Collapse of civilizations

Jared Diamond has moved on from Guns, Germs and Steel, which gave an account of what factors influenced the growth and development of civilisations in certain parts of the World and not in others. Collapse, looks at why civilisations, well, collapse..and why some do not. Well worth at watching his lecture, available online here.

A few key points include Jared's 5 main reasons for collapse:
1) Human environmental impacts
2) Climate change (and how that impacts environmental services provision)
3) Hostile neighbors (to take advantage of internal weaknesses)
4) Trading partners (as the society may be too dependent on successes or failures of neighboring societies)
5) A Society's institutions being able to perceive and solve, or ignoring and failing to solve the other 4 problems.

He also discusses some of the differences between the past and the present such as:
-We have more people with more potent destructive technologies that can cause more destruction more quickly.
-Faster communications and transportation of good and bad things like terrorists, immigrants and diseases.
-Societies cannot really collapse in isolation as there are likely to be consequences elsewhere, including remote countries like Somalia.

On the other hand, greater hope comes from the faster and greater spread of knowledge for us to learn from mistakes and successes around the World now, and in the past. This gives us the chance to know what we are doing and gives the choice to continue or to change.

Some things he seems to believe are not as important include cultural differences and political system differences, which is quite interesting. I have not read the book but am keen too. In particular I find 5) the most interesting issue.

Business approaches and Traditional approaches needed, to reduce poverty

Yes, i totally agree with Paul Polak, Jacqueline Novogratz, CK Prahalad, Stuart Hart, Nancy Barry and the others who think a new, business, approach is needed to help combat poverty. It is, for sure. It helps create new products that the poor need and can afford, and can access. It helps create jobs. It empowers the poor and unleashes them do work hard to reduce their own poverty. It can be sustainable. It can be scalable. There are many many books and reports written about this approach, how it is changing the world, how it is changing the business world and how it is making aid and traditional appraoches to poverty reduction/eradication a waste of effort, time and money.

However, as much as I agree with them, I have to say that there are a number of things that determine poverty, and the business approach will nto solve all of them. It will not help put children in school, not will it get rid of corruption, or write laws that protect citizens, or protect citizens by enforcing those laws (though business could play creative roles in all of these, in some way).

Aid is still needed -more aid and better applied. Governance is a key issue, and one, unfortunately, where so little progress is being made. Ultimately irregardless of how one tries to reduce poverty, be it through aid, loans, business etc... a country needs a good government that sets the right framework for a country (i.e. laws that are implemented), does what is best for its citizens and so forth.

With issues like poverty and Climate Change, where incredibly fast progress needs to be made on a massive scale, there is a need to engage governments and improve the aid agenda (where actually some progress has been made, despite constant environmental degradation, increasingly unfair trade, increasing population growth, wars, greater incidence of diseases amongst others) AND for business to utilise business approaches to poverty reduction. Let's pay more attention to the business approach, but not forget the need for aid and 'traditional approaches to poverty reduction'.

Blanket statements criticising 'traditional approaches' as useless, are not useful. Instead one needs to see how they have helped and learn lessons to improve traditional approaches, and use their lessons in business approaches. Ultimately business will find it very hard (though possible) to thrive when there is no effective government creating an effective marketplace.

Can Green be a sign of status?

There comes a point when people move beyond buying out of neccessity and convenience to start buying for greater luxury and status. In China and parts of Asia it's fair to say that the environmental footprint of the poor is fairly low, but the middle classes is higher. Although many that buy cars argue it is a necessary purchase, the reality is that many cars are as much a status symbol than a neccessity. It is reasonable to expect comfort to be an important decision factor but is it unreasonable for status to be such an important factor?

For the upper middle classes, apart from the car, the choice of accommodation also affects one's environmental footprint. Again, though location and comfort are important factors, it is a matter of status: how one's spouse, parents, peers or business partners view your choices matters.

In travelling between Beijing and Shanghai, though the trains' sleeper carriages do contain their fair share of business travellers, most business travellers fly. It can be important to spend the night with one's family, but apart from that, taking the train has many benefits: the stations are on the subway so travelling to/from the station is not just cheap but there is no need to worry about traffic jams. The journey itself is comfortable and efficient -with a few hours to work or read before sleeping. In fact many business travellers i speak to have just never considered the train and are not against taking it, but are just used to flying and are not motivated enough to change.

