Tools for Measuring Success

For every organisation that wants to measure its progress on the journey to sustainability, there need to be tools that are appropriate for their situation. Fortunately, many have already been developed (even though strong sustainability hasn't always been their goal). One of the most official that large corporations are already familiar with is the ISO 14001 standard. Here is a research article reviewing it from the point of view of the Natural Step framework.  The main conclusion is "tools such as ISO 14001, while a useful start, do not in themselves assist an organization in strategic planning, with true sustainability in mind".  As Karl-Henrick mentions in the presentation a few blogs down, all of these have a place and are useful, but currently only the 5-level framework is capable of looking at the whole picture to stimulate thinking towards transformational change.

Other tools are:

• Envirostep (an entry level online assessment tool to help SMEs understand, improve and communicate environmental performance)
• Tourism Oil Price Tool (an online assessment tool for New Zealand tourism businesses to assess relative exposure to profitability risks associated with higher world oil prices)
• The Global Reporting Initiative have an indicator search.
• ANEW New Zealand Integrated Structure of Indicators - this site has a variety of national and international case studies on indicators. Their research project aims to assist Councils to develop their community outcomes and performance indicators and to assist in moving toward an integrated structure of indicators across all Councils

Sustainable Housing in NZ

Who knew that there were so many cool things happening in NZ in regards to sustainable shelter!  This Solar Action Innovative Housing issue (2010) has a whole lot of information, including a the results of the Sustainable Habitat Challenge which was launched to stimulate new building design ideas; this Building a Better Way: Summary for Designers document they produced afterwards gives a detailed overview of some inspirations.  Such a clever idea to use a national competition to gather research data (see page 12 of the newsletter)!  So efficient its genius!
Also, for anyone who is interested in Villa renovations, see this Retrofit and Renovation resource.

Better by Design

A cool talk by Adam Lowry who spoke on Creating Positive Change Through Design Integration in Business at the Better By Design CEO Summit in NZ (2010).

After he was fed up with the common notion of having to buy inferior products to 'be good to the planet' he started a cleaning products range which has been quite successful and forced their competitors to think differently, thereby creating massive change (bigger than just their business).



Can't argue with success... and it seems that CEO's have really cottoned on to the importance of sustainability, it was listed as one of the 5 big shifts in this space by James Goodman and Martin Wright when they produced this article Five shifts in Sustainability that will make waves in 2011.  Oh, we are in 2012 now right?! So here's my quick observational response to how spot-on these projections were:1. Nowhere to hide as the open society arrives (absolutely, as long as the internet is alive we are all going to be more an more informed than before and this will lead to bottom-up rising-up all over the place).2. Africa, from basket case to boom time (yep, the biggest untapped market is being tapped.  Whether it be negatives like land-grabs or positives like start-up support - numerous examples in Richard Branson's book Screw Business as Usual; he's even set up a centre for entrepreneurship there - Africa is the place to consider).3. Biodiversity, its a business issue (I'm not sure how much this factored in, I have a feeling its something that is being discussed in a lot of boardrooms but I haven't seen many headlines or commitments to support other species yet... but I sooo want to!)4. The return of climate change, will science strike back (yes, I'd agree that there is less of a climate-denier presence than there was in 2010, based on my NZ perspective at least)5. CEO's have finally cottoned on, what now? (again, there might be plenty of boardroom discussions but we need more action, now!  Overall though as the stats in the article indicate, more and more people are getting it, we are closer to actions than we have been before.)

Whistler Canada case study

Here is a video of interviews with Whistler's municipal decision makers about the decision making process they used to evaluate a new infrastructure investment using the Natural Step Framework.



I have yet to finish reading the Whistler 2020 plan and Key Lessons, as soon as I do I'll update this post with more info.
The Whistler 2020 Performance monitoring programme tracks and reports their status and progress toward the Whistler 2020 Vision through Core Indicators and Strategy Indicators. You can track Whistler's progress towards or away from each Whistler 2020 Priority, Strategy and Sustainability Objectives. The monitoring programme tracks progress, informs decision making, and ensures accountability while educating and engaging community members and stakeholders. Progress is reported at least annually for most indicators.  Pretty cool huh?

