialogues on understanding “deforestation-free” commitments on April 29 in Riau Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. The event, co-convened by the Indonesian Business Council for Sustainable Development (IBCSD), brought Indonesian communities, indigenous tribes, NGOs, companies and government representatives together with international organizations to discuss the many challenges and solutions to implementation.

As stated by Andika Putraditama of World Resources Institute, one of the co-chairs of the meeting: “A big challenge is that key stakeholders on the ground don’t interpret the goal [of deforestation-free] and how to get there in the same way. This dialogue helps us understand issues faced by the people who are implementing and are directly affected by the pledges. This comprehension will help us collaborate better to make deforestation-free a reality.”

Indonesia, and the Riau province in particular, has some of the highest deforestation rates in the world, and the devastating impact of forest loss and associated fires and peatland degradation on local communities, biodiversity and global greenhouse gas emissions has been well documented. Hundreds of corporations have made deforestation-free commitments of varying scopes within the last few years, a widely celebrated development. According to the Carbon Disclosure Project, the strongest company commitments include elements of traceability, legal compliance, social criteria, and protection of High Conservation Value and High Carbon Stock forests, as well as peatland.

However, uncertainty around indigenous and community rights to land and resources; overlapping permits and concessions; legal constraints to voluntary set-asides; lack of clarity around definitions and assessments; and weak governance and conflicting laws significantly complicate implementation.

As Rod Taylor of the World Wildlife Fund, a co-chair of the dialogue, said: “We need to understand, with all the complexity on the ground, that success isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to be a process.”

Challenges facing Indonesian suppliers

For consumer goods and retail companies that have made or are thinking about making commitments, it’s important to know some of the obstacles their Indonesian suppliers are facing in implementing deforestation-free policies. The suppliers are delineating and setting aside areas for conservation, but that’s only the beginning. The really hard work is to make sure those areas are effectively protected and not degraded by others.

“Encroachment” is in the eye of the beholder

Smallholder encroachment on forest management concessions is widespread. As just one illustrative example, dialogue participants met with local government officials at Tahura, a Forest Management Unit (FMU) legally designated for habitat conservation, protection of ecotourism, biodiversity and endangered species such as Sumatra tiger. The park is overrun by smallholders, many of whom have moved in from other districts to establish farms upon receiving permits from village leaders.

Currently, over 70 percent of the park is planted in palm oil and rubber plantations. The FMU managers engaged the district government and the National Ministry of Forestry and Environment to contest these permits. But resolution has not been reached on many of the land disputes, and they may have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to appeal.

Conversely, government agencies have routinely given concessions to pulp and paper, palm oil, and other companies for lands already occupied by indigenous peoples and communities. Highlighting this issue, dialogue participants met with the Sakai tribe, one of eight indigenous communities in Riau. Without consultation with or consent from the Sakai, the Ministry of Forestry allocated the forest land that the tribe has lived on since the 1930s to APP to convert into acacia and eucalyptus plantations.

Mr. Lontai, a member of the Sakai, stated: “We cannot get fish or food. We cannot get the honey from the sialang trees. The forests are used up, and we can’t go into [the company-designated conservation areas] to get timber for our houses. Life has become much harder for us.” When asked what they thought about deforestation-free commitments, members of the tribe expressed confusion as to the meaning of the term, saying that they had lost their forests long ago.

A fight without a referee

No Indonesian agency is mandated to resolve the types of tenure conflicts like the one APP and the Sakai are facing. A 2013 Supreme Court ruling requires that these contested lands be transferred to the indigenous peoples, but a legal framework to implement this still needs to be sorted out.

In the meantime, companies like APP are engaging in conflict resolution with communities, but there aren’t enough mediators, either in the NGO or government sector, to handle the myriad of cases.

As Tiur Rumondang of IBCSD, a meeting co-chair, said: “We need a lot more tools and trained mediators to resolve these social conflicts. It’s imperative that NGOs, business and the government work together to fast-track this.”

Lost in the forest without (One) Map

A complex and prolonged government spatial planning process contributes to unclear tenure and land-use designations. Overlapping permits are given out by multiple ministries and agencies to different corporate and community entities. Community and indigenous land use is not typically mapped out in spatial planning processes.

The One Map process is attempting to clarify the confusion around land-use licensing, but many dialogue participants believe that the mapping needs to happen at a much more detailed scale to understand where the majority of the problematic licensing exists. To gather this information effectively, communities need to be engaged in participatory mapping, which takes a lot of time and resources and requires people who are trusted by the communities to do the mapping.

Government policy: Seeing the forests through the trees

In addition to land tenure issues, other government policies can undermine corporate deforestation-free commitments.

For example, on agricultural concessions, areas that companies voluntarily set aside for conservation might be considered “abandoned land” by the government and given to other companies to develop. The Ministry of Industry might continue to give out new mill permits without assuring added production capacity is in line with sustainable plantation inventories. Regulations allow mining licenses to be given on top of forest concessions. There are inconsistencies in applying the law and regulations, and weak law enforcement to impose them.

