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If you're a CEO and want to report on your triple bottom line, where are you gonna go? GRI.

Sustainability reporting is nothing new for readers of TriplePundit.

Since the late 1990s, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has been the standard-bearer for corporate sustainability, literally creating the global standard for integrating non-financial metrics into business reporting. GRI allows businesses, governments and organizations to recognize and disclose their social and environmental impact, be it climate change, corruption, human rights, equality or the many other important elements of sustainability now encompassed in the G4 Standard.

That said, producing a corporate sustainability report likely doesn’t evoke a sense of excitement. It sounds complicated, cumbersome and a little obscure. Another stuffy report gathering dust on the shelf. What’s the point?

That's a good question, one that needs answering if you're serious about sustainability. A report is so stuffy, so static.

Reporting is something else entirely. Reporting frees the data tucked inside the report and brings it into the light of day. It's this "liberation" of the data that gets GRI CEO Michael Meehan really excited.

“I’m much less concerned about that big, thick paper report with all that information locked up in it,” Meehan said in an interview at the COP21 climate talks in Paris. “I want to liberate that … put that information directly into financial and business decisions.”

Beyond the report: Sustainability reporting comes of age

The historic climate agreement signed in Paris, combined with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in September, made 2015 a pivotal year for transformation. Laid out in these two documents is a roadmap for, as economist Jeffery Sachs put it, “the age of sustainable development.” Throughout the two weeks of COP21 there was a distinct sense of guarded yet persistent optimism that something new was afoot. COP21 was, arguably, the signal we've all been waiting for.

The Paris Agreement and SDGs integrate the highest aspirations of the world community, defining the path for a world in transformation. Seeking to make a better world is not new, but, unlike the Millennium Development goals or the Kyoto Protocol, we can now fully recognize the stake we all have in the effort. Every sector of global society is called upon to be part of the process.

For Meehan, engaging this multi-stakeholder approach is the foundation for the future of GRI and sustainability reporting in the context of our transformative economy. Embracing this "new era" of integrating sustainability into an organization's decision-making process -- liberating the data from the report -- is the theme for GRI's 5th Global Conference in Amsterdam this May.

Transparency and trust: Managing the flow of capital

Economies are built on transparency and trust. To the extent that either is lacking, any economy fails to operate efficiently and equitably. Sustainable global development will not happen without transparency and trust. The Paris Agreement and SDGs clarify this common connection between economic and sustainable development. One does not happen without the other.

As many developing markets emerge onto the world stage, insuring these markets evolve on a foundation of trust and transparency is essential for creating credible and sustainable investment opportunities as trillions of dollars move into these new emerging markets. Managing this economic transition requires what Meehan called a "filter" between these vast flows of money shifting into new markets.

"GRI needs to insure that as this huge shift takes place -- it’s the biggest one in maybe 10 years. We need to make sure this filter is right there," Meehan said. "Otherwise this money is going to be going toward things that promote corruption."

"All these long-term investments go into an emerging economy and put GRI as a filter between the money and the recipients of that money to insure that things like human rights and corruption are taken into account. Because you can’t invest in these economies if they’re not credible, so you have to build them up. And that’s what sustainable development funding is all about."

There are real risks; these are all the things that you need to worry about. It’s not just carbon and energy, it’s all this other stuff, and there’s these huge financial vehicles around the world that already use GRI as this filter, and we’ve got to make sure that it stays in place as trillions of dollars in investment change focus."

It is this filter, Meehan explained, that will catalyze real change as defined by the SDGs.

The SDG compass

Developed with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the U.N. Global Compact and GRI, the SDG Compass helps companies understand the business case for taking credible and transparent action on these goals.

The strength of the SDGs is how they define global risks for future development and identify opportunities to meet those challenges. The SDGs explicitly integrate a broad coalition of civil society, government and business to understand the common issues at hand and how they will be successfully met through mutual effort and trust.

“The reason I like the SDGs is it gives people a reason to care about sustainability," Meehan told 3p.

It's one thing to claim you care about human rights, poverty or climate change; it's another to measure progress against common goals. “Unless you have some way of actually collecting that information and showing your progress toward those goals, it’s just a pledge," Meehan said. The SDG Compass guides business leaders on how they can align their strategies with specific SDG goals, measure and communicate their progress against those goals, and incorporate feedback from the global community for further innovation and action.

“SDG target 12.6 explicitly acknowledges the critical role corporate reporting must play in the achievement of the goals," Meehan said at the launch of the SDG Compass in September. "Our ambition is that by using the SDG Compass to measure and manage their contributions, businesses will generate high-quality data to inform better decision making and improve the lives of millions of people across our planet."

GRI's U.N. Target 12.6 Live Tracker Sustainability Disclosure Database gives realtime updates on the global progress of sustainability reporting within the context of the SDGs.

"GRI's role is only as a data engine," Meehan explained. "We just want to push out as much of the data as we can and incorporate it in as many things as we can. And SDGs is a really, really great way to do that”

While chatting with Meehan at COP21, I suggested this approach was a key element to a viable and sustainable economic revolution, to actually seeing the SDGs succeed.

