Sustainability
When green travel meets big business
Giulia Carbone explains why the tourism industry needs to address ecological threats
Tourism needs a healthy and pristine environment. No other industry relies as heavily on unspoilt scenery and natural diversity to attract the crowds. When nature suffers, travel companies suffer, too. The question is how to create synergies between the tourism industry and conservation efforts, allowing both to thrive while minimizing negative impact.
For many conservation projects, ecotourism seems the perfect way to raise funds. Travellers in search of pristine natural beauty can help to finance...
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March 7, 2013
Are we moving toward sustainable travelism?
Geoffrey Lipman discusses how we are becoming more environmentally responsible tourists
Someone famously said that “an elephant is a very hard thing to define, but if you see one coming down the street you know what it is”. It’s rather the same about sustainability, travel and tourism – we’ve stopped describing it and started to engage it.
Twenty years ago at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit – when the modern approach to sustainable development was set out in Agenda 21 – the focus was on preserving the planet’s resources. For our sector, it was very much about ecotourism that often translated into...
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March 6, 2013
Paving the way for electric cars
Levi Tillemann addresses the challenges facing the electric car
Electric cars are buzzing. Twice in two years, the Chevy Volt has edged out the Porsche 911 for highest customer satisfaction in Consumer Reports magazine. In 2011, the all-electric Nissan LEAF was named European Car of the Year. In 2012, the Tesla Model S was awarded Motor Trend’s “Car of the Year”. Sales are rising, too.
All this portends a fundamental shift in the energy landscape. After a century, transportation is decoupling from its complete reliance on oil.
Yet there are some major hurdles. All-electric cars, with no...
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March 5, 2013
Will biotechnology provide food security?
According to David Lawrence biotechnology, like all technologies, is not in itself good or bad. It’s what we do with it that decides
The way we human beings behave can be strange. For at least 30 years I used to give talks which included a slide showing how population increase was reducing the land available to feed an individual, pointing out that unless we changed something, at some point we would run the risk of not being able to feed everyone on the planet. Every few years I would update it, and while the trends continued as predicted, no one seemed to want to pay any attention....
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March 1, 2013
Sustainable solutions from the sea?
George Guo-Qiang Chen looks to the planet’s oceans to provide the resources to produce and process the large quantities of biomass that will be needed for a sustainable future
Industrial applications of biotechnology – the new “Bioeconomy” – hold out the promise of being able to produce biofuels and renewable chemicals and provide an alternative for society’s chronic addiction to goods that are produced using the finite supplies of petroleum and fossil fuel feedstocks. “Biorefining” is based on using biomass as its basic feedstock. Biomass is a renewable resource produced by agriculture....
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February 27, 2013
How could biotechnology improve your life?
Experts on the World Economic Forum’s Council on Biotechnology have selected 10 developments which they believe could help not only meet the rapidly growing demand for energy, food and healthcare, but also increase productivity and create new jobs, should issues such as regulatory certainty, public perception and investment be tackled successfully. In this blog post, the council members make their case for each of these technologies and highlight their potential benefits:
1. Bioproduction of sustainable chemicals, energy and other materials
Over the past 100 years, humans have depleted...
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February 25, 2013
Can sustainability be profitable?
It’s hard for companies to recognize that sustainable production can be less expensive. That’s in part because they have to fundamentally change the way they think about lowering costs, taking a leap of faith that initial investments made in more-costly materials and methods will lead to greater saving down the road. It may also require a willingness to buck conventional financial wisdom by focusing not on reducing the cost of each part but on increasing the efficiency of the system as a whole.
Rapidly developing economies are often portrayed as sustainability laggards – focused more in...
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February 20, 2013
The case for the circular economy
Stef Kranendijk discusses responsible business and sustainability
Finding a way to boost world economic growth sustainably is one of the greatest challenges we face today.
For the past century, we have acted as if the Earth’s natural resources are infinite. But we are fast discovering how untrue this is.
If everyone lived like an average North American, we would need four planets to sustain our needs, according to the WWF’s Living Planet Report 2012.