There is absolutely no status to be gained by being 'green' in China. No-one is proud of taking the train, no-one is proud of buying a smaller (though still comfortable) car and no-one is proud to buy a green apartment. In fact though companies are proud of their environmentally friendly offices, none of them encourage staff to not fly. There are many schemes that work elsewhere to encourage cycling (i.e. suitable cycle storage and showers at work) or public transport (i.e. free public transport cards and financial incentives to use them). It is not cool to cycle to work.

What is needed is a shift in how status is gained, which is not just about being seen in a positive light for being green (like many who buy hybrid cars in the West) but more about being seen ina negative light for not being green. We might start to see this change if public opinion shows distaste at those using plastic bags, instead of a re-usable one. A few are buying fashionable re-usable bags now to seem cool, apparently. but this is not mainstream.

If it becomes mainstream, could it spread? Could 'green' be the real status gainer in China, or will it just affect the youth? If a sense of shame starts to develop that would be great, and maybe have a wider affect than the positive status of being 'green'.

In reality though this needs to lead to something bigger...to the demand for greener cars, greener apartments, environmentally friendly clothing and so on. How can we make 'green' a status symbol beyond the fringes of society, so that demand affects supply leading to retailers, developers, salesmen etc developing greener products, because of the demand for them. How can we create this demand for green life? How can we start to make it embarassing not to use a reusable bag, to fly, to consume too much (waste food or buy too many clothes)?

Although this is yet to even affect the 'cool crowd' in the West it might not be unreasonable to target the 'status' crowd in China (as well as the 'cool' crowd; though the 'status' crowd are those with a bigger impact). It is not just the plastic bag example that could offer a glimmer of hope. The other example is of course the earthquake where amongst the 'status crowd' you were looked down upon if you did not donate a certain amount or attend certain fundraisers. If it was possible to create such an atmosphere because of the earthquake -and that, like china's current environmental crisis, also had no direct impact on the 'status' crowd, is it possible?

The situations are not the same, but there is some hope.

An inspiration, a hero, a role model.... Anita Roddick died yesterday

Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop is one of the few people I could call either a hero, a role model or an inspiration to me. Way before people were talking about CSR she was doing it (1976) because it needed to be done for business reasons and for social and environmental reasons.

Her whole life has been devoted to issues she truly believes in and issues her company truly believes in. Lets just have hope in others like her and hope that there are many many more people like her still to come.

For Dame Anita, the truly exceptional entrepreneur, business and ethics came together. "Businesses have the power to do good," she wrote. "That's why The Body Shop's Mission Statement opens with the overriding commitment, 'To dedicate our business to the pursuit of social and environmental change.'" Capitalist with a Conscience

We're using up our Earth!

Humanity's Ecological Footprint is over 23% larger than what the planet can regenerate. In other words, it now takes more than one year and two months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year. We maintain this overshoot by liquidating the planet's ecological resources. This is a vastly underestimated threat and one that is not adequately addressed.

It is fascinating stuff, showing that around 1988 we started using up more resources that the Earth generates each year and that North America uses up 8 times more resources, per person, than Asia Pacific. The UK's footprint (in hectares per person) has gone from 4 to 5 in the last 40 years; even though its capacity has stayed almost constant around 2. China's footprint has doubled from 0.8 to 1.6, whilst its capacity has been getting smaller relatively quickly (down from 1 to 0.8).

The good news is that technology can save our problems; but due to market imperfections, it is unlikely to -will we, since it is the only other option, be able to reduce our global footprint instead, to solve the problem? It seems unlikely, bearing in mind the impact of fast growing developing countries -though if the developed countries could halve their ecological footprint it would make a massive difference. Anyone for behaviour and lifestyle change?

The most improtant stakeholder cannot speak

The natural environment is what all of us rely on for our existence, so it is quite important to know what it thinks, what it is up to, what's affecting it, how it relates to us. But, it cannot speak, and environmental NGOs/Charities may be able to stand up for the environment, but they do not really know what it needs, what its state is and what it wants to say. Of course, they should continue to try to communicate with the environment through research as much as possible, and to try to listen to the signals the environment gives off. This way, they can do their job as best as possible -and they need to, we are really not listening to the environment; instead we are suffocating it!