On the window of a bike shop in Copenhagen, a sign reads: Your next car is a bike.

More than 62% of Copenhageners cycle to work in one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world, and the municipality is actively investing in new bike lanes and green light waves to allow seamless commutes in the morning traffic. In recent years, new types of bikes, such as cargo and electric bikes, have also reduced the need for family cars.

But these trends arent unique to Copenhagen. Around the world, cities are witnessing the emergence, and sometimes the demise, of smarter, healthier and cheaper transportation tools and systems, and they are attempting to integrate them into existing mobility patterns.

Paris pioneered one of the first city bike schemes, the Vlib, and projected it onto the global stage. The system took advantage of innovations in smart cards in the early 2000s to deploy a fleet of around 15,000 bikes, accessible by the hour, to residents and tourists. It soon became a refreshing new mode of discovering the citys leafy boulevards, away from traffic jams and crowds. The system was very successful and inspired similar schemes across the globe: Milan in 2008, London in 2010 and even NYC in 2013, which, to the surprise of many, has raced ahead on the path to becoming a bike-friendly city.

The next wave of innovation came from the East. Chinese startups Mobike and Ofo and Singapore-based oBike took advantage of GPS tracking. If you know where a bike is at all times, why do you need docking stations? And dockless systems were born, with clear advantages in terms of usage for customers and deployment for cities. Before spreading to many other cities in 2017, these companies raised billions of dollars in funding and became known as Chinese bike unicorns, Silicon Valley jargon for companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more.

Bike sharing is on the rise around the world.

Image: Statista

Then, the issues started.

First, quality. Many bikes required constant maintenance and were often out of service.

Then, vandalism, as bikes freed from docking stations were much more vulnerable to improper usage. They were drowned in Amsterdams canals, and they eventually ended up in urban bike cemeteries around the world, giving rise to pollution concerns and prompting cities to get more stringent in granting licenses.

Finally, the business model came under pressure. At the beginning, new deposits by customers financed the deployment of new bikes, but market saturation soon threatened this strategy. As of now, several dockless bike startups have gone bankrupt, and Mobike the remaining largest player is considering selling most of the stakes of its European arm.

Yet, micromobility addresses important urban issues, and as such, it will certainly have a role in tomorrows cities. Of all trips in the United States, 80% are under 12 miles, and in New York City, most dont exceed 2 miles. This is precisely where the car is not particularly competitive and where micromobility is handy. Micromobility is more energy and space efficient, and safer if accompanied by dedicated urban areas.

Besides, why use a five-seat, 2,000-pound SUV to move what is often less than 200 pounds? If you can access one the vehicle that best suits you at the touch of an app, it would be better to go for a two-seater, when moving with a partner, or when alone, a single-pod car, bike, or even dockless electric scooter, which are now deployed by companies like Bird, Lime, Bolt and others. These scooter companies have attracted investment from big ride-hailing operators such as Uber and Lyft, and theyre probably just the first sign of a richer biodiversity (or bike-diversity?) in mobility.

If micromobility can play a big role in the coming years, cities and investors should plan ahead to avoid recent shortcomings. To avoid polluting bike cemeteries, cities should start providing designated spaces for dockless parking. This would fit well with the trend of managing the curb as a city-wide resource that could provide income to public administrations. To manage this multipurpose physical space, there could be a corresponding unique digital platform granting us the freedom to choose between cycling, scootering, walking, taking an on-demand vehicle, using the subway or train and hitching a ride with friends. We could call it the moving web an integration platform similar to what happened with the airline industry a few decades ago.

Cities represent humanity's greatest achievements - and greatest challenges. From inequality to air pollution, poorly designed cities are feeling the strain as 68% of humanity is predicted to live in urban areas by 2050.

The World Economic Forum supports a number of projects designed to make cities cleaner, greener and more inclusive.

These include hosting the Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization, which gathers bright ideas from around the world to inspire city leaders, and running the Future of Urban Development and Services initiative. The latter focuses on how themes such as the circular economy and the Fourth Industrial Revolution can be harnessed to create better cities. To shed light on the housing crisis, the Forum has produced the report Making Affordable Housing a Reality in Cities.

Cities should also manage citizens expectations. Urban tech means using the city as a lab. The next few years are an important time for experimentation, but city governments should communicate with citizens to educate them about tolerating failure. This means allowing ideas and innovations to be tested by people and using feedback loops to take users responses into account.

If we are able to address the above issues, the future of micromobility will be bright and will help make our cities healthier and more sustainable. And then, your next car could, indeed, be a bike.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Written by

Carlo Ratti, Director, SENSEable City Lab, MIT

Ida Auken, Member of Parliament, Parliament of Denmark (Folketinget)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Why micromobility is the future of transportation in cities - World Economic Forum

Addressing chief ministers of the states in July 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was reported as having said that he wanted India to be a "$5 trillion economy" by 2024. This means roughly doubling of the size of our economy in 5 years.

As a part of the efforts to accelerate the economic activities of the nation, the union government announced in February 2018 its decision to set up 12 additional nuclear power reactors. Also being planned and constructed are many coal based and dam based power plants to support the energy demands of such accelerated economic activity.

The country has also embarked on having a total capacity of 175,000 MW of renewable energy by 2022. These are all a part of the ease of doing business environment, and making India global hub of manufacturing in addition to massive number of investments in setting up roads, railways, dams, industries, airports etc.

When we note the official statements that the country has a surplus power generating capacity which will last several years, and that it is looking for opportunities to export electricity, there seems an urgent need to review the high GDP growth rate paradigm keeping in mind the all-round welfare needs of our society.

Successive governments in the country have been focusing on a high GDP growth rate since the 1990s, supposedly as the road map to eliminate poverty. After decades of such a focus, what is the experience of society as a whole? Is such high growth year after year desirable, is it truly in the interest of our communities?

Very often the issues of economic development and environment are wrongly pitted against each other. Since everything we see around us is provided by nature, the necessity of harnessing natural resources on a sustainable basis need not be emphasised.

The frenetic growth in non-agricultural sectors, as is happening in many states of our union, may lead to instability (directly and indirectly) in the production and productivity of food and other agricultural products. Such a probability of lowered agricultural output in the context of a huge and growing population should be a matter of matter of grave concern to our country.

There are also genuine concerns among environmentalists, that the policy of high business growth at any cost is seriously compromising the environment, as evidenced by the deteriorating environment all over the world. Serious concerns on the pollution of air, water and soil, as has been reported from different parts of the country, cannot be ignored any longer. The fact that global warming is clearly associated with a huge and deleterious impact on food production should make this issue of even greater concern.

In this context, the primary question should be whether the PMs stated doubling of the wealth of society without regard to its distribution or true worth in a decade should come at a huge cost to large sections of our society. How much are such societal costs acceptable, and who gets to decide?

Under the kind of economy we have at present, a sustained high GDP growth rate will mean:

The setting up of more factories or manufacturing facilities; consumption of large quantities of raw materials such as iron, steel, cement, chemicals etc.; increasing an unsustainable demand for natural resources such as land, water, minerals, timber etc.; acute pressure from businesses on the government to divert agricultural or forest lands; huge demand for various forms of energy (petroleum products, coal, electricity etc.); accelerated urban migration; a clamour for more of airports, airlines, hotels, shopping malls, private vehicles, express highways etc.

A vast increase in each of these activities, while increasing the total greenhouse gas (GHG, responsible for global warming) emissions, will also reduce the overall ability of natural carbon sinks such as forests to absorb these emissions. There will also be increased pollution of land, air and water, along with huge issues of managing the solid, liquid and gaseous wastes.

The governments own draft National Resource Efficiency Policy, 2019 points out many concerns in India:

- High import dependency of many critical raw materials

- 30% of land undergoing degradation

- Highest water withdrawal globally for agriculture

- 3rd highest CO2 emitter, responsible for 6.9% of global CO2 emissions

- Much lower recycling rate at 20-25% compared to 70% in developed countries

- Low material productivity compared to global average

- 3rd largest material demand (in 2010)

- Resource extraction of 1,580 tonnes/acre much higher than the world average of 450 tonnes/acre.

The assumption that the country needs to sustain economic growth of 8-9 % over the next 20 years to eradicate poverty and to meet its human development goals, will lead to very many intractable problems for the society from social and environmental perspectives.

Besides, such a simple correlation between income and human development, without concerted state intervention to improve the latter, is rarely in evidence.

Such a high growth rate has never been found necessary in developed economies, where even at the highest growth period they are reported to have registered only 3-4 % growth. The so called trickle down benefits to vulnerable sections of our society through 8-9 % growth will be negligible as compared to the all-round benefits associated with equitable growth at a greatly reduced rate, 3-4%, if we harness our natural resources responsibly.