“I totally think so," Meehan replied. "That’s what sustainability information is all about: build more credible and sustainable markets. Every business decision or policy decision has sustainability baked into it."

"The SDGs for me are real important ... The reason we care is because it gives companies a reason to care about this. It makes the value of reporting and these standards so much more."

Meehan is truly a passionate ambassador for the SDGs and the role GRI and the SDG Compass will play in their success.

The stars align

 History progresses in fits and starts, especially from the perspective of those living in it. Change is ongoing and relentless, but it sneaks up on us, playing out in unexpected and sudden ways. The vestiges of how we imbue certain human events with an almost mystical enthusiasm is evident when we comment how "the stars are aligned" to signal a sudden shift in fortune or joining of forces pointing "fate" in a new direction.

By token of how often the phrase was used during the COP21 climate talks, it seems that the stars aligned over the December skies of Paris. COP21 was the capstone to a year of new possibilities.

If there is a "mystical" element in the transformation for which we now endeavor, it is believing that it is possible and not merely a meaningless platitude. Action must follow on aspiration. It's good to have stars in our eyes as long as our feet are on the ground.

We have the tools we need. The responsibility for a better world is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Image credit: Wikipedia creative commons, GRI, Stuart Rankin, courtesy flickr 

The men behind the armed takeover and vandalization of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, have defended their actions by appealing to the rule of local citizens versus the federal bureaucracy.

However, the weeks-long drama is now winding down, providing local media with an opportunity to dig deeper into the situation leading up to the takeover. Rather than supporting the militants' cause, the picture that emerges makes this attempt to overthrow federal control of public property by force even more incoherent than it did at the start.

Poster boys for bad behavior

The first question that arises is why the takeover leader, Arizona businessman and Idaho resident Ammon Bundy, chose to travel to Oregon to champion the cause of two ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond. The two men's history of illegal activities has apparently been screened by supportive community sentiment for years, but they don't emerge as particularly sympathetic characters in the public record.

The immediate sequence of events leading up to the Malheur takeover was the re-sentencing of the Hammond ranchers, who were previously given light sentences for two arson charges related to brush fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006. In their 2012 trial, the judge ignored the fact that the charges carry a mandatory five-year minimum sentence. The father and son were accordingly re-sentenced last fall and agreed to turn themselves in to complete their time, which they did earlier this month.

Five years may seem extremely burdensome for setting two relatively small brush fires, considering that burning out brush and other debris is a common land management practice.

However, in a press release last fall, the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case noted that the Hammonds had rejected an opportunity to plea-bargain for lesser sentences. He also noted that the Hammonds were well aware of their responsibility to work with federal officers on land management, and that their failure to do so in these two instances endangered firefighters, a group of hunters, and even one of their own relatives, who was 13 years old at the time.

The two convictions also tell only part of the story of the Hammonds' activities. The website Wildfire Today has compiled a timeline dating back to 1994 for charges that include illegally attempting to build a fence on federal property, intimidating federal officials and interfering with other lawful users in addition to other instances of fire-setting. According to Wildfire Today, public pressure and threats against local Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials were instrumental in having these other charges reduced or dropped. The arson charges that finally did stick were just two among multiple instances that were openly admitted by the Hammonds, or witnessed by other parties.

Many more details about the Hammonds' behavior emerges in a 2014 BLM document refusing to renew the ranchers' grazing permits. The agency's formal decision cites their two convictions as sufficient reason for not renewing the permits, and it also goes much further. The BLM document cites a series of alleged arson episodes linked to the Hammonds in precise, blow-by-blow detail. It paints a picture of a reckless approach to land management that endangered human life on multiple occasions.

That's the nut of the first Bundy miscalculation. He intended to showcase the Hammonds as victims of a federal agency run amok, but in doing so he has turned a spotlight on the family's history of abusing their privilege as holders of federal grazing permits.

Fleeing through pregnant cows

Information is also starting to trickle in that suggests the relationship between local residents and the BLM is not nearly as fraught as Bundy and his supporters portray it.

Earlier in the standoff, Ammon Bundy attempted to force a confrontation with federal officials by tearing down a newly installed fence at the Malheur refuge, which he claimed was at the request of an adjacent rancher. The rancher denied having anything to do with Bundy, and sent his own crew out to repair the fence:

"I work with BLM," the rancher, Tim Puckett, told the Oregonian. "I have no problem with them." He said government officials told him of their plans to erect the fence, which he said "has not nor will it affect my cattle operation."

"I am a good steward of the land. ... In no way do I feel that I am entitled to the refuge for grazing," he said.

Another rancher endured the aftermath of the standoff last week, when all but a handful of the remaining occupiers fled across his property. He referenced the need for conservation work at the Malheur refuge to continue in a timely manner. Staff reporter Hal Bernton summed up the incident in the Seattle Times. Here's an excerpt:

Rather than take the main public road, they drove through his property, riling up the pregnant cows.