Challenges with third-party suppliers

Forty percent of the world's palm oil comes from smallholder plantations, and tracing supply from the mill to the growers can be very challenging depending on the trading structure. Furthermore, given the sheer number and variability of smallholder profiles, there is a high transaction cost for buyers to work with farmers on sustainable production and certification. Farmers have different needs, aspirations and organizations with respect to their palm oil plantations, and not one size sustainability scheme fits all.

However, there are good models in place from which to learn. For example, dialogue participants visited with the Dosan community palm oil cooperative, developed by the district government as a means of economic development for the village. NGOs like Greenpeace helped the farmers increase their productivity through sustainable agricultural practices, enabling them to earn even better incomes. In return, the community committed, through village regulation, to protect its remaining forest and peatland, to prohibit plantation area expansion, and to protect the area from forest fire. The plantations are now in the process of attaining Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification.

Initiatives like Dosan show great promise but take time and resources from supporting organizations to build farmer capacity, and only represent a small fraction of the smallholder population. And the tools, like HCV, that are being used on larger concessions are not designed for smaller areas.

As Ian Suwarganda of Golden Agri-Resources said: “We need incentives and tools that work for both small and medium players. We need to encourage producers to be sustainable and build their capacity in ways that speak to their motivations, needs and aspirations.”

Build on what’s working

Given these challenges, dialogue participants identified specific actions which could accelerate and scale deforestation-free implementation, and in which all actors along the supply chain (including Western consumer-facing companies) might support:

1. Flexible approaches: Identifying and managing conservation areas will look different for big producer companies, independent and community smallholders, and indigenous peoples, and they should be customized to the local context. And Indonesian companies who have not yet signed onto commitments and are lagging in the sustainability department may need different entry points than the leading companies into these initiatives, perhaps through some type of stepwise approach.


2. Managing legacy issues: Producer companies that have a history of conversion are excluded from the certification schemes used to verify achievement of deforestation-free commitments. They will need compensation mechanisms like what is being offered under RSPO, where a company that inadvertently converts forest after 2005 could mitigate through funding additional restoration or conservation projects. Companies might take advantage of the government’s newly allocated 2.7 million hectares of production forest for Ecosystem Restoration Concessions (ERC). Several NGO and industrial plantation companies (both palm oil and pulp) have started to acquire ERC licenses to protect and restore native biodiversity, ecosystem services and forest productivity as a means to address their legacy conversion of natural forests.


3. Mobilization and efficiency of resources: To implement the commitments at the scale required means more capacity is needed in the private and public sector for HCV and HCS assessments, land-use conflict mediation, Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), and indigenous peoples and communities’ rights. And in the interest of efficiency and prevention of market-based confusion, the best innovations from the proliferation of tools should be integrated into one approach that could be used for multiple commodities.


4. Landscape approach: Company-by-company, commodity-by-commodity solutions provide suboptimal benefits. Undertaking cross-sector and cross-commodity collaboration within a specific geographic unit to manage the policy, participatory mapping, community engagement and conservation efforts may yield better results. And, if packaged well, such initiatives could attract significant conservation finance to support the effort.


5. Finance: Local and regional banks need to be better engaged in these discussions, and the private equity companies financing palm oil plantation expansion need to use better social and environmental safeguards.


6. Harmonized advocacy: Corporations belonging to the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge (IPOP) are already lobbying the government on topics like the abandoned land issue and land-swap regulations. Having NGOs, companies from different sectors, communities and indigenous people join this advocacy effort would be very powerful. “The new moratorium creates a terrific opportunity for companies and NGOs to lobby together for things like better protection of peatland,” said Grant Rosoman of Greenpeace. Harmonized advocacy could also be part of landscape pilots, where the lobbying target might be district and provincial governments


7. Engagement: Solutions to implementing commitments should be co-created with the producers and the communities impacted, along with other local government, company and civil society stakeholders

Looking ahead

Participants agreed that, as a next step, the Indonesian organizations in attendance would work together to communicate some of the points raised in the meeting to the government, perhaps with a more formalized Indonesian-based dialogue platform. Nienke Stam of the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and co-chair of the meeting, said she hoped that “out of this gathering, we will make good progress on alignment around policy discussions. We need local dialogues to ground these global aspirations.”

IDH recently signed an MOU with The Forest Dialogue and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to improve public-private management of landscapes in support of corporate deforestation-free pledges. One of the ways The Forest Dialogue will help contribute to this plan will be through creating local platforms across four geographies, including in Indonesia, where key stakeholders within a landscape can resolve conflicts, enable more inclusive decision-making and create a spirit of collaboration. The hope is that through these processes, sustainable solutions can be accelerated at scale.

Image credits: The Forest Dialogue

Jessica McGlyn is Founder and President of Catalynics, a consultancy with the mission to help corporations and NGOs catalyze smart strategy, partner collaboration, stakeholder engagement, project ideation and development, communications and issues management in sustainability.

