Launched in the capital, Addis Ababa, on 22 November, the review evaluates innovation capacity, policies and institutions in Ethiopia and suggests how the government and other key stakeholders can better harness innovation, technology and science to accelerate development and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Through our home-grown economic reform and 10-year strategy, Ethiopia aims to become a middle-income economy. Innovation and technology are the main drivers for attaining this goal, and the STIP review will help us towards this objective, said Getahun Mekuria, the countrys minister of innovation and technology at the launch of the report.

The STIP review contrasts Ethiopia's rapid economic growth with much slower growth in technological learning and innovation capacity as a major obstacle to sustaining this impressive performance and achieving more sustainable development.

It shows that on paper, Ethiopia has most of the policies, regulations, background studies and roadmaps necessary to kick-start a successful process of technological learning, innovation and technological upgrading.

However, in reality the country faces challenges in policy implementation across public institutions related to capacity constraints and sub-optimal allocation of efforts and resources.

Innovation ultimately takes place at the firm-level, but the state plays a key role as a facilitator of the national innovation system, said Shamika N. Sirimanne, UNCTADs director of technology and logistics division during the reports launch in Addis Ababa. The state is the glue that holds the innovation system together.

UNCTAD prepared the policy review at the request of the government to support the technology ministry in preparing a new science, technology and innovation (STI) policy.

The review process is timely, taking place at a critical juncture in the countrys development.

The report finds that hurdles to technological progress are largely due to deficiencies in design processes, in particular with implementation and evaluation, rather than a lack of policies, strategies and institutions.

Improved policy coordination and greater coherence across key areas of development policy are needed, according to the review.

Building productive capacities

The STIP review notes that Ethiopia needs to build its productive capacities to add greater value, produce a wider range of products, diversify the economy and generate higher income.

Like other least developed countries, Ethiopias productive capacity must be reinforced.

Policy action in recent years has enabled the country to initiate a process of productive capacity-building, driven by intensive public-sector investment in targeted areas that has powered recent growth.

Production linkages are not sufficiently developed, reflecting a private sector that is still emerging, and insufficient technological capability and manufacturing production capacity.

In September, the government launched an economic reform agenda aimed at boosting private investment, creating productive jobs and enhancing the role of the private sector in the economy.

Science, technology and innovation are critical for the achievement of these objectives.

The countrys progress has been greatest in productive resources, particularly transport infrastructure, with significant improvements in road and railway networks.

The report suggests that Ethiopias next STI framework should build on this progress and reinforce entrepreneurial and technological capacities as well as production linkages.

From technology transfer to innovation

The current Ethiopian STI policy gives priority to technology transfer, mainly referring to acquisition of technologies from abroad.

Implicit in this approach is the assumption that acquired technologies will be automatically assimilated in the local economy through learning, linkages and demonstration effects.

The report recommends that the next STIP framework should shift the focus of the national STI policy to the dynamic processes of technological learning and innovation, which are aligned with Ethiopias current economic reform agenda.

The focus of the new STI policy framework should be on technological learning and upgrading, and building strong innovation capacity through inter-firm linkages, including between local firms and foreign enterprises, particularly those operating in the country's industrial parks.

The STIP review offers specific recommendations to assist the government to create mature and effective systems to support innovation, with UNCTADs help.

Sectoral case studies

The STIP review also provides an in-depth analysis of two sectors as case studies for understanding how STI policy can stimulate technological upgrading and innovation and thereby improve the performance of industries identified as important for Ethiopia's development.

They are the apparel and textile sector for resource-based labour-intensive exports and the pharmaceuticals sector for knowledge-intensive import substitution.

The STIP review is based on fact-finding missions to Ethiopia conducted in December 2018 and March 2019, which included interviews with government ministries, public sector agencies, private sector firms, universities, research institutes, international organizations and other key stakeholders.

UNCTADs STIP reviews contribute to the development of innovation capacity and upgrading of technologies along with STI policy capacity so that science, technology and innovation policies can better contribute to development strategies.

The reviews evaluate science, technology and innovation capacity, policies and institutions from a neutral and independent perspective, offering suggestions for policy action to harness them for sustainable development.

So far, UNCTAD has completed 16 STIP reviews in 15 countries, in which the reviews have often ignited a renewal in STI policy, raised the profile of STI policy in national development strategies and facilitated the inclusion of STI activities in international cooperation plans.

Continued here:

How to launch Ethiopia's tech and innovation lift-off - UNCTAD

Challenges of the Indus Basin

In this article, I will summarize key discussion points on understanding and assessing the impact of climate change in the Indus Basin. This article is the outcome of a two-day meeting of the Indus Forum Working Group organized by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) this week in Dubai.

Experts from Afghanistan, India, China and Pakistan took part in this two-day meeting organized by the ICIMOD which currently holds the secretariat of this regional forum. I was invited as one of the experts in the working group meeting to contribute in the joint research programme to address the knowledge gap on basin-wide integrated issues of water, ecology, economy and adaptation. The working group was able to devise concrete steps and a viable roadmap for operationalizing and sustaining the joint research programme for which potential funding opportunities were also identified.

There was consensus among the experts to continue working in collaboration on four interlinked work packages baseline observations, climate change projections, climate change adaptation and capacity building and knowledge exchange. The experts were assigned responsibility to develop a workable research framework by integrating all four work packages into a comprehensive proposal. They, in turn, were able to provide key knowledge ingredients towards the development of a framework for integrated and sustainable basin-wide water resource management and its incremental effects on socioeconomic conditions of people living in the Basin.

The impact of climate and demographic changes on annual water flow as well as the cryosphere (solid water sources like glaciers and snowpack) were thoroughly discussed during the sessions of the working group. Contextual variations of country-specific issues and their interconnectedness with the larger ecology of the Indus Basin were also brought under discussion to help facilitate informed decision-making for the larger good of the 800 million people who are likely to be affected by climate change in the region.

In a nutshell, the experts were given the task to develop a framework for integrated basin-wide water resource assessment under the changing climate in the Indus Basin. It is believed that the joint research outcome will enable development of informed climate change adaptation strategies for informed decision-making about the sustainable management of water resources in the Basin.

Let me summarize the specific objectives of the joint research proposal for the readers. These were; one, to establish long-term monitoring sites in each of the four countries sharing the Indus Basin in order to better understand the spatial and temporal patterns of weather, snowpack, glacier mass balance and black carbon throughout the Upper Indus Basin. Two, develop scenarios to understand the impacts that climate may have on glaciers and water resources in the Upper Indus Basin.

Three, assess potential impacts of plausible future scenarios of cryosphere and climate changes on water, energy and food supply/demand. Four, utilize insights from all the above activities to construct/ develop robust adaptation strategies using a scientific and socioeconomic modelling framework. Five, build the capacity of human resources in the Basin; and six, disseminate and share information learned through the programme with relevant parties.

Based on these broad-based objectives the experts agreed that only regional cooperation beyond the immediate political and economic interests of nation state would usher in long-lasting stability in this ecologically sensitive region. Emanating from the deliberations, the delegates/experts from Afghanistan, China, India and Pakistan were able to put forth a concrete proposal under four different work packages as a policy support mechanism for regional cooperation.

The Indus Basin, which is shared by Afghanistan, China, India and Pakistan, gets most of its annual water flow from melting of glaciers and snowpack. According to ICIMOD estimates, the annual renewable water availability per capita in the Basin is expected to decrease from its current supply of 1329 m3 to below 750 m3 by 2050 with the rapid increase of basin population. The Basin is likely to undergo disruptions in its hydrological regime because of climate change with some serious implications on the life and economy of more than 300 million people living in the Basin.

The disruption in the hydrological balance (annual rate of glacial deposit and melting) and changing patterns of weather will be detrimental to the agro-based economy and livelihood of poor people. This calls for scientific research to understand the phenomena of abrupt changes and their impact on the cryosphere and associated water resources. However, scientific research alone will not suffice if it is not put to work for improving the quality of life of the people by investing prudently to reduce vulnerabilities through community based adaptation strategies.

In this context, one of the key challenges for researchers and practitioners is to bring together a coherent trans-boundary framework to address the challenges of climate change. Any trans-boundary arrangement requires researchers and practitioners to work closely and the regional states to facilitate coordination between researchers and practitioners. The integration out of ecological and hydrological necessity beyond political conflicts is key to the success of this initiative.

Even the long-term socioeconomic development of the countries in the Basin requires trans-boundary cooperation for optimal and prudent management of their water resources. This joint research initiative of the Indus Forum Working Group will be governed by the programme secretariat the ICIMOD a review committee of technical experts and steering committee for administrative oversight.

Despite the visible advantage of cooperation in the water sector among the neighbouring countries in the Basin, so far, there has been no initiative aimed at developing a synoptic understanding of the Indus water system as a whole. The proposed programme is the first of its kind that aims to systematically assess the historic and likely future trends of water resource availability and socio-economic impact across the entire Basin and the four countries sharing the Basin. This will provide policy and decision-makers within the Basin and beyond with the information and knowledge to support the development of evidence-based climate change adaptation planning in the Indus Basin.

South Asia has over one-fifth of the worlds population and is recognized amongst the most disaster-prone regions of the world (UNEP, 2003). The disadvantaged people of the developing countries of the region will be more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, as existing risks will increase and new ones will appear.

High Asia including the Hindu-Kush-Karakoram Himalaya (HKKH), Pamir and which includes the Indus Basin, is referred to as the Third Pole and constitutes one of the most extensive glacier-covered regions of the world outside the Polar Regions. It provides water to approximately 800 million people living in its catchments and it is believed that climate change will heavily affect this region. The loss of cryosphere will directly threaten livelihoods in the whole Basin, in addition to bringing about dramatic changes in its climate system, impacting various sectors such as agriculture, horticulture, hydropower generation, tourism, etc.

This is the right time for all of us to think beyond the national border if we have to save our region from the impending destructions due to climate change effects. The ICIMOD has provided a great opportunity to initiate this dialogue and the Indus Forum Working Group can play a pivotal role in promoting this most needed regional cooperation.

The writer is a social development and policy adviser, and a freelance columnist based in Islamabad.

Email: [emailprotected]

Twitter: @AmirHussain76

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Challenges of the Indus Basin - The News International

By Marjorie Muyrong

Conclusion

Last week, the link between the economy and ecology was explored as premise to answering the question of how the Philippines must rethink its development strategies. After all, adaptation and mitigation to climate change is most urgent in a country directly facing the Pacific. However, equally valid is the countrys desire to adapt new technologies already available abroad as part of its growth agenda. It is also hopeful that the Filipino people are concerned about potential labor displacement with industry 4.0. The question that remains is whether these new technologies set to be adopted all over the world support sustainable development and would not further aggravate the situation of those populations already vulnerable to climate change.

The dilemma of sustainable development in the Philippineslies in the fact that our climate-change problems are caused by the warming ofthe entire planet, and this worldwide warming is caused by the actions ofeveryone in this planet. Unfortunately for the Philippines, our contribution toglobal warming in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions does not compare to thedamage caused by typhoon exposure. While the Philippine emissions in 2014 wasat 106.9 metric tons, China contributes the most at 10,328.7 MT, which isaround 30 percent of all emissions.

However,even if the Philippines remains to be a low carbon-emitter, our countryexperiences the brunt of climate-change impacts. In February 2013, an empirical studylinking windspeed exposure to socioeconomic variables was published. The studyfound that, on average compared to families who did not experience typhoons,income of families exposed to typhoons is lower by 6.6 percent, thereby leadingto human capital disinvestments. In November that year, Supertyphoon Yolanda(Haiyan) hit the Philippines, causing impacts that Filipinos in Leyte and Samarprovinces have not fully recovered from until now.

InDecember 2015, the Philippines, led by then Ateneo School of Government deanTony La Via, sent a 158-member delegation to the 21st Conference of Parties(dubbed as COP21) in Paris, France, that ultimately led to the Paris Agreement.During these negotiations, the countrys negotiators foughtto set the limit of global warming only until 1.5 degrees Celsius abovepre-industrial age and not until 2.0C. Unfortunately, this year, the Duterteadministration had announced that it will no longer send delegates to climatetalks, even when a more recent empirical studyin 2018 from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies links rainfallshocks with poverty.

Economicgrowth has always been linked with capital accumulation and technologicaladvancement. Understandably, countries would want to be part of the industry4.0 bandwagon. Economic growth is simply the expansion of production. Ittherefore relies on the ability of labor and capital in transforming rawmaterials into higher-value goods. Economists have always ignored the role ofnatural resources in the equation, and its perceived abundance has been theusual explanation for ignoring the role of natural resource capital inproduction. However, ignoring land as another factor of production like laborand capital ignores how land is also able to transform seeds into crops.Ignoring marine resources means forgetting how the vast blue seas allow fish togrow from fingerlings. Mother Earth has always been an economic producerherself.

InSeptember this year, Pope Francis sent a video message to the participants ofthe UN Climate Action Summit held in New York. In his message, the Pope linkedour climate and environmental problems with the human, ethical and socialdegradation that we experience every day. He then called us to think aboutthe meaning of our models of consumption and production, and the processes ofeducation and awareness, to make them consistent with human dignity. There isalso the Ling Jiou Mountain Buddhist Society, a Taiwan-based group of Buddhistmonasteries founded by Chan Master Hsin Tao, which aims to establish theUniversity for Life and Peace in Myanmar, as an educational institution thatwould respond to the ecological crisis. In January 2019, they invited a groupof professors and researchers from various fields of study from across theworld for the first Experimental Winter School at Yangon, Myanmar. At the endof two weeks, there was agreement among the researchers that changing economicbehavior would require changing mentality in everyday life.

The dilemma of sustainable development is understandably difficult. Rethinking our development strategies, therefore, require strategies beyond economic planning. It requires changing economic thinking at the global scale. People across the world must change their consumption behavior if we hope to lessen the climate-change impacts at home. We must, therefore, rethink our participation in climate talks. We must also rethink how we teach basic economics. Perhaps, most important of all, we must rethink the power of the ordinary people in bringing about change. So, how do we harness that power?