Applying ABCD

Strategic Planning for Implementing

For the Implementing Sustainable Practice paper I am taking, we were given a resource called Strategic Planning with Appreciative Inquiry: Unleashing the Positive Potential to SOAR.  It was prepared by Innovation Partners International to describe an appreciative strategic planning technique SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results) as an alternative to the traditional strategic planning technique SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

SOAR is based on a "5-D process", referring to:

1. Definition (decide who to invite and how)

2. Discovery (inquiry into Strengths and Opportunities)

3. Dream (identify Aspirations and Results) 

4. Design (decide which opportunities have the most potential)

5. Destiny (delivery; implement and measure success)

More details on each step are in the linked document, when you read it you see that this is very similar to the Natural Step 5 level framework (but tailored to include the fine strategic detail for getting things done).
It's definitely something worth referring to for managing projects.

TNS Sustainability Primer

A good accompanying document to the previous post is the Natural Step Sustainability Primer.  It is a simple to read explanation of the thinking behind the framework and its tools.  After learning all the bits in relative isolation through the many presentations I have taken notes on, it is a nice overview demonstrating how they all fit together.

For the actual task of transforming organisations there is the Planning for Sustainability: A Starter Guide (this one is adapted to NZ specifically) which I will use when I work on my assignment(s) coming up.  It's a fantastic resource that anyone in NZ could use to do this work.

The Natural Step explained in 48 minutes

Karl-Henrick Robert is one of the founders of the Natural Step Framework; although, as he makes clear in the first minutes of the video, it is a continually evolving framework that many people are contributing to continually.

I completely agreed with one of his early comments, i.e. "What the world needs more than anything today, are proactive role models showing the way", because I believe we are all simply creatures of habit and doing new things is a very scary thing that can only be made less-scary by seeing someone else do it first.  Also, as I learned from Sam Harris's talk on free will, it seems that with all of our different thinking patterns that have arisen due to our unique backgrounds, the process of learning and realisation (and consequently our actions) is different for all of us, so the simplest thing to do to get everyone on the same page is to continually expose others and demonstrate to them the preferred ways (then, at different times, gradually, as it seems rational to them to do the same, the new way may catch on and new habits will form).

Karl-Henrick explains that he sought for a system that could define sustainability in principles based on universal values, so it could be used in the huge multitude of different circumstances that we need to transform, and better still, as a tool for creating a common language so that different groups can talk to one another and cooperate for progress.  Considering I love this topic, I'm eternally grateful that he and others have dedicated their time to make it easier for newbies like me.  He gives a good overview of the Natural Step Framework that I am trying to learn.  I found him a really compelling speaker...with a european-speaking-english charm... enjoy.

The ABCD Planning Process

Creating Shared Value

There are many leaders in the business community that have recognised the importance of adapting in response to the drivers of change.  Richard Branson describes some examples of transformational change he has so far initiated and observed in his book Screw Business as Usual, which I am halfway through at the moment.  His motto goes 'doing good is good for business', which is the same theme I came across in this Harvard Business Review article Creating Shared Value.  It's quite long, so here's the main points:

The authors are concerned about the fact that the current state of the economy is resulting in a lot of mistrust in business (which they blame on an outdated approach to value creation) and they call on companies to take the lead to bring business and society back together.  "A business needs a successful community, not only to create demand for its products but also to provide critical public assets and a supportive environment.  A community needs successful businesses to provide jobs and wealth creation opportunities for its citizens" and "Businesses acting as businesses, not as charitable donors, are the most powerful force for addressing the pressing issues we face".

"The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se.  This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy.  It will also reshape capitalism and its relationship to society.  Perhaps, most important of all, learning how to create shared value is our best chance to legitimize business again."  

They define shared value as "policies and operating practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company whilst simultaneously advancing the economic and social conditions in the communities in which it operates", a concept which blurs the line between for-profit and non-profit organisations, and is essentially a complicated way of explaining what makes social entrepreneurs get out of bed in the morning.  Essentially its a more meaningful revamp of the originally hollow 'corporate social responsibility'.  They claim that putting societal issues at its core will lead to the ability to tap into "overlooked opportunities to meet fundamental societal needs" since it is now obvious that "societal harms and weaknesses affect value chains".