The consequential social and environmental impacts of high GDP growth rate in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bolivia etc. for many years continuously should establish that the concerns are similar everywhere, whereas the poverty has not been eliminated fully.

The Club of Rome had raised considerable public attention in this regard way back in 1972 with its report The Limits to Growth. It had predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly oil. A 2011 study of those predictions found that the warnings we received in 1972... are becoming increasingly more worrisome as reality seems to be following closely the curves that the... scenario had generated.

We in India should keep in mind that air pollution here is so bad that it kills about half a million people every year.

And despite a high GDP growth rate since 1996, about 30% of the population in the country are still reportedly living below international poverty lines.

The consequences of high GDP growth will result in depriving the dispossessed sections of society of access even to natural resources (such as forests, rivers and fertile land), while driving fragile ecologies to a point of no return.

Already a joint study by the World Bank and University of Washington released in 2016 has estimated that in 2013 the environmental degradation costs to India, including welfare costs and lost labour income due to air pollution, was of about 8.5 % of its economy.

These World Bank estimates may indicate that net growth in our economy is probably negative when we take the environmental degradation and health costs into objective consideration.

In this context, how advisable is it to plan to double the size of our economy in the next 5 years?

As far back as 1974, the Cocoyoc Declaration in Mexico had unequivocally stated the criticality to limit our needs within the natures limits. Organised by UNEP and the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development, this symposium identified the economic and social factors which lead to environmental deterioration:

The combined destructive impacts of a poor majority struggling to stay alive and an affluent minority consuming most of the world's resources are undermining the very means by which all people can survive and flourish.

We are all in need of a redefinition of our goals, or new development strategies, or new lifestyles, including more modest patterns of consumption among the rich.

Should we not focus instead on those economic activities which will not lead to further diversion of forest/agricultural lands, which will not demand much of water and energy, which will not lead to pollution of land, air and water, and which will lead to sustainable harnessing of our natural resources? Such activities may include sustainable agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry, forestry, health and educational services, IT&BT, eco & health tourism etc.

In this context it is pertinent to know what Tamil Nadu State Action Plan on Climate Change (TNSAPCC) has said: Global development experience reveals that one percent growth in agriculture [and allied activities] is at least two or three times more effective in reducing poverty than the type of same growth emanating from non-agricultural sector.

Can we hope that the tall claims by the government on the issue of climate change and on economic growth will be matched by an effective action plan to minimise the pollution and contamination issues of our communities, by urgently moving away from the high GDP growth rate paradigm?

Shankar Sharma is a power policy analyst.

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Growing GDP Amid Hazardous Pollution The True Welfare of our Communities? - The Citizen

On a spring day, I stood at the corner of Madison and Pennsylvania avenues in the nations capital, transfixed on the building in front of me.

Passersby zigzagged around me.

In my trance, I imagined a magnificent brownstone front, its towering height, with spacious windows. A splendid sight indeed. Through those windows I imagined its marble counters and black walnut finishings, and a row of its gentlemanly and elegantly dressed Black men and women clerks, with their pens behind their ears and buttonhole bouquets in their coat-fronts.

It was beautiful, just as Frederick Douglass had described, nearly 140 years ago.

Someone brushing past me snapped me back to the present. I climbed the stairs of the buildingacross from the White Houseto read the two plaques affixed to the Treasury Annex. The first read: On this site stood the principal office of the Freedmans Savings and Trust Company founded on March 3, 1865 to receive deposits from former slaves. Frederick Douglass served as its last president. The bank was closed on June 29, 1874. The building was sold in 1882, and razed a few years later. The other, simply: FREEDMANS BANK BUILDING.

Sitting on the stairs, I started to consider the historical significance of that moment. Black people hadin nine yearsamassed tens of millions of dollars,after 246 years of the most brutal and unimaginable treatment of any human beingkidnapping, trafficking, rape, castration, torture, uncompensated backbreaking labor.

I tried to imagine a world where 70,000 Black men and women whod deposited nearly $60 million into the Freedmans Savings and Trust Company had not been swindled out of that money by White bank managers.

What if they had been able to invest their own dollars, and grow their own capital? What if Reconstruction hadnt been disrupted and those newly freed men and women were allowed to keep and develop their 40 acres? What if reparations had been paid to them rather than to their enslavers? What might they and their descendants have collectively achieved?

The modern-day movement to repair the harm done to the descendants of enslaved Africans is rooted in a history that reaches back more than 400 yearsto before our arrival on U.S. shores. To truly understand the debt this country owes to Black people is to be liberated from the bondage of miseducation that weve remained shackled to in the so-called land of the free.

The case for reparations didnt begin with Ta-Nehisi Coates 2014 bombshell articlein The Atlantic that based our claim to reparations not only on the enslavement of African people on this land, but also for the post-emancipation exclusionary policies that followed: Jim Crow, Black Codes, redlining, mass incarceration. Coates article created an awakening, granting new life to a movement that dates back more than a century and a half.

The hard work of hundreds of organizations and individuals means the mainstream can no longer ignore the demand by questioning if reparations are warranted.

The discovery of wreckage from the slave ship Clotilda near Mobile, Alabama, earlier this year presents an ideal test case for reparations. Descendants of the ships owner are among the citys wealthiest citizenswith land worth millionswhile descendants of the 110 Africans brought over on the Cotilda scrape by on working-class wages.

Making atonement to the descendants of enslaved people was the subject of a Congressional Hearing on Reparationsin June and the question of reparations is a live topic in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

The conversation now isnt should it be done, but how. After all, paying reparations in this country is not a novel idea or deed. The United States government has compensated Sioux Indians for stolen land, Japanese Americans for internment, and supported Holocaust survivorsin their reparation demands from Germany and Austria.

Nevertheless, many Whites are still threatened by the idea of reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans, and some Blacks are antagonistic toward it. But the attempts to recover the debt owed to Black people can no longer be ignored.

Recovering that debt will require the continued work of a critical mass, of not only Black people, but also White folks, whom presidential candidate Marianne Williamson saidare still passing the baton of horror and guilt and toxicity and emotional turbulence from generation to generation.

This sometimes contentious conversation has fomented a more holistic conception of reparations: No longer about a one-time payout to Black folks, reparations today are about collective healing thats going to take more than a check, a one-time fixor any single remedy. Says Mashariki Jywanza, national co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America: They should have just paid us then.

The first efforts to atone for the damages of slavery and seek reparations for formerly enslaved Africans came in 1865 during a meeting between 20 Black pastors and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The meeting led to Shermans Special Field Order No. 15, which sought to redistribute 400,000 acres along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts confiscated from Confederates after their defeat in the Civil War.

The newly freed families were each given 40 acres of land, and some received surplus mules from the army, but Shermans order was rescinded by President Andrew Johnson just months later. The phrase 40 acres and a mule has since come to represent the broken promise to pay compensation for centuries of slavery.

In the years to follow there would be innumerable efforts to collect reparations for Black people.

In 1890, William Connell, a Nebraska Republican, introduced the first ex-slave pension bill in Congress. He did so at the request of Walter Vaughan, an Omaha Democrat, who had received a letter from Frederick Douglass marveling that the U.S. government had failed to compensate Black people for 250 years of unpaid labor, including building the Capitol and White House.

The idea of pensions for the formerly enslaved, one of several such proposals at the time, was modeled after the Civil War-era program for military service pensions.

Then in 1898, a formerly enslaved woman, a widow and mother of five named Callie House, who worked as a laundress, and an educator and minister named Isaiah H. Dickerson, created the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association, which grew out of the advocacy created by Vaughns campaign for reparations.

As secretary, then leader of the organization, House traveled extensively in former slave states preaching the gospel of reparations. By the early 1900s, her association had grown to about 300,000members. But her work was thwarted by White peoplegovernment officials and constituents alikethreatened by any attempt to elevate Black people.

Meanwhile, influential Black leaders of the time, such as W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, largely ignored the reparations movement, focusing instead on their own ideas to advance the racehigher learning and pulling oneself up by ones own bootstraps, respectively.

In 1915, politician and lawyer Cornelius J. Jones filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Treasury for $68 million in compensatory reparations. Jones argued that, through a federal tax placed on raw cotton, the federal government had benefited financially from the sale of cotton that slave labor had produced, according to Randall Robinson, author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. The case was dismissed because the federal appeals court ruled that the United States could not be sued without its consent, a legal principle known as sovereign immunity.

For 60 years, beginning in the early 1900s, Queen Mother Audley Moore pushed for reparations, co-founding among other organizations the Reparations Committee of Descendants of United States Slaves, which demanded land and recompense for Black people.

Her activism and petition to the United Nations in 1962 led the intergovernmental organization to declare the trans-Atlantic slave trade a crime against humanity at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, which was held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Moore died in 1997, just months before her 99th birthday.

