A global claim has been echoing for many years: since 2000, when the UN launched the Millennium Development Goals, the world hasn’t seen such public debate about the need to commit to social and environmental targets. As the years have passed and global leaders have complied with the reviewed and renamed Sustainable Development Goals, society started to be bolder about expanding the commitment to a better future.
In the last few years, more companies have been vocal about their own actions thanks to an increased responsiveness of their stakeholders: investors, clients and civil society who demand more engaged action for the SDGs.
Clients and consumers are the first group to put pressure on the private sector, carefully choosing ecofriendly products and brands. Last September, 87 companies, including Danone, Amazon and IKEA, committed to set climate targets across their operations and value chains, setting zero net emissions by 2050. A recent Accenture survey shows that 80% of consumers believe it’s important or extremely important for companies to design environmentally conscious products. It affects the whole supply chain: from lighter and smaller packaging that will require less material to components that are recyclable and reusable.
Jobseekers are another important group that influences companies’ commitment to sustainable actions. MBA graduates are now able to see if corporate social responsibility strategies are legitimate or pure PR – and choose companies they want to work for accordingly. A 2015 survey covering more than 3,700 MBA graduates shows that 64% of them don’t think businesses are making enough efforts to address environmental challenges. Recruiters are getting used to questions about these CSR policies and are feeling the need to develop their employer’s branding, the capacity to attract talented people, investing in real sustainable actions.
Finally, there is the deciding factor for many businesses: money. Asset managers are increasingly taking sustainability into consideration when shaping their investment strategies, according to a recently published article in the Financial Times. Some of them, like Hermes, are launching SDG Equity Funds focused on small and medium-sized companies engaged with the UN Goals. Others, like the Scandinavian investment group Summa, are focusing on some sustainable development areas like infrastructure and innovation (goal 9). These initiatives follow the launch of UN Impact, a program that aims to channel funds to SDG-related projects and companies.
Other funding opportunities like HoryouToken, the utility token 100% dedicated to inclusion and sustainability, are also spotting projects and actions that resonate with the UN SDGs. Built on the concept of “Blockchain with a purpose”, HoryouToken supports and promotes social and economic inclusion while enhancing a positive circle of interactions benefiting civil society, social entrepreneurs and social good doers.
The Japanese Capital supports startups, public policies and innovative ideas to help solve the transportation challenge
Each day, 20 million commuters leave their houses to go to work in one of the trains of Tokyo’s metropolitan area. The figure is impressive, and it represents only a part of the challenge that the city, which is home to more than 13 million people, is facing. Yet, Tokyo also has one of the most efficient and innovative transportation systems in the world, which places it in the smart cities’ Olympus.
Thus not surprisingly, Tokyo will be hosting the Summer Olympic Games next year, and the Japanese authorities are making important efforts to improve intramuros mobility. Since planning is key, a few years ago the government started to stimulate and support innovative projects which would bring greener and smarter solutions to that particular challenge.
The results are already showing: projects like “Condition-Based Maintenance” use Internet of Things (IoT) technology to collect and analyze data pertaining to the Yamanote Line, one of the busiest train rings in Tokyo, in order to forecast failures and identify weaknesses, and hence to reduce the need for maintenance closures. The city has also set a bold objective in terms of the environmental impact of its transportation system: bring down carbon dioxide emissions to 25 percent by next year.
The entrepreneurial landscape is also bustling in Tokyo, as projects like autonomous driving, transportation apps and shared mobility start to flourish. Even private companies from traditional industries like Mori, an urban developer based in Tokyo, are investing in on-demand transit technologies for its employees. By using a mobile app which calculates and optimizes commuting routes, they can share cars and give rides.
A recent McKinsey report has calculated that the taxi market alone accounts for more than USD$17 billion, which has attracted companies like Uber but also caught the attention of other investors. Last year, the city’s first autonomous taxi was launched as a pilot project, which is intended to be fully operative during the Olympic Games. Financed by the metropolitan government, the project is projected to be affordable and safe with sensor-equipped vehicles that operate in full autonomy while a driver is at the wheel to attend to emergencies.