There is a paradox here. On the one hand, globalization in recent decades has helped to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. But on the...
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January 25, 2013
An aspirational lifestyle for 7 billion people?
There is an unconscious and slightly patronising attitude out there in the world about doing our bit to help poor people with some aid, which does not seem to see the link to the casually well off lives that many of us lead. I sensed it as an eminent line up of world political and business leaders discussed what will follow the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the World Economic Forum at Davos on Thursday evening.
It was up to Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the UN to remind the panel that the world committed to develop a set of universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at...
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January 25, 2013
Choosing the long path to sustainability
Frans van Houten discusses the environmental challenges of our age
Recently, a public policy debate played out in the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, an increasingly familiar debate about how society allocates limited resources to meet people’s needs. It was the kind of discussion that takes place every day in council chambers, legislative halls and bureaucrats’ offices across the globe. In the case of the Dutch Ministry, officials were considering whether to save money and reduce light pollution on a busy 30-kilometer stretch of freeway by simply switching off the...
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January 24, 2013
It’s the economy, stupid
Here at Davos we participated in a fantastic scenario planning workshop with Schwab Social Entrepreneurs and business partners including Boston Consulting Group, Credit Suisse and Siemens. One of the scenarios we examined was that of a ‘Positive Economy’ when, by 2030, true environmental and social costs and benefits are included in national and company accounts. This is the big prize for sustainable development – when we can harness market forces and align them for everyone’s benefit to tackle the major challenges we face such as climate change and political insecurity caused by...
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January 23, 2013
Forget the buzzwords, it’s simply good business
When I was young, life was easy: there were those who studied to become rich and those who studied to save the world. Since then, things have changed. The worlds of business and non-profit have increasingly converged, illustrated by new movements and new labels such as social entrepreneurship, social business and impact investing.
As a result, companies are emphasizing the social and environmental value components of their business models. Driven by the consumer movement and the Internet, corporate social responsibility and sustainability issues are slowly moving from being outliers to...
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January 21, 2013
Turn off the lights, turn on sustainability
The French government recently proposed a regulation requiring businesses and office buildings throughout the country to turn off their lights between 01.00 and 07.00. Such a regulation addresses a long-unanswered question: “Why leave the lights on when no one is using them?”
In fact, the French government is embracing resilient dynamism: bold vision and action to adapt and meet critical goals. The goals here are to reduce energy consumption by 20% by 2020 and to change culture. I would go one step further and say that France is also trying to change behaviour, which is incredibly difficult...
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January 15, 2013
Norway tops the table in the global energy race
Every country wants affordable, sustainable, and secure energy supplies; to live in a cleaner, greener planet where the lights also stay on.
But some countries are doing better than others at achieving it.
In the World Economic Forum’s The Global Energy Architecture Performance Index Report 2013, compiled in collaboration with Accenture, the winners and losers in the global energy race are starkly laid out.
Norway and Sweden top the table of 105 countries when their scores for economic growth and development, environmental sustainability, and energy access and security are added up. They...
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December 17, 2012
Discovering the hidden cost of virtual water
Five years ago I fell in love with the concept of virtual water. That concept took me on an amazing journey that led to major discoveries: the power of information design, the importance of communicating science and above all our hidden demands on water.
What if I told you that I eat 5,600 litres of water every day? Eating water might sound strange, but I discovered that we eat loads of it, we are addicted to it and we don’t know it.
Much of our water use is obvious – it’s visible in our homes, in the water we use for drinking, cooking, washing. This is our domestic consumption. Research...
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November 28, 2012
Food security in Africa is more than just a dream
The message that leaders took away from the World Economic Forum in Africa in Addis Ababa last month is that Africa’s time as a bona fide growth engine is near, and when it comes to developing a new vision for agriculture, the continent is a world leader.It is only a year ago since the last World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town that the African Union, NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) and the Forum convened the Grow Africa partnership – an African-led, country-owned multistakeholder platform that seeks to accelerate investments and transformative change in African...