“It was unnerving,” [the rancher, Andy Dunbar, said]. “They were armed and had their tactical vests on, and I was kind of spooked.”

Finally, Dunbar confronted one driver and asked why they were driving across his property. He was told someone at the refuge had placed a loader as a barricade across the bridge on the main road. And none of the occupiers could find the key to start the loader.

“I want it to be over. There are things that need to be done,” Dunbar said. “We got a canal on the refuge that’s got so many muskrat holes it’s like Swiss cheese.”

In fact, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge appears to represent the exact opposite of Bundy's complaint. According to local accounts, years of difficult, painstaking negotiations with stakeholders -- including the Oregon Cattleman's Association -- resulted in a "landmark" 2013 agreement that treats livestock not as a necessarily destructive force, but as a working element in sustainable land management.

The Seattle Times cites this fourth-generation local rancher in support of the agreement:

Over the years, Fred Otley has had plenty of conflicts with federal land managers. But the current refuge leadership appears to have earned his respect, even as some disagreements still persist about management of federal lands that provide his cattle vital fall and winter feed.

“To me, what is important is that the refuge has really listened and taken a more collaborative approach,” Otley said. “Automatically, that helps build better relations with the community.”

In the same article, the Seattle Times discusses how the 2013 agreement enables ranchers to work with the refuge on species preservation, avoiding burdensome regulations:

“We started saying what’s good for the bird is good for the herd,” said Tom Sharp, a Harney County rancher who helped launch the cooperative effort that grew to encompass 53 ranches and 320,000 acres.

The work drew praise from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell when she traveled to eastern Oregon last March. She referred to Harney County’s approach as the “Oregon Way” and promoted it as a model.

The real agenda behind the Malheur takeover

All this leads us to thinking that Bundy chose the Malheur refuge as the focus for extreme action precisely because the 2013 agreement was working, not because it wasn't working.

As described, the 2013 agreement is actually a model for mobilizing local stakeholders in support of federal land ownership. That presents a direct threat to the movement to privatize federal land, promoted by the powerful lobbying organization ALEC under the guise of a "states' rights" philosophy.

When the Malheur takeover first erupted, TriplePundit noted that ALEC's states'-rights fingerprints were all over all it, and as events unfold, the ALEC lens is emerging as the only way to make sense of Bundy's actions.

While professing to help the local community, Bundy consistently and willfully failed to abide by overwhelming local sentiment calling for him to leave, including pleas from the Hammonds themselves.

In addition to ignoring the desires of local stakeholders, Bundy also pointedly ignored the requests and the direction of the Harney County Sheriff, David M. Ward, who immediately and forcefully told Bundy to leave.

That's significant because, in the "patriot" movement to which Bundy professes allegiance, the County Sheriff is the only legitimate law enforcement office recognized by the U.S. Constitution. That explains why Ammon Bundy began petitioning Ward to keep the Hammonds from jail as early as last November. Here's a Facebook post from his family ranch dated Nov. 17:

**ACTION NEEDED** - HAMMOND FAMILY UPDATE

[snip]

We ask that anyone who may care about whether the Hammond’s go to prison, contact the Sheriff and express to him that it is not acceptable that he allows good people to suffer at the hands of our government.

[snip]

The injustices the Hammond’s are suffering will be a type and shadow of the suffering the American people will endure if we do not stand and put an end to it. It is time to act.

In concluding the post, Bundy clearly anticipates the possibility that Sheriff Ward will not cooperate:

Contact Sheriff Ward as soon as possible and then be prepared to gather in Burns, Oregon if necessary.

Again, the concept of the Constitutional Sheriff is central to the "patriot" movement, and yet Bundy chose to ignore this concept when it proved inconvenient.

In fact, Bundy chose to skip over any established form of local authority by establishing his own extra-legal Harney County Committee of Public Safety. Somewhat ironically, the committee also recognizes the sheriff's authority among its official resolutions:

"... The County Sheriff, duly elected by the people, is the rightful premier law enforcement officer in Harney County and the first and last line of protection from abuses both from private and public offenders of our laws and Constitution, and said Constitution is the premier law of the land."

Even with the Hammonds in jail and the standoff winding down, the committee has promised to hold additional meetings, though its relevance to other Harney County stakeholders is unclear.

Meanwhile, Ammon Bundy and several of his key supporters were arrested last week on federal felony charges, and they are being held without bail as flight risks in Portland, Oregon.

A call has gone out for "patriots" throughout the region to rally in support of the Bundy group and the Hammonds, but without any particularly significant result so far. One rally was held on Saturday in the nearby town of Burns, but it was not a daylight confrontation. It was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. and consisted of approximately 100 people who drove through Burns, with some vehicles sporting Confederate flags.

Another rally is planned for Monday night, so it will be interesting to see what kind of support it garners.

Four armed holdouts still remain at the refuge, despite calls from Bundy himself for them to leave peacefully.

Image: Mule Deer at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by Barbara Wheeler via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Solar and wind power could substantially reduce power generation emissions in the near term, according to a recent joint study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado. Once the electric grid is updated and reconfigured to deal effectively with these new energy sources, their role will be significantly expanded.