Then there was James Forman, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who in 1969 delivered his Black Manifesto challenging White churches and synagogues, which he believed were complicit in slavery, to pay $500 million in reparations. The money was to go for projects that would benefit Black communities, including a Southern land bank, a Black university, and media networks.

Raymond Jenkins, a Detroit real estate entrepreneur, spent 40 years raising the topic of reparations everywhere he went. Known as Reparations Ray, he was the inspiration for House Resolution 40, the reparations bill that the late U.S. Rep. John Conyers first introduced in 1989.

Jenkins was moved by his own trauma from witnessing racial violence including, when he was a child, seeing a White playmate shoot and kill a Black playmate for not calling him Mister. Also, he was encouraged by two successful actions in the 1980s. The first was the U.S. Supreme Courts 1980 orderrequiring the federal government to pay $122 million to the eight Sioux Indian Tribes in compensation for the illegal seizure of their lands 100 years earlier. The second was in 1988, when Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, officially apologizing for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and authorizing $1.25 billion in compensation to 60,000 survivors.

Contrary to what opponents of reparations have argued, the concept is not one of a handoutit is an effort at indemnification.

Having studied the movement work of those before her, Deadria C. Farmer-Paellmann focused on researching and educating others about the need for reparations. She drew lessons from cases like Jones in 1915 and then Cato v. United States in 1995, which too was dismissed because of sovereign immunity, as well as the statute of limitations because it came so long after slavery ended.

Called the Rosa Parks of the reparations litigation movement, Farmer-Paellmann brought a suit in 2002, In Re: African American Descendants Slave Litigation, against corporations who earned their wealth through slavery. There were 18 companies in total, including Aetna, Fleetboston, CSX, JPMorgan Chase, New York Life Insurance Co., R.J. Reynolds, and Lehman Brothers.

In a phone interview, Farmer-Paellmann wanted to clarify that she did not lose her case. While parts of it were dismissed, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that she and other plaintiffs whose cases were combined with hers had standing in their consumer fraud and consumer protection law claim. The court maintained that The injury is the loss incurred by buying something that one wouldnt have bought had one known the truth about the product.

We were successful, Farmer-Paellmann says adamantly, referring to a Harvard Review article that describes the case with great precision. We just never finished the litigation.

Farmer-Paellmann says the plaintiffs ran out of money, so they couldnt pursue the consumer fraud claim, which still has a great chance of winning.

She believes the judicial approach against corporations is the most likely to succeed in any case for reparations. And, she says, theres another claim that has never been argued before a court of law: genocide. She believes it has a greater chance of success than even HR 40.

What I would love to see is they create a private right of action within the Proxmire Act, she said, referring to the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987. This, she says, cannot be dismissed by claims of sovereign immunity. It allows for the kinds of conditions that we suffer from the vestiges of slavery, referencing, for example, the destruction of an ethnic and national identity.

Meanwhile, reparations proponents like Ron Daniels of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century have been working on a reparations action plan, with the hope that HR 40 will be made law.

While the bill has never been debated, in 2017, he points out, HR 40 went from being a study bill, charged with creating a commission to study the need for reparations, to a remedy bill, calling for the creation of a commission to develop proposals for and implement reparations.

A decadeslong advocate for reparations and Black self-determination, Daniels points to the work of the National African American Reparations Commission, of which hes a member. The Commission created a 10-Point Reparations Programfor people of African descent in the United States, similar to that of the Caribbean Reparations Commissions Ten Point Action Plan.

The U.S. program includes a formal apology and establishment of an African Holocaust Institute; the right of repatriation; the right to land for social and economic development; resources for health, wellness, and healing of Black families and communities; education for community development and empowerment; affordable housing for healthy Black communities and wealth generation; and repairing the damages of the criminal injustice system.

The foundation has been laid and the work is being done globally, Daniels says, adding that what is still missing are sufficient resources to support the effort.

There have been actions on multiple levels individual, municipal, and institutional, with banks like Wachovia, and colleges and universities like Brownand Georgetownand Virginia Theological Seminary acknowledging their role in slavery and the perpetuation of it.

In September, California lawmakers introduced a resolution to investigate what statewide reparations would look like and how best to use them to fix inequities, acknowledging that California had a role in reinforcing slavery in the United States.

Not since the late 19th and early 20th centuries has there been this much momentum around reparations, says David Ragland, director of the nonprofit FOR Truth & Reparations, and co-founder of the Truth Telling Project of Ferguson.

In addition to political attention and increased support for two reparations measures in Congress, the Movement for Black Lives has released a Reparations Now Toolkitto help answer questions about reparations.

And on the weekend marking the fifth anniversary of Mike Browns death, Aug. 9, I attended the national grassroots reparations convening in Ferguson, Missouri, hosted by FOR Truth & Reparations and the Truth Telling Project of Ferguson.

About 20 organizations participated in the discussion on healing as a means of reparations. Ragland and other panelists explained that reparations arent just about monetary compensation. Black folks need to heal from the generations of trauma weve endured from slavery and the vestiges thereof.

This healing must be done internally, says Hakim Williams, associate professor and interim chair of Africana Studies and director of Peace and Justice Studies at Gettysburg College.

Williams, one of the panelists, said that for him the main part of reparations discourse needs to center on how we stop injuring ourselves and others and start to rebuild our communities through our own lens. Now, thats not to say its mutually exclusive from holding former colonizers accountable for the harm that they have rendered, he said. But while we are arguing for that, and while were waiting for that, we need to do our own healing.

If that healing doesnt happen, Williams says, no amount of money that comes will be helpful.

In fact, he adds, I think the class chasms might widen if [we dont] have a vision of what to do with that money. We dont want to be just another capitalist cog in the global capitalist economy we want to re-envision our society.

Christine Schmidt, a New York-based psychotherapist and clinical consultant, asked the question: What specifically do Black people want or need for White people to do?

Afterward, I spoke with Schmidt, who is White. I think thats something that must be determined by the people who are harmed. What do people who have been harmed need to heal? she said. The material compensation is not something that White people can decide.

That, she said, would be charitynot reparations.

I think that we have to be there and prepared and willing to offer and say that this is our responsibility, she continued. [And] I think that the responsibility is both material, and psychological and emotional. But its also really, really important that we are not going to be in the lead, that we need to be actively engaged responders.

Her question was reminiscent of the one Sherman asked the 20 pastors 154 years ago: What did they need to take care of themselves?

Their responsethen was twofold.

Separation: land of their own, separate from the control of Whites; and Assimilation: the freedom to exist among Whites without the threat of harm.

In so many ways, those desires have not changed. Resources and the space to heal are necessary for both.

The consensus of the many people Ive talked to about reparations is that no dollar amount can make up for the harm of slavery and the exploitation and oppression of Black people that followed. However, the trillionsowed are a start, and can be disbursed in a number of ways.

Proponents of reparations have adopted a multifaceted understanding of them as defined by the United Nations. It includes restitution, or return of what was stolen; rehabilitation, mental and physical health support; compensation, both monetary and resource-based, which includes a meaningful transfer of wealth; satisfaction, acknowledgement of guilt, apology, and memorial; and guarantees of non-repeat. Or, as Ragland explains: Dont do that shit again.

Jywanza, who also attended the convening in Ferguson, said she sees value in collaborating with institutions already doing this work.

Theres no need for us to be divided and conquered, she says. Lets call everyone (economists, social scientists, psychologists, activists) together and see what full repair can look like in our communities. Whether we ever get a dime. We should take on that responsibility.

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How Reparations to Descendants of Slavery Can Heal a Nation - YES! Magazine

PUNE: On the occasion of World Toilet Day, Geneva-based Toilet Board Coalition (TBC) is hosting the Global Sanitation Economic Summit in Pune, India, from November 18, 2019, to November 21, 2019.

The summit will provide business, investment and sanitation leaders at the forefront of the global Sanitation Economy with a platform to deliberate upon Sanitation Economy solutions for various industries, citizens, and development agendas.

The summits inauguration will feature eminent keynote speakers including Secretary P. Iyer, Ministry of Water and Sanitation, Government of India; Cheryl Hicks, Executive Director and CEO, Toilet Board Coalition; and Rajendra Jagtap, CEO, Pune Smart City.

Delegates will include representatives from prominent entities like Tata Trusts, Unilever, Kalyani Group, Lixil, Kimberly-Clark, Veolia, Firmenich and USAID as well as Indian Smart Cities.

The events panel discussions will see leading sectoral experts touch upon various topics, including India leading the way in business innovation & WASH; How the Sanitation Economy approach becomes a part of mitigating water risk for companies and governments; How the Circular Economy, applied to sanitation, becomes a solution provider for agriculture and consumer goods industries and Sanitation solutions for a resource constrained world (detailed agenda appended).