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June 26, 2012
Water: managing the world’s most precious resource
The world’s demand for fresh water is growing so fast that, by 2030, agriculture, industry and expanding cities will face such scarce supplies that the confrontation could disrupt economic development and threaten political stability and public health.People in places as disparate as north Africa, Central Valley, California, and India’s northern states, among others, are already facing similar threats to their livelihoods, while population growth, ageing infrastructure, pollution and resource-intensive ways of life are putting a huge strain on local fresh water supplies.By 2050, demand for...
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June 14, 2012
Getting to Zero: A sustainable approach to poverty reduction
Since the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were established by the United Nations in 2000, lives have improved around the world at a rate never equalled in human history.The World Bank estimates that the first MDG goal of halving extreme poverty was reached globally by 2010. The percentage of people in the developing world living in extreme poverty has fallen from 43% to 21% since 1990. We want to see this percentage reduced to zero by 2030.Yet more than one billion people still live on less than US$ 1.25 a day. The problem is particularly acute in South Asia, where more than one person in...
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June 13, 2012
Seafood supply chains: no more fishy business
Today, consumers, distributors and even many seafood processors commonly lack basic information about the fisheries from which fish products originate. In general, they cannot know whether the fisheries are overfished or well-managed. They cannot even be assured that the fish were caught legally – a major concern when current evidence suggests that illegal fishing could provide up to around 30% of the wild-caught seafood that reaches global markets and, ultimately, people’s plates.Overfishing cannot end without some fundamental changes in the fishing and seafood trade. Among the most...
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June 8, 2012
Transforming Mauritius into a “blue” economy
Coming from the island nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, I grew up surrounded by the sea, coral reefs and rich marine life. With a vast maritime zone of 2.3 million km2, this coastal and ocean territory holds an immense potential for development, which could play a vital role in the future economic well-being of Mauritius.As an investment adviser in the country’s marine industry, it is exciting to witness the country transform itself from a small island developing state to a more developed “blue” economy ocean state. But this can only come about through the sustainable development of...
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June 5, 2012
Food and nutrition security
Global food and nutrition security must be a top priority for our world. But is this goal compatible with the move towards a more sustainable, greener economy?It has certainly become more difficult to achieve thanks to growing natural resource constraints, rising energy costs, continued population growth, rapid urbanization, a fragmented sectoral approach, and weak capacity to design and develop policies in developing countries.Yet the problem remains acute. Over 900 million people worldwide are hungry, according to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. And...
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June 4, 2012
Rio+20 Conference Backgrounder
Rio+20 is shorthand for The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 20-22June 2012.The number 20 refers to the number of years since the historic UN Conference on Environment and Development was held in 1992, also in Rio de Janeiro.The Rio+20 Summit will be co-hosted by Brazil’s Minister of External Affairs and the Minister of Environment.It will bring together non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics, civil society groups and business leaders from every geography and sector, as well as the usual government and...
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May 31, 2012
Future cities: sustainable and resilient
How can we make our future cities less resource-hungry, more sustainable, and more resilient to the ever changing global conditions?This is probably one of the most significant questions we face as the global population is expected to rise to 9.3 billion by 2050, with urban dwellers likely to make up two-thirds of that number.Of course we want to lift people out of poverty, as the Millennium Development Goals state, but the desire to own and consume is often at odds with the carrying capacity of the planet and the local capacity to deal with the implications is often not present in local...
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May 27, 2012
The sustainable future of the automobile
The emissions average for new cars in 2011 was 138g/km. This is a drop of between 5g and 8.5g per year for the last four years, averaging 6.6g per annum. If we keep this up, we will easily surpass the proposed 95g/km European target for 2020. Indeed, maintaining this rate would lead us to 85g/km. This is great news. Of course, it has been strongly driven by the impact of the recession and ever-increasing oil prices. However, the focus on CO2 emissions reduction and the impact of government policy have also played a major role. Automotive manufacturers are doing their bit to respond...
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May 15, 2012
Rebranding agriculture: Isn’t agriculture cool?