"Companies can create economic value by creating societal value" via three distinct ways: by reconceiving products and markets (products that are good for customers as well as societies major needs are an untapped market), redefining productivity in the value chain (many externalities actually inflict internal costs), and building supportive industry clusters at the company's locations.

They identified the root cause of our issues to be "the traditional divide between economic concerns and social ones, people in the public and private sectors have often followed very different educational and career paths" and the authors recommend more holistic thinking and training in both camps so that this model can work.  "Business and society have been pitted against each other for too long ... economists have legitimized the idea that to provide societal benefits, companies must temper their economic success and ... solving social problems has been ceded to governments and NGOs."  

On governments and NGOs, the authors suggest a shift in thinking to view success more as 'results achieved' as opposed to 'funds and effort expended', and for the design of regulations to focus on enhancing shared value also; regulations that have features like: clear and measurable social goals, performance standards (without prescribing how to achieve these, yet with phase-in periods) and universal ways to measure and report on them, the provision of benchmarking data.  "Survival of the fittest would still prevail, but market competition would benefit society in ways we have lost".

Education Revolution

I watched Sir Ken Robinson's talks sometime last year, but I have not yet read his book The Element.  Looking back on my own education, I bet I would have thrived in a much more balanced way if his thinking formed the basis of the system.  I sure hope for the sake of all the bored but well intentioned kids everywhere that his beliefs break through to mainstream soon!

Here's the concept:

and here he is in detail:

A lot of people talk about the potential to integrate knowledge on how to be sustainable into students learning.  It's again something that we used to do but was lost due to the reasons in the first video above.  Since this is a blog about education and sustainability I wanted to mention another resource given to us in this course which is a guide prepared by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) to inspire actions for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-14) by illustrating innovation and practice in education with case studies, examples and interviews; its called Engaging People in Sustainability (I'll find the link sometime and add it in).  I didn't even know we are in this UN decade, but it doesn't surprise me, it sounds like something they'd do.  It was cool to see NZ mentioned for the Enviroschools initiative.  I was the first chairperson when it started up at my school St Peters in Cambridge :-)

Learning Organisations and Transformational Change

Implementing - Introduction to the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development

The Power of Crowdsourcing

The reason I get excited about open platforms for idea generation and action is because the results almost always supersede expectations.  Here's an example:

When Richard Branson wrote his book Screw Business as Usual, he also created a competition for people to submit videos on their ideas, I had a look at a few and there's some real gems in there!

Neighborland

Something I keep coming across is the need for communities to set their own priorities and create their shared living space.  It's how things used to be before we all became so independent and successful - competitive instead of cooperative!  So I was quite excited when I came across an idea called Neighborland, found here, and I summarise it as 'Facebook for communities' so they can talk to each other and cooperate again to create well functioning and unique places that people will want to live in. I like the idea of restricting access to just those people who are living in the community, but having it open within this circle so anyone can contribute.  I imagine it could be a platform for communicating with local government too, on the same aims as shaping our future.

Total Food Resilience in Todmorden

In the previous post Jon Jandai talks about the possibility of life being easy when you have, what he describes as, the 4 physical basics of life: Food, shelter, clothing and medicine.  If we have these things then we do not need to earn money, and aren't as vulnerable - although we most likely will want to earn money to extend our enjoyment of life!  But it is the needing that has many of us so stressed out (it also doesn't help that many of us don't know the difference between wants and needs anymore).  Logically, having our own supply of these basics would mean the first step to resilience.  For inspiration on this concept, here's a great example of people who understand it and are working towards it:  A deliciously resourceful town aims for total food self-sufficiency within 7 years. Good on them!

Jon Jandai - Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard?

One of the TED talks I saw recently really had a big impact on me, so I want to share it here.  I think ever since the busyness of high school I have yearned for some me-time to think about life and then invest time in doing what is fun and feels right.  Jon Jandai gets it.

The World Is Where We Live

My favourite beautiful one-minute art to remind us of our place in the world :-)

Generations Past - the humbling email

Here's a funny email I received through my mum:

The Green Thing
In the line at the supermarket, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."  The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the shop or off licence. They sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized and refilled and re-used. So it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. 