Speaking about the summit, Cheryl Hicks, CEO and Executive Director, Toilet Board Coalition, said, Sanitation is a net contributor to human-rights, new resources, and data with vast opportunities for business and society. Companies hold the potential to transform sanitation systems from an unaffordable cost into delivery systems for renewable resources and information about human-health and behaviour critical to future business growth. Applying Sanitation Economy approaches that are circular and digitised enables new solutions for water security, energy security, food security and health.

With Sanitation Economy approaches, the current cost of providing sanitation can be reduced from about USD 200 per person to a net value of USD 10 per person. We call on fellow business leaders to join us in mobilising business leadership to scale up the Sanitation Economy 2020-2025.

Through the summit, the Coalition will focus on the rising population and corresponding demand for robust sanitation systems and policies, and how this creates waste-to-value opportunities for multiple applications, including energy products, agricultural products and water recovery. This is an opportunity to create a sustainable waste management cycle wherein data-driven sanitation helps increase efficiency and cost reduction while repurposing the waste for further use in the economy. According to the Coalition, any company that seeks to lead on issues of sustainability and purpose must incorporate the circular sanitation economy as an integral part of their business.

Key Statistics

The Sanitation Economy approaches provide three pathways to scale:

Original post:

India's Sanitation Economy estimated to be a $62 billion market opportunity - IndiaCSR

Newly appointed 104th President of the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management (CIWM), Trevor Nicoll, has highlighted the importance of supporting skills and professional development for both current and future professionals across the resources and waste sector.

Speaking at his inauguration speech yesterday (12 November) at the Downing College Guildhall in Cambridge, Nicoll explained that, with the core resources and waste sector employing over 150,000 people and more than 600,000 jobs anticipated in the wider circular economy by 2030, attracting new talent into the sector is essential.

We need to ask the next generation some questions, Nicoll said. Will you be part of a sector that has so much to contribute to building a more sustainable and healthy future? Will you be part of a sector that will manage the valuable resources in our waste to protect our landscapes and our oceans? Would you like to be part of a bigger family that has a really important task ahead to help tackle climate change and reduce marine plastics pollution? Will you help to create a more circular economy to reduce consumption of the earths finite resources?

Outlining what action CIWM would be taking to support future workers in the sector, Nicoll launched his Presidential Report, a new Green Careers Toolkit developed to inspire students in secondary schools and colleges by showcasing the range, relevance and diversity of jobs in the sector.

The toolkit will be one of the first resources to be hosted on a new teacher platform called Transform Our World. Launching in January 2020, this free online resource hub aims to support teachers in bringing environmental action into the classroom.

Each CIWM President launches a Presidential Report, which focuses on their priorities for their presidency. Last years President, Enda Kiernan, looked at the risks of Brexit on exports of refuse-derived fuel (RDF), while Professor David Wilson, who was appointed in 2017, focused his on community-based resource management and increased levels of international development finance to address health and environmental challenges in low- and middle-income countries.

Commenting on the toolkit, Luke Wynne, Head of Youth and Schools at Global Action Plan said: It has been great to work with CIWM and explore the different green career opportunities within the Waste and Resource Management industry. We're excited to have created a resource that aims to encourage young people from across the country to understand the opportunities available to them to pursue a career with purpose in this sector.

After announcing the Green Careers Toolkit, Nicoll went on to outline CIWMs work to develop a Framework of Professional Standards to provide structured and targeted support to CIWM members working in the sector today.

With the support of industry experts, the framework aims to help workers meet their professional development goals, address skills gaps and progress through the stages of CIWM membership to Chartered and Fellow grades.

The Framework covers the knowledge, skills and behaviours that CIWM expects to see at four core levels of a resource and waste professionals career and this work has led us to the development of a new digital tool called CIWM Aspire, which will be launched in Spring 2020, Nicoll explained.

He added: Based on the competences used to assess Chartered Waste Managers, the framework outlines the core sector knowledge and essential business skills that individuals need. By comparing their current knowledge and skills with the Framework, the digital platform will help CIWM Members to evaluate their career to date and offer learning opportunities for the future. This will enable our members to demonstrate their competence and knowledge, make a real difference in the sector and seize future opportunities.

Nicoll is taking over the presidential position from Enda Kiernan, who will continue to support as part of the 2019/20 CIWM presidential team.

Nicoll has a wealth of experience in municipal waste management he is currently Assistant Director for Waste and Special Projects at Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire District Councils, and previously worked as Head of Recycling, Waste and Fleet Services at Newcastle under Lyme Borough Council.

He will be supported by the presidential team that includes Senior Vice-President Adam Read, Junior Vice-President Anna Willetts and CIWM Honorary Treasurer John Kutner. In a bid to streamline decision-making, CIWM has also chosen to reduce its number of trustees from 27 to seven.

In welcoming the new CIWM Trustee Board, Nicoll outlined the strategic goals for CIWM during his term of office. They include:

I believe that this year will be a crucial for the sector with the development of the new Resources and Waste Strategy in England and with the greater focus on the circular economy and the environment across all nations, he concluded.

CIWM has undergone major restructuring over the past two years, with a new business plan set in motion in October 2018 to help the company regain financial stability after operating at a net deficit of 223,000 in 2017. However, the organisation has recovered, trading profitably through 2018, and it is expected to break even by the end of 2019.

You can learn more about the CIWM, including the Green Careers Toolkit, on the CIWM website.

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Skills and training the focus for new CIWM President - Resource Magazine

To the Editor re: Joseph Nusses Oct 31st Letter.

Rachel Notley calling the Federal NDPs Jagmeet Singh out for opposing Trans Mountain expansion shouldnt be surprising to anyone. However, Joe Nusses suggestion that this is all about blue-collar job losses is the way I see it simply wrong. Notley, Trudeau, Scheer and most of the mainstream press continue to profess the false industry rhetoric that pipelines bring jobs to Canadians, but the National Governments own website smashes this falsehood: The U.S. imports 84% of Canadas crude production, while only consuming 21%, meaning that Canada exports 63% of its refining jobs to the Americans. Expect such stats to get worse, not better, with oil sands and pipeline expansion.

Mega-project cash potentially makes election promises shine to some blue-collar workers. The reality is that these jobs are part of a surge and crash economy which does little for long-term socio-economic stability. Canada had only 62,000 permanent oil and gas jobs in 2018, while the clean energy sector employed 268,000. Add to this, the 436,000 existing jobs in energy efficiency, and we understand the Canadian publics green economic commitment-even before the initiation of any official federal transition from fossil fuels. Shame on anybody who reports otherwise, and kudos to Singh for not committing to expanding Trans Mountain.

The fact is that some Canadian employment continues to be focussed on exporting finite resources. This reality, however, is largely the product of big business, big government, and big media pushing economics which deplete our lands biodiversity, clean water, and living soil, while also destabilizing our social and economic future.

Instead of a $4.5 billion pipeline, expanding finite resource extraction economies which have caused massive social and environmental degradation globally, the Liberals would have done our country a much greater service by investing in three small universities: One focusing on clean energy innovation and the others on innovative small scale organic farming and community-based ecological forestry, which both promote ecology and water, while sequestering carbon. These would have created and stabilized more long-term jobs than any pipeline ever will.

If the mainstream media and the political campaigns were truth-searched on their facts the past few months, I doubt the Greens or N.D.P would have polled so poorly, or that the Conservatives and Liberals would have done so well. The problem is not really the lefts demographics, as Nusse also suggests, but falsehoods pushed as facts which then distort the way people vote.

Rob Mercereau,Dunster, B.C.

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Green economy already eclipses that of oil and gas - The Rocky Mountain Goat

Two BC research projects have received a combined total of $448,000 through the Ignite Program of Innovate BC, the agency that funds entrepreneurial support programs in the province.

Innovate BC said the projects were selected based on their commercial and technical viability and their ability to be market-ready within three years.

Both projects are being led by researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), as well as industry partners within the province. The funding is aimed to help accelerate the commercialization of these projects innovations, so they can address significant environmental and healthcare challenges in BC and globally. Innovate BC has awarded $5.3 million in Ignite funding to 25 projects since the programs launch in 2016.

The Ignite Program addresses some of the worlds most pressing challenges by turning innovative ideas into real-life solutions, said Raghwa Gopal, president and CEO of Innovate BC. In BC, 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.

A waste polyurethane chemical recycling project led by James Olson of UBC, Polymer Research Technologies, and the BC Research Institute, will receive $300,000 in funding from Innovate BC.

This project is seeking to develop technology to chemically recycle polyurethane foam waste from the transportation, furniture, automotive, construction, insulation, and appliance industries. The result of the project is intended to be a reusable, recyclable, economical, and eco-friendly raw material alternative to petroleum-based virgin polyol.

Polymer Research is extremely excited to receive this prestigious award, saidKambiz Taheri, CEO of Polymer Research Technologies. 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.