Editor's Note: This post is a condensed version of a paper available at the Kleinman Center.

By Mark Alan Hughes

For almost two years now, Philadelphia has engaged in an increasingly contentious debate over the role that energy should play in the region’s economic future. An initial vision emerged from the Chamber of Commerce based on infrastructure investments (especially pipelines) that would allow Philadelphia to play an active role in Pennsylvania’s natural gas boom. That vision mobilized a vocal alternative view that focused on risks and costs associated with a natural-gas-based, petro-chemical supply chain.

The “Philadelphia energy hub” is stuck in the promotional stage of the issue attention-cycle, in which boosters and doomsayers each try to create a narrative that benefits a strategic interest. To have a real discussion about a Philadelphia energy hub, we need to move beyond simplistic references to good things like “a manufacturing revival” and bad things like “an environmental sacrifice zone." Now, we have two monologues: one saying “absolutely yes” and one saying “absolutely no.” The extremes have a right to state their positions, and personally I’m glad to have them both on the scene. But the question for the large majority of us is not, “yes or no?” The question is, “under what conditions?”

Can Philadelphia turn a “yes or no” debate -- in which blunt instruments of power are likely to produce either a pyrrhic victory or a stalemate -- into an “under what conditions” debate, in which legitimate concerns are accommodated in ways that advance the whole region on a sustainable pathway to a better future. This goal requires a delicate dance between analysis and compromise — toward a coherent strategy for using natural gas as an economic development driver for Philadelphia, the nation’s poorest big city.

The reason natural gas makes a powerful claim as a necessary bridge to the future is that CCS, renewables, storage, energy efficiency and every other option alone or in combination almost certainly takes more time to implement than we have to avoid the worst environmental consequences of a carbon-intensive energy system. (These consequences are outlined in many studies, but for a bi-partisan and establishment version, see Risky Business.)

But just calling natural gas “a bridge” doesn’t make it one. It’s time — past time — to design this bridge with at least as much seriousness as if we were planning to literally drive across one. Major design choices must go into a bridge before it can be built and used. Where do we get on, and where do we get off? How long is it, and what’s the speed limit? How much weight does it bear? What’s the toll charge? And once we’re across it, what does it connect us with and where have we bypassed?

So far, the Philadelphia energy hub debate has been dominated by narrow (which is not to say unimportant) interests. It’s like a bridge being designed by a bridge-painting company. They wouldn’t care about all those questions above; they’d only want a bridge that is ready for the next repainting as soon as the last repainting is completed. We need to design a bridge that serves everyone, not just the bridge painters.

The first principle of this design effort should be that no assumption is above interrogation. For example, why isn’t carbon-based natural gas a total non-starter for anyone who believes in climate change and its risks? Fair enough.

A January 2015 study published in the journal Nature provides a helpful answer. Informed by science over decades and from around the world, policymakers from every nation agreed in 2009 that average global temperatures should not be allowed to increase more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (usually measured as 2 degrees Celsius above normal temperatures before industrialization). The accepted estimate for having at least a 50 percent chance of staying below that dangerous threshold states that the total additional amount of carbon emissions added to the atmosphere between now and 2050 cannot exceed the emissions contained in about a third of the world’s fossil fuel reserves.

What’s new and interesting in the Nature paper is that the authors ask which two-thirds should be left in the ground as “unburnable” fuels? Using well-established models that run both economic and climate data, they identify the most cost-effective third to burn before 2050 in order to stay under the 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit threshold. For the whole world, they estimate that 33 percent of oil, 49 percent of natural gas and 82 percent of coal is unburnable. But they also calculate these estimates for all the regions of the world with reserves. For the United States, they estimate that 6 percent of oil, 4 percent of natural gas and 92 percent of coal is unburnable. Even under the strictest scientific constraints with respect to global warming, the optimal global scenario for the U.S. energy system almost completely exploits our existing oil and natural gas reserves (and almost completely halts coal burning and further fossil fuel exploration).

Okay, that’s a smart accounting exercise by researchers who modeled a world committed to saving the planet. But what if we consider the question from a completely different perspective? How would a high-functioning government in the U.S. use a natural gas option to pursue a carbon reduction goal under some meaningful conditions like keeping the lights on and the bills affordable? Forget scientific research. How about long-term planning in the real world? Again, fair enough.

In September 2014, a group of 25 companies, organizations and foundations known as the Low-Carbon Grid Study (LCGS) released a report to determine a pathway for meeting California’s ambitious goal of cutting in half its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The analysis shows that meeting the goal is possible with minimal impact on electricity rates and no compromise in electric grid reliability. The keys to the transition are energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, energy storage, electric vehicles, regional cooperation in energy markets, and the strategic and efficient use of natural gas dispatched to provide energy to the grid. Even in California, where stars align to an extent that climate hawks in other states can only dream about, natural gas is a critical element of getting to 2050 when real plans are being made for a real energy system.