"A transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system can be accomplished with commercially available technology and within 15 years,” said Alexander MacDonald, co-lead author of the study and recently-retired director of the NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in Boulder, Colorado.

The research, which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change, looked at “the cost-optimized configuration of variable electrical power generators using weather data with high spatial (13-kilometer) and temporal (60-minute) resolution over the contiguous U.S.” What they found was that “carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. electricity sector can be reduced by up to 80 percent relative to 1990 levels, without an increase in the levelized cost of electricity.”

A major focus of the investigation was the fact that utilities today are accommodating renewables by building backup generation capacity, fired by natural gas, to account for those times when solar and wind power are not available. This is somewhat counterproductive since natural gas still produces carbon emissions. Can an optimized grid reduce the need for these backup plants, and what role will storage play?

Even though solar and wind are both intermittent sources, the fact is that the sun is shining and the wind is blowing somewhere at any given time. By looking at weather models, transmission capacity and cost parameters, the team came up with a scenario that meets demand, at a cost of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, with a carbon reduction of 78 percent compared to the 1990 baseline.

In order to achieve that result, the model required the addition of high voltage DC (HVDC) transmission lines. MacDonald compares the development of this type of DC grid to the construction of the Interstate Highway System, back in the '50s, except that this highway system would be for electrons.

This ability to move power around the country -- in response to both electrical demand and weather conditions -- could hold the key to the wholesale migration of our national electricity supply, to one that relies primarily on renewables. According to MacDonald, this can be achieved with technologies that are available today. The only breakthrough required is one of commitment to get this done.

At the COP21 climate talks in Paris, the U.S. pledged to cut carbon emissions to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. MacDonald’s team found that we could cut emissions by 31 percent in the same time-frame by making changes to the electrical sector alone.

No other study, said Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University civil engineering professor, “pushes the limits” like this one, considering what can be achieved with solar and wind without relying on storage.

It shows, added Jeremy Firestone of the Center for Carbon-Free Power Integration at the University of Delaware, that the goals of the Clean Power Plan, can readily be achieved, if a commitment is made to the infrastructure needed.

However, doing so will require the cooperation of numerous states, including some that oppose this type of progress.

Image credit: Flickr/Andrew Imanaka

The Intertubes have been buzzing with news of a new 50-megawatt wind turbine under development under the auspices of the U.S. Energy Department. The scale of the supersized turbine makes it newsworthy enough, but TriplePundit is particularly interested from a business angle because this ambitious project leverages three hot trends at once: biomimicry, public-private partnerships and inter-corporate collaboration.

The collaborative effort also underscores the extent to which powerful, diversified global corporations are embracing renewable energy -- setting off a political ripple effect that undermines the influence of fossil interests such as the Koch brothers and ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

1.  Biomimicry on a gigantic scale

The largest wind turbines in the world currently clock in around the 10-megawatt range, so the huge leap to 50 megawatts requires out-of-the-box thinking. That's where biomimicry comes in.

The project, called the Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor (SUMR), meets this design challenge:

"... A low-cost offshore 50-MW turbine requiring a rotor blade more than 650 feet (200 meters) long, two and a half times longer than any existing wind blade."

With blades extending more than the length of two football fields, creating a system that can avoid damage during storms is a critical part of the challenge. As it turns out, the basic principle behind the solution was quite simple: palm trees.

The palm tree solution is elegantly described in an article on ASME.org, the online publication of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Do read the piece for a full appreciation of the biomimicry inspiration behind the new design, but for those of you on the go, here's the money quote from University of Virginia professor and research team member, Eric Loth:

The possible solution — segmented rotors — was inspired by the palm tree. “Compared to an oak tree, for instance, palms are light with a segmented trunk that flattens almost to 90 degrees. They can morph to the wind."

The basic idea is that the "fronds" or turbine blades will extend during good weather, and fold up protectively during storms.

2. Public-private partnerships fuel renewable energy progress

As noted above, the SUMR wind turbine project is spearheaded by the U.S. Energy Department, and that agency illustrates the extent to which public-private partnerships are being leveraged for clean energy development here in the U.S.

Leading the Energy Department in the SUMR project, for example, is Sandia National Laboratories. Located on two campuses in New Mexico and California, Sandia is run by the Sandia Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin.

If that relationship comes as a surprise to you, consider that Sandia is better known for its national defense R&D, and Lockheed of course is an important national defense partner/supplier.

As for the renewable energy connection, Lockheed has been right on top of the corporate sustainability movement.  It has diversified its operations into wave energy among other renewable sources, and it is the force behind the proprietary WindTracer system for assessing and optimizing wind turbine placement in new wind farms.

The company has also engaged with NASA as part of a collaborative effort to reduce the carbon footprint of air travel.

3. Collaborating for a sustainable future

That brings us to the third trend, inter-corporate collaboration. About two years ago, TriplePundit had a conversation with Deb Frodl, head of GE's global innovation and collaboration platform, Ecomagination, in which she stressed that the collaborative model is needed to address the critical problems of today leading to "big outcomes that change the world."