RELATED: Simon Fraser University receives $3 million for youth entrepreneurship, cleantech

The second project, focused on automated clinical tissue manufacturing, will receive $148,000 in funding. This project is led by Konrad Walus of UBC and Vancouver-based Aspect Biosystems. It will focus on a manufacturing platform that will allow tissue production to be scaled in what Innovate BC called a robust and highly repeatable manner.

The 3D printed tissues are intended to drive the future of drug development, regenerative medicine, and cellular therapies. They would eliminate the need for animals in the discovery of new therapeutics and would allow doctors to know how a patient will react to a drug before prescribing it. Clinical tissue manufacturing could allow transplant organs to be created, rather than harvested.

Through this exciting collaboration, we look forward to accessing world-class research capabilities at the University of British Columbia, said Tamer Mohamed, CEO of Aspect Biosystems. Investing in deep technology for medical applications does not only improve health outcomes but drives our economy. This support from Innovate BC is a testament to the provincial governments belief in innovation, and its power to create impact and value.

Innovate BC said these projects were selected based on their commercial and technical viability as well as their ability to be market-ready within three years. All Ignite projects need to address an industry problem in the natural resource or applied sciences, have the potential to benefit to the province, and be undertaken by academic and industry members.

Image courtesy Unsplash

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Two research projects receive combined $448000 from Innovate BC - BetaKit

ROME, ITALY Global leaders gathered for the 31st Meeting of the Parties (MOP) to theMontreal Protocolin Rome this week to continue preparations for the implementation of the Kigali Amendment, the global deal to phase down and reduce reliance on heat-trapping hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) over the next few decades. HFCs are potent greenhouse gases used in air conditioning and refrigeration, for making insulating foams, and in some aerosols and other products. Though only 1-2% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions, HFCs are the fastest growing climate pollutants because of the skyrocketing demand for air conditioning and refrigeration in developing markets such as India.

Several countries are showcasing domestic action towards sustainable and climate friendly cooling by developing their national level cooling action plans.India is one of the first countries to release its India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP), earlier in 2019, which lays out detailed, cross-sectoral policy plans that will ensure that growing cooling demand can be met more sustainably in the country.

The Indian government, along with experts from civil society partner organizations, shared the story of the development of the ICAP, at the side event titled Facilitating the Implementation of the India Cooling Action Plan, at the 31st MOP in Rome this week.

The side event organized by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE), Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) also highlighted the evolving implementation strategies for the ICAP, as it enters its implementation phase, now.

Some of the key issues highlighted at the side-event were the need for strong stakeholder engagement, synchronization in the policies, access and assimilation of technologies, and access to finance for facilitating the implementation of the ICAP.

Ms Geeta Menon, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Government of India, nodal agency for the preparation of the ICAP, delivered the keynote address at the event, highlighting the process of the development of the ICAP and the plans of the Ministry to ensure effective and timely implementation going forward. Ms Menon, said, Synergistic actions are more effective than actions taken in isolation. MoEFCC will be working closely with other ministries and also state and city governments for effective implementation of the ICAP.

The event also provided an opportunity to discuss and get feedback from international cooling stakeholders, such as governments, civil society, academia, industry and senior experts, on prioritizing activities to maximize the impact of the ICAP.

Mr R R Rashmi, Distinguished Fellow, TERI said, The ICAP is a very unique initiative, as it brings together different aspects of cooling being looked at by different parts of the government. While devising implementation strategies, it is thus also important to harmonize actions in way to bring together the bottom up and top down approaches to achieve the goals of the ICAP.

There is momentum both at international and national levels to develop mechanisms for ensuring implementation of the Kigali Amendment, which came into force in January 2019, said David Doniger, Senior Strategic Director, Climate & Clean Energy Program at NRDC. Several countries are showcasing domestic action towards sustainable cooling by debuting their national level cooling action plans.China, Rwanda and India have released national cooling action plans, laying out detailed, cross-sectoral policy plans. Plans like these will help ensure that growing cooling demand can be met more sustainably,

"India is the first country to have developed a national cooling action plan, in line with its climate commitments and development priorities. It is important to recognise that India is not only the first nation to design a truly ambitious and targeted ICAP, it is also a testimony to the fact that cooling is cross-sectoral subject. This multi-sectoral plan holds immense potential to unlock opportunities in industrial competitiveness, energy efficiency, and food security while enhancing human well-being and boosting economic growth. We need to now bring together stakeholders across government, international agencies, think-tanks, R&D facilities, industry and civil society. Each has a complementary role in ensuring that there is coherence in top-down policies and bottom-up actions to meet Indias cooling demand in a socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable manner. The successful implementation of the ICAP could serve as a blueprint for several other countries grappling with the paradox of cooling more, with less warming. said Arunabha Ghosh, Chief Executive Office, The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).

According to Dr. Satish Kumar, President and Executive Director of the Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE), ICAP is a bold response from Indias Ministry of Environment Forest & Climate Change (MoEFCC) indicative of our country prioritizing nationally determined Climate Action goals in alignment with Indias sustainable growth aspiration. Prioritizing reduction of 20-25% in overall cooling demand, 25-40% in cooling energy requirements and 25-30% in refrigerant demand by 2037-38 at its core ICAP really is about the quality of life and productivity of people of India. ICAP is an exemplary showcase of triple-sector leadership from the government, private and civil society and I hope that we will continue to work together, as silos could risk progress in implementation.

Mr Bhambure, Head ODS Committee, Refrigeration and Airconditioning Manufacturers (RAMA) Association (RAMA) also present at the event highlighted, Industry is committed to the noble cause of conservation of energy to reduce the impact on environment. It will take a holistic approach in evaluating emerging and alternative technologies to provide sustainable, climate friendly, safe and affordable solutions to consumers.

At the event, TERI, AEEE, CEEW & NRDC also made an announcement of a civil society consortium that has been brought together to facilitate the implementation of critical activities under the ICAP. The consortium will work to support the government in implementation of prioritized short- and medium-term interventions identified in the ICAP over the next four-year period with initial support from the Children Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF).

As global temperatures continue to rise, cooling becomes crucial to provide thermal comfort for improving quality of life of populations, especially children and maintaining efficient cold supply chains critical for food security. We congratulate Government of India for launch of the India Cooling Action Plan, a cross sectoral policy that will ensure sustainable and climate friendly cooling in the country. We are extremely excited to facilitate ICAPs implementation initiated as a civil society and think-tanks initiative said, Sonia Medina, Executive Director, CIFF.

CIFF has been supporting cooling efficiency since 2009 with focus on HFC phasedown and transition to energy efficient cooling through the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Programme (KCEP). At the recent UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019, CIFF made an additional pledge for a global cooling efficiency, with deep dive focus on India and China.

The detailed ICAP is here.

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Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE) is a policy advocacy and energy efficiency market enabler with a not-for-profit motive. It is the only organization in India which advocates energy efficiency as a resource and collaborates with diverse stakeholders such as policymakers, government officials, business and industry, consumers, researchers, and civil society organizations. AEEE advocates for data driven and evidence-based energy efficiency policies that will unleash innovation and entrepreneurship within the country to create a culture of energy-efficiency in the country. The goal is to transform the market for energy-efficient products and services, thereby contributing towards meeting Indias goals on energy security, clean energy and climate action.

The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) is one of South Asias leading not-for-profit policy research institutions. The Council uses data, integrated analysis, and strategic outreach to explain and change the use, reuse, and misuse of resources. It prides itself on the independence of its high-quality research, develops partnerships with public and private institutions, and engages with wider public. In 2019, CEEW once again featured extensively across nine categories in the 2018 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report. The Council has also been consistently ranked among the worlds top climate change think tanks. Follow us on Twitter @CEEWIndia for the latest updates.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international non-profit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the worlds natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDCs India Program on Climate Change and Clean Energy, launched in 2009, works with local partners to help build a low-carbon, sustainable economy. http://www.nrdc.org Twitter @NRDC_India

TERI is an independent, multi-dimensional organization, with capabilities in research, policy, consultancy and implementation. TERI is innovators and agents of change in the energy, environment, climate change and sustainability space, having pioneered conversations and action in these areas for over four decades.

Resource efficiency and waste management are the keys to smart, sustainable and inclusive development. Its work across sectors is focused on

Its research, and research-based solutions have had a transformative impact on industry as well as communities. Headquartered in New Delhi, it has regional centres and campuses in Gurugram, Bengaluru, Guwahati, Mumbai, Panaji, and Nainital. Its 1200-plus team of scientists, sociologists, economists and engineers delivers insightful, high quality action-oriented research and transformative solutions supported

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India Cooling Action Plan and Implementation Strategies Highlighted at a Sideline Event at the 31st Meeting of the Parties of the Montreal Protocol -...