All of these long-term accounting and planning scenarios, even if we accept their assumptions and methods, skip past the feasibility of actually implementing the changes they describe. What good are these exercises if they don’t take into consideration the difficulty of actually making the changes needed to realize them? One last time, fair enough.

A Jan/Feb 2015 study of this question is so on-point that I’ll just recite the title: “A critical review of global decarbonization scenarios: What do they tell us about feasibility?” The authors examine 17 scenarios from 11 studies. The most important conclusion for our present purposes is this: “Finally, all of the studies present comparatively little detail on strategies to decarbonize the industrial and transportation sectors, and most give superficial treatment to relevant constraints on energy system transformations. To be reliable guides for policymaking, scenarios such as these need to be supplemented by more detailed analyses realistically addressing the key constraints on energy system transformation.”

We have useful examples of collaborative processes addressing real-world constraints, including one centered on natural gas. The Salem Harbor Power Station opened in 1952 and burned coal for 60 years to supply the Boston area with electricity. In 2010, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) won a lawsuit based on the Clean Air Act against Salem Harbor’s owner, Dominion, and secured an order from the U.S. District court to approve a consent decree that would shut down coal operations by 2014 and prevent any future owner from ever burning coal on the site. In 2012, an energy company called Footprint bought Salem Harbor with a plan to convert it into a 630-megawatt, $800 million combined-cycle gas-fired turbine power station. But CLF went to court to stop the plan, arguing that natural gas is better than coal but still not good enough to meet Massachusetts' own carbon emissions goals set for 2050.

That’s when things got interesting. CLF and Footprint negotiated a deal that aligned all the salient concerns: Massachusetts’ carbon reduction targets, Footprint’s stated business plan, and CLF’s mission of environmental protection in accordance with state and federal laws. The basics of the deal are (1) the plant will open in 2016, (2) it must begin to reduce its CO2 emissions by 2026, and (3) its emissions must be 25 percent of its 2016 emissions by 2049. If Footprint can’t meet these conditions with technology that reduces its emissions, then it must either reduce operations accordingly or purchase renewable offsets.

The deal makes the “bridge to the future” a real thing, writing the specifics of the agreement into Footprint's permit to operate, which was approved by the state in 2014. The agreement designates how much CO2 may be emitted over a specific period of time and delineates remedies if the emissions exceed the permissible levels at given points in the future.

Admittedly, this is a simple and well-defined deal compared with the multiple of competing concerns wrapped up in the Philadelphia energy hub. But it does illustrate the point and shows that it’s at least possible to design compromises that create an acceptable balance among economic and environmental concerns in using natural gas to transform the energy system.

In the end, are Philadelphia and Pennsylvania up to the challenge of drafting a deal like Salem Harbor but on a much more complex issue? Can we identify the elements of such a deal and convene legitimate voices to explore the specific tradeoffs among those elements? Is there a compromise that a majority can embrace and that ensures protections and opportunities for all?

These questions will demand self-governance. There is no single trigger, like a lawsuit before a U.S. District Court, that will lead to a negotiation like that among CLF, Footprint, and Massachusetts’s energy and environmental regulators that produced the Salem Harbor agreement. A Philadelphia energy hub worth having will require a voluntary process among civic-minded parties capable of advancing all the important interests at stake.

Nothing about the energy hub discussion to date sounds even remotely like the above. Boosters and doomers talking without listening have more in common with an Eagles game than with a facilitated process of structured decision-making. But that process is the only way to move toward a Philadelphia energy hub worth having.

Image credit: flickr/Philadelphia Night Skyline

Mark Alan Hughes, Ph.D., is Professor of Practice at PennDesign and Director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Back in January, 3p reported on an innovative community agroforestry development project that is having tremendous success revitalizing rural smallholder farms and communities in rural Haiti. With steadfast support from Timberland, as well as the rural communities in which it works, the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) is helping smallholder farmers and communities in northern Haiti raise crop yields, reforest a nation that's suffered from the highest rate of deforestation in the Western Hemisphere, and improve their livelihoods and overall well-being.

SFA-Timberland's five-year agroforestry project highlights the vital role smallholder farms and communities play in sustaining the socioeconomic and ecological fabric of countries the world over. It also highlights the tremendous, triple-bottom-line benefits that can be realized with relatively little in the way of capital and other resources; in lieu of sufficient funds, success can come by employing an innovative model of sustainable development that affords local residents ownership of for-profit ventures based on “sweat equity.”

SFA is now taking its message worldwide. “One-third of the world's 7.3 billion people are smallholder family farmers who produce nearly 70 percent of all food consumed worldwide. So, why aren't we doing more to protect them?” reads the news “hook” for an article written by SFA co-founder and president, Hugh Locke, published in the Guardian on May 13.