In the popular “top-10” style lists of “best paid jobs” or “most attractive” jobs, it can hardly be expected that agricultural jobs would hit any of these spots. Why should it? After all, agriculture is a back-breaking, low-rewards and unappealingly uncomfortable sector. It is, in all aspects, the sort of occupation which nobody would willingly choose for themselves. But should this be the case? Is it possible to change the face of agriculture so that it ends up in the list of the most appealing jobs?The figures have been unequivocal: in a few years we will be looking at a population of 9...
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May 14, 2012
Advancing sustainable solutions in Latin America
Yesterday the World Economic Forum brought together 150 leaders from civil society, business and government in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, at the Sustainable Growth Summit, a lead-in to the Forum’s larger Latin America regional meeting that starts today.Sustainable Growth Summit Co-Chairs Jordy Herrera, Mexican Minister for Energy, and Martin Senn, CEO of Zurich Insurance Group kicked off the discussion on an optimistic tone, highlighting the substantial progress that countries like Mexico and Brazil have made in advancing sustainable solutions such as renewable energy and energy efficiency....
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April 18, 2012
What if we fail to adapt to the new era of scarcity?
Dominic Waughray,Head of Environmental Initiatives at the World Economic Forum, explores what could happen if the world fails to get to grips with the new reality of extreme weather and scarce resources. The interview is part of the Risk Response Network’s “What if?” series.What is your main field of expertise and current research? I am Senior Director of Environmental Initiatives at the World Economic Forum. This means that I have an institutional, professional and personal interest in looking at environmental and sustainability issues within the context of economic growth.Given your...
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April 11, 2012
What if we went back to the year 2000?
Stewart Wallis, Executive Director of the New Economics Foundation, assesses the consequences if the world returns to business as usual instead of learning the lessons of the financial crisis. The interview is part of the Risk Response Network‘s “What if?” series, which explores various hypothetical risk scenarios.What is your main field of expertise and current research? I am the Director of the New Economics Foundation. My background is working in business as an economist at the World Bank and with Oxfam as their International Director. My area of expertise is the systemic nature...
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March 27, 2012
Sustainable Manufacturing
Manufacturing is an industry that can bring a competitive edge to countries worldwide. However, if our goal is to have a long-term and sustainable approach, the industry cannot only be economically sustainable but also environmentally friendly.Since the Industrial Revolution transformed society’s interaction with the environment, there has been a drastic increase in the use of natural resources and in the demand for new products. In 2012, patterns still look the same: people consume more than ever; population rates continue to rise; and the environment deteriorates. This increase in...
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February 28, 2012
Water Resources Group: A new model for water sector transformation
The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012 kicked off yesterday exploring the most pressing challenges that our world faces today. A strong green thread runs across Davos this year, where many discussions are focused on realizing growth in a sustainable manner. Given their importance to economic growth and social development aspirations of countries and societies around the world, water issues are among the most pressing we face and must tackle without delay. Today at Davos, the Water Resources Group (WRG) – a new global partnership on water – emerges as a new model of collaboration to...
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January 27, 2012
Transforming agriculture to feed the world
How will we feed 9 billion people by 2050? At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, we are discussing how business leaders can help meet this challenge by advancing a “New Vision for Agriculture” that will deliver economic growth, food security and environmental sustainability.Today, we are launching a new report, Putting the New Vision for Agriculture into Action, outlining the key steps required to achieve an ambitious, lasting transformation in agriculture – in specific countries and worldwide.With nearly a billion hungry people and many stresses on the world’s natural...
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January 27, 2012
Financing green growth: breakthroughs under development
Can we meet emerging economies’ rapidly growing needs for water, food and energy in a way that manages limited global resources and shifts us onto a low-carbon path? And how can we pay for this, even as the shockwaves from the global economic crisis continue to reverberate?Those are the questions we will be looking to answer at the Annual Meeting in Davos on Friday morning in a dynamic private session designed to engage leading CEOs, such as Bob Diamond of Barclays Capital and his peers from the energy and infrastructure sectors, with emerging economy government leaders like Mexican President...
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January 26, 2012
A real transformation – now!