Smart transportation is one of the major investments in Japan, as the country faces a series of demographic and economic shifts, requiring new solutions and regulations. Air mobility is another one. Japan is an insulated country with restricted land mobility. Via its Future 2018 Investment Strategy, the Japanese government has set up a roadmap for the development of flying vehicles, which has already attracted several startups and innovative minds.
Are you interested in Smart Technology, Mobility and Smart Cities? Register for SIGEF, the Social Innovation and Global Ethics Forum, which will be held in Tokyo on 18-19 September 2019. Experts, officials and entrepreneurs from all over the world will discuss new trends in transportation and disruptive technologies for the future of our cities.
When talking about how fast the world around me is changing, I’m often scared of never being fully aware of how these changes will impact my life. As a journalist, I have a relatively good understanding of how newsrooms and content strategy are being impacted by digital marketing, and as a consumer, I can see how simple tasks like purchasing a product, communicating with my friends and even booking a visit at the doctor have been revolutionized in the past few years. However, I’ve always had the feeling that I’m missing something.
The bad news is I AM missing something. The good news is most people are in the same situation. In the past few months, especially during the Bitcoin frenzy that caught everybody at the end of 2017, I saw friends and family investing in a completely unknown technology that frightened me so much I couldn’t even think about it. I started asking questions about it and I realized no one was fully aware of what they were doing. Even some financial journalists and other friends from the financial market didn’t sound very convincing about their level of knowledge about it.
Bitcoin is a brand. It is an open source system created by a mysterious person – or it might be a group of people – who use the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin is based on this new technology we call Blockchain, which is now used by many governments and industries for many purposes: logistics, contract management, real estate transactions, etc.
But what is blockchain? One source once told me that this task is as difficult to explain as it was the internet in 1995. ‘You have to experience it’, he said. But after this, he went through a complicated explanation that I will try to simplify here.
Blockchain is a group of people – let’s say that each person is called block – that control and validate transactions. So, if I transfer money to you, this information is not only registered in the bank data center but is distributed among all the blocks. In the case a data center is hacked, for example, the transaction still exists because there are more agents aware of it.
It works because the longer and diverse the chain is, the harder it is to fraud. Every block needs to validate the chain of blocks that came before it, which makes it even more secure (it’s virtually impossible to ‘bribe’ someone since the identity of the block is safeguarded).
But what about my data? It will circulate among all those people and they will all know my personal banking information and who am I transferring money to? It depends. If the data is encripted, it’s protected. If not, well, you mustn’t trust people holding your data. It’s 2018 and we’ve seen what is happening.
The Blockchain potential is still being discovered by many industries, and I dare to include the financial world among them. New currencies are being launched, new services, products and solutions are being announced, but even the experts are not unanimous about how deep this new technology is going to impact our lives. If it’s really comparable to the internet in 1995, we will see another revolution coming.
The revolution I want to see, though, is how Blockchain will go beyond profit and greed. All this connectivity, safety and collaboration features could be amazing were it to solve some of humanity’s challenges, including migration, climate change and inequality. Some initiatives are already set; one of them is HoryouToken, a new Blockchain-based decentralized system that will enhance traceability and security of philanthropy. Since Horyou has developed a new concept for social media and the Internet, HoryouToken makes me hopeful that Blockchain can have a purpose.
As the team leader of the Global Perspectives Studies from FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Lorenzo Bellù studies the impact of agriculture in our daily lives. Is humanity threatened by mass food production techniques? Should we all go organic? I talked to him and brought you answers to these and other questions.
Photo: UNDP
Regarding the Zero Hunger goal, how can we overcome the challenge to produce healthy food for all?
I understand healthy food as safe food, which means is not poisonous or damaging, and then containing sufficiently nutrients, vitamins and proteins. On the other side, it is a healthy combination of healthy food. You can use healthy food and have an unhealthy diet. I’m saying that in terms of abuse of animal proteins, for example. Food may be healthy but the way you use it or abuse it can be unhealthy.