That mindset is clearly at play in the SUMR wind turbine project. In addition to Lockheed Martin, the project has pulled in GE, Dominion Resources, Siemens AG and Vestas Wind Systems as corporate advisory partners.

The presence of the fossil-centric energy company Dominion among the three wind turbine innovators -- GE, Siemens and Vestas -- was a bit of surprise to us, but last year the Virginia-based company launched a 110-megawatt solar partnership with its home state. More to the point, Dominion already owns a stake in several onshore wind farms in the U.S., and it is poised to assert a leadership position in developing Virginia's share of the considerable offshore wind energy resources in the U.S.

It remains to be seen if Dominion's clean-energy ventures will affect its ongoing support for ALEC, and we notice that our friends over at the Virginian-Pilot are also wondering how much longer the relationship will last.

Speaking of Virginia: The lead research partner in the SUMR project is the University of Virginia. The University of Colorado, the Colorado School of Mines, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory round out the collaboration.

The next steps include developing a segmented or modular approach to manufacturing the extremely long turbine blades, and developing workable systems for transporting and installing them. One factor working in the project's favor is that the blades are designed to project downwind from the turbine itself, relieving them from the stress incurred by conventional upwind blades.

Photo (cropped): Palm trees by G. Talan via flickr.com, creative commons license.

By Ned Daly and Mark Spalding

There’s enough going on in the seafood sector to fill a dozen trend lists — and in co-creating the program for the annual SeaWeb Seafood Summit, taking place Feb. 1–3 in Malta, we’ve probably considered every topic of conversation in the industry.

After several months of consulting colleagues and polling stakeholders, we’re confident that we’ve identified the top four issues in the seafood sector right now. You’re likely to hear about them all year long.

1. Seafood’s role on the changing dinner plate

Concern about how we’re going to feed a growing global population, the challenges of climate change, rising demand for protein in the developing world, and unhealthy diets in richer countries are causing people to rethink the balance of foods we eat. Seafood, as one of the healthiest and most sustainable proteins, is poised to play a bigger role on the dinner plate.

Seafood has some inherently sustainable traits: Because fish are buoyant and cold-blooded, less of their feed goes into energy production and more goes into fattening up filets, making the input-to-output ratio better than it is for most other animal proteins. Seafood also has a lower climate impact than other proteins. Farmed oysters and mussels, because they filter water, actually have a positive impact on their environment.

The questions we have to address are: Can seafood maintain its protein sustainability advantage while production and consumption grow rapidly? Can we eat a lot more fish while protecting our oceans? And how should we think about seafood’s sustainability profile — in comparison with other proteins or in isolation?

To get to yes on the first two questions, we need the majority of aquaculture operations to adopt best practices and start using alternative sources of fish feed, fisheries all over the world to be well managed, and sustainability-related technology to be broadly accessible.

2. Human rights and social issues in the supply chain

There are ethical issues to clean up before we crown seafood the clean protein of the future. Not many supply chains for food or natural resources are free from human rights abuses, but the stories of slavery and other abuses coming out of the seafood supply chain are particularly difficult to hear — especially for consumers who want to see seafood as the right choice (even if for their pet food).

Thailand, the world’s third-largest seafood exporter, has become the focus of many efforts to improve human rights in fisheries. The U.S. imported over $1.6 billion in seafood from Thailand in 2013, at the same time that the State Department was downgrading the country from the Tier 2 Watch List for human trafficking to Tier 3 (countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so). There are a few weak signs that Thailand may finally be responding to the problem, and there’s a big opportunity for retailers to put some weight behind the issue and urge Thailand to take much more serious action.

Solutions have to address social issues beyond slavery and human trafficking, though. About half the world’s population lives in coastal areas, and how fisheries are managed can have a significant impact on economic development in those regions. We need to start thinking about a more networked, connected approach for dealing with social issues, one that involves the communities that rely on fisheries.

3. The drive toward traceability

We need better traceability and verification in the supply chain to enable companies and consumers to support fisheries and aquaculture operations that follow good environmental and labor practices. Even though seafood is usually a fresh product, it can have a very tangled supply chain. Lots of small producers, traditional market practices, aggregation and transfer of products at sea, and fraud (species substitution) all make seafood traceability enormously challenging.

One of the biggest challenges is implementing solutions in a way that does not favor large industrial fishing operations while pushing out traditional or artisanal fisheries that may have difficulty implementing traceability measures. Another problem is that only 20 percent of the world’s fisheries have been assessed — so even if we know where the fish comes from, we may not know the impact of the catch.

Still, promising efforts are under way, including fish monitoring initiatives, genetic-testing and catch-tracking technologies, and voluntary verification programs such as the Marine Stewardship Council and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. One of the keys to making these solutions useful is common data elements. Along with technology and systems development, we need a parallel effort to determine what questions we want to ask and how data collection can meet the needs of both government and industry.