****

Marjorie Muyrongis a PhD Sociology student at La Trobe University. She is currently on-leavefrom Ateneo de Manila University as an instructor of the Economics Department.In January 2019, she joined the two-week 2019 Experimental Winter School atYangon, Myanmar.

Read more from the original source:

Resiliency and sustainability in the face of industry 4.0 | Eagle Watch - Business Mirror

As the ecological crisis deepens, nearing the infamous Tipping Point taking us closer to planetary catastrophe we are being led to believe that an imminent greening of the world economy will deliver us from a very dark future. Somehow, against all logic, we have adopted a collective faith in the willingness of ruling governments and corporations to do the right thing. Carbon footprints will be drastically reduced thanks to a combination of market stratagems and technological magic. While greenhouse mitigation seamlessly advances, the ruling forces can return to what they do best indulge their religion of endless accumulation and growth.

That scenario, so widely embellished, turns out to be the saddest and most crippling of all grand illusions. Nowhere is its peculiar influence stronger than in that worst of all environmental culprits, the United States.

The overblown 2015 Paris Agreement was touted as the last great hope, but is now better described as a well-intentioned exercise in futility, closer to James Hansens dismissive fraud with no action, just promises. At Paris the 200 members settled on a 20/20/20 formula: reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent, increase renewable energy sources to 20 percent of the total, elevate overall energy efficiency by 20 percent. That would theoretically keep global average temperatures at less than two degrees Celsius (ideally 1.5 degrees) above pre-industrial levels.

The problem is that all targets are voluntary, with no binding mechanisms. Under Paris each nation (currently 187 signatories) determines its own plans, sets its own outcomes, and reports on its carbon-mitigation efforts. In fact no members have yet moved forward to implement goals thought to be consistent with the 20/20/20 prescription and most are woefully short. While President Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris arrangements, its added carbon footprint turns out to be no worse and indeed better than other major emitters China, India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Canada, Mexico.

Despite greater reliance on sustainable energy in many nations, heightened overall economic growth has meant higher global carbon emissions of 1.6 percent in 2017 and 2.7 percent in 2018, with anticipated sharper increases for 2019. The fossil economy moves full-speed ahead: oil and gas extractions have reached all-time highs, with no slowdowns expected. Even as renewables significantly climb upward, as in China, India, the U.S., and Europe, we see a steadily rising carbon footprint because of total increases in economic growth and energy consumption. The top 10 countries presently account for 67 percent of all greenhouse emissions, with little change in sight.

Recently the United Nations Environmental Program, hardly a radical source, projected that by 2030 global production of fossil fuels will more than double what can be consumed to reverse further global warming. In other words, the Paris accords are essentially null and void. The UNEP report, extrapolating from emissions data among eight leading national emitters, concludes that humanity is moving along a suicidal path to ecological oblivion marked by temperature increases of four degrees Celsius, perhaps worse.

Even if the 20/20/20 targets were faithfully met by all leading nations, however, little would change. In fact the sum of all pledges at Paris would not keep temperatures from rising two degrees (even more) in coming decades. Overall fossil-fuel consumption dictated by soaring growth levels easily cancels such efforts, so that existing carbon-mitigation strategies turn out to be illusory. In fact many keen observers believe it is already too late, that burdened by a legacy of political failure we are headed straight toward planetary disaster. Waves of militant climate protests across the world speak to mounting public anger, yet these protests (and others before them) have yet to generate the kind of cohesive political opposition that could reverse the crisis. We appear trapped in a cycle of futility, a kind of psychological immobility that David Wallace-Wells, in Uninhabitable World, refers to as climate nihilism. Mass protests in such a milieu are not readily translated into anti-system change or even far-reaching reforms like those associated with the various Green New Deals.

According to writers like Wallace-Wells, we are trapped in a world moving inexorably toward an additional four or five degree Celsius by the end of the century, if not sooner. He concludes: . . . if the next 30 years of industrial activity trace the same arc upward as the last 30 years have, whole regions will become unlivable by any standard we have today. Ecological cataclysm will befall large sections of Europe, North America, and South America. In this setting the world economy would be reduced to shambles, making Karl Marxs famous crisis theory appear rather tepid. Wallace-Wells adds: Warming by three degrees Celsius would unleash suffering beyond anything that humans have ever experienced through many millenia of strains and strife and all-out war.

Along with industrial activity Wallace-Wells could have mentioned the even more problematic realm of agriculture and food: that will be the weakest link in a crisis-ridden system. Presently up to 80 percent of all fresh water goes to farming half of that total utilized for meat production. We live in a world where it takes 2400 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef and 685 gallons for one gallon of milk, compared to just a few gallons for equivalent amounts of grains and vegetables. Half of all arable land goes to corrosive animal grazing, with no decline expected as more nations reach industrialized status. Taking fossil-fuel use into account, the carbon footprint of meat-based agriculture could be 30 percent of the total, even more. Since more than two billion people are now deprived of adequate food and water, the severe unsustainability of capitalist agribusiness and fast-food industry should need little elaboration.

Amid fashionable pleas to save the planet and recent surge in climate activism, few countries have embraced a program of serious carbon mitigation. For government and corporate elites, it is continued business-as-usual. Writing in Climate Leviathan, British Marxists Geoff Mann and Jonathan Wainwright lament: The possibility of rapid global carbon mitigation as climate-change abatement has passed. The worlds elites, at least, appear to have abandoned it if they ever took it seriously. Instead, the real plan going forward is one of adaptation to a continuously heating planet.

The same corporate behemoths that dominate the world economy also shape decisions impacting the ecological future. At present, according to Peter Phillips in Giants, 389 major transnational corporations manage a world system worth an estimated $255 trillion, much of that invested in a boundless trove of fossil fuels. The U.S. and Europe hold nearly two-thirds of that total. No more than 100 of these corporations are currently responsible for at least 70 percent of all greenhouse emissions. At the top of this pyramid 17 financial giants drive the world capitalist economy. To date there are no signs that the chieftains of fossil capitalism are ready to deviate from their historically destructive course.

In the U.S. nowadays, there is much inflated talk among Big Tech elites of slashing the carbon footprint, a move obviously beneficial to the corporate image. Managers at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook seem anxious to launch their own greening crusades. They ritually tout green technology as the preferred route to carbon mitigation. Jeff Bezos claims Amazon will derive 100 percent of its energy from alternative sources by 2030. Other tech oligarchs, in command of a dynamic technological universe, seem to be promising a carbon-free economy at least partly in response to mounting worker protests.

Another fine illusion: Big Tech and Big Oil have in fact decided to march forward in tight partnership, much to the advantage of those supposedly harmful fossil-fuel interests. The idea of greening apparently does not extend to moves by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others to profit from assisting those giants (Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, etc.) to locate better, cheaper, and more efficient drilling and fracking locations. Big Tech can furnish precisely what is most needed: lucrative cloud facilities, AI, robotics, troves of geological and meteorological data. This has been especially helpful in exploiting the mass shale oil boom in Canada and the U.S. Referring to ExxonMobil in particular, Bezos has said that we need to help them instead of vilifying them. That could mean an extra 50,000 barrels of shale oil daily for just one climate-destroying enterprise.

While business at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon is doing just fine, worker discontent flows through the hardly-dispossessed ranks protests and walkouts directed not only at all the climate hypocrisy but at the spread of other partnerships with law enforcement, border-security agencies, intelligence operations, and of course the Pentagon. Another Big Tech scheme to capture and sequester carbon emissions, or CCS is widely viewed as another fantasy, highly problematic both technically and economically.

The stubborn reality is that, by 2040, the world will be consuming fully one-third more energy than is presently the case probably 85 percent of that from oil, gas, and coal. Many trillions of dollars in fossil fuels remain to be exploited. Corporate logic dictates that such unbelievable sources of wealth be extracted to the maximum, whatever greening targets might be set at Paris and later environmental summits.

Meanwhile, reputable economic projections indicate that China will have a world-leading GDP of $50 trillion by 2040, followed by the U.S. at $34 trillion and India at $28 trillion. Those nations will presumably command more wealth than the rest of the world combined. More daunting, the leading two countries will possess more wealth and control more resources than the total of what exists on the planet today. What could this frightening scenario mean for energy consumption? For climate disruption? For social misery? For agriculture and food shortages? For resource wars and the militarism that figures to be both cause and effect of such wars? Could Paris and its succeeding international accords or any Green New Deal make a meaningful difference on such a wildly unsustainable planet?

As the crisis worsens, with few if any strong counter-forces on the horizon, what we desperately need is an entirely new political imaginary one that finally sets the world free of transnational corporate domination.

The title of this article comes from the seminal 1937 Jean Revoir film Grand Illusion, in that case focused on the ideological mirage of warfare.

See the rest here:

The Grand Illusion - CounterPunch

Find the series on APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUKUFind out more on Sustainable Asia.

Episode OneEpisode Two

Gerard Barron, DeepGreenGregory Stone, DeepGreenDavid Santillo, GreenpeaceMatthew Gianni, Deep Sea Conservation CoalitionChong Chen, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and TechnologyJulia Sigwart, Queens University, BelfastDuncan Currie, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition

Executive producer and host: Marcy Trent LongProducer: Samuel ColombieSound engineer: Chris WoodIntro/outro music: Alex Mauboussin

Marcy Trent Long: Welcome to Mining the Deep, a podcast series by Sustainable Asia. My name is Marcy Trent Long.

In the previous two episodes, we looked at the growing need for minerals to build our renewable energy sources. We saw how deep-seabed mining might offer a solution, but we also learned about the risks of destroying unique habitats like hydrothermal vents and the financial burden these experimental ventures can have on developing nations.

In this episode, well follow mining company DeepGreen out to the open ocean, more specifically to the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

International Seabed Authority (ISA) meeting: The Clarion Clipperton Zone, or the CCZed or the CCZee, depending upon your nationality Its probably the most studied area for these seabed deposits in the world.

Marcy: This is a recording from a 2009 meeting by the International Seabed Authority. Theyre discussing an area of seabed the size of the United States, stretched out in the Pacific waters between Hawaii and Mexico.

ISA meeting: And it is in this area that most of the large deposits have been found over time.

Marcy: The mineral deposits in this area are concentrated in whats known as nodules. Potato-sized lumps of black rock full of manganese, nickel and other minerals. They form over thousands of years, when mineral particles sink to the bottom of the ocean and accumulate around a hard object like a sharks tooth. So if theyre just there, lying on the seafloor, maybe they could solve our demand for minerals.

Gerard Barron: Its a resource made by Mother Nature that just happens to sit on the abyssal plain 4,000 metres below sea level, in one concentrated area.

Marcy: This is Gerard Barron. Weve heard him in episode two as well. Hes the CEO of mining company DeepGreen.

Gerard: This is a very, very unique resource with enough nickel and cobalt, and manganese and copper, to electrify our entire transport fleet four times over. You know, its not full of gold, its not full of precious metals, its full of base metals that we need to build batteries.

Marcy: I also spoke with Dr Gregory Stone, the chief scientist at DeepGreen.

Gregory Stone: These base metals, the copper, the nickel, the cobalt, the manganese the atomic properties of these metals we cant replace that. Theyre really quite extraordinary. Theyre like rubber bands that store energy and release it.

Marcy: Gregory and Gerard are clearly sold on the concept. And thats understandable. If the world accepts deep-seabed mining, this could become a multi-billion dollar industry, with DeepGreen at the forefront.

NGOs like Deep Sea Mining Campaign are already suspicious of Gerard Barron, an early investor in Nautilus, who cashed out of the disastrous Papua New Guinea project before it fell apart.

So its worth trying to understand what these nodules really mean for our renewable energy future and what opponents of deep-seabed mining think. Heres Dr David Santillo, the Greenpeace scientist weve heard previously.

David Santillo: I think that theres a real danger in conflating the green revolution with a need inevitably to mine the seabed. Its true that were using a lot more metals now, and quite a range of different metals, including those rare earths that we perhaps werent using anything like as extensively in the past; and that if we move towards an increasingly electronics-based economy in lots of countries, smart technologies, if were moving towards renewable energy, that the demands for some of those minerals are going to increase, at least in the short term. But the question is really: what can we do about the supplies of those? Are there not ways in which we can better recover those metals in obsolete products, and make sure that were building these devices, whether theyre solar panels, electronics for wind energy, for vehicle technology, can we not build them in ways in which we can actually close the loop much more effectively on recycling? Some of those minerals that we go to such lengths to get out from resources on land, theyre recycled at the moment less than 1%.

Marcy: Thats a good point. Do we even need to mine the seabed if we already have so much nickel and copper in the products we throw away every day?

Matthew Gianni: We need as a society to make much better use of the resources that we have.

Marcy: Matthew Gianni, from Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.

Matthew: And until we get up to a level where were recycling the kinds of metals that are found in the deep ocean in the products were using today We shouldnt be opening up a whole new area of resource exploitation, with unknown ecological consequences, before we start making better use of what we already have.

David: When people look into the future, they see minerals still as a non-renewable resource, of course, but also as a non-recyclable resource, almost as a single-use resource. And if we look at it in that way, then of course, youre looking at something which is finite on land, and equally is going to be finite if we mine the seabed. So this is not a solution to an unending supply of minerals. In most cases, its just going to look to extend the supplies of these minerals by a few decades. But it doesnt break us out of that same approach of unsustainable use, and perhaps, even greater unsustainable use in the future. And if weve got the ingenuity as a species to even consider going out and mining the seafloor, surely we can put that ingenuity to better use to protect the seabed and to make much better use, and much smarter use, of the minerals that we have already.

Marcy: I put that question to Gerard and Gregory of DeepGreen. Do they not agree that for a truly sustainable future, we need to work towards a circular economy?