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have lifts and escalators in every shop and office building.  We walked to the local shops and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go to a supermarket.  We bought fruit and veg loose - and washed them at home. We didn't have to throw away bins full of plastic, foam and paper packaging that need huge recycling plants fed by monster trucks all day, everyday.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes.  Kids got hand-me-down (mostly hand made or hand knitted) clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing shipped from the other side of the planet.

But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then shops repaired things with funny things called spare parts - we didn't need to throw whole items away because a small part failed.  Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Wales ...... In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.  When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.  Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power and hand clippers for the hedges. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a brightly lit, air conditioned health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity and then drink millions of bottles of that special water from those plastic bottles.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a plastic cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.  We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new plastic pen, and we replaced blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole plastic razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.  

Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their parents into a 24-hour taxi service.  We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest fish & chip shop.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?  Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a young smart-ass.

I wonder if we'll learn from our past voluntarily or by necessity?! ;-)

I don't think we have to go back all the way... I think we can have a more comfortable and fun lifestyle than those back then as long as we see some sense in doing the little extras (perhaps even get some pleasure from it!) and get the basic principles right (e.g. cradle to cradle designs, and adhering to the four sustainability principles).  Overall, just get a bit more humble to the point of finding enjoyment.

Susan Krumdieck

Another plenary talk that deserves its own blog post was the presentation by Associate Professor Susan Krumdieck from Canterbury University. She was a fantastically engaging and natural presenter that managed to bring the science right down to everyones level of understanding; which as a scientist myself I always find fascinating!  Here is a video of her talk.

Her line of expertise is Transition Engineering (i.e. sustainability + mechanical engineering).  She and her PhD students have been investigating peak oil vulnerability for NZ cities, especially in regards to transport, by looking at activity and how adaptive our capacity is.  Land-use patterns were identified as the most determining factor, as this is what our transport network sits upon and then leads to our behavioural decisions.

She has some great points of view to share, e.g. "It is irrational NOT to drive a car if a nice road has been provided and a nice car is affordable to you" - this comment really shapes how I will view the behaviour of others in the future, she just put it so eloquently!

Her team also evaluated all of the transport solutions that could help us reach the goal of 50% oil-use-reduction that is required (according to 97% of geologists; must find the meta-study that claims this) and identified the low-carbon lifestyle as the surest way to get there, as opposed to biofuels and electric cars and so on.  But for this to be a rational option our urban planning has to be done right, so we go back to having more urban villages and/or better public transport.

For anyone who wants to learn more, here is a link to her publications and a great NZTA report.

Nicole Foss on Peak Finance and Peak Energy

The first plenary talk was given by Nicole Foss on peak finance and energy, i.e. preparing for the economic crisis - quite the doom and gloom story!  Here's a few snippets of what I picked up on:

To set the scene, Nicole talked about finance being the main driver of our crises, closely followed by energy.  She explained the pyramid dynamics of the global financial bubble(s) which created the perception of increasing wealth, with a positive feedback loop (based on hope and greed, i.e. when we borrow for consumption and gambling instead of value creation), and their tendency to collapse, via a negative feedback loop (based on fear, i.e. when debts fail to get serviced).  She focussed on the availability of money and its effect on price and affordability; e.g. with an increase in money available, assets get overvalued until price discovery eventually revalues them - although unfortunately affordability is always a step behind as society adjusts.  The theme she wanted to get across is: we have the biggest collapse coming up still, no one is able to stop it (governments are always a step behind and kicking the issue along) and so we better prepare to weather it as best we can.  It is really unfortunate that in the aim to keep the money circulating our environment keeps getting the raw end of the deal over and over - with 7 billion people this could be really messy!  Nothing we all haven't thought about before, aye!? It's disappointing to know that these bubbles have happened before and we haven't learned our lesson(s).  Her estimations put the undershoot that happens right after the steep nosedive (everyone is trying to delay) for this one at 1970's price levels - wow, imagine that!
On energy, she spoke about peak-conventional oil and explained our ever decreasing net-energy (i.e. the ratio of energy in:out) and how we will eventually be forced to simplify.  A great comment was "we will never run out of oil completely on earth, but there will always be less" which is clear about the fact our futures will be different to what we currently consider conventional. "Lets get our expectations in line with reality!" and "we can rediscover what makes people happy".