That being said, how to produce healthy food for an ever-growing global population?
There is a debate about whether farmers should use organic versus conventional techniques. I’m not against organic, but a key question is whether producing organic food is something that can actually feed the planet now and in the future. This question is an issue that still needs to be researched. Having said that, this doesn’t mean conventional agriculture doesn’t require investigation. In general, we need to identify sustainable ways of producing to achieve the SDGs, but we don’t have the answers. Moving food along the sustainable pattern require investigation, investment, commitment.
Are technology and social innovation helping with providing solutions to the increasing global demand for food?
We are going to face several challenges, one of them is in front of us, how to produce more food with fewer resources – water, land and greenhouse gas emissions. Technology may help us to use less water or using it in a more efficient way, it is something that may evolve a lot. But this requires knowing the moment when crops need water and the quantity. So technology can help with finding ways of dealing with antimicrobial resistance. The use and abuse of chemicals, medicaments, antibiotics to deal with animals and plants diseases cause resistance. Technology can discover new remedies ant the better use of the current ones.
Conventional agriculture has shown limitation in terms of excess withdrawal of water, fertility of soils, what has been useful so far to feed global expanding population now cannot be on the future, we are facing deflation of biodiversity. We must change the way of doing and producing things by spreading existing knowledge, investing more in research and development, infrastructure, know-how and expertise of people. We don’t have preconceived solutions. To move around these ways you need political commitment, private investment and the participation of all actors.
What is the role of consumers and their personal choices in order to push for a more sustainable agriculture?
I believe that the role of consumers is crucial now and it’s going to be crucial in the future. First of all, the consumer can decide to move personal diets into more healthy food. In developed countries, for example, where there is an excess of animal products consumption, we can move to more sustainable diets, because animal processing is very intense on gas emissions. (By eating too many animal products), I am not going to help myself and other people and I put pressure on the market, contributing to raising prices. Consumers are sovereign, what they decide can influence production and is going to be crucial to go on the sustainable path.
Many experts and influencers advocate for organic, regional, seasonal food. Is it part of the solution to make agriculture more sustainable?
It’s important to rely on trustworthy information and not ‘fake news’ sources concerning food. On internet you find everything, consumers have to be informed but not trapped getting wrong signals. Not all the websites are the same. But I believe consumers who want to privilege organic food may have their right to do that. I believe the awareness is a key factor also in pushing production techniques. I’m not saying that local food intended as self-sufficiency of small, regional areas is necessarily more sustainable than traditional. To some extent, exchange of food across different zones may help increase sustainability, so you are not forced to produce some kinds of food. If you live in a zone where water and land are under stress, there is no need to produce that to fulfill needs. So it doesn’t exist simple solutions to complex problems. But consumers who want strawberries in winter time need to know it’s not advisable. If they want cherries in December in Europe and they’re coming from Australia, it’s not environmentally sound. You can consume other things. We need to be wiser about what the implications are.
What should we be aware of working conditions and other social impacts of agriculture?
When we eat food at cheaper prices, we don’t count externalities like footprints as transport cost and pollution. We don’t fully internalize the costs of gas emissions. The food is cheap, I consume it, but environmentally and socially it may not be cheap. Prices are signals the consumer receive, but the cost of polluting water sources may not be reflected in these prices. Food may come at cheaper prices because people work with indecent wages and conditions. In some parts of the world, labor conditions are not acceptable, that’s why FAO push member countries do adopt legislation to impose decent working conditions. FAO avocates for responsible investment in agriculture, respect for the environment, local values, right to food, access to resources to small holders. It may imply higher costs, but the consumers have to be aware of what they consume and if it comes from countries which actually respect these conditions. If we move in that direction we may be close to achieve the SDGs.
The European Commission launched this week a report which addresses the challenges for the future of Europe regarding innovation and research.
The European Commission event took place in Brussels
Over 700 scientists, business leaders and policy makers have gathered this week in Brussels at the conference Research and Innovation – Shaping Our Future, where competitiveness, productivity and value generation were some of the key topics on discussion.