Gerard: As an organisation, were big believers in the circular economy. The circular economy is all about moving towards more recycling. And I often hear people say: Recycling should take the place, we shouldnt need to mine anything new, we should just recycle. Well, you know, thats just, unfortunately, an uninformed position. Because to allow recycling, you need a bigger base load of metals. You need to be able to have more metals in the system, and then you need to encourage recycling.

Gregory: We do believe that in some number of years, its possible to acquire enough metal with a corresponding recycling strategy for those metals, that we should be able to close that loop. But we simply dont have enough in circulation right now to do that.

Marcy: Thats true, take copper for instance. More than 80% of copper is currently recycled, but the demand for copper is so high that all the recycled copper amounts to just a third of what we need. So only when we have more copper in our production and recycling systems will we be able to close the loop. But, if we can close the loop in the near future, is it even worth it to start up a whole new extractive industry in the meantime?

Break to thank sponsors.

Marcy: In 2016, researchers at the University of Technology, Sydney looked at the quantity of minerals that is economically available to mine on land, and they concluded: A transition towards a 100% renewable energy supply can take place without deep-seabed mining. I put those results to Gregory.

Gregory: Thats true. But you have to think about where that metal is. All the high-grade ore sites, people go there first. And weve already started to move down, Im told, to lower-grade terrestrial ores. And also nickel, some, or much, or a lot of that is found beneath tropical rainforest. So you want to think about where that metal is going to come from that is in the ground. But yes, if you want to just keep digging, and going for the terrestrial deposits, you can keep doing that. Thats true.

Marcy: So, if we want to get enough base materials in the system to achieve a circular economy, its not really a question of whether we need to be mining the seabed, but whether we prefer it over mining on land. And this is the key argument. Youll hear it from everyone who supports deep-seabed mining: its the best option.

Gerard: The challenge when you getting a new industry going is: how do you benchmark what youre doing versus what the known alternatives are? And the known alternatives, of course, are whats happening on land. And thats there for all of us to see. And so the question when were trying to build the case for ocean nodules is: is it better? The fact is, we dont have to do any of the things that are normally associated with land-based mining. We dont have to blast and drill and create nasty tailings ponds.

Marcy: Tailings, by the way, is whats left over after the minerals have been separated from the ore. In land-based mining, theyre usually toxic lakes of cyanide or other acids.

Gerard: You can understand why people are anxious. You know, when you wake up in the morning and you realise theres been a tailings dam spill in Papua New Guinea, or villages have been wiped out in Brazil due to tailings collapse. You know, people are suspicious of the mining industry.

Gregory: You dont have that with this. You dont have tailings. You have these rocks that you pick up, and you process them. I see it as the most earth-friendly way to get these metals.

Marcy: So its completely harmless then, right? I know were not tearing down hydrothermal vents here, like the Lost City or the ones with the scaly-foot snail. These are just nodules, rocks with a bunch of minerals in them, that we can scoop up

Matthew: Theyre basically finding that what heretofore had been considered, or thought of, as a very large area of deep abyssal plain that consisted of rocks and mud and these so-called polymetallic nodules with metals such as cobalt, nickel, magnesium and copper in them, are actually ecosystems of relatively high biodiversity.

Marcy: So animals live on and among these nodules? To find out more, I asked Chong Chen, the deep-sea biologist who studies the scaly-foot snail.

Chong Chen: So we have new species of sponges and also molluscs. There are these very rare molluscs called monoplacophorans that love the nodules, and they will basically occur only on the nodules. Many species have only ever been found on the nodules. And then you have small species of So, theyre not big. Theyre not big animals like the hydrothermal vent ones, because theres no energy production. But you have many, many small species like worms, snails, limpets and sponges, that live on these nodules and nowhere else.

Marcy: So whereas in hydrothermal vents you get large species like crabs and sea worms all grouped together around the vent system

Julia Sigwart: Habitats like nodule fields are much more widespread.

Marcy: Thats Julia Sigwart, Chongs research partner.

Julia: Theyre much more difficult to study, in terms of the biodiversity, whats there, how abundant the animals are, what the ranges of the species that live there [are] We actually know much less about the biodiversity in nodule fields. That doesnt mean the biodiversity isnt there and isnt valuable, it just means that its spread out over a bigger area.

Marcy: And even though the animals that live there are so spread out, the nodule mining still poses a high risk to their survival because of the scale of this activity.

Matthew: If you put a mining operation into one of these areas, and the mining occurs at the level [of] the target production levels established by the ISA, the International Seabed Authority, which is roughly three million tonnes of nodules per year A typical mining operation over the course of a 25 to 30-year contract would directly impact somewhere between 8 and 10 thousand square kilometres of ocean bottom, and have a knock-on impact of another 10 or several tens of thousands of ocean bottom.

Marcy: But Gerard of DeepGreen says were looking at this all wrong. When asking the question: Whats better, mining on land or in the ocean?

Gerard: You cant look at that question and answer by looking at one simple area. And so we decided that it was necessary to do a full lifecycle analysis, from cradle to gate, looking at a multitude of areas.

Marcy: So what Gerard and his team did was to look at seven areas of potential damage. Things like biodiversity loss, but also the amount of carbon it would release. They compared the results for both mining methods, and found that, on the whole, land-based mining would be worse than seabed mining.

Gerard: Theres a lot of assumptions that people, especially NGO people, like to jump to. And thats because they dont look at these seven areas, they look at their area. And, you know, as responsible citizens of the planet, I think you cant afford to do that. You have to look at this from a complete ecosystem perspective.

Marcy: But theres one key problem with this: right now, we already have land-based mining. So is that just going to stop when we start mining the ocean?

Duncan Currie: Its not simply a question of: do you take the minerals from land or from sea?

Marcy: Duncan Currie, an environmental lawyer with Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.

Duncan: Because the reality is, if you have seabed mining, youre going to be almost certainly using both. Minerals are going to continue to be produced from land as well as from the deep ocean. And therefore, the question arises: are you not opening up a whole new area of environmental damage by starting seabed mining?

Marcy: Matthew Gianni agrees.

Matthew: Theres no guarantee that even if you were to mine, say cobalt, in the deep ocean, that the worst of the terrestrial mining operations would shut down as a result. To the contrary, they may even get worse, in the sense that terrestrial mining operations that are trying to improve their human rights and labour standards, trying to improve their environmental performance, might end up cutting back on investments in these sorts of things if they had to compete with cheaper metals coming out of the deep oceans. You know, they might decide to cut costs and ignore, or otherwise work to limit or reduce, environmental regulations and rules, or child labour standards, or whatever.

Marcy: This sounds like something that really needs to be worked out first. Surely we cannot allow seabed mining to start if we know it will make land-based mining even worse.

But we have a chance to do this right. Right now at the International Seabed Authority, member states are negotiating a set of rules for seabed mining. Its called the Mining Code, and it even includes provisions on compensating countries that depend on land-based mining. We might do something properly this time, right? Well scientists and environmental groups are very, very concerned about the way the International Seabed Authority works.

Matthew: Theres a growing recognition that the world isnt ready to start doing this, and a real worry that the ISA, because of its bylaws and the structure and the decision-making process thats in play at the moment, will drag the world into deep-seabed mining without the full consent of the international community as a whole, or the ability for all of us to collectively decide whether this is a good idea or not, and how much more information we need before we can make informed decisions.

Marcy: In the last episode of Mining the Deep: whats going on at the International Seabed Authority, and do we have a chance to set things straight before large-scale seabed mining really takes off?

Mining the Deep is hosted by me, Marcy Trent Long, and produced by Samuel Colombie, in collaboration with China Dialogue. The series is mixed by Chris Wood.

Thanks to all our guests for helping us unravel this complicated issue, to Miguel Urmeneta for his voice-over, and Alexander Mauboussin for his intro music, made from repurposed and recovered waste items. Additional thanks to the podcast After the Fact by Pew Charitable Trusts, for providing audio from a speech by Michael Lodge. Thank you to the entire Sustainable Asia team, Bonnie and Heidi Au, Josie Chan, Crystal Wu and Jill Baxter.

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Podcast: Rich pickings on the abyssal plain? - chinadialogue ocean

Credit: InnovateBC

Innovate BC has awarded $5.3 million to 25 BC research projects through Ignite since the program launched in 2016.

Innovate BC, the crown agency supporting the provinces thriving innovation sector, has awarded two B.C.-based research projects with a total of $448,000 through its Ignite Program.

Ignite awards up to $300,000 to research projects that address an industry problem in the natural resource or applied sciences. Most compelling, the program funds projects that address some of the worlds most pressing challenges by turning innovative ideas into real life solutions.

In B.C., were extremely fortunate to have world-class researchers and industry leading companies working hand-in-hand to develop new technologies that have a positive impact on our economy, environment, and overall standard of living, says Raghwa Gopal, President and CEO of Innovate BC.

The first project is a collaboration between Dr. James Olson of UBC, industry partner Polymer Research Technologies (PRT), and the BC Research Institute. Theyre developing a novel solution to chemically recycle polyurethane foam waste from the automotive, transportation, furniture, construction, insulation and appliance industries, creating a reusable, recyclable, economical, and environmentally friendly raw material alternative to petroleum-based virgin polyol.

Kambiz Taheri, Founder and CTO of Polymer Research Technologies, says the $300,000 award will help the company push into a more active phase of development. The funding will allow us to perform all of the necessary and crucial R&D work at UBC and validate the sustainability and scalability of our innovative technology by our key customers, Taheri says.

Recipients of the second award, Dr. Konrad Walus of UBC and industry partner Aspect Biosystems, are using $148,000 to develop a turn-key manufacturing platform that will allow upscaled production of 3D-printed tissue used to radically advance the future of drug development, regenerative medicine, and cellular therapies. This works success will mean animals are no longer needed to discover new therapeutics, doctors can understand how a patient will react to a drug before prescribing it, and lifesaving transplant organs are created, not harvested.

Investing in deep technology for medical applications does not only improve health outcomes, but drives our economy, says Tamer Mohamed, Aspect Biosystems CEO. This support from Innovate BC is a testament to the provincial governments belief in innovation and its power to create impact and value.

The Innovate BC Ignite Program has supported the hiring, training and retention of more than 65 highly qualified personnel in the first two years of the program. Furthermore, several projects have reported that receiving the award has elevated the credibility of their research and helped attract additional investment.

The program has produced several success stories and supported some of the provinces top tech companies. Jetti Resources, Axine Water Technologies and Terramera are notable past winners who have gone on to secure additional funding, awards and recognition after receiving their Ignite Award.

Overall, Innovate BC has awarded $5.3 million to 25 BC research projects through Ignite since the program launched in 2016. Successful projects are selected based on their promising commercial and technical viability as well as their ability to be market ready within three years. For more information about the program and past winners, visit the Ignite Program page.

Created by BCBusiness in partnership with Innovate BC

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Igniting Innovation - BCBusiness

According to the Government of Western Australia, China was the worlds largest producer of rare earths (71%), graphite (68%) and vanadium (54%) in 2018, and a major producer of all other battery minerals. Moreover, the global economic growth and increased intensity of use of vanadium in steel and emerging vanadium redox batteries (VRBs) is expected to drive near term growth in vanadium demand.

Western Australia, which accounts for the largest lithium production at the global level, also holds the 4th largest vanadium and manganese resources.

Surefire Resources NL (ASX: SRN) is a base metals focussed company that has ample exposure to this lucrative opportunity, owning exploration assets for vanadium in Western Australia. The company operates in the region seeking to target an extraordinary opportunity in base metal exploration while developing its projects.

SRNs vanadium exploration projects include Unaly Hill and Victory Bore (E57/1068 and E57/1036) in Western Australia, with licence areas located roughly 500km north of Perth Sandstone in the East Murchison Mineral Field of Western Australia and forming a 25km long contiguous tenement holding along strike of the Youanmi Shear zone.

Geological Composition of the Projects

Historical and Current Exploration Activities

SRN completed a drilling programme at the Unaly Hill project during the year ended 30 June 2019, intended to test additional magnetic anomalies identified along strike of the already established JORC Inferred resource of 86Mt @ 0.42% V2O5, with the below attributes:

Significant results from the drilling programme included:

The drilling shows that, in accordance with the aeromagnetic data, the mineralisation at Unaly Hill remains open for a considerable distance along strike from the previous drilling.

Recently, SRN intersected several vanadium-bearing magnetite units with significant intercepts at its Victory Bore Project.

To learn more about the other developments in the process of RC drilling, READ: Surefire Victory Bore RC Drill Results Out.

In addition, SRN evaluated and budgeted an in-fill drilling programme designed to delineate a JORC Indicated Resource within the current inferred resource at Unaly, while the planning for the advancement of the project to a scoping study is under pipeline.

To read more on the Detailed view of Surefires activities for the quarter ended 30 September 2019 , READ: SRN Quarterly Results, Eyeing Exploration Prospects.

Metallurgical Test work

SRN also completed a comprehensive metallurgical test work programme (developed and supervised by METS Engineering Group based in Perth) on the Unaly vandiferous magnetite core obtained from diamond drill hole UHDM001.

The metallurgical test work was dedicated on the salt roasting process, which is a frequently used procedure for processing the vanadiferous titanomagnetites to recover vanadium from the ore.

The test work looked at the effects of grind size on mineral liberation and magnetic separation and addressed the parameters of comminution and physical characterisation, mineralogy, magnetic beneficiation and salt roasting.

The advanced test work programme successfully achieved a 192% to 367% vanadium upgrade with V2O5 concentrate grades up to 1.43%, showing consistent vanadium grades and recoveries across the three mineralised zones tested.

SRN Vanadium Resources

The acquisition of the Victory Bore vanadium project in April 2019 significantly increased Surefires vanadium resource base and exploration potential, making it one of the largest vanadium resource holders in Australia. The combined Inferred Mineral Resource for SRN including Unaly Hill vanadium project and Victory Bore Vanadium Project was estimated at 237 Mt grading ~0.42- 44% V2O5 with a contained V2O5 content of 102,900 tonnes.