4. Finance for sustainability

The seafood industry today is more dynamic than many people realize, and attracting private capital to finance new technologies and sustainable business models is a pressing concern.

There’s huge potential for growth in sustainable aquaculture (aquaculture as a whole is already the world’s fastest-growing agriculture sector), and there’s a lot of innovation around systems and technologies for both open-water and land-based fish farming. The challenge is to educate investors about the opportunity and differentiate sustainable aquaculture from operations that have negative impacts.

In the wild-caught sector, fisheries production has leveled off from its peak in the late 1990s, but there’s good reason to believe that well-managed fisheries can produce higher yields, and do it sustainably. Encourage Capital (a Summit participant) just published research outlining six investment blueprints for fisheries with varying sizes and characteristics. For any of these wild catch investment scenarios to succeed, we need to find the collective political will globally to roll back overcapacity and eliminate overfishing.  At this point, just a few nations are leading on this, so we have a lot more work to do.

We're looking forward to insights and debate on all these issues at the Seafood Summit. Ultimately, we want the focus to be on collaborating to find solutions. Achieving seafood’s sustainability potential will most likely require precompetitive strategies that bring market players together to conduct research, test concepts and establish standards. That’s going to push many stakeholders out of their comfort zones—but feeding the world is a pretty big motivator.

Photo by Devin Harvey

Ned Daly is program director of SeaWeb, an affiliate of The Ocean Foundation that transforms knowledge into action by shining a spotlight on workable, science-based solutions to the most serious threats facing the ocean. Mark Spalding is president of SeaWeb and The Ocean Foundation.

Almost three-quarters of the electricity used in Finland comes from outside its borders, and as much as 70 percent is imported from Russia. That is a significant amount. With all of its hydro energy already tapped and few domestic alternatives, finding economical ways to heat things like water during Finland's icy winters has been a challenge.

Russia's top Web company, Yandex, has come up with a provocative answer: Use the heat generated by the company's data center to heat hot water for a nearby town's district water system.

The town of Mäntsälä, dubbed the "crossroads of Finland," lies about an hour north of the capitol, Helsinki, and has in recent years become an attractive hub for Finland's industrial sector. One of those companies is Yandex, which believes the design of its new data center can have an instrumental role in heat recovery for the town's water district.

Yandex's CEO, Yuri Kurvi, believes the project will not only benefit the town's 20,000 residents and the local utility company, Mäntsälän Sähkö OY, but the data center as well.

"This is better than a win-win situation," Kurvi said."It's a jackpot."

The idea is provocative because recovered heat from data centers is often only about 80 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn't hot enough to heat water for commercial purposes. But Kurvi said with the additional use of heat pumps to boost the temperature and fans to push the heated air outside, the system can increase the water temperature. Best of all, he told DataCenterDynamics, because of the facility's design, the water recovery process happens outside of the data center, so there is no need for alterations to the data center to accommodate the recovery process.

"[Because] it is in our outgoing air stream, it doesn't have any effect on any design" or process within the data center, said Kurvi, who said that although running auxiliary fans will lower the power usage efficiency (PUE) ratio a tiny bit, "total energy wise, we gain so much that the PUE value isn't an important characteristic."

The project is expected to reduce heating costs for the town's residents by 5 percent and cut the utility company's costs by half. It also fits nicely under the mandates of the Kyoto Protocol, of which Finland is a signatory.

Kurvi is also challenging other data centers to explore ways to implement heat recovery systems -- suggesting that it will increase, not take away from, power usage efficiency. Both Telecity Paris and Telehouse West in London are experimenting with selling recovered heat for heating homes.

At the present time, the first of four construction phases is operational in Mäntsälä. Three more units are due to be completed soon, and once they are, the district water system will be able to transition away from its conventional natural gas heating system and rely on the data center's recovered heat for a fraction of the previous overhead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HWhzr5n-lo

Image credit: Wikimedia

By Maureen Hart

On Jan. 26, TriplePundit ran an opinion piece by Bard MBA student Alistair Hall on the topic of the sustainability professional certification provided by the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP), alleging the process furthers ethnic and socioeconomic exclusion in the sustainability movement. We at ISSP are writing to correct what we feel are inaccuracies in that article.

Mr. Hall addresses important concerns about the representation of historically underprivileged communities in the sustainability movement. In fact, those communities are among the most heavily impacted by the problems that sustainability professionals seek to address. ISSP is doing its part to rectify the continuing socioeconomic and racial stratification in academia and the professional world by ensuring that those working in the sustainability field are highly trained and have the skills needed to tackle environmental, social and economic injustice.

ISSP Sustainability Professional Certification is based on more than five years of collaborative research with hundreds of established sustainability professionals and organizations from around the globe. This effort includes a 2010 Core Competency study, a 2013 Job Task Analysis, and our 2015 survey of those hiring sustainability professionals on the critical knowledge, skills and abilities required by businesses and others in need of sustainability assistance. ISSP has also reviewed work done by others on the critical competencies for sustainability professionals (Weik et al, 2011 and the ongoing work at NCSE), and we’ve found close alignment with what our own research has identified. The certification process continues to evolve with input from sustainability professionals around the world to ensure a comprehensive picture of what it takes for practitioners to bring real value to organizations without degrading the reputation of the field as a whole.