She briefly talked about the psychology of economic contractions and outlined it as the increase of fear and anger (often leading to a pointless blame game and shortened time horizon thinking), leading to lack of trust, trade wars and protectionism, then deglobalisation.  The centralisation of power that happened during globalisation is difficult to take back to the local level, essentially the only solution she mentioned was to use the power in numbers, i.e. don't leave courageous visionaries vulnerable, if enough people do it at once it is very difficult to stop.

Nicole has looked at the NZ situation and identifies us as vulnerable due to the large housing bubble, and high household debt (e.g. mortgages) which makes citizens very sensitive to interest rate rises.  Also, we are a resource export economy, very vulnerable to international trade and demand, and long supply chains for our imports.  The global commodity bubble supports our dollar value, but in time our domestic stuff is likely going to be cheaper than overseas products, the better we get at weaning off essential-item imports the less leverage others might have over us.  NZ also has mainly foreign owned banks, of places which have big issues of their own, it might be good to know about alternative ways of banking.  NZ's comfortable lifestyle gives us a very high complacency atmosphere - probably our biggest hurdle.  Disentangling from the global system was cited as our best way forward and biggest challenge.  I personally have always had hope that NZ could become a self-sufficient resilient nation.  One thing she was very clear on is that we can't expect any of our media and government to be warning us, they are busy trying to halt the 'fear', so we cannot expect them to come up with the solutions top-down. We need to take responsibility here and get ready so that we can help others bridge the gap when the time comes.  Her suggestions to us the attendees were: eliminate the dependence on credit, minimize debt, move into value goods, productive land, low-tech transportation, invest in the fabric of our community and move into depression proof employment.

The sweetest thing was that right after her doom and gloom talk, we got to hear a great uplifting poem (which is one of the first I ever liked, and I'd say has taught me the power of poetry finally).  Overall, for the conference it was good for setting the scene as all the other talks had very positive and opportunistic intentions.

Permaculture Convergence 2012

I just came back from an amazing week in Turangi where I attended the Australasian Permaculture Convergence with some of the other Sustainable Practice students.  It was only a few months ago that I had to ask them what the term "Permaculture" actually meant :-)  The name apparently stems from permanent agriculture or permanent culture, and refers to a sustainable way of growing food and living.  Now I think of it as a type of science that sprouted after the realisation that we (humanity) are marginalising and forgetting 'the old way of doing things'.

In true spirit, all of the food we ate was provided by Awhi Farm down the road (organic of course) and various donations.   The line up was really impressive and attracted over 500 people!  I imagine that many more people would have found it very interesting, its just that its brilliance was hidden under the name few people recognize.  More than once I sat there marvelling at the incredible microbiology and nutrient cycling knowledge that was being discussed!

Not surprisingly, there were a few Jesus-look-a-like-most-probably-a-vegan greenies around, and they're all aware how that tends to block adoption of their fascinating information by mainstream.  More than that, many wonder how to overcome the issue.  One beautiful conclusion that was reached in one of the last panel discussions was that it definitely doesn't require rebranding, but definitely diversification!  Leave the pioneers their integrity, but then spread the knowledge under whatever form that fits.

Overall, I only got to experience a tiny slice of all the things on offer at the conference (since there were usually 10 sessions running concurrently at any one time).  Topics included: local currency design and timebanking, waste management, deep ecology, co-operative business structures, eco-village examples, food self-reliance, terraquaculture, scything, biochar, seed saving, regenerative agriculture and soil health for food and human health, urban permaculture design, edible food forests (I love this concept and plan to erect one on my parents property - more updates on that once I have started the design), fermentation of foods, the natural step framework, hempology, composting toilets, how to grow mushrooms, emergency response examples, natural burials, indigenous foods, eco-schools, permaculture education systems, and more.  I'll have to write separate posts on my favourite plenary talks.

The best highlight was getting to meet so many kind and interesting people with big dreams, it was really really really quite fun! ;-)