The magnetic anomalies within both licence areas have the potential for not only an increased resource tonnage but for larger zones of higher-grade vanadium mineralisation as well.

SRN had previously established a significant JORC vanadium resource at Unaly Hill from drilling 3km of magnetic anomaly corresponding with the cumulous magnetite layers within the intrusive.

View at Vanadiums Outlook

Rarely found metal, Vanadium has primary utility in the steel industry for metal alloys like high-speed tools, titanium alloys and aircraft. However, the rapidly developing energy storage (battery) sector has significant utility for vanadium with the expanding use and increasing penetration of the vanadium redox batteries (VRBs), which use the unique ability of vanadium to exist in solution in four different oxidation states to store energy.

The inclusion of Vanadium on the Australian Governments list of critical minerals in Australia validates the growing strategic importance of Vanadium to the Australian economy.

A reduction in global feedstock capacity on the supply side and the declining global inventories along with several other international uncertainties have caused the global vanadium price to rise. Having such positive prospects, SRN can be a significant player in the vanadium market, globally.

SRN stock traded at a price of $0.002 on 29 November 2019 (1:50 PM AEST) with a market capitalisation of $1.26 million.

Disclaimer

This website is a service of Kalkine Media Pty. Ltd. A.C.N. 629 651 672. The website has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as a complete source of information on any particular company. The above article is sponsored but NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold the stock of the company (or companies) under discussion. We are neither licensed nor qualified to provide investment advice through this platform.

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Cannabis companies that sell both medicinal weed and recreational pot. Marijuana stocks to look at. Marijuana mergers and acquisitions. Dispensary data analytics. Upcoming marijuana IPOsThose phrases have become increasingly common as marijuana legalization spreads.

Global spending on legal cannabis is expected to grow 230% to $32 billion in 2020 as compared to $9.5 in 2017, according to Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics. As of June 29, 2018 the United States Marijuana Index, despite a lot of uncertainty around regulations, has over the past 1 year gained 71.49%, as compared to about 12% gain seen by the S&P 500.

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Shedding Light on Surefire Resources Unaly Hill and Victory Bore Vanadium Projects - Kalkine Media

AUBURN, Calif. New regulations for vacation rentals in eastern Placer County will take effect in January with the county Board of Supervisors recently voting to approve a short-term rental ordinance.

The ordinance is intended to strike a balance of reducing neighborhood nuisances like noise and parking issues related to vacation rentals without undermining the market for this important guest accommodation.

Among its key provisions, the ordinance establishes a new permitting requirement to operate a residence as a vacation rental property. The new permits would not be required for more traditional lodging types like hotels or timeshares, or homes within resorts that are managed through a resort management company.

The new regulations define quiet hours between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., and include a requirement to provide bear bins for garbage.

They also set occupancy limits after 10 p.m. of two adults per bedroom, plus two additional people, excluding children under 16. Occupancy limits were revised from a first draft of the ordinance to allow greater flexibility to accommodate families with children. The revision allows the Community Development Resource Agency director to increase occupancy limits on a case-by-case basis to ensure that large families are not left out of the rental market.

Fire safety is also addressed in the ordinance. Outdoor wood-burning fires and charcoal grills would be prohibited at vacation rentals to reduce the risk of fire. The application for a permit requires a safety inspection by the local fire district once every three years to verify installation of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and a fire extinguisher, and that barbecues and outdoor fireplaces are in compliance with fire code.

Property owners will be required to designate a local point of contact who can quickly respond in person to any complaints about their guests. And either guests or the property owner could be fined for citations. Penalties could escalate with repeat violations, and more than three citations in a year could result in a vacation rental permit being revoked.

With an overwhelming majority of vacation rental properties located in the North Lake Tahoe region 3,638 out of 3,778 of the total countywide the ordinance applies only to properties above 5,000 feet in elevation.

Vacation rentals in western Placer County will not require a short-term rental permit but will still be required to obtain a transient occupancy tax certificate and comply with the TOT ordinance.

Vacation rental owners within a residential association may request an exemption from the short-term rental ordinance and must demonstrate that the association requirements cover noise, parking and trash and that fire requirements are met. Single-family homes in resort areas not managed by the resort are also eligible for an exemption if they meet those requirements.

The board also approved fee amounts for the permits $200.18 for professionally managed properties and $337.13 for privately managed properties. The fees are intended to cover the estimated annual cost to administer the short-term rental program of $455,620, as well as the cost of fire inspections by local fire departments. Fees for rentals managed professionally are lower because those properties have historically presented fewer code compliance issues and better response to complaints.

The permits must be renewed annually by March 31.

Vacation rentals have long been a part of eastern Placer Countys tourism-based economy, and lodging taxes paid by guests are an important source of funding for local infrastructure projects and services.

With the rise of online vacation rental booking services like Homeaway and Airbnb, an increasing number of homeowners are offering their properties part-time as lodging.

Staff and our partners and the fire districts have moved expeditiously to address this situation, said District 5 Supervisor Cindy Gustafson. I really appreciate the time and dedication it has taken to move this forward so quickly.

County staff brought a first draft of the ordinance to the board for consideration Oct. 22. The board approved the introduction of a revised draft of the ordinance Nov. 5. With todays adoption of the ordinance, it will become effective Jan. 1, 2020.

See the rest here:

North Lake Tahoe vacation rentals impacted most with new regulations - Rocklin & Roseville Today

Thanksgiving is a traditional time for Americans to celebrate Earths bounty. The whole of humanity, however, can be thankful that extraordinary advances in agriculture have enabled food producers to keep pace with a fourfold increase in population since 1900 and rising standards of living in the developing world. Can that progress be sustained in the face of climate change? This months selection of books and reports addresses this fundamental question from a variety of perspectives. Their answers may cause you to look more closely at whats on your plate over the holiday.

As always, the descriptions of the books and reports are drawn and/or adapted from copy provided by the publishers or organizations that released them. When two dates of publication are provided, the second is the date for the paperback edition.

The Fate of Food: What Well Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World, by Amanda Little (Penguin Random House 2019, 352 pages, $27.00)

The race to reinvent the global food system is on, and the challenge is twofold: We must solve the existing problems of industrial agriculture while also preparing for the pressures ahead. Through her interviews with farmers, scientists, activists, and engineers, Amanda Little, a professor of journalism and writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, explores new and old approaches to food production while charting the growth of a movement that could redefine sustainable food on a grand scale. Little asks tough questions: Can GMOs actually be good for the environment? Are we facing the end of animal meat? What will it take to eliminate harmful chemicals from farming? How can a clean, resilient food supply become accessible to all?

Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save Our World, by Josh Tickell (Simon & Schuster 2017/2018, 352 pages, $16.00 paperback)

Kiss the Ground explains an incredible truth: by changing our diets to a soil-nourishing, regenerative agriculture diet, we can reverse global warming, harvest healthy, abundant food, and eliminate the poisonous substances that are harming our children, pets, bodies, and ultimately our planet. This richly visual look at the impact of an underappreciated but essential resource the very ground that feeds us features fascinating and accessible interviews with celebrity chefs, ranchers, farmers, and top scientists. Kiss the Ground teaches you how to become an agent in humanitys single most important and time-sensitive mission: reversing climate change and saving the world through the choices you make in how and what to eat.

We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, by Jonathan Safran Foer (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2019, 288 pages, $25.00)

Some people reject the fact, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, that our planet is warming because of human activity. But do those of us who accept the reality of human-caused climate change truly believe it? If we did, surely we would be roused to act on what we know. In We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer (explains that) the task of saving the planet will involve a great reckoning with ourselves with our all-too-human reluctance to sacrifice immediate comfort for the sake of the future. We have, he reveals, turned our planet into a farm for growing animal products, and the consequences are catastrophic. Only collective action will save our home and way of life. And it all starts with what we eat and dont eat for breakfast.

Global Hunger Index: The Challenge of Hunger and Climate Change, by Klaus von Grebmer, Jill Bernstein, Fraser Patterson, Miriam Wiemers, Reiseal Ni Cheilleachair, Connell Foley, Seth Gitter, Kierstin Ekstrom, and Heidi Fritschel (Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide 2019, 72 pages, free download available here, eight-page synopsis available here)

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels. GHI scores are calculated each year to assess progress and setbacks in combating hunger. The GHI is designed to raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger, provide a way to compare levels of hunger between countries and regions, and call attention to those areas of the world where hunger levels are highest and where the need for additional efforts to eliminate hunger is greatest. Measuring hunger is complicated. The report explains how the GHI scores are calculated and what they can and cannot tell us. This years report also focuses on the impact of climate change on hunger.

Climate Change and Agricultural Risk Management into the 21st Century, by Andrew Crane-Droesch, Elizabeth Marshall, Stephanie Rosch, Anne Riddle, Joseph Cooper, and Steven Wallander (United States Department of Agriculture 2019, 63 pages, free download available here; two-report summary available here)

Programs that help farmers manage risk are a major component of the federal governments support to rural America. Changes to this risk and thus to the governments fiscal exposure are expected as weather averages and extremes change over the coming decades. This study uses a combination of statistical and economic modeling techniques to explore the mechanisms by which climate change could affect the cost of the Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) to the federal government, which accounts for approximately half of government expenditures on agricultural risk management. We compare scenarios of the future that differ only in terms of climate. (We find that) differences between the scenarios are driven by increasing prices for the three crops studied, caused by lower production, inelastic demand, and increasing volatility.

Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems, by IPCC Working Group III (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2019, 1542 pages, free download available here; 43-page Summary for policymakers available here)

This report addresses greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in land-based ecosystems, land use and sustainable land management in relation to climate change adaptation and mitigation, desertification, land degradation, and food security. This report follows the publication of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C, the thematic assessment of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) on Land Degradation and Restoration, the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and the Global Land Outlook of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). This report provides an updated assessment of the current state of knowledge while striving for coherence and complementarity with other recent reports.

Growing Better: Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use, by co-lead authors Per Pharo and Jeremy Oppenheim (The Food and Land Use Coalition 2019, 237 pages, free download available here; 32-page executive summary available here)

There is a remarkable opportunity to transform food and land use systems, but as the challenges are growing, we need to act with great urgency. The global report from the Food and Land Use Coalition proposes a reform agenda centered around ten critical transitions of real actionable solutions. These could deliver the needed change to boost progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris agreement, help mitigate the negative effects of climate change, safeguard biodiversity, ensure more healthy diets for all, drastically improve food security, and create more inclusive rural economies.

Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People, by 2050, by Tim Searchinger, Richard Waite, Craig Hanson, and Janet Ranganathan (World Resources Institute 2019, 564 pages, free download available here; 96-page synthesis report available here)

Can we feed the world without destroying the planet? The World Resources Report, Creating a Sustainable Food Future, shows that it is possible but there is no silver bullet. The report offers a five-course menu of solutions to ensure we can feed 10 billion people by 2050 without increasing emissions, fueling deforestation or exacerbating poverty. Intensive research and modeling examining the nexus of the food system, economic development, and the environment show why each of the 22 items on the menu is important and quantifies how far each solution can get us. This site presents text from the Synthesis Report, with download links to full chapters from the complete report.

Climate-Smart Agriculture and the Sustainable Development Goals, by Shereen DSouza, Julian Schnetzer, and Rima Al-Azar (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2019, 144 pages, free download available here)150210

Rising sea levels and more intense storms and droughts are becoming the new normal. In addition, the imperative of reducing food insecurity and population growth amid changing dietary preferences requires increased food production at a time when natural resources are more and more constrained. Given these intertwined challenges and threats to sustainable development, the world needs a comprehensive approach to addressing one of the primary connections between people and the planet: food and agriculture. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) offers a wealth of opportunities in this respect, combining a focus on sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; building resilience and adapting to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, where possible.

Delivering Sustainable Food and Land Use Systems: The Role of International Trade, by Christophe Bellmann, Bernice Lee, and Jonathab Hepburn (Chatham House/Hoffman Centre for Sustainable Resource Economy 2019, 80 pages, free download available here)

Meeting future global food security requirements is not just about quantity; it is also about meeting growing needs in a manner that safeguards human as well as planetary health. International trade and trade policies play an ambiguous role in the current food system. With 80 per cent of the worlds population depending on imports to meet at least part of their food and nutritional requirements, trade has a unique function in offsetting imbalances between supply and demand. However, in the absence of effective regulatory frameworks or pricing frameworks that internalize environmental, social or health costs, trade can exacerbate and globalize challenges associated with food production and land use trends such as deforestation, land degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss and the shift to unhealthy diets.

Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-Based and Cellular Meat and Dairy, by Martin Rowe (Brighter Green 2019, 58 pages, free download available here; two-page brief available here)

Beyond the Impossible: The Futures of Plant-based and Cellular Meat and Dairy imagines what the United States might look like as a vegan country in 2050. Martin Rowe, who heads the Vegan America Project, has read widely in plant-based meat and cellular agriculture, and he has listened to scientists (both natural and social), food marketers, entrepreneurs, investors, and policy mavens. Rowe has gathered the results of his research in a work that is both a state-of-the-industries overview and a work of speculation, a critical effort to reconcile competing concerns and values. Beyond the Impossible is oriented toward a vegan future, even as it recognizes that cellular agriculture has the means to transform just what vegan might mean in that future.

Editors note: Those not yet ready to embrace veganism but still wanting to reduce emissions from the meat in their diet can consult Achieving Peak Pasture: Shrinking Pastures Footprint by Spreading the Livestock Revolution (Breakthrough Institute 2019, 80 pages, free download available here).