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced thatRealEatsAmerica is the $1 million winner of the first year of the ground-breaking New York food and agriculture challenge known as Grow-NY. Based out of Geneva, New York,RealEatswas chosen following a two-day summit in Rochester during which the 17 selected finalists pitched their businesses to a live audience and panel of experienced judges for their share theprize money. The Grow-NY competition is focused on growing an enduring food and agriculture innovation cluster in Central New York, the Finger Lakes, and the Southern Tier regions of New York State. The competition, which will run for three rounds, offers a total of $3 million in funding to innovative,high-growth startups from across the globe focused on the food and agriculture industry. Funding for the Grow-NYcompetition is being provided through the Upstate Revitalization Initiatives connected with the three regions CNY Rising, Finger LakesForward, and Southern Tier Soaring. Cornell University is administering the competition through itsCenter for Regional Economic Advancement. Grow-NY winners must commit to operating in the Central New York, Finger Lakes, or Southern Tier regions for at least one year.

I want to congratulateRealEatsas the first recipient of the Grow-NY Competition,Governor Cuomo said. This targeted investment not only helps these dynamic companies establish themselves in New York State, but supports New Yorks regional agricultural economy.RealEatsrepresents the initiatives that will create a lasting economic impact on New Yorks agribusiness.

The agricultural economy in New York continues to grow with increased investment in our farms and local products,Lieutenant Governor KathyHochulsaid.The first round of the Grow-NY Competition has been a success, and we are excited about the potential that these entrepreneurs have to make the industry even stronger. These companies are developing ideas and plans to revolutionize the industry by transforming sustainability and improving the health and well-being of New Yorkers. I congratulate all of the finalists and winners of the competition, and we look forward to helping these innovative companies grow and thrive in New York.

Nearly 200 food and agriculture startups from around the world applied for the competition this spring and the top 17 finalists moved forward in the competition. Those 17 startups were matched one-to-one with an experienced entrepreneur from the region who served as a mentor and helped each company plan a multi-day business development trip to the three regions. During these trips, the startups met with potential partners, customers, manufacturers, and producers and fine-tuned their plans for making a significant economic impact in the region.

Nearly 900 startups, companies, investors, resource providers, researchers, entrepreneurs, farmers, and students attended the two-day event which, in addition to the pitch competition, included an exhibition hall with over 70 food and agricultural exhibitors from New York State and a symposium with a series of panels that tackled some of the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the food and agriculture industry today.

In addition to the $1 million top prize, two $500,000 prizes, and four $250,000 prizes were also awarded at todays event. The other awarded teams include:

$500,000 WinnerDropcopter

Syracuse, New York

$500,000 WinnerTiliter

Munchen, Germany

$250,000 WinnerCapro-X

Ithaca, New York

$250,000 WinnerCombplex

Ithaca, New York

$250,000 WinnerThe Perfect Granola

Victor, New York

$250,000 WinnerWhole Healthy Food

Ithaca, New York

Founder and CEO ofRealEatsDan Wise said,We are so thrilled to have won this prize money and are so thankful to New York State for this opportunity. With this prize, we will be able to leverage the amazing resources in the region to take our startup to the next level.

The winners were chosen following todays pitch event based on the following five criteria;

In addition to prize money, funding for the competition supports all operational, promotional and implementation expenses including marketing, events, and the mentoring program that brings the finalists to the three regions, supports their development, and fosters connections to regional resources in the agriculture and food and innovation communities.

The Grow-NY winners will immediately get to work executing their business plans in the three regions, leveraging the connections they made during their business development trips and the support their mentors provided. Applications for the next round of the competition will open on April 1, 2020 and the Grow-NY Summit will be held on November 17-18th 2020 in Syracuse, New York.

Executive Director of Cornells Center for Regional Economic Advancement TomSchryversaid,The Grow-NY competition exceeded every benchmark we set for this inaugural year and the Summit event is an unprecedented celebration of the vibrant food andaginnovation cluster growing in Upstate New York. The quality of the startup competitors was truly incredible and there is no doubt that this first year has showcased to the world that the Central NY, Finger Lakes, and Southern Tier regions are an outstanding place for food and ag innovation to thrive.

Empire State Development Acting Commissioner and President & CEO-designate EricGertlersaid, Congratulations to all of todays winners and to all who took part in the initial round of the Grow-NY competition. This latest business competition reflects New York States support for building entrepreneurial ecosystems that will now boost innovative economic growth in the rich farming and agricultural areas of the Finger Lakes, Central and Southern Tier regions.

State Agriculture Commissioner Richard A. Ball said, We thank Governor Cuomo for this event, which encourages innovation and supports our agricultural industry partners. Congratulations to the winners and to all of the entrepreneurs who took part in this first-of-its kind competition to develop new ideas and products to help spur economic development and advance agribusiness in New York State.

The Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Co-Chairs Dr. Anne Kress, President of Monroe Community College, and Bob Duffy, President and CEO, Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce said,We are so proud of all who took part in this innovative competition. The regional council is focused on growing the states agricultural and food industries. The investment in Governor Cuomos Grow-NY competition is working to connect local industry partners with the cutting-edge ideas of these entrepreneurs and further supports our multi-pronged approach laid out in the Finger Lakes Forward Upstate Revitalization Initiative that is working to create a thriving regional economy.

Central New York Regional Economic Development Council Chair andPresident & CEO of the Manufacturers Association of Central New YorkRandyWolkenand Deborah Stanley, President of the State University of New York at Oswego said,We are pleased to offer many congratulations to all of todays winners and to all who were part of round one of the Grow-NY contest. New York State continues to experience unprecedented growth in the agriculture and food industries. The Governors Grow-NY competition represents yet another exciting investment in our community that will further bolster regional job growth and further support our agricultural base throughout Central New York ensuring the region continues to rise.

Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council Co-Chairs HarveyStenger, President of Binghamton University, and Judy McKinney Cherry, Executive Director, Schuyler County Partnership for Economic Development said,Congratulations to the winning teams and to all of the round one Grow-NY competitors. New Yorks agriculture industry is one of the most prestigious in the nation, and this initiative will not doubt add to our regions continued economic success. The Grow-NY competition enables innovative and competitive businesses and will further bolster our efforts to boost the regional economy helping the Southern Tier to soar.

For more information about Grow-NY, clickhere.

Accelerating Finger Lakes Forward

Todays announcement complements Finger Lakes Forward, the regions comprehensive blueprint to generate robust economic growth and community development. The State has already invested more than $6.1 billion in the region since 2012 to lay the groundwork for the plan investing in key industries including photonics, agriculture and food production, and advanced manufacturing. Today, unemployment is down to the lowest levels since before the Great Recession; personal and corporate income taxes are down; and businesses are choosing places like Rochester, Batavia and Canandaigua as a destination to grow and invest in.

Now, the region is accelerating Finger Lakes Forward with a $500 million State investment through the Upstate Revitalization Initiative, announced by Governor Cuomo in December 2015. The States $500 million investment will incentivize private business to invest well over $2.5 billion and the regions plan, as submitted, projects up to 8,200 new jobs. More information is availablehere.

Accelerating CNY Rising

Todays announcement complements Central NY Rising, the regions comprehensive blueprint to generate robust economic growth and community development. The State has already invested more than $5.6 billion in the region since 2012 to lay the groundwork for the plan capitalizing on global market opportunities, strengthening entrepreneurship and creating an inclusive economy. Today, unemployment is down to the lowest levels since before the Great Recession; personal and corporate income taxes are down; and businesses are choosing places like Syracuse, Oswego and Auburn as a destination to grow and invest in.

Now, the region is accelerating Central NY Rising with a $500 million State investment through the Upstate Revitalization Initiative, announced by Governor Cuomo in December 2015. The States $500 million investment will incentivize private business to invest well over $2.5 billion and the regions plan, as submitted, projects up to 5,900 new jobs. More information is availablehere.

Accelerating Southern Tier Soaring

Todays announcement complementsSouthern Tier Soaring the regions comprehensive blueprint to generate robust economic growth and community development. The State has already invested more than $6.2 billion in the region since 2012 to lay for groundwork for the plan attracting a talented workforce, growing business and driving innovation. Today, unemployment is down to the lowest levels since before the Great Recession; personal and corporate income taxes are down; and businesses are choosing places like Binghamton, Johnson City and Corning as a destination in which to grow and invest. Now, the region is accelerating Southern Tier Soaring with a $500 million State investment through the Upstate Revitalization Initiative, announced by Governor Cuomo in December 2015. The States $500 million investment will incentivize private business to invest well over $2.5 billion and the regions plan, as submitted, projects up to 10,200 new jobs. More information is availablehere.