Training and qualifications are needed to ensure that sustainability efforts are truly moving the needle on the problems we are facing, and are not just a form of greenwashing. In addition, a detailed understanding of what expertise sustainability professionals should and should not be expected to provide, and what qualifications they should have, needs to be standardized as much as possible to assist organizations seeking their support.

Since ISSP formed in 2007, the field of sustainability has attracted thousands of people from a variety of backgrounds who are doing work in this field and claim the title “sustainability professional." While the field has been enriched and informed by this diversity of expertise, it has also created inconsistency in practice and definition, which in turn has created a serious problem in the understanding of the magnitude of the problems we face and what is needed to make progress. If the billions of tons of carbon emissions ‘saved’ reported in all the corporate sustainability reports published in the last decade had been sufficient, COP21 would have been a meeting about how we have already solved the climate change problem.

We believe that, in order for the field and its professionals to be taken seriously and be granted due credibility and in order to truly make progress, there needs to be some definition and standardization of the competencies employers and seekers of consultants can come to expect.

Yes, the world needs more sustainability managers. Indeed everyone needs to be proficient in sustainability concepts, skills and abilities so that sustainability becomes standard practice in every organization and community around the world. In fact, this is the reason for ISSP’s two levels of certification:

• The Sustainability Associate (ISSP-SA) level is for anyone in any field to show that they understand the core sustainability concepts that everyone should know and incorporate into their day-to-day activities.


• The Certified Sustainability Professional (ISSP-CSP) is for individuals in roles responsible for implementing sustainability throughout organizations.

A key component of creating a more sustainable world is the pursuit of equality, including economic, environmental and social justice for all. We realize that diversity is key to making this happen. As an international organization, ISSP recognizes the importance of inclusiveness. In particular, we recognize sustainability practitioners in lower-income countries are just as necessary to achieving long-term global sustainability as professionals in the developed countries. The ISSP certification process does not dictate where a practitioner gains the required knowledge, skills and abilities. While ISSP membership is not a requirement for certification, ISSP provides significant membership discounts to professionals from lower-income countries.

ISSP is not seeking to limit who can be engaged in sustainability work. Rather we are trying to ensure that those who are engaged have sufficient knowledge, skills and abilities to really make the efforts count. The sustainability field is still in its beginning stages, but we look forward to helping expand the number of organizations and individuals improving sustainability practices everywhere. There is no time to waste.

Maureen Hart is executive director of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals, which works to make sustainability standard practice through empowering professionals to advance sustainability in organizations and communities around the globe.

COP21 may be over, but on the rainforest front the work is just beginning, writes Claire Raisin, Director Size of Wales

Rainforests are vital when it comes to preventing, and responding to, climate change. They are a major carbon sink, absorbing nearly a fifth of the world’s man-made CO2 emissions every year (IPCC 2014). The destruction and degradation of tropical forests releases the same amount of CO2 emissions as the entire world’s transportation – cars, trains, planes and ships all together. Keeping the world’s forests standing, and reforestation of cleared areas, is the most effective and efficient way to tackle climate change.

Since 2010 Size of Wales has been helping to fund projects that support communities in Africa and South America who depend on the forest for their livelihood. These projects aim to improve living conditions as well as protecting and managing forests. Needless to say we were delighted that a global deal was agreed at COP21, and that real importance was placed on forests, both from governments and businesses. Many Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) included important references to forest conservation. The UK, Norway and Germany have collectively pledged to contribute $5 billion for forest conservation. This money will enable developing countries to improve law enforcement against illegal logging and land clearance.

But that’s only the beginning - now it’s time for the hard work, as countries must implement their promises. Following COP21, we now need to see real action from the international community to keep up the momentum and prove that they are taking this agreement seriously. All countries now need to continue to strive for the targets of the New York Declaration on Forests , i.e. to halve natural forest loss by 2020, and to end it altogether by 2030. We’re pleased that an agreement to halt warming to 2° was made, and glad that countries will push for 1.5°. These goals must be achieved if we want to avoid massive changes to the Earth’s climate.

One of the countries that is vulnerable to climate change impacts is Uganda, where the majority of the population depends on agriculture, which again is prone to climate variability. The area has already suffered severe droughts and heavy hail storms in recent years affecting agricultural yields. Rising temperatures, increased intensity and frequency of rainfall, floods, heat waves and storms would all have a massive impact on the country.

Uganda’s Mount Elgon region has been ravaged by deforestation and agricultural expansion, leading to dangerous landslides. Size of Wales is supporting the work of Mbale CAP to plant 10 million trees, which will help to improve climate change resilience. One million trees have already been planted, and soil stabilisation is being restored by reforesting the Mbale area – putting an end to landslides.