Lifting smallholder farms and communities out of poverty

Even though they cultivate 60 percent of the world's arable land and produce 70 percent of the food we eat, smallholder farmers are among the most impoverished people on earth, Locke points out in his Guardian article, saying “smallholder farmers are the new global food frontier.”

Oddly enough, the plight and impoverishment of the world's 2-plus billion smallholder farmers has its roots in the “Green Revolution” that took root back in the 1960s. Experts predicted world population would exceed food supply by the 1990s, unleashing a massive wave of investment in industrialized agriculture that saw intensive fossil and synthetic fertilizer-fueled agricultural development that spread from developing to developed countries around the world.

“About the same time as the initial food scare, rich countries began giving foreign aid to developing countries to improve their economies and reduce poverty. Part of the deal was that recipient nations had to agree to reduce support for domestic smallholder agriculture and encourage their citizens to buy cheap imported grain from industrialized farms in the countries giving the foreign aid,” Locke recounts.

Supported by the theorized, statistically-complicated economic notion of competitive advantage, this quid pro quo has sent smallholder farms, families and communities across the developing world into poverty. Ironically, it was precisely such groups of people that played key roles in the forging of developed-country economies and societies.

As Locke writes: “The combination of a vast increase in industrial farming and greatly reduced support for agriculture in developing countries led to smallholder farmers becoming invisible.

“Today, there are 2.5 billion people who live and work on 500 million smallholder farms, each less than two hectares (five acres). They represent one-third of humanity, yet they have been systematically ignored and marginalized for 60 years, while industrial farming has received the benefits of agricultural research, subsidies, trade agreements, tax credits and regulatory systems.”

Supporting smallholder farms: The new global food frontier

The same food scare-tactics and logic are being used today to push for more industrialized, high-tech agriculture that benefits multinational corporations and investors at the expense of smallholder farms across the developing world. Large sections of so-called free-trade agreements, such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), are typically devoted to furthering its spread.

“Experts are now telling us there will be 2 billion more people by 2050, but not enough food to feed this increased population if we stay at current production levels. Almost all of these new people will be born in low-income countries where food is produced on small farms," Locke writes.

"In an ironic twist, this new global food scare is putting smallholder farmers on the radar for the first time. Having reached the limit of arable land worldwide, our only option is to figure out how to increase yields on land already being cultivated. Given that more than half of all farmland is cultivated by smallholder farmers, they have become the new global food frontier.

Unexpectedly, smallholder farmers have found a strong new ally in the growing number of major multinational food and beverage companies that come out in support of a new model of sustainable agricultural development, Locke continues. That's a development that 3p has reported on extensively in its coverage of sustainable agriculture.

“Major companies within the food and beverage industry, typically for business reasons, have begun procuring from millions of smallholder farmers throughout the developing world. In less than a decade, this market-based partnership between smallholder farmers and corporations has in some ways done more to benefit the farmers than 60 years of foreign aid,” Locke writes.

“The food and beverage industry is now in a leadership role it did not ask for. More significantly, they are in a unique position to be the catalyst for a global course correction that goes beyond just helping smallholder farmers.”

*Image credits: 1)Timberland-SFA; 2), 3) SFA

By Dennis Hung

Online learning is an excellent educational option that offers convenience, reduced costs and a personalized experience. It is estimated that almost half of all students will take an online course at least one time during their lifetime. Over 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies use some form of online educational technology for employee training. Common courses among large enterprises are CCNA Data Center Training and other forms of system administration. According to IBM, online learning can boost productivity by up to 50 percent.

Telecommuting started to become popular during the 1990s. Employers quickly discovered that they could both reduce costs and increase employee satisfaction through allowing them to telecommute to work. Online learning offers similar benefits to the organization and individuals involved. However, there are extra benefits to online learning for the environment.

Online learning reduces the negative environmental impacts that come from manufacturing and transportation. The materials needed for traditional education institutions (textbooks, desks, electricity, buildings) are dramatically reduced. This reduces waste and conserves natural resources. Additionally, online learning saves money and time for both the learning institution and the student.

Here are four more things you'll save by choosing online learning:

1. Gas

American towns and cities tend to be decentralized. That is, residential, commercial, government and educational buildings are spread out to ensure proper urban growth. However, the downside is that the average American uses up to 600 gallons of gas a year. Much of this waste comes from speeding, waiting in traffic and idling the car in park while texting. Students who travel every day for just a few classes’ waste gas and natural resources. Online learning allows the student to learn from the comfort of their home while avoiding wear-and-tear on their vehicle and local roads.

2. Pollution and emissions

One study by the University of West Georgia revealed that for every 100 students who did not commute to school, carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by up to 10 tons every semester. Another study by the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) showed that online learning courses resulted in a 90 percent emission reduction. The study specifically found that the average full-time traditional student created roughly 180 pounds of CO2 emissions, compared to only four pounds for an online student.