The report, entitled LAB – FAB – APP: Investing in the European Future We Want was initiated by an independent group of leading experts chaired by Pascal Lamy, President Emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute. The document highlights the idea that part of Europe’s success is due to research and innovation as two thirds of economic growth achieved in the last two decades by industrialised countries are attributed to investments in this area. The document included 11 recommendations that focused on maximising the impact of EU investments in research and innovation in order to increase prosperity and solve the biggest societal challenges on the continent.
Apart from being pretty much focused on policies and research budgeting propositions, the recommendations address some of the Sustainable Development Goals such as education and human rights.
The 11 recommendations for the future of innovation are as follows:
*1. Prioritise research and innovation in the EU while taking them into account in national budgets, with emphasis on a doubling of the budget covering post-2020 EU research and innovation programme
Build a true EU innovation policy that creates future markets
Educate for the future and invest in people who will make the change
Design the EU R&I programme for greater impact
Adopt a mission-oriented, impact-focused approach to address global challenges
Rationalise the EU funding landscape and achieve synergy with structural funds
Simplify further, privilege impact over process
Mobilise and involve citizens
Better align EU and national R&I investment
Make international R&I cooperation a trademark of EU research and innovation
Capture and better communicate impact*
For Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, “Research and Innovation make a big difference to enhancing productivity, boosting competitiveness and tangibly improving our quality of life. Europe is a global scientific powerhouse, but we need to better reap the benefits of this knowledge by turning it into value for the economy and society through innovation.”
Horyou is the Social Network for Social Good, which connects, supports and promotes social initiatives, entrepreneurs, and citizens who help the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals to build a more harmonious and inclusive world. We invite you to Be the Change, Be Horyou!
In 2012, the luxury, sport and lifestyle apparel group Kering made a bold and pioneering move in the world of corporate social responsibility as they set themselves a series of sustainability targets to achieve over a four year timeline. Not only that, but they announced they would also publish the results at the beginning on 2016. At a time of increasing pressure from discerning customers and in turn increasing competition in the area of sustainable fashion, it was done with the goal of driving the brand toward higher levels of economic, environmental, ethical and social performance.
Among the targets set out was strict monitoring of their supply chain processes by evaluating suppliers every two years, reducing carbon emissions by 25%, being PVC free by 2016, completely eliminating the use of hazardous chemicals by 2020 and having 100% of their gold, diamonds, leather and fur ethically sourced. Ambitious to say the least but the CEO of the group Francois Pinault even said that as a commercial business, investing in this reorganization of priorities and systems was a no-brainer if they wanted to continue to capture market share.
Panel discussion Parsons University
Ahead of the publication of the results at a fireside chat in Parsons University, New York, he said that “in the year 2015, sustainability is opportunity. We can create value for our shareholders, customers, employees and the planet, and that is what we as a group want to deliver”.
Pinault said that these targets have impacted on every facet of the company. There has been a complete overhaul in governance from top level down, to reflect the goals set out in the report. In addition to tracking the end product across the production line, management have been incentivised with bonuses for sustainability performance. This represents a significant sea change, where employees are rewarded for hitting targets that are not directly profit related.
Also in a conversation with Pinault at the University was Executive Dean Joel Towers, he said that “you cannot get through a course at Parsons without studying sustainability at some point”. This is significant for two reasons .Not only is Parsons one of the leading fashion design schools of the world and therefore a key driver of trends, but the fact that students are leaving and going into their respective industries with sustainability practices ingrained as a part of any business is important.
Kering luxury, sport and lifestyle apparel group
Education facilities, like Parsons, have the opportunity and also the responsibility to cultivate a belief system in their students where they realize that in order to succeed in the marketplace of any industry of the foreseeable future, they will need to appreciate consumer demand for sustainability. Francois Pinault concluded: “We will enhance and expand our sustainability efforts and strive to create broader environmental and social value, proactive in our contribution to solving global challenges and helping catalyze change”.
As Horyou is the social network also trying to connect the people of the world to catalyze change, we commend Kering for their efforts so far and wish them continued success.
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