In Guyana, Size of Wales has been working with Forest Peoples Programme to support the Wapichan indigenous group. The Wapichan community aims to secure legal title to their customary forests by mapping traditional land and developing plans for forest conservation and sustainable livelihoods.

The forests in Guyana are threatened by deforestation from illegal timber and mineral exploitation. Indigenous groups are the best protectors of forest and were finally recognised as such during COP21.

Over the next five years Size of Wales is planning to double its impact and help to protect an area of tropical forest twice the size of Wales. By 2020 we hope to expand our contribution to the global effort to protect the world’s remaining rainforests– not by locking them up but by enabling them to be used in a sustainable way by the communities that have depended on them for generations.
 

A historic decision by the California Public Utilities Commission means that net-metering, which allows rooftop solar owners to connect to the electricity grid and deliver any excess power they generate to other electric customers, has been preserved -- in a big win for solar energy in the Golden State.

This was big news because all three of California’s investor-owned utility giants – Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric – opposed the CPUC's move. They wanted to shift the burden of new rooftop solar directly to customers, prioritizing their large-scale solar (and dirty fuel) energies instead.

Why do utilities prefer large-scale solar rather than dispersed rooftop solar? Simply: control and profits. That latter is the main reason – a power-plant-centric grid allows for energy companies to make money and maintain control over electricity.

Their public arguments were that the burden of rooftop solar on non-solar households is high, and that solar households are getting a free ride by not paying to maintain the grid. No matter that study after study shows that rooftop solar is actually beneficial for the grid as it reduces capital costs and aids in environmental compliance. When profits are at risk, truth is not that important.

Rooftop solar is taking control away from the big utilities and changing California's energy paradigm. It has been the main driver in California's clean-energy revolution, and it empowers homeowners to take control of their carbon footprint. While there are issues to be resolved – chiefly the fact that low-income households are not able to access rooftop solar financing easily, meaning the benefits are collected mostly by the rich – the utilities proposal would have done little to change that.

“Utilities should be encouraging more people to go solar, not fewer,” said Bret Fanshaw, coordinator for Environment America’s solar program in a statement. “That’s why we’re delighted that California leaders didn’t bow to special interests today and instead are protecting this critical program to support rooftop solar."

The biggest part of yesterday's news is that the CPUC actually sided with consumers, a marked shift from its traditional role as a rubber-stamp for the utility companies. The evidence, of course, was on the side of solar advocates. But that was the case last fall in Nevada, and there, the PUC sided with NV Energy, leading to SolarCity withdrawing from the state.

“[Nevada's] decision to change the rules to punish existing solar customers after the state encouraged them to go solar with rebates is particularly callous and leaves Nevadans to question whether the state would ever place the financial security of regular citizens above the financial interests of NV Energy,” said Lyndon Rive, SolarCity's CEO, in a statement.

You can bet the utility companies won't end their fight to restrict rooftop solar. But today was a big victory in California's march to becoming a clean-energy leader – and it should send a message to states across the country that solar's future is now.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

One of the biggest tragedies of the new millennium is that, in a world where technology is transforming our daily lives, hundreds of millions of people in the global south are still living without the most basic technological need: access to electricity.

A New Deal for Energy, a partnership launched last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, aims to fill that gap by connecting more than 200 million people in Africa, including 75 million off-grid.

From the Huffington Post.

This announcement is an unequivocal acknowledgement of the role that energy access will play in the economic growth of Africa and should be loudly applauded; for the recognition of the mandatory collaboration among key partners, particularly among donors; for setting out a clear prioritization of energy access in the [African Development Bank Group's] agenda, an area that the bank has been weak on in the past; and for its clear articulation of the political will and financing innovations that will be needed to achieve such levels of access.

The plan aims to invest between $40 billion and $70 billion a year in Africa – a huge, 200-percent increase from what was invested in the continent in 2014.

“The New Deal on Energy for Africa sets the ambitious target of universal access by 2025, which means bringing modern energy to 900 million people in sub-Saharan Africa," said Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank Group, in a statement.

The plan includes a huge group of actors, from international institutions like the World Bank to NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund, and several yet-to-be announced private companies.

"The Africa Progress Panel has already done the research to show that Africa can power itself -- if it and others work together," Adesina said.

One criticism of the plan is that is does not focus enough on off-grid solutions, which study after study has shown are far cheaper than grid-focused solutions. Moreover, off-grid energies rely on renewables – solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and small-scale hydro. These energies provide not only electricity, but environmental benefits to consumers as well, and systems can be built quickly, bringing energy to those who need it faster.

Some countries have already seen this transformation – according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, 100 million people now have energy access through off-grid solutions.

This is having transformational changes. For example, in India, the growth of off-grid solar has led the country to actually cut back on plans to build scores of new coal-fires power plants. This is one reason why the Paris Agreement was signed last month – because it is looking like clean energy can meet future energy needs.

The New Deal is a big deal – now lets shift the focus of the plan to what works – off-grid renewables, and we can take a big step toward connecting an even greater share of Africa's 600 million who lack reliable energy. No better time than now.

Image credit: Pixabay