Youth in Motion for Climate Action! A Compilation of Youth Initiatives in Agriculture to Address the Impacts of Climate Change, by Melanie Pisano, Fiona Korporaal, and Rima Al-Azar (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2019, 60 pages, free download available here)

This publication is a compilation of 10 successful youth-focused or youth-led initiatives in agriculture that address the impacts of climate change. The case studies are organized under five themes: E-agriculture, innovation and technology; youth employment; capacity development; entrepreneurship; and Alliances and Networks. For each theme one FAO-led initiative and one non-FAO initiative is showcased to provide a broad picture of the activities being implemented around the world at various levels. FAO and other institutions believe that partnerships and collaboration on youth-focused projects, programs and initiatives produce stronger results on the ground. This publication highlights these multi-organizational, collaborative efforts.

Go here to read the rest:

13 new books and reports about the future of food - Yale Climate Connections

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures both the economys total income and the economys total expenditure on goods and services. GDP per person tells us the income and expenditure of the average person in the economy. In an age where a huge cause of social dislocation is inequality, GDP has nothing to say about distribution. A society comprising 100 people where5 out of 100 people have annual incomes of Rs50 million (510 million), 10 peoples annual income is Rs 1 million (10x Rs 100,000), and 85 people have annual income of Rs 1.7 million (85x Rs 20,000), the total GDP would be Rs10 million, and the average per capita income will be Rs53,000.Averages are misleading, as a rise in average GDP could actually be retrograde if it leaves 85 percent of people resentful at how the five percent is making good. GDP says nothing about the distribution of income.

This is the reason that economists are thinking beyond GDP. David Pilling, author of The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty and the Well Being of the People in his recent article in Time stated: This year, New Zealand became the first nation to formally drop gross domestic product as its main measure of economic success. The government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that budget would aim not at maximising GDP but instead on maximising well-being.

The nexus between poverty and poor social indicators is quite obvious, as lack of access to education, primary health care, population welfare, and basic infrastructure limits the potential for gainful employment. In addition to lack of social justice, economic determinants vis--vis lack of infrastructure, inadequate savings and investment and burgeoning debt burden, whereby a considerable part of the budget is allocated for debt servicing, and inflation are some of the causes for abject poverty in the country.

There is a misconception that an increase in the GDP and consequently an increase in per capita income improves the lives of the people. Evidence suggests that the best of economic revival plans cannot succeed unless benefits of economic growth are fairly distributed among the factors of productions. In other words, only equitable economic growth can reduce the incidence of poverty. However, the challenge in Pakistan is enormous, and therefore, conscientious efforts have to be made to alleviate poverty and ensure a decent life to the people.

Lack of access to education, primary health care, population welfare, and basic infrastructure limits the potential for gainful employment

A major constraint in this regard is that distribution of economic and political power is not equal especially due to the feudal factor and mindset. Poverty is indeed the most serious challenge, as it is the basic reason for hunger, disease, ill health, extremism, crimes and other social malaises in a society. A common method used to measure poverty was based on incomes or consumption levels.

A person was considered poor if his consumption of calories level fell below 2,300 or income level fell below $1 or 1.25 per day. To confuse the issue, some economists relate it to deprivation of citizens who are denied political liberty and civil rights by authoritarian rulers. The World Bank, however, described poverty comprehensively in these words: Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time.

The problem is that the policies framed by economic managers are predicated on the assumption that if people on the higher social pyramid generate a lot of wealth, common people would automatically benefit from the trickle-down effect of economic growth.

But that never happens, and the result invariably is that the rich become richer and the poor poorer.

In Pakistan, it is difficult to have reliable statistics, and even if available they fail to capture multi-dimensional perspectives of poverty. Various governments in Pakistan took steps for encouraging investment for revival of economy with a view to generating job opportunities to provide gainful employment to the unemployed, and also to generate revenue to be able to invest in human resource development. But that could not help alleviate poverty as the targeted revenues could not be generated due to corruption, tax evasion and plundering of national resources. There is a perception that then informal economy is about 50 percent of the formal economy, and hence the loss of revenue to the extent of 50 percent of the revenue from the informal or unregistered economy.

There is another clich that the increase in the price of shares in bourses is an indicator of the good health of economy. Though ups and downs in the shares are hallmark of stock exchanges throughout the world but the share market of Pakistan is the most unpredictable and its mechanism incomprehensible with the result that steep rise and fall in price structure of scrips does not come within the ambit of logical reasoning. In fact, a few local manipulators working in tandem with global investors invest targeted shares to increase its price, and the result is a bull Run. Then they unload the shares and make good profit.

Since 1994 the plummeting of share prices after a years escalation of prices has become a regular feature. It is not difficult to conclude from the financial statements of the listed companies that the market value of the shares of many companies has no relevance to the book value or realistic value of the shares.

The writer is a freelance columnist

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Economic clichs and misconceptions - Daily Times

The City of Edmonton released the results from its third annual Climate and Energy Perceptions Survey on Thursday and the poll suggests 75 per cent of the more than 1,000 citizens who took part believe there is a need to act now to address the issue of climate change.

The survey also found that 74 per cent of respondents are concerned about climate change and 69 per cent believe climate change is mostly caused by human activities.

Sixty-eight per cent of respondents agreed that investing in energy efficiency and transitioning to renewable energy sources provides job opportunities for the city.

READ MORE: Is the Liberal climate plan achievable?

These surveys help us understand how local perceptions around climate and greenhouse gas emissions are shifting over time, Mike Mellross, the City of Edmontons general supervisor of energy transition and utility supply, said in a news release.

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Year-over-year we are seeing that Edmontonians are growing more concerned about climate change and how it will affect their lives and the economy.

The results show residents want accelerated, decisive action on climate change and want the city to do more to limit emissions and prepare for the impacts of a changing climate.

READ MORE: Catastrophic: Canada set to miss 2030 emissions target by 15%, UN report says

The city noted that the survey found more respondents said Edmontonians should be doing more to help prevent climate change and that more agreed they want to do more personally to help prevent climate change, up 10 percentage points and nine percentage points, respectively, over the last two years.

The survey was conducted just weeks after Edmonton city council officially declared a climate emergency in August.

READ MORE: City of Edmonton declares climate emergency

At the time, council also passed a resolution to plan to respond to climate change with a revised Community Energy Transition Strategy.

This is a response to science first and foremost, Mayor Don Iveson said at the time. I think the fact we are a resource-producing and energy-producing region equips us to be energy problem solvers.

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Last month, thousands of people joined Greta Thunberg, a teenage environmental activist from Sweden, for a rally at the Alberta legislature to demand action on climate change.

READ MORE: Thousands rally with Greta Thunberg at Alberta legislature for climate strike amid counter-rally

METHODOLOGY: The online survey, conducted between Sept. 13 and Sept. 23, used a general population online panel provided by Dynata. Data was statistically weighted by age, gender and region (quadrants) using 2016 Census data to reflect the citys population along those demographics. The city said because this was a general population non-probability panel survey, to report a margin of error is inappropriate. However, the city said if this were a probability sample, the margin of error would be +/- 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, based on this sample size.

2019 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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68% of Edmontonians believe transition to green energy will lead to job opportunities: survey - Global News

Precision nutrition and 24-hour monitoring will enable scientists to provide new insights for the pig industry, as the University of Leeds opens the National Pig Centre today.

Scientists from a range ofdisciplines at the University will use new state-of-the-art facilities to helpimprove the sustainability and efficiency of pig production.

Supported by more than 11million of investment, the facilities make Yorkshire one of the best places inEurope for pig research.

The National Pig Centrewill be a leading research facility for pig nutrition, behaviour, health andproduction system research all themes identified by the livestock industry ascentral to improving quality, productivity and future competitiveness.

Professor Lisa Collins,academic lead for the PigSustainproject and Head of the University of Leeds Schoolof Biology, said: This new centre allows us to expand our work toimprove the welfare of pigs, and the sustainability of the British pig industry.

Our aim is to lower theenvironmental footprint of pig farming whilst ensuring that high welfarestandards are maintained.

The new centre willbenefit from academic expertise drawn from across a range of disciplinesincluding nutrition, health, behaviour and fertility, as well as computervision, engineering, soil and water sciences, data analytics, and atmosphericand climate science.

It has been launched inpartnership with CIEL (Centre for Innovation Excellence inLivestock). CIEL has invested 4.5 millionwith funding from Innovate UK, the UKs Innovation Agency.

Aerial view of the National Pig Centre

The investment includes athree-fold increase in the previous capacity of the farm, from 200 to 660 sows, ensuring research carried out at the centre better represents commercial pig farming.Of these, 220 will live outdoors.

The combination of anoutdoor sow unit with an indoor system is unique in Europe, enabling directcomparison of the different rearing systems.

Academics will work toidentify the key factors contributing to pig farmings environmental footprint,and attempt to find alternatives that could drive down the sectors greenhousegas emissions.

Their findings will helpthe UK achieve the National Farmers Union (NFU) target of reaching net zerogreenhouse gas emissions across the whole of agriculture in England and Walesby 2040.

The National Pig Centre will provide a key national resource for industry to work in partnership with the University, to develop innovative and practical solutions that make a positive contribution to the economy, environment and society.

The centres indoorfacility includes the ability to perform in-depth, automated nutrition trialsto understand how best to feed and manage pigs at all stages of production. By harnessingprecision nutrition, based on individual requirements, the aim is to reduce thecost of production, improve feed efficiency and reduce the environment impactof pig farming.

Researchers will also beable to make feed recommendations which keep pace with ongoing geneticimprovements to pigs.

The indoor facility isequipped with CCTV throughout, permitting round-the-clock observations ofindividual pigs behaviour at all stages of production. Researchers willuse computer vision to automate data collection from the video footage, sobehaviour and nutrition can be monitored at the individual pig level.

Students from across theUniversity will have the opportunity to study at the National Pig Centre aspart of their degrees, and some will have chance to contribute to researchprojects taking place at the farm.

The facility has also been supported by a generous donation from University of Leeds alumnus Nigel Bertram.

Named in his honour, the Nigel Bertram Visitor Centre features conference and meeting facilities, offices and the live CCTV feed from the indoor pig unit.

Sir Alan Langlands,Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds, said: "Leeds is proud to be workingin a number of ways at home and internationally to improve food security andthe sustainability of the agricultural sector.

"The National Pig Centrewill provide a key national resource for industry to work in partnership withthe University to develop innovative and practical solutions that make apositive contribution to the economy, environment and society.

"We are hugely grateful forthe strong support we have received from CIEL and Nigel Bertram, and theleading edge work of Helen Miller, our Professor of Animal Bioscience, indeveloping this facility.

Centrally located in theUK, the National Pig Centre will promote engagement, discussion andcollaboration between researchers and industry. The University and CIEL willwork together to drive this process.

A membership organisation, CIEL works withbusinesses across the livestock supply chain to identify & develop theirresearch needs and build relevant collaborations to deliver new technologiesand processes that address key challenges facing the sector.

"We're very proud towork with Leeds and develop this first for the pig and pork industry, saidLyndsay Chapman, CIELs Chief Executive. It provides unique researchcapability on a commercially relevant scale and complements the investmentsweve made across the CIEL network. Through our nationwide collaborativealliance, we're working to ensure industry has access to the very best expertisein this field of research."

Projects at the NationalPig Centre will help tackle some of the current challenges in pig productionincluding:

Nutrition:developing precision feeding for livestock to improve sustainability andproductivity and study the effects of nutrition on welfare and behaviour;

Anti-microbialresistance: developinghealthier pigs with more robust gut health and improved resistance to disease,thereby reducing antibiotic use;

Production systems: improving efficiency of production andidentifying better ways to feed and manage pigs;

Monitoring pigbehaviour and developingalgorithms to allow early detection of health conditions.

The National Pig Centre isone of the University facilities that will help deliver the goals of the GlobalFood and Environment Institute (GFEI), which aims to address thechallenge of feeding the world whilst protecting natural resources.

This work aligns closelyto the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly to endhunger, achieve food security and promote sustainable agriculture.

As well as the pig farm, GFEIis also carrying out research projects in arable farming, urban foodconsumption and health, food security in the Global South, and international foodsupply chains.

Further information

For interview requests, please contact the University of Leeds press office on +44 (0)113 34 38059 or pressoffice@leeds.ac.uk

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News > Working with Business > University opens National Pig Centre in Yorkshire - University of Leeds

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia represents a key nation in the heart of the Middle East and the desert kingdom is going through dramatic economic and social changes that could change the region and its relationship with Israel.

The major challenge facing Saudi Arabia is implementing Vision 2030. It is an ambitious plan to transform the country from an oil-based economy to one based on business investment, technology and tourism.

Vision 2030 is basically unlocking this potential of Saudi Arabia. Diversifying away from oil. Having a sustainable, growing economy. Engaging the private sector. Creating sustainable jobs for the locals. But also having a regional responsibility and a global responsibility as a good citizen of the world, Saudi Arabias Minister of Economy and Planning Mohammed Altuwaijri told CBN News.

Dr. Yonatan Freeman of Hebrew University says Saudi Arabia can learn from Israel.

I think that Saudi Arabia is asking Israel, Whats your secret? How could you be so successful internationally using your own mind and not some sort of natural resource? So, I think what Saudi Arabia is going to learn from us is how do we move ahead without being dependent on just one natural resource? Dr. Freeman explained.

One main focus of Vision 2030 is tourism. For the first time in its history, Saudi Arabia is allowing tourists from nearly 50 countries to apply for visas beginning this fall.

Tourism is one pillar that checks all the boxes. It checks the diversification box. It checks the jobs box. The balance of payments, people will come and spend money here, explained Altuwaijri.

One tourist attraction for people coming to Saudi Arabia would be at Al Ula, the southern capital of the Nabatean people and a UNESCO heritage site. It was part of the ancient trade routes more than two thousand years ago.

A place that hasnt been visited; hasnt been studied. And we are committed to fully understand it; preserve it and share it with the world through an interpretation strategy that turns Al Ula into a one, large, engaging living museum. This is basically, the largest living museum in the world, said Amer Madani, the CEO of the Al Ula royal commission.