3. Natural resources

Buildings use large amounts of energy for power and heat. Energy consumption for students in regular classroom creates a CO2 equivalent of over 220 pounds, compared to only 10 pounds for an online student. The U.K.'s Open University Design Innovation Group (DIG) found that online learning consumes up to 90 percent less energy compared to traditional sources. In addition to this, constructing schools and educational institutions need plastic, metal, wood and other building materials. Online education reduces the demand for these raw goods which protects the environment.

4. Paper

Deforestation is a serious global issue. According to the National Wildlife Foundation, 60 percent of school waste is paper. One ton of paper waste is equal to 16 large trees. Recycling 10 tons of paper is equal to the use of up to 100 barrels of crude oil. The traditional education system notoriously over-uses “busy work,” which is a chronic source of paper waste. Online learning even reduces the energy and resources used to recycle paper.

Online education is an excellent way to save paper because the curriculum, assignments and even textbooks are all digital. Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona, started an innovative program called the Textbook Savings Program. This has reduced student’s costs by over 50 percent. Finally, administration paperwork, registration, finances can all be done through online portals.

Image credits: Stock images

Dennis Hung is a business and technology consultant. He’s passionate about conservation and spends much of his time out of the office promoting conservation best practices.

By Meghna Tare

Human capital is a collection of resources — knowledge, talents, skills, abilities, experience, intelligence, training and judgment -- possessed individually and collectively by a community. These resources are the total capacity of the people, which represents a form of wealth that can be directed to accomplish the goals of the nation or state.

Human capital is just as important in the nonprofit sector as it is to businesses and nations, which is why human capital investments such as education and training are a driving force and area of interest for individuals, firms and governments as it is a major factor in generating future growth and prosperity. Colleges and universities are increasingly viewed as engines of local economic development. Conventional approaches to valuing the economic activity generated by colleges and universities often focused on direct employment or expenditure effects, along with a multiplier effect to capture indirect and induced outcomes.

However, the potential influence of colleges and universities goes beyond these standard effects for an important reason. These institutions can help build the knowledge and skills — or human capital — of a region’s people, a critical component of an area’s economic success. A region with higher levels of human capital tends to have greater amounts of economic activity and more rapid economic growth. In addition, its workers tend to be more productive and earn higher wages. The total effect of higher levels of human capital on economic activity is larger than the sum of its parts. The geographic concentration of human capital facilitates what economists refer to as “knowledge spillovers”—the transfer of knowledge and skills from one individual to another.

One such example of a university creating human capital impact is University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) with a campus that spans 420 acres and 110 buildings with more than 180 degree programs, and record spending of $77.7 million on R&D in 2013. UTA improves higher education delivery throughout the state and helps students increase their employability and potential. By facilitating new research and drawing students and visitors to Texas, the university also generates new dollars and opportunities for the state. In the fiscal year 2013, $493.3 million in payroll and operations spending of UTA, together with the spending of its students, visitors, and former students, created $3.4 billion in added state income. This is equal to approximately 0.30 percent of the total gross state product (GSP) of Texas, and is equivalent to creating 52,341 new jobs. The accumulated contribution of former students of UTA currently employed in the state workforce amounted to $2.9 billion in added state income for the Texas economy, which is equivalent to creating 44,460 new jobs. For every dollar that society spent on educations at UTA, Texas communities will receive a cumulative value of $5.80 in benefits.

Texas as a whole spent an estimated $1.3 billion on education at UTA in FY 13. This includes $493.3 million in expenses by UTA, $35 million in student expenses, and $778.6 million in student opportunity costs. In return, the state of Texas will receive an estimate present value of $6.8 million in added state income over the course of the student’s working lives. Texas will also benefit from an estimated $791.7 million in present value social externalities related to reduced crime, lower welfare and reduced unemployment, and increased health and well-being across the state. Health savings include avoided medical costs, lost productivity, and other effects associated with smoking, alcoholism, obesity, mental illness, and drug abuse. Crime savings consists of avoided costs to the justice system. Welfare and unemployment benefits consists of avoided costs due to the reduce reliance on social assistance and unemployment insurance claims.

The amount of human capital in a region is a key determinant of its economic vitality and long-run economic success. As the U.S. economy continues to shift away from manufacturing and the distribution of goods toward the production of knowledge and ideas, the importance of human capital to a region will only grow.

Note: The Economic Modeling for UTA was conducted by EMSI.

Image credit: University of Texas at Arlington

Meghna is the Executive Director, Institute for Sustainability and Global Impact at the University of Texas at Arlington where she has spearheaded many successful projects related to policy implementation, buildings and development, green procurement, transportation, employee engagement, waste management, and GRI reporting. She is a TEDx UTA speaker, was featured as Women in CSR by TriplePundit, has done various radio shows on sustainability, and is an active blogger. She has a sunny and positive attitude about life and all of its adventures. You can connect with her on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter @meghnatare

A new report from Friends of the Earth (FoE) estimates for the first time how much land and water well-known brands such as Apple, Kraft and Gap use in a year, and what is needed to manufacture some of the products they sell.