If I bump into Professor Klaus Schwab, who started and still runs the World Economic Forum here in Davos, I will challenge him on the purpose of the event. Schwab has described the WEF as “a platform for collaborative thinking and searching for solutions, not for making decisions”.The Davos meeting may not be a bastion of democratic or transparent democracy and participation, but it is a place where solutions should be discussed and plans made to tackle the cacophony of crises that our planet in faces. But important decisions can also be taken here, decisions by corporations, politicians or...
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January 26, 2012
Smart resource management: good for nature, people and business
Resource scarcity has been a frequent topic at the World Economic Forum in recent years, and for good reason.Between now and 2050, the world’s population will grow by an additional 2 billion people. Over the same period, millions of people will be lifted out of poverty. By 2030, nearly two thirds of the global population–as opposed to today’s one quarter–could be middle class.Rising incomes, of course, are a good thing. But a rapidly growing and more affluent population are straining the natural systems on which natural diversity, human health and prosperity depend.The good news is that...
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January 26, 2012
Peter Bakker: It’s time to prioritize and scale-up sustainable solutions
As I share insights with my colleagues at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, one thing is clear: the world is at a crucial stage in solving global sustainability challenges. We cannot continue to use resources, emit gases, and tolerate the many inequalities that exist in our societies in the same way. Or the world will come to a grinding halt.Even if we add up all the sustainability programs worldwide from both business and governments, they don’t begin to make a dent in solving our most pressing problems. In order to create a significant impact globally, we need to...
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January 24, 2012
Unilever’s Keith Weed: ‘We have to find sustainable solutions’
This year’s theme: “The Great Transformation – shaping new models”, is well chosen. It is clear that the world cannot go on as it currently is doing, using up limited resources as though they will be magically replaced. We’re all aware of the impact of rising commodity costs but at an individual level, the repercussions are so stark – a statue being stolen from a park in the UK to be sold as scrap metal or cooking stoves only being used a few days a month. We have now reached a global population of 7 billion, and experts say we will be at 9 billion by 2050. Citizens in the fast-...
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January 24, 2012
A Green Thread to this Year’s Davos
There is a strong sustainability theme at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012.Why? Within the last 12 months, floods have cost the Thai economy US$ 45 billion, or about 7% of its GDP according to the World Bank, with wider disruption to global supply chains. Parts of China are experiencing their worst drought in 60 years. Worryingly, these events may be trends. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in November that they are at least 90% certain that hottest day events that occur once in every 20 years will occur every other year by the end of the century. They also...
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January 24, 2012
Urban Sustainability
The SlimCity initiative began at the Annual Meeting 2008 and wrapped up two years later. The focus of the project was on the sustainable development of all aspects of a city to achieve reduced carbon emissions and increased resource efficiency across all sectors, involving the following industries: Energy, Mobility, Engineering and Construction, Chemicals, Real Estate and Information Technology.Download the SlimCity Knowledge Cards which identify key trends and best practices in the areas of Smart Energy, Urban Mobility, and Sustainable Construction.New Initiatives developed within this...
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November 5, 2010
Agriculture and Food Security
Overview The Issue A New Vision for Agriculture Who Is Involved? Project Activity Grow Africa and the G8 News, Videos, Reports and Blog PostsThe New Vision for agriculture: Transforming agriculture through collaborationIn order to feed a population of 9 billion in 2050, the world will need a New Vision for Agriculture - delivering food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity through agriculture. This will require producing more food with fewer resources while reinvigorating rural economies. It can be achieved through collaboration, investment and innovation among...
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October 19, 2010
Sustainable Consumption
Each year until 2030, at least 150 million people will be entering the middle class. This will bring almost 60% of the world’s population into a middle income bracket. Over the same period energy demand is projected to increase by 40%, and water demand is expected to outstrip supply by 40%.Providing for the next generation of consumers in a sustainable manner presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Leaders can position themselves to succeed in this changing framework by redefining their strategies. New products, services and value chains can embrace "absolute sustainability".These...
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October 19, 2010