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Dropcopter win $500k in inaugural Grow-NY business competition - sUAS News

Drees & Sommer's booth at Expo Real was inspired by the cradle-to-cradle concept

16 Oct 2019, 12:04 | Nicola Byrne

As I explored Expo Real and the miles of stands, one in particular stood out. European consulting, planning and project management enterprise Drees & Sommer had designed its booth using the cradle-to-cradle concept.

The concept, co-developed by German chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough, describes the principle of two continuous cycles, both referring to the circular economy, an economic system aimed at eliminating waste and encouraging the continual use of resources.

Click to expand

For the biological cycle, materials and building components are designed to feedback into and regenerate living systems. An example of this is green roofs catching rain water which is then used in a building for flushing toilets and irrigating, thereby the site becomes part of the local water cycle.

Technical cycles recover and restore products, components and materials through strategies such as reuse, repair, remanufacture or recycling. An example of this would be reusing flooring or bricks from another site.

Drees & Sommer had labels throughout its stand highlighting the sustainable materials it had used from its steel scaffolds to its chairs made from recyclable and non-hazardous materials.

One of Drees & Sommers labels attached to its stands steel scaffolding, an example of how materials can be reused

Circular economy isnt a new idea and it isnt just about recycling buildings. As construction margins get smaller, demand for sustainable materials and production is at all-time high, and in the words of Anna Surgenor, senior sustainability advisor at UK Green Building Council and the leader of its circular economy programme, its a surprise that not much is being done in the UK.

The Netherlands has set itself a target of having a 50% circular economy by 2030 and to be fully circular by 2050. This is reflected when you Google examples of circular economy, the majority of projects are Dutch, including a recent development by trendsetting developer Edge Technologies.

Edge Technologies delivered an office building for Triodos Bank in the Netherlands engineered to be sustainable inside and out

The firm produced a building which can be rebuilt at a different location without creating any waste flows, and used a BIM-based Material Passport, which provides a record of all the materials used within the building.

There are only a few examples of companies in the UK attempting to incorporate the concept of circular into developments. This is something the UK Green Building Council is trying to change.

UKGBC launched its circular economy programme in spring 2018. In the first year the council worked with members and stakeholders to produce a comprehensive practical guide for those wanting toincludecircular principles in their project briefs.

The council also created a web-based actor and resource mapof initiatives within the built environment around circular economy, to allow organisations to use existing knowledge and methodologies without repeating the work of others

UK Green Building Council created an interactive map environment around who is doing what in circular economy

Companies in the UK taking steps toward a circular economy

One of the UKs largest housing associations, is attempting to implement the circular economy strategy into its Merton Regeneration project, a 1bn investment to provide 2,800 new home in Wimbledon, along with 97,000 sq ft of retail, leisure, office, work and community space.

The project will see over 1,000 homes demolished and materials reused. Based on an initial assessment of the regeneration project, the scale of benefits that may be realised through comprehensive implementation of Clarions circular economy strategy are significant.

For the demolition and construction phase alone benefits could include:

Clarion Housings Merton regeneration scheme in London will look to apply a circular economy strategy to the creation of 2,800 homes

Industrial developer Segro relocated a warehouse building to a site one mile away. The firm dismantled 34,000 sq ft of office space and warehouse on Leigh Road in Slough and re-erected it in Cambridge Avenue.

The benefits Segro found included:

The London Waste & Recycling Board is a partnership between the Mayor of London and the London boroughs to improve waste and resource management with a focus on circular economy. The board decided to practice what it preached when it fitted-out its office in November 2018.

Completed in four weeks, the brief was to retain, refurbish and recycle, with a consideration of open source design or leasing where appropriate. This meant understanding what would happen to items at the end of their life.

The board reused existing meeting rooms and doors, kitchen cabinets in a new layout, existing carpet, air conditioning and lighting, and blinds. Refurbished furniture was procured, as well as reclaimed timber from another site and refurbished electronics.

London Waste & Recycling Board circular fit-out completed in four weeks

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Recycling buildings in the circular economy - PlaceTech

Life has changed almost beyond recognition in the last few decades. Artificial intelligence (AI) has substituted entire job fields intelligent software can now review legal documents, a job which was previously only carried out by lawyers. Machine learning means technical systems can pull together entire libraries of information in a single handheld device. Virtual spaces now exist where people from all over the world can share, connect and chat instantly.

In 2019, its clear that digital innovations will continue to change society and the economy, but its uncertain whether these new technologies will benefit the global transformation to sustainability. Will digital technologies allow everyone to live in a world where their development isnt dependent on exhausting finite resources and increasing emissions?

There is certainly reason to be optimistic. Digital technologies can make energy and resource use more efficient. By analysing the optimal amount of water each crop needs and by using a smart irrigation system accordingly, farming can become infinitely more efficient. Digital systems can assess the optimal use of vehicles too. Instead of one person owning one car which is only used for an hour each day and then sits parked for the rest of the day, several people can share one electric car, reducing the number of vehicles needed overall.

For the first time, digital technologies can comprehensively trace, document, and analyse each resource and product as it flows across global supply chains. This could create circular economies, in which resources such as water and rare Earth metals arrive where theyre needed and waste such as plastic rubbish doesnt escape to pollute the environment.

Digital monitoring can help scientists to better understand how ecosystems around the world such as forests, reefs and glaciers are changing in real time. This can help conservationists understand how to protect and restore the environment, while ensuring that governments and private companies are held accountable for their public commitments to preserve natural habitats. The Global Forest Watch already does this its an open-source web system that uses satellite data to monitor forests and their destruction.

But so far, this potential hasnt been harnessed to make the global economy greener. Instead, theres been an explosion in high energy computing centres, which are needed to sustain the expanding internet, its social media platforms and big data analysis. By 2022, global data flows will have more than tripled since 2017. As long as fossil fuels dominate the global energy mix, expanding these computing centres will accelerate climate change.

Solutions to global problems like climate change and the instability of financial markets need the cooperation of all countries. But a knowledge divide between the global north which could secure access to sophisticated digital infrastructure with its wealth and the global south would hold worldwide solutions back.

The digital revolution is transforming societies just as the printing press and the steam engine triggered new eras of human civilisation. But without using these digital disruptions to make the global economy more sustainable, the powerful tools of the digital revolution will just multiply existing problems.

AI systems can substitute a major part of a well qualified work force, but without policies in place to support workers to retrain or enjoy the benefits of working less, unemployment and poverty could skyrocket. Meanwhile, authoritarian regimes already use digital monitoring to control their citizens and influence their behaviour.

World leaders need to ensure public administrations are up to speed to effectively and ethically govern these digital disruptions. Most governments around the world currently lack expertise on AI, machine learning, and virtual reality many bureaucracies are still paper-based. Governments are struggling to adapt to the new realities, which pose important questions about data privacy laws and the need and desire to increasingly benefit from digital systems.

Read more: Tech companies collect our data every day, but even the biggest datasets can't solve social issues

Governments need to ramp up investments in digital infrastructure, channelling it towards making everything about the modern world sustainable. They need to ensure that everyone can profit from the new opportunities of the digital age and that no one is left behind. This includes investing in broadband networks and expanding education for the next generation of digital engineers.

Combining AI, big data analysis, genome research and developments in cognitive sciences opens the door to a completely new world. In many ways, the pace of the digital revolution can redefine what it means to be human, enhancing our physical, psychological, and cognitive capabilities.

The digital era is the new reality whether people like it or not. The world stands at a crossroads its in all humankinds interest to take the pathway towards sustainability. Digital technology can take us there better and faster than ever before if we steer it in the right direction.

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The digital revolution could unlock a green transformation of the global economy - The Conversation UK

During the Gilded Age and the second industrial revolution, the world saw rapid adoption of life-altering technologies electricity, rail transport, the automobile, telegraph communications and then the telephone. Thanks to these innovations, companies were able to create and sell products they could not before to people they had not previously been able to reach, in ways they never could have envisioned.

That young United States saw unprecedented growth, with total national wealth increasing from $16 billion in 1860 to $88 billion by 1900.

Todays evolution looks set to be just as transformative. Disruptive technologies like augmented reality, artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) are already having an impact. On offshore oil rigs, for instance, we see our customers using a type of reverse augmented reality that allows humans to view the status of equipment remotely through the eyes of a mobile inspection robot. This reduces the time that people spend on platforms in the open ocean away from their families.

Over the coming years, I believe we will see a nexus of forces that enable companies to do business in ways that we probably have a hard time comprehending today.

Business and technology

Historically, we used technology to make business processes more efficient in predictable ways (reduced manhours, inventory or order turn time, etc.). Now, technology itself is the enabler for new business processes and new business models.

A retail chain without an effective web presence will face gradual decline, while an intuitive and sticky web storefront with superior cross-selling opportunities and engaging content is a strategic tool for exponential growth. A food processing machinery company with the technology to sell not just a capital asset but the output in terms of units sold through outcomes-based contracts will be well-placed to disrupt its market and capitalize on new monetization models.