In addition to economic changes, there are dramatic changes in society.

One major change in Saudi society is in soccer. Just more than a year ago, for the first time, women were permitted to attend games of the most popular sport in the country.

Some stadiums include a family section where husbands with their wives, mothers with their children or single women can come and enjoy the game.

Its another barrier broken as part of Vision 2030.

In the end is what were seeing in all over the Arab and Muslim world is that more and more, the local population is to want their countries to push of increasing the welfare of those citizens in those countries to be more open to the outside world, Dr. Freeman explained.

But the changes come with challenges.

One thing that Saudi Arabia has to make sure is the more they open up doesnt cause too much of a challenge by those who are opposed to any sort of rapprochement with the West, rapprochement with other religions like Christians. So, one of the things that the regime has to be certain about is that they do it gradually, said Dr. Freeman.

The threat of Iran overshadows this economic revolution. On September 14th Iran targeted Saudi Arabias main oil processing facility. It cut Saudis oil production drastically for several weeks.

But the vision expects to change Saudi society by cutting dependence on oil and offering a new Saudi Arabia to the world.

Amr Ahmed Banaja, CEO of the General Entertainment Authority, has a mission to build the entertainment sector in Saudi Arabia.

Banaja works on long-term entertainment projects like Qiddiya, a Six Flags-style amusement park to be built just outside of Riyadh. He is also working on the Red Sea Project, which is focused on developing Saudi Arabias coastline, and Neom, billed as a city of the future.

Neom located on the shores of the Red Sea is the largest mega project in the world today with an estimated cost of 500 billion dollars and its the centerpiece of Saudi Arabias vision 2030.

Projects like these are part of what Saudi Arabia is now opening and offering to the world.

I think there is a lot to discover about Saudi Arabia, said Amer Madani, CEO of the Al Ula Royal Commission.

I think people think of Saudi Arabia as hot, camels, sand. I think this is a very monotonic view. I encourage for everybody to think about Saudi Arabia the way they think about the US. California is nothing like Florida, you know. Utah is nothing like Kansas. So, theres a lot of beauty and details I think the world will come to see the largest living museum in the world being unveiled, Madani continued.

How Saudi Arabia can achieve Vision 2030 or not will deeply affect the future of the Middle East.

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Saudi Arabia on a Bold Mission to Transform its Economy and Culture by 2030 - CBN News

Too often the concept of a circular economy is muddled up with some kind of advanced recycling process that would mean keeping our industrial system as it is and preserving a growing consumption model.

This idea is based on a belief that recycling will take care of everything.

One of the most startling examples of this is the part of the European Union's Circular Economy Action Plan which aims to increase recycling rates: up to 70% of all packaging waste by 2030 and 65% of all municipal waste by 2035. In a properly built circular economy, one should rather focus on avoiding the recycling stage at all costs. It may sound straightforward, but preventing waste from being created in the first place is the only realistic strategy.

While we obviously need to continue recycling for quite some time, putting the emphasis on genuine circular innovations that is, moving us away from a waste-based model should be our sole objective.

In a linear economy, we do not account for the side-effects generated by a product once sold to an end customer. The aim is to sell a maximum number of products at minimal cost. Continuous pressure to reduce costs leads to the creation of many of these side-effects called externalities by economists. The higher a company's rate of production and the higher its efficiency, the more successful it will be at selling its goods in a fiercely competitive environment.

This worked well in the 20th century when resources were easily available and raw material prices kept decreasing. Waste, as an economic externality, was not the producers' responsibility. Managing waste cycles, dumping it out of sight or, at best, recycling it but only when it was cost-effective were under the control of our national institutions.

Visionary manufacturers, who understand the upcoming challenges of increasing their economic resilience, know better: a product that is returned for repair will cost less to fix and sell again, than manufacturing it from scratch.

In our current model, we extract resources, transform them into products, and consume or use them, prior to disposing of them. Recycling only starts at the throwing-away stage: this is a process that is not made to preserve or increase value nor to enhance materials.

We need to understand that recycling is not an effective strategy for dealing with unused resource volumes in a growth model. We will find ourselves in a never-ending pursuit of continuously generated waste, rather than seeing the avoidance of waste as a path to beneficial innovations on many levels.

Of course, it is easier to think about recycling. This avoids changing the whole of our volume-based production model. But in a world where we have to shift our consumption patterns and use less energy, recycling no longer has all the answers.

Since we cannot stop the volume of waste overnight, investments in the recycling industry are needed. But truly meaningful investment in developing a circular economy takes place outside of the recycling space. Indeed, the more we recycle and the more we finance recycling factories, the more we stay 'linear'. We mistakenly believe this is the best route to solve our problems - but by staying in a recycling-based economy, we will delay the transition to an advanced circular economy.

In a circular economy, resources do not end up as recyclables since products are made to last several lifecycles. Products' lifespans are extended via maintain, repair, redistribute, refurbishment and/or re-manufacture loops, thus they never end up in the low-value, high-need-for-energy loop: recycling.

We live in a world in dire need of disruptive innovations. Closing loops next to where customers live while avoiding waste is a short and longer-term win-win for any leading re-manufacturer. Short-term because you are in direct contact with your customers, and taking back a product that needs maintenance is an opportunity to better understand their needs and help them with additional services. Long-term because you will lower your exposure to future financial risks. Any of the feedback loops that exist prior to the recycling loop are an opportunity to take back control over your stock of resources taking control away from the raw material markets, which may become highly volatile. Increased interactions with your customers, both commercial and financial, and an in-depth understanding of their needs, would increase customer loyalty and a business' overall resilience.

Re-using, re-distributing and/or remanufacturing strategies are the preferred approaches in a circular economy, as they are based on parts durability. Caring for and preserving the value of product components increases corporate economic resilience, while diminishing external market risks. Whether you are acting in a highly advanced or a developing economy, these strategies make crystal-clear sense: they are less costly in the long-run because repairing a product made to last is always less expensive than producing it from scratch.

Following this approach, we must move away from activities that devalue the material, such as recycling, and instead invest in those activities that preserve it: reuse and remanufacture. These two are especially important since they create many more secure jobs. Walter R. Stahel, the godfather of the modern circular economy, introduced the metric of labor input-per-weight ratio (man-hour-per-kg, or mh/kg) to measure job creation in relation to resource consumption. He found that the ratio of mh/kg when building a remanufactured engine from used resources compared to making the same engine from virgin materials is 270:1. The impact on employment is huge.

The re-localization and the re-sizing of activities closer to customers become critical. Production sites should migrate from a highly centralized global hub to units designed to fulfill local needs. In developed markets, a possible plan could be to develop strategic partnerships with local service providers, who can provide the infrastructure. In emerging markets, where there is often an urgent need for jobs, leapfrogging straight into a national re-manufacturing strategy is the way forward. Becoming the next 'world factory' hub is an obsolete vision today.

One way to start thinking like a leader in the next economy while creating jobs could be in order of priority:

All of the above make sense in a world where planetary limits have already hit most economies.

Adopting a circular strategy by avoiding reliance on recycling is the way forward.

This is about genuine innovation derived from genuine leadership.

Reprinted with permission of the World Economic Forum. Read the original article.

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To build a circular economy, we need to put recycling in the bin - Big Think

In line with the United Nations Practical Manual on Transfer Pricing for Developing Countries (2017) (UN 2017) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developments (OECD 2013) Draft Handbook on Transfer Pricing Risk Assessment emphasising the development of risk assessment procedures to select cases for transfer pricing scrutiny, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), in March 2016, introduced a series of measures. This was as part of the new guidelines to be followed by the revenue department in inspecting transfer pricing audits with respect to cross-border transactions. These fresh set of protocols fundamentally replaced the earlier set of guidelines issued in 2003 regarding the manual selection of similar cases by field officers.

Apart from the broader objective of effective initial risk identification and assessment for focused and more strategic audit as well as judicious deployment of available enforcement resources, the new policy reform is principally aimed at reducing the number of litigations on the transfer pricing front so as to promote the image of the economy as a non-adversarial tax regime, especially for the multinational companies. The investor sentiments are thought to be harmed by the numerous pending litigations and high tax adjustments around transfer pricing that several multinational enterprise (MNE)-affiliated companies have faced in India recently. This situation has arisen particularly due to the various complexities involved in reviewing these cases that the tax authorities and the judiciary have to deal with. The new series of guidelines are expected to remove the fear of onerous taxation and unreasonable litigation burden from the mindset of MNEs operating in India.

Rising litigations are a serious matter and are considered as the direct fallout of the rise in number and complexities of cross-border transactions especially over recent years. As per some rough estimates, the extent of intra-firm trade within transnationalcorporation (TNC) networks in global trade of goods and services is about 33%, where 80% of global trade is linked to the international production networks of the TNCs (WIR UNCTAD 2013). The trade within MNE networks is highly susceptible to trade mispricing and money laundering and can lead to serious losses of tax revenue for nations, as some recent studies have highlighted. According to the World Economic Forums Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade, the shadow economy is worth $650 billion, and has probably risen to $1.77 trillion in 2015 due to illicit practices. Specifically due to Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), the estimates indicate annual losses worth 4%10% of global corporate tax revenues ($100$240 billion annually), with the developing countries facing a much higher impact of transfer mispricing (OECD 2015). Another significant report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI 2015) shows that developing and emerging economies have lost $7.8 trillion over 200413 as illicit financial flows, where illicit outflows increased at an average rate of 6.5% per year. The mis-invoicing of trade transactions accounted for 83.4% of all illicit flows according to this report.

Among other important studies focusing on India, the GFI report has estimated that India has lost gross illicit assets worth $462 billion over the 19482008 period mainly through trade mis-invoicing of goods and other corrupt practices used for tax evasion (GFI 2010). In a more recent report, the GFI hasestimated that the amount of illicit financial flows out of India was about $505 billion over the 200413 period (GFI 2015) and was $13 billion in 2016 (GFI 2019). The report has noted that the rise in international trade has created more opportunities for trade mispricing especially since the introduction of trade liberalisation. Improving tax collection by curtailing trade mispricing and country-by-country reporting by multinational corporations (MNCs) are essential tools to check these illicit outflows. A study by Jansky and Prats (2013) analysed financial and ownership data of about 1,500 MNCs operating in India and found evidence of profit-shifting among them. The study found that MNCs with tax haven links reported 1.5% less profits, paid 17.4% less in taxes per unit of asset and 30.3% less in taxes per unit of profit than MNCs with no such links. These studies point towards the high susceptibility of trade transactions to mispricing and BEPS practices in the Indian case.

Certainly, transfer mispricing in cross-border transactions conducted within multinational networks requires a far sharper scrutiny, which developing countries like India cannot afford to overlook. Following the Arms-Length approach as per the OECD guidelines on transfer pricing, India had introduced new transfer pricing rules through amendments in the Income Tax Act and the Finance Act in 2001. These new guidelines provided broad instructions to revenue officers for auditing international transactions of corporations located in India using various transfer pricing appraisal approaches based on the Arms Length Principle (ALP).

Arms Length Method

Several challenges are posed by the Arms Length Method (ALM) in terms of practical applications both for the companies as well as the tax officers. This method requires the examination of international transfer payments by comparing it to another similar transaction or range of transactions conducted between unrelated parties. Given the individual nature of assets or services transferred in related party transactions of multinationals, finding an appropriate comparable transaction is extremely difficult. In several cases, the services or intangible asset transferred is unique, and a comparable service may not exist at all.

In this context, a further challenging aspect more common to developing countries is the lack of reliable and comprehensive databases to facilitate a direct comparability exercise due to resource constraints, inadequate corporate disclosure requirements, poor reporting of financial data by companies or underdeveloped systems of data compilation. Nil, insufficient or non-transparent disclosures of related party transaction details by companies are frequent in public documents, and create further difficulties in evaluation. The challenge is severe in the Indian case especially for the unlisted firms, which are several in number and usually escape corporate disclosure norms. The recent Census on Foreign Liabilities and Assets of Indian Direct Investment Companies 201718 published by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI 2019) indicates that at least 17,648 Indian direct investment companies with only inward foreign investment are unlisted. Further, the commercial databases may not provide detailed segmented transaction data of companies, largely limiting the scope of a transaction-by-transaction analysis via identifying appropriate comparables. In the Indian case, disclosure of unrelated party transaction segmented data is not mandatory, posing difficulties in identifying transactions for ALP comparisons via direct methods from commonly used commercial databases.

Given these complexities in practical application of the ALM using direct comparability criteria, indirect methods are often used, which principally compare the net margins of the companies or of a particular transaction. In actual experience, tax authorities have targeted several multinational companies in India for transfer pricing audits since 2005 and have levied high values of tax adjustments. In various cases where direct comparables could not be found, the transactional net margin method (TNMM) has been used. Table 1 indicates the sharp rise in transfer pricing adjustment cases and the amount of tax adjustments since 200506. In more than 24,000 cases that have been scrutinised by transfer pricing officers over the years, nearly half have faced tax adjustments.

The ample scope for subjectivity in ALP comparability computation gives rise to numerous points of disputes especially in cases where broad comparability methods like TNMM are applied. A number of tax adjustments have been disputed by the companies and have faced litigations and counter litigations. In fact, transfer pricing has been the major source of disputes in direct taxes making India the third highest country with the maximum number of transfer pricing disputes. A significant number of litigations pertain to the issue of choice of comparables and method of comparability, especially for the pricing of intangibles.

The complexities associated with these issues have caused an inordinate delay in the litigation resolution process, with an average time of two-and-a-half years taken by the tribunal courts to dispose each case (Deloitte and TaxSutra 2015). The concern of pending litigations is quite severe as more than 4,000 disputes were pending before the Dispute Resolution Panel, CIT (A) and Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) in 2016. About 90,000 cases were pending at ITAT level (various tax cases) in March 2017 (Economic Survey 2018). A commonly held view is that the lower monetary threshold for transfer pricing audits (approximately 15 crore/$3.30 million at present) has contributed to this steady rise in disputes. The latest CBDT reforms have been guided by this perception, and are focused on checking this very aggressive tax regime followed under Indian regulations and on creating a regime with tax certainty, with minimum number of disputes and litigations.