Based on modelling by environmental data company Trucost, the ‘Mind your step’ report examines the land and water ‘footprints’ of a range of diverse products including smartphones, leather boots, coffee, chicken curry ready-meals, t-shirts, and milk chocolate.

Trucost’s calculations also indicate the extent to which often controversial stages in the manufacture of these products - such as mining for metals and minerals, and water pollution from electronics assembly factories - contribute to these water and land footprints.

Former European Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik commented: “The estimates provided in the report are extremely useful reminders of how heavily we currently tread on the world. More than that, in a world of fragile economies and environments, they are signposts to how we can tread more lightly, while continuing to grow our economies and improve the wellbeing of our citizens.”

Read the full report here.
 

Official data from China shows it is cutting coal and CO2 emissions faster than any other country. Indeed, Greenpeace says the CO2 reduction could be equal to UK total emissions over same period.

An analysis of the data by Greenpeace/Energydesk China suggests coal consumption in the world’s largest economy fell by almost 8% and CO2 emissions by around 5% in the first four months of the year, compared with the same period in 2014.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, commented: “While China has historically been used as an excuse not to act on climate change, now we are beginning to see China as the example of why we should act on climate change. The drop in emissions from coal shows that the progress made on alternative energy and energy efficiency is beginning to kick in.

"While some of the drop may be caused by slower GDP growth, the majority is clearly government action to curtail coal use and rebalance the economy. China’s drop in emissions is a timely message to the rest of the world ahead of climate talks in Paris in December.”

 

Hosted by the Scottish Government, the Global Ethical Finance Forum (GEFF) in September is being hailed as an historic initiative, in conjunction with the Islamic Finance Council UK (IFC UK) and Thomson Reuters. It aims to be a platform to connect the large, but fragmented, ethical / responsible finance and investment communities.

The event will mark the launch of the Responsible Finance Institute (RFI) which will act to engage the industry in a dialogue which will result in increased opportunities for convergence and collaboration.

Sarah Marten, ceo of the RFI, commented: “GEFF's objectives are to harness the collective strengths of the various forms of responsible finance and investing (inclusive of Islamic finance) that together comprise more than US$11 trillion dollars.”

She added that global sustainable development challenges such as climate change and poverty line cannot be addressed successfully without responsible finance that integrates ESG concerns into the financing and investment decision making of financial institutions.

Thomson Reuters has chosen the Forum for the exclusive launch of the Responsible Finance Report, produced in collaboration with the RFI.

The report will be the first to rigorously measure the size and geographic concentrations of the entire ethical finance and SRI industry, inclusive of the Islamic banking and finance industry, assess its commonalities and present opportunities for convergence in customers, processes and practices.

GEFF will take place in Edinburgh from 1-2 September 2015.
 

Every now and then, a company takes a bold step, walking away from a profitable line of business because it doesn’t align with their mission. Retail pharmacy chain CVS took such a step last year when it decided to stop selling tobacco products. I asked Eileen Howard Boone, SVP of corporate social responsibility and philanthropy at CVS, to help us to better understand the thinking behind this decision.

"Consider the statistics: 480,000 people die each year from tobacco-related illness; 42 million American adults and 3 million middle- and high-school students continue to smoke," Boone told us. She went on to say that contributing to these shocking statistics clearly conflicts with the company's purpose of "helping people on their path to better health." Moreover, it poses "a significant threat to public health."

While she said there were many factors the company considered in making the decision, “in the end, it was just the right thing to do for the health of our colleagues and our customers."

Taking a short-term hit for long-term benefit

What makes this statement unusual is the fact that, by making it, the company is walking away from approximately $2 billion in annual tobacco sales, not to mention additional sales of health care products and services to all the people who become sicker as a result of smoking.

Boone calls the move as an investment. "This was a long-term decision that our board, our senior leaders and our stakeholders all agreed was in line with where we expect to be as a health care company in the future."

Clearly the company is positioning itself in line with perceived opportunities. This includes the aging demographic, the continuous parade of medical advances, the increasing cost and complexity of the health care delivery system, and growing health consciousness among consumers.

"Now more than ever, pharmacies are on the front line of health care, becoming more involved in chronic disease management to help patients with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes," Boone said.

"All of these conditions are worsened by tobacco use. As a pharmacy innovation company, we have the unique capability of aligning our 26,000 CVS/pharmacy pharmacists, our leading Pharmacy Benefits Management services, and our nurse practitioners at nearly 1,000 MinuteClinics to help people lead tobacco-free lives and manage their health."

But for CVS, taking action to help reduce smoking "was not just about removing cigarettes from our stores," Boone told 3p. "We also wanted to support smokers’ efforts to quit. That’s why we launched a uniquely personalized and comprehensive smoking cessation campaign designed to help smokers quit.