With technology as the business model enabler, efficiency gains will be determined by market forces and upside rather than savings in time, inventory or dollars.

People and experiences

Technology has changed our expectations. In the business-to-business setting, we need to catch up. Tools we use in our private lives are often more powerful and intuitive than the ones we use at work. In business-to-business transactions, the customer experience also lags. The results might be an inability to recruit millennials and to compete with customer experience.

As consumers, our expectations are changing, and we increasingly value access and outcomes over ownership, Vala Afshar writes in a recent ZDNet article. We want the freedom to access services and use them anytime, anywhere. We want the latest technology or product model available at our fingertips at all times. We demand choice in how we pay, flexibility to pause and resume services, and the ability to tailor them to meet our specific needs. And thanks to the subscription economy, all of this is now easily possible.

We need to bring this line of thinking into our business software as well. Were all accustomed to logging onto a website and doing what we need to with engaging and relevant content; it's easy, it offers intuitive navigation and there's instant confirmation. Business software should be the same.

Automation and efficiency

While technology is a key factor in how humans experience business, I believe humans will become less of a factor in business operations. Ever since enterprise resource planning (ERP) was invented, it's been about efficiency. Business process automation means that some of these human tasks will be eliminated. As a result, the scope of business efficiency will no longer be constrained by human capacities, costs can drop dramatically and productivity per employee can rise.

According to Gartner, there will be 20.4 billion connected devices by 2020. North American organizations are already well on their way to reaching that number by implementing disruptive technologies such as AI. In fact, 20% or more have already implemented robotic process automation, machine learning and conversational interfaces.

Once data enters the system through IoT, AI algorithms can optimize the tasks and processes based on unfolding events. Communication from AI is already becoming indistinguishable from a human in some settings. We are moving toward a world where out-of-the-box software will deliver an integrated IoT-AI process flow, resulting in autonomous enterprises.

An outcomes-based future?

Businesses used to be structured around sales transactions. Today, intelligent businesses can easily target revenue or margin over a customer life cycle. We see software today designed to manage subscription-based product models, where humans can specify the service level and, based on predictive analytics, compute the total cost to support a product. Uber's technology can do what no human taxi dispatcher ever could. Industrial companies must engage with similar disruptive technologies that might compute the actual cost of operating each of their products, for each customer, and then price subscriptions accordingly. We will likely see new types of contract vehicles, new business models and innovative product and service offerings.

While servitization of product businesses is happening, it wont happen all at once. Caterpillar, for example, with its Cat Connect Services is using servitization to drive revenue and customer intimacy. The company has even opened its connected equipment to dealers who can create value-added offerings like remote expert solutions. And NCR aggressively sells equipment as a service to its installed base.

For every Cat or NCR, there are other giants too hidebound to change. A growing company with a strong, digital-first business model can easily outflank them.

Seize the opportunity

Vast rewards await executive teams bold enough to take advantage. When the transcontinental railroad was built in the Gilded Age, financing construction was a challenge because to most Americans, the West was as remote as the moon, its terrain as alien and forbidding. Situations like this are challenging for risk-averse institutions unaccustomed to planning around ambiguity and non-tangibles.

The other side of this digital divide is hard to see, but we predict the result will be a net positive for numerous companies across several industries.

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Technology Prepares Us For Massive Gains In The On-Demand Economy - Forbes

Pakistan's economy is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, historically poor domestic revenue generation by successive governments, excessive untargeted subsidies, poor governance and political imperatives in public sector units have led to unsustainable domestic fiscal deficit and its financing problems. On the other hand, misguided exchange rate policies, rampant corruption by importers and their collaborators in customs department, and lack of coherent strategic industrial policy have reduced the country into an industrial wasteland where even rudimentary everyday use items are largely imported. As a result, the current account deficit went out of whack which, as usual, led the new government to seek assistance from abroad to shore up foreign exchange reserves, including from the IMF.

The IMF, in turn, diagnosed the problem in the classic traditional manner and suggested the usual set remedies for demand suppression via hiking interest rates, massive depreciation of the rupee against the dollar, regulated price hikes to contain sectoral deficits, while exhorting the government to raise tax revenue. All this of course give a feeling of dj vu to any observer of the Pakistan economy. While there is always talk of structural reforms and conditionalities related to privatisations it does not address the heart of the matter, the root cause of economic deficiency. In the meantime, bulk of the population middle and lower income groups is bearing the brunt of the economic adjustment', in terms of lack of employment opportunities, high inflation and loss of purchasing power, and savers whose dollar value of savings fell by over 40% due to devaluation of the currency and continually rising regulated rates/prices. Business investment and expansion is almost at a standstill due both to higher tax scrutiny (which is good) and unbridled accountability by various law-enforcement divisions, such as NAB (which is bad).While the Government's recent policy decisions have led to some macro indicators showing improvement such as tax collection and current account deficit, the core issue remains largely un-tackled.

It is unfortunate that the multilateral finance institutions appear to be sticking to the old rule book of policies which have again and again been tried and found wanting in terms of desired outcomes of getting the economy back to a sustainable, balanced growth over the medium to longer term. One only has to take a look at the history of economic policymaking the world over to realise that pure market-driven policies seldom lead to successful economic outcomes for majority of the population. Even in the free market citadel of the United States, early economic development needed the helping hand of the government through Eisenhour's market intervention and Roosevelt's New Deal policies. After the excesses experienced by the Friedmanite free-for-all" market mantra in Thatcher and Reagan-led era, egged on by the central bankers of the Greenspan ilk, the pendulum is swinging back towards Keynesian view of greater role of the government in directing economic development in one way or another.

In the developing economies' context, every single success story of economic development particularly in East Asia is closely linked to an overarching medium to long-term strategic economic road map, where domestic industrialisation has been a key plank of the overall economic policy, regardless of the government in power. The focus here is not the political shape of government but rather the model of a centrally directed strategic macroeconomic plan which has sustained execution. Even in Pakistan, highest rates of sustained economic growth were achieved in the 1950s and the early 1960s under five-year plans with targeted sectors and priorities which were centrally directed.

Fast forward today. Economic nationalism, led by the US in particular, is gradually becoming the norm despite collective warnings by many opinion leaders who highlight the benefits of global free trade. In fact, in Western academia and in their policy think-tanks, the current thinking among the most ardent free-trade proponents is that the benefits of globalisation have been unevenly distributed. Western multinational corporations (and their executives and investors) and the emerging market countries that focused on outsourcing and exports, have benefited the most (with large proportion of their populations moving from poor to middle-income category) while the traditional western middle-class, primarily in the manufacturing sector as well as several service sectors, has found itself left behind in terms of income growth and wealth distribution. To be fair, this is only a part of the story. A significant chunk of industrial and white-collar unemployment in the Western world has to do with rapid technology-driven automation of work. Nevertheless, the anti-globalization narrative is used successfully by Western nationalist leaders to build strong domestic political platforms.

It is in this changing world that the new government in Pakistan finds itself. It is still coping with the crisis caused by aforementioned factors and could not focus the central issues properly such as maximum self-reliance, large-scale job creation, fully leveraging the infrastructure enhancement opportunity presented by CPEC, import-substitution wherever possible, induction of technology-driven productivity enhancement both in the private and public sectors and importantly, redesigning of the financial system landscape to foster medium-sized enterprises that can generate significant private sector employment while supporting larger scale import-substitution industrial enterprises. Further, the central bank's (SBP's) focus should go beyond macro-prudential regulatory aspects to micro-prudential level with specific sector financing emphasis.

This does not mean that the other structural reforms should not be undertaken. They can and should be fast-tracked, especially those related to loss-making state-owned enterprises which eat up massive financial resources of the government; the streamlining of the FBR and Customs department; bringing the civil-service quality back up to par; accountability of ministries, to mention a few. The present government has embarked on several of these initiatives and it should continue to push forward on these reforms.

At the same time, it is absolutely critical and a clearly thought out road map for longer term sustainable economic growth, driven by maximum practicable self-sufficiency, especially in the industrial and technology space, is developed and its implementation supervised from the federal government level. The long-term horizon of implementing such a road map also means that the population has to be equipped with the required skills and managerial capabilities to handle an industrial/technological economy. And that means appropriate large-scale education of our young generation education that is geared towards acquiring the knowledge and skills needed for such an economy.

The following chart provides a simplified sample of broad self-sufficiency canvass that can be used to start discussions regarding re-industrialisation of the economy based on Pakistan's existing resource base. One area deliberately left out in this discussion is information technology which is a whole subject to be tackled on its on an exclusive basis.

(The writer is former managing director of Pakistan Stock Exchange)

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Pakistans economy beyond the IMF - Business Recorder

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Press release from the issuing company