Earlier in 2015, the revenue secretary had stated that the focus of international taxation should be on dispute resolution and the government was moving fast on this front. The exigency to ensure a fair and judicious dispute resolution regime had driven the introduction of different significant measures like the Advance Pricing Agreement (APA), Safe Harbour Rules, Dispute Resolution Panel (DRP) and Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP). The first India APA annual report published in May 2017 by CBDT shows that since its initiation in 201213, 152 APAs have been concluded in four years and 815 applications were filed by 31 March 2017. Further, between April 2014 and February 2016, CBDT has resolved 180 cases involving 5,000 crore of funds through MAP with countries, namely the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and China.

The DRP was introduced in 2009 by inserting Section 144C in the Income Tax Act, 1961 by the Finance Act, 2009 to provide an alternative dispute resolution mechanism for resolving transfer pricing disputes related to international transactions. However, the DRP has not proven to be a successful mechanism for resolving tax disputes since practical experience indicates that DRPs have rarely affirmed a position different from the one proposed by the assessing officers, due to this mechanisms statutorily constrained powers. Whilst these above alternative mechanisms have been ambitiously introduced to deal with the unplanned series of disputes and litigations, their efficacy in comprehensively addressing the fundamental issue of tax evasion seems limited. Since the majority of transfer pricing cases still go through the regular cycle of audits by the revenue department, the new CBDT norms have been brought in to check the possibility of incidence of disputes or litigations at the audit stage. Given the difficulties posed by numerous pending controversial legal disputes on the transfer pricing front and severe strain on revenue resources, the current step as a direct policy response to manage the situation is not surprising.

New CBDT Guidelines

As a particularly targeted approach to reduce the incidences of transfer pricing audits with respect to cross-border transactions in order to indirectly address the probable litigation burden in future, the CBDT has issued a new set of instructions to its field officers as Instruction No 3 of 2016 on 10 March 2016 to provide guidance on reference by an assessing officer to a transfer pricing officer (TPO) and on the role of assessing officer and TPO in the case of transfer pricing audits. This follows the issuance of an interim instruction of a similar form as Instruction No 15 of 2015 on 16 October 2015. The new set of guidelines have replaced Instruction No 3 dated 20 May 2003 issued to field officers regarding manual selection of cross-border transactions for scrutiny.

The key feature which has been introduced now is the reference to TPOs by assessing officers on the basis of risk-based parameters rather than the value of international transactions. The earlier approach of evaluating every international transaction above a threshold value of 15 crore for transfer pricing audit through manual selection has been abandoned. The risk-based scrutiny approach is expected to restrict audits to only those cases where the revenue risk to the government is substantial. Specific guidelines have been provided to the assessing officer regarding the selection of cases for scrutiny on the basis of transfer pricing risk parameters, which involve selection on the basis of broad-based selection filters through computer assisted scrutiny selection (CASS) or through the compulsory manual selection system with specifically defined criteria.

Clearly, this amendment has been introduced to ensure that the valuable time of revenue authorities and the judiciary are spent on worthwhile cases, by strictly reducing the number of cases being audited itself, thereby indirectly addressing the huge dispute resolution burden. However, the practical implementation and the effectiveness of the new measure in addressing the problem of transfer mispricing is largely dependent on the choice of transfer pricing risk-parameters, which are not defined clearly by the guidelines beyond some indicative aspects for non-transfer pricing risk parameters. A typical transfer pricing risk assessment process involves identifying cases with a high degree of transfer pricing risk that requires a detailed further scrutiny. Prudent judgment by a specialised team of tax personnel is crucial both at the initial risk assessment stage as well as during the audit. The limitation of database and information on related party transactions and company financials in the tax return documentation filed by companies as well as in commercial databases commonly used for ALP comparability analysis in transfer pricing audits may largely inhibit the risk assessment procedure based on informed conclusions as well as the conduct of accurate audits subsequently.

As another policy step with a similar objective to reduce audits, the power of assessing officer to make transfer pricing adjustments has been abolished, and only the TPO is allowed to make any transfer pricing tax adjustment. Further, the number of important and complex cases assigned to each TPO annually has been limited to 50 cases only to enable them to devote more quality time on each case. This step aims to check the unreasonable batch processing of cases giving rise to unsustainable transfer pricing adjustments as in the past. This also reduces the number of revenue officials empowered to question any cross-border transaction with regard to transfer pricing.

Also, before referring the case to a TPO, an assessing officer is required now to give a structured opportunity of being heard to the taxpayer in order to check unwarranted litigation. In essence, this and the above-mentioned policy changes introduced are specifically designed to provide a boost to taxpayer confidence by controlling the volume of disputes and to support a tax regime conducive to foreign investors, as promised by successive governments in India over years. Indeed, the quantum of transfer pricing litigation is expected to fall by about half as a result of the new policy norms.

Prima facie, the latest norms appear to adeptly address the issue of enormous number of possible revenue and legal disputes around transfer pricing in future years by bringing certainty and uniformity in assessment, but some very basic issues with respect to the precise evaluation of cross-border transactions by foreign firms remain completely unaddressed. Given the high revenue risks facing the Indian exchequer on account of BEPS practices in recent years, there is a crucial need to closely scrutinise the vast range of cross-border transactions, especially those involving MNC affiliates. This requires a far more aggressive and thorough audit of their foreign transactions, as is currently followed by a rising number of jurisdictions of the world. Due to the ceasing of the earlier threshold value for selecting transfer pricing cases for audit, a large number of such transactions that faced revenue scrutiny earlier shall remain unaudited now. Whereas a risk-based audit approach may help to deploy the available revenue resources in effective ways on selective cases, how these particular cases will be selected and scrutinised after weighing several risk factors is fairly ambiguous.

Also, susceptibility to mis-invoicing in traded goods is substantially high in India, as indicated by the GFI (2015) in its reports. Whereas this high risk area calls for urgent policy attention globally, customs data was not analysed usually from a specific transfer pricing perspective until recently. A prior customs notification introduced in 2004 (Notification No 128/2004) prohibited the mention of the Indian or foreign partys name in the product-wise disaggregated trade data, which made it not very useful for comparability purpose under ALM as related parties could not be identified. Disappointingly, in a very recent customs notification (Notification No 140/2016) introduced in November 2016, the publication of Daily List of Imports and Exports has been discontinued without any cogent reason, which makes the usage of trade data for transfer pricing comparability analysis particularly difficult now.

Most importantly, to ably address the serious revenue risks posed by transfer pricing, there is a pressing need to adopt a multipronged approach by the Indian tax administrators. This requires a stricter and closer evaluation of various cross-border transactions by a more effective and capable revenue machinery. Necessarily, the serious data shortcomings need to be duly addressed by developing a comprehensive database by introducing robust reporting rules and related party trade disclosure norms. The efficacy of risk-based audits may remain largely limited in scope unless backed by other serious policy measures like enhanced transparency in reported data and a cautiously designed strategy for a selection of high risk cases. Also, more judicial benches devoted to examine transfer pricing disputes may help to tackle the issue of pending litigations expeditiously.

A move towards country-by-country reporting under the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement initiated since 2015 aims to map global operations of a multinational firm, but may cover very large multinationals mostly and reports may not be available in the public domain. At present, the arms-length norm to judge transfer pricing is the key international tax tool in use to audit the cross-border transactions, and is followed worldwide despite all its difficult aspects. Any policy path towards a minimal audit zone such as risk-based audits within an ALM framework needs a very serious rethink and thorough careful strategic designing before implementation, especially in present times when cross-border intra-firm transactions are rising in scale, volume and complexities while simultaneously posing grave international tax evaluation challenges globally.

References

CBDT (2016): Instruction No 3 / 2016, New Delhi, dated 10 March 2016, F No 500/9/2015-APA-II, Foreign Tax and Tax Research Division-I, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government of India.

(2017): Advance Pricing Agreement (APA) Programme of India, Annual Report 201617,https://www.incometaxindia.gov.in.

Customs Notification (2004): Publication of Daily List of Imports and Exports Rules 2004, Notification No 128/2004-Customs (NT) dated19 November 2004, Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part 2, Section 3, Sub-section (i), Central Board of Excise and Customs, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government of India.

(2016): Notification No 140/2016-Customs (NT) dated 25 November 2016, Gazette of India,Extraordinary, Part 2, Section 3, Sub-section (i), Central Board of Excise and Customs, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government of India.

Dave, Sachin (2019): Customs Departments Work Closer to Vet MNC Transfer Pricing, Economic Times, 6 June.

Deloitte and TaxSutra (2015): Transfer Pricing Disputes Trends, Report 2015, http://www.tp.taxsutra.com/tptrendsreport2015.pdf.

Economic Survey (2018): Chapter 9, http://mofapp.nic.in:8080/economicsurvey/.

GFI (2010): The Drivers and Dynamics of Illicit Financial Flows from India: 19482008, Global Financial Integrity, http://www.gfintegrity.org/report/country-case-study-india.

(2015): Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 20042013, Global Financial Integrity, http://www.gfintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IFF-Update_2015-Fi....

(2019): India: Potential Revenue Losses Associated with Trade Misinvoicing, Global Financial Integrity, https://gfintegrity.org/report/india-potential-revenue-losses-associated....

Jansky, Petr and Alex Prats (2013): Multinational Corporations and the Profit-shifting Lure of Tax Havens, Christian Aid Occasional Paper Number 9, http://www.christianaid.org.uk/Images/CA-OP-9-multinational-corporations....

Ministry of Finance (2014): Annual Report 201314, Budget Division, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, http://mof.gov.in/reports/AnnualReport2013-14.pdf.

(2015): Annual Report 201415, Budget Division, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, http://mof.gov.in/reports/AnnualReport2014-15.pdf.

OECD (2013): Public Consultation: Draft Handbook on Transfer Pricing Risk Assessment,Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, http://www.oecd.org/tax/transfer-pricing/Draft-Handbook-TP-Risk-Assessme..., 30 April.

(2015): BEPS Project Explanatory Statement 2015 Final Reports, OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/2316341e.pdf.

RBI (2019): Census on Foreign Liabilities andAssets of Indian Direct Investment Companies 201718, RBI Bulletin, 28 January, https://www.rbi.org.in.

UNCTAD (2013): Global Value Chains: Investment and Trade for Development, World Investment Report, 2013, United Nations Publication.

United Nations (2017): United Nations Practical Manual on Transfer Pricing for Developing Countries, New York: United Nations Publications, pp 41758.

World Economic Forum (2015): State of the Illicit Economy, Briefing Papers, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_State_of_the_Illicit_Economy_2015_2.pdf.

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Risk-based Audits for Transfer Pricing : Some Key Concerns - Economic and Political Weekly

A new study makes a direct link between a small amount of extra physical activity and economic growth.

The value of employer-sponsored wellness programs has beendebatedever since the first employer offered to pony up with the goal of making workers healthierand, by extension, happier and more productive.

Now, a new academic study from the independent nonprofit research institute RAND Europe delivers the latest data showing a true relationship between global economic growth and physical activity, even if its not driven by a full-blown wellness program.

Related: Read all of our coverage of wellness topics here.

Commissioned by Vitality, which offers an interactive, personalized wellness program, the study reveals significant benefits to gross domestic product, workplace productivity and life expectancyif physical activity levels increase globally.

According to the study, the economic improvement would be linked to lower mortality rates (more people alive and contributing to the economy), reduced absenteeism and lower presenteeism, driven largely by the impact of physical activity on mental health. In terms of economic benefits, the study reports that if all adults aged 18-64 walked just 15 minutes more a day, the world economy could grow by an average of $100 billion a year until 2050. In addition to productivity, mortality would also improveranging from 11% to 28%. Vitality estimates this to result in 2.5 years of additional life (based on an average 40-year-old male).

This groundbreaking study provides proof of the relationship between physical activity, productivity, mortality and economic growth, said Tal Gilbert, CEO of Vitality USA, in a company statement. The stakes are enormous for the individual and for our society as a whole. This is why we are leading efforts with Vitality-linked insurers to make 100 million people 20% more active by 2025, as part of our global pledge.

Since 2015, one of those insurers, John Hancock, has partnered with Vitality to reward its life-insurance holders for healthy behaviors, such as physical activity, mindfulness, improved nutrition and preventive screenings.

When more people take small, everyday steps to improve their health and wellness, our society and global economies benefit. Were proud to be a part of this important effort, said Brooks Tingle, president and CEO of John Hancock.

RAND Europe used a dynamic, multi-country macroeconomic model to comprehensively assess the impact of physical inactivity on national economies on a consistent basis, allowing for an aggregation of the effect to the global economy. According to RAND Europe, the study followed a novel approach to synthesize the existing evidence on physical activity and mortality risk by taking study design and publication bias into account. It utilizes Vitalitys extensive proprietary data set on workplace healthderived from its Healthiest Workplace initiative in seven countriesto assess the relationship between physical activity and performance at work. It also combined the mortality and productivity effects into a single model to project the true economic cost of physical inactivity over time.

Related: Wellness program helping fight burnout

Hans Pung, president of RAND Europe, noted the significance of the study for policymakers and employers alike.

The study points to a significant relationship between inactivity and productivity loss, driven largely by ill-health-related presenteeism, he said. We hope that these insights will support policymakers and employers with new perspectives on how to enhance the productivity of their populations.

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Learn more about the latest trends in employee wellness at HREs upcomingHealth & Benefits Leadership Conference, set for April 15-17 at the Aria in Las Vegas.