Going a step further: Smoking cessation

"Our innovative smoking cessation program taps our entire chain of CVS/pharmacy stores, our MinuteClinics and our leading administrator of prescription drug benefit coverage. These resources are supplemented with information online at as well as a smoking quit line operated by the American Cancer Society for additional support and access to services in local communities."

The program appears to be gaining traction. From its launch on Sept. 3, 2014, through December 2014, CVS pharmacists counseled more than 67,000 patients filling a first prescription for a smoking cessation drug or prescription nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), and consulted with thousands more smokers seeking advice about over-the-counter NRT products. In addition, prescriptions for smoking cessation medications and visits to MinuteClinic for smoking cessation counseling increased on a monthly basis from the prior eight months. Purchases of over-the-counter NRT products that assist smokers trying to quit increased by 21 percent in that timeframe compared to the previous four months. And, customers picked up 2.3 million tobacco cessation brochures at CVS/pharmacy and thousands of “Last Pack” encouragement toolkits, reaching millions of additional smokers with education, information and support.

The company has taken its fight against tobacco beyond its stores as well. CVS Health Foundation recently launched a five-year, $5 million commitment to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids for a new "Making the Next Generation Tobacco-Free" grant program.

Through the program, the CVS Health Foundation is partnering with Tobacco-Free Kids to provide grants to organizations across the country that are committed to implementing public health strategies to reduce youth tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke. Grants will support programs that help to reduce youth tobacco use, especially among at-risk populations, educate the public about the problem of and solutions to youth tobacco use in local communities, and increase youth engagement in tobacco prevention activities.

Image credit: 1) Flickr/Matt McDaniel 2) Flickr/Curran Kelleher

Ask anyone who has children or has spent time around young ones, and they’ll tell you that kids love to remember random facts. That’s why it’s perfect that Levis Strauss & Co. has partnered with Project WET Foundation to develop custom water education curriculum and train Levi’s employees to teach young students about water conservation – a pilot program which employee volunteers kicked off last week as part of the company’s Community Day.

Called “water ambassadors,” Levi’s employees from San Francisco, Shanghai and Singapore were trained by Project WET to go into classrooms and teach students around the world about their water footprints, all while promoting water literacy and awareness.

Through a series of interactive lessons, students learned facts – such as the number of liters used to grow cotton (2,565 liters), the percentage of Earth’s surface covered by water (71 percent) and the amount of water on the planet that is actually potable fresh water (0.003 percent) – and were given handouts to learn more about the lifecycle of a jean and how to conserve water at home.

“As a company, water is a big priority for us,” said Michael Kobori, VP of sustainability at Levi Strauss & Co. “Bringing water conservation and sustainability into the classroom is a natural extension of our company’s focus on water. This [program] gets young people to be more aware of water issues and is also a way to activate our employee base.”

The LS&Co. Water Ambassador program – a stellar model for the intersection between sustainability, employee engagement and consumer education – is just the latest example of the company’s proactive approach to promoting water conservation.

Teaching water stewardship

The company's water education efforts go far beyond the classroom. In 2011, Levi’s launched its Water<Less jean collection, a line of products that uses 96 percent less water in the finishing process and has helped the company save 1 billion liters of water to date. Through its partnership with the Better Cotton Initiative, the company is also promoting water conservation, reduction in pesticide use and improved child labor practices within the cotton industry.

With the new Water Ambassador employee volunteer program, Levi Strauss is bringing water conservation education to the next generation.

“Kids are the ones who are going to make the decisions about how our water is managed in the future,” said Morgan Close, international program manager at Project WET. “Levi’s has so many employees around the world ... Now they can teach kids how to be water stewards, and the kids can take what they learn and teach others. Kids can become change agents and be the catalyst to make changes at home.”

Consumer education and engagement

The drive to teach kids about water issues is part of the company’s larger goal to educate consumers about their role in creating a product's ecological footprint. According to the company's lifecycle assessment, consumer use accounts for about 23 percent of the total water used over the lifetime of a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans.

To raise consumer awareness and inspire water conservation, in 2009 Levi Strauss added a “Care Tag for Our Planet” to its products, and last year CEO Chip Bergh made headlines when he encouraged consumers to stop washing their jeans – a practice that has been further promoted with the company’s #WashLessPledge campaign and online LCA Quiz.

A culture of giving back

Beyond highlighting Levi Strauss’ focus on water conservation, the company’s Water Ambassador program also underlines the company’s deep-seated commitment to community involvement.

This year’s Community Day marked the 15th anniversary of the company’s annual global day of service, which enlisted participation from other organizations such as the Waterkeeper Alliance, and also gave employees the opportunity to build bicycles, beautify parks and paint schoolyards. In total, Levi Strauss employees in 57 countries volunteered over a year’s worth of volunteer time on that day alone.

All that volunteering goes to show that, as the company puts it, giving back never goes out of style.

Check out the infographic below for more information about Levi Strauss' Community Day impact:

Image credit: Pexels