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Are wellness and economic growth connected? - Human Resource Executive

The following is a contributed article by Stephanie McClellan, director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, a U.S. offshore wind energy policy and communications program based at the University of Delaware.

Last month the American wind industry hit a major milestone 100 gigawatts of total installed capacity. That's enough electricity to power the state of California and New Jersey combined for one year.

Offshore wind represents a large portion of new gigawatts in the pipeline, and we should do everything we can to keep it growing for the good of our economy and the health of our oceans. There's a revolution happening along our coasts, with the number of offshore wind projects ballooning over the past year.

And the costs have been plummeting. Global offshore wind prices have dropped 32% in the past yearand 12% in the past six months. A new outlook from the International Energy Agency predicts offshore wind generation will grow 15-fold in the next 20 years,emerging as a $1 trillion global industry.

While offshore wind is just finally hitting its stride here in the United States, Europe and Asia have proven how profitable it is to harness ocean winds to create electricity. Progress here in the U.S. in 2019 alone shows that we're well on our way to realizing the same profits. State commitments for offshore wind have now reached over 22 gigawatts by 2035 equal to the entire installed capacity in the world at the end of 2018.

According to my own analysis, by 2030, the U.S. offshore wind industry will expend some $70 billion to build the wind farms to meet the states' commitment, providing good jobs for some 40,000 people.

We don't have any time to spare to usher in this economic and energy opportunity. Last month, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)released a reporton oceans, ice and climate, and the news is grim.

All over the world, carbon pollution is making oceans more acidic and less oxygen-rich, while the warming temperatures are fundamentally changing ocean ecosystems. That means trouble for coastal fisheries, and the millions of people who rely on healthy fish populations for food. Meanwhile, rising sea levels are causing regular flooding in coastal communities, threatening clean water supplies and rusting away infrastructure.

Climate change is already costing coastal communities plenty, but fortunately, offshore wind can not only provide much-needed economic benefit but also play a crucial role as an emissions-free resource. In fact, the IPCC report explicitly says that ocean-based renewable energy sources, including offshore wind, can help address climate change and generate economic opportunities.

The climate benefits of offshore wind should be factored into any decision Congress makes on a potential tax credit extension package. Recent research from the Rhodium Group shows that extending the offshore wind investment tax credit through 2025 will help create more certainly in the market. This will allow the industry to invest in a strong domestic supply chain that will bring down costs and increase domestic manufacturing.

The offshore wind revolution will mean redevelopment of coastal communities and a reinvestment in neglected ports. Some communities have already experienced the benefits: New Bedford, a city with one of the highest unemployment rates in Massachusetts, has seen an increase in local jobsas it has strategically prepared to be a hub of operationsfor the industry. Block Island, the site of the country's first offshore wind farm, has seen a positive impact on tourismfollowing construction.

A thriving offshore wind industry goes hand in hand with a thriving community on shore. Acknowledging that other users of the ocean are concerned about new large scale developments in the ocean, I am confident the offshore wind industry can proactively work together with other users, to identify solutions that keep these exciting projects moving forward.

A good model of cooperation is the Joint Industry Task Forcerun by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which exists to improve communication between the fishing industry and offshore wind energy developers. Another is the recently-founded Responsible Offshore Science Alliancewhich will work to increase data on fisheries and wind development to allow both industries to better understand the effects of wind on fisheries and ocean ecosystems.

The offshore wind sector is also proactively addressing the concerns of coastal communities with a forthcoming public participation guide that will give transparency and visibility into an otherwise overwhelming regulatory process.

The ocean has always been one of humanity's greatest resources, and most dangerous threats. With offshore wind, we can turn the power of the ocean from an existential risk to our coasts into an economic engine of health, clean energy and well-being. And it's already taking place, across the country and around the world.

The revolution is happening, one revolution at a time.

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Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but our oceans and economy need it now - Utility Dive

The President of the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association is taking an active role in western representation at the federal level.

Gordon Barnhart will be part of a Federation of Canadian Municipalities task force set up to speak with the Liberal minority government in Ottawa.

Barnhart feels it will be a key voice for Saskatchewan which has no members in the Trudeau government caucus.

SUMAs President is encouraged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spoken with the mayors of Saskatoon and Regina but believes discussion needs to go further than phone conversations with Charlie Clark and Micheal Fougere.

Barnhart says SUMAs goals havent changed since the election, namely at least maintaining the current level of gas taxes going to municipalities and getting a cut of the Cannabis Excise Tax.

He maintains the task force, which is non-partisan will be a strong voice for prairie residents who feel alienated after four years of the Trudeau government and its decisions they feel hamper the wests resource based economy.

Barnhart says if the task force cant get its message across at first, it will scream a little louder.

(CJWW)

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SUMA's president will help represent the west in Ottawa - 620 CKRM.com

Albertans were already angry with B.C., with Quebec, and Justin Trudeau even before Canadians gave Trudeau a second chance in the form of a minority government in the recent federal election.

And now theyre really angry and hurt. Saskatchewan is mad too. A lot of the anger has to do with energy and climate change policies, including a national carbon tax. They feel Trudeau has done too much on one file and not enough on the other.

Though Trudeaus government was reduced to a minority, the fact Canadians didnt toss the Trudeau government out entirely appears to be viewed by some Albertans as a betrayal by the rest of Canada.

Why would Canadians re-elect a government that cares so little about Alberta?

The fact the Trudeau government bought a pipeline, the twinning of which is actually now under construction, doesnt seem to count for much right now in Alberta, where talk of western alienation and even separatism is once again a thing, though not a thing anyone takes very seriously, at least not in the same way that Quebec separatism is taken seriously.

In an attempt to try to bridge the archipelago of envies that Keith Spicer so aptly described in 1982 during the last bout of regional alienation, Suits and Boots an Alberta-based, pro-resources grassroots organization plans to hold a series of dialogues, called Face to Face, across Canada, in an attempt to help Canadians better understand each other and resolve their regional differences.

It started Friday, November 15, in Vancouver, where four British Columbians of varying backgrounds were asked to speak about Alberta and Canadas resource sectors.

Suits and Boots founder Rick Peterson, president of Peterson Capital, said the pain and the hurt in Alberta is deep. Albertas economy is suffering, thanks in part to low oil prices, though Albertans also blame Trudeau and British Columbias John Horgan government for policies and attitudes that they view to be distinctly anti-oil and anti-Alberta.

Delays in getting pipelines built, a national carbon tax, a moratorium on oil tanker traffic on B.C.s north coast, and a new environmental act that Premier Jason Kenney has dubbed the no-more-pipelines bill all add insult to injury.

Stewart Muir, executive director for Resource Works, said resource industries in general in Canada not just Albertas oil sector are facing a crisis of confidence due to increasing government regulation and environmental and social licence issues.

Sandy Garossino, national affairs columnist for the National Observer, who grew up in Alberta, said there is a lot of hot air blowing out of Alberta, and that Albertas premier is running the risk of being tuned out, as a result.

Jason Kenney is at serious risk of having Canadians tune him out, because hes just mad all the time about everything, she said.

Kenny has lately been threatening to pull Alberta out of the Canada Pension Plan, and hold a referendum on equalization.

Garossino suggested Albertans may be a bit overwrought. After all, Canadians appeared to have voted for both pipelines and strong climate change policies in the recent federal election.

There was an election on climate change, she said. And Canadians voted across party lines by a plurality for climate change. And they also voted for parties more than two-thirds that wanted to advance Albertas pipelines aspirations. So why are we in crisis?

She added that she thought former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Trudeau could have done a better job of selling the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project to British Columbia as part and parcel of Albertas and Canadas climate change plans.

I come out in support of TMX because Im an Albertan and because Im a Canadian, and I want to support Canadians, she said. But it makes it really hard when were getting attacked all the time over carbon taxes and climate initiatives.

Markham Hislop, who writes about energy for EnergiMedia, said some of the oil majors in Alberta understand the challenge of the coming energy transition, have been busy trying to reduce the emissions intensity of the oil sands, and that, as a result, they have earned the right to a pipeline.

However, more broadly, he characterized Alberta as being in a state of denial over and unprepared for the energy transition that will come from climate change policies and technological change.

Theres a tremendous amount of technological change happening in the electrification of transportation, he said. And 60% to 70% of oil goes into transportation. And we dont talk about that.

That not pipelines, not climate policy, not Trudeau being in the prime ministers chair that, the energy transition, is the existential threat Alberta is facing today.

One voice that was not heard in the 1980s, the last time Alberta alienation flared up, was that of First Nations.

While some First Nations oppose energy projects, like the Trans Mountain pipeline, others in B.C. and Alberta support the energy industry. Ellis Ross, former Haisla First Nation chief and current Liberal MLA, is an unapologetic booster of the LNG industry. He points to prosperity in his own community in Kitimat as an example of the benefits that come to First Nations working with industry, and the growing importance of First Nations in resource projects.

But he said there is a level of energy illiteracy in Canada that makes it difficult to even have a conversation about it. He added politicians may not even feel comfortable having an honest discussion about energy and climate change policies.

Politicians are afraid to speak against the narratives, he said.

The next Face to Face dialogue will be held in Toronto November 21. At the end of the nation-wide tour in March 2020, Peterson plans to summarize what was heard in dialogues across Canada and present it to the federal government.

nbennett@biv.com

@nbennett_biv

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Trying to bridge Canadas archipelago of envies again - Business in Vancouver

PCS The Moving Game illustrates complexities of the process Credit: Navy infographic

For years, Ive privately advocated for the US Army to create some British-style regiments to provide greater personal stability for officers and enlisted, increase unit identification and morale, and build units that include organic capabilities so they can go to war without drawing on lots of specialized support units. One aspect of the regimental system is that troops dont rotate to a new post every 18 months to two years, as do many US military personnel. This op-ed by a Foreign Area Officer (FAO) my favorite breed of Army officer currently a military fellow at CSIS, addresses the issue of stability in a clear and compelling fashion. Read on! The Editor.

For decades, the U.S. Army has insisted that most of its soldiers move every few years. That should stop.

Given the changing demographics of the force, contemporary societal pressures, and practical resource constraints, it is prudent to re-examine thisindustrial-age process of building generalists. It comes at a cost to the Army not only by forcing soldiers to cyclically shed specialization but also in the instability and uncertainty borne by the soldier.

Moving soldiers every two to three years come at a high cost.Moving causes enormous strain on the family unit.In todays increasingly polarized U.S. culture, it is important to reconsider ways the Army can encourage more physical community-building at its bases. While more study is required to assess the overall impact of a PCS (Permanent Change of Station), it is hard to argue that it helps stability.

Col. Jason Gresh

Moving every few years is especially tough on children, who often attend several schools in the span of a few years.Stabilization would also reduce the inevitable hassle of temporary housing concerns.Undoubtedly, a move can be positive: It gives the soldier a chance to redefine himself, start fresh, and learn a new skill in a new environment.But it also involves making new friends and integrating into a new community. Given todays renewed focus on mental health issues, it seems reasonable to provide more stability for soldiers and their families.

With the recent focus on the Army Talent Management Task Force, the Army has a great opportunity to offer more stabilization a move that aligns well with the focus on talent. Now is the perfect time to reassess the need for the PCS.

Yes, the PCS is often seen as a rite of passage in the Army and other services; many Army families boast of the number of places theyve been assigned to. But a lifetime of multiple station changes may not be attractive to the new post-industrial workforce the Army is now trying to recruit and retain. Numerous studies have pointed to what millennials and Gen-Z desire in a career and the prospect of moving every two to three years certainly is not one of them.New recruits value purpose and belonging, the chance to build expertise, as well as some choice about their career paths.Offering the choice to remain in one place for longer periods may be attractive.

If the Army is serious about harnessing skills in the knowledge-based economy, this same workforce is more likely to have spouses who are also seeking a professional career and work prospects.Regardless of a soldiers skill set, traditional notions of the Army spouse staying at home, taking care of the kids, and managing the household are rarer in todays knowledge-based economy.Frequent moves strain the spouses ability to improve their professional credentials, should they choose to do so.

The Army could enact some changes now.Certain high-density skills and grades can advance in certain geographic locales without the price of multiple PCS moves. Assignment policies at Army Human Resources Command do not necessarily look for advancement or broadening opportunities in the locale where that soldier is stationed.

To be fair, the Army has a few initiatives, including measures to stabilize the family when the soldier is deployed, or for school-age stabilization. But these are exceptions to the rule. Stabilization should be offered as a choice.Especially in high-density operational and combat support communities, these opportunities exist now.Certainly, stabilization chances decrease as the type of specialization increases, but it would be wise for the Army to offer stability to the soldier when considering her for a new job. Challenges remain; the Army would have to reconcile stabilization with career timelines that include continuing education, not to mention senior leader preferences.

Finally, theres the financial argument. Decreasing the number of PCS moves could save money and ease the logistical burden required to move and support our soldiers, while eliminating the all-too familiar moving headaches for soldiers. The Army is projected to spend approximately $1.7B in fiscal 2020 alone on PCS related travel expenses.Over the last five years, PCS travel costs for the Army have hovered around $1.75B per year.

Soldier moves are so frequent that DoDs database management systems have trouble handling the workload.DoDs moving database crashed for several days in fiscal 2019, creating long delays for the approximately 80,000 moves that it had to process that summer.Leadership has taken notice.Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville has already cited the need to improve the quality of PCS moves by holding moving contractors more accountable.

Reduce the number of moves so a soldier stays in one place for four to five years.Offering stabilization as a choice will help, not disrupt, the formation of the post-industrial force. Creating an attractive environment for recruiting will also help the Army realize its increasingly difficult goal of retaining talentwhile imparting stability to the Armys workforce.

Col. Jason Gresh is a military fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Gresh has been serving for the last 12 years as a Foreign Area Officer. He specializes in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The views expressed above are Greshs alone and do not reflect the views of the US government.

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Reassess The PCS: Stop Moving Soldiers Every 2 Years - Breaking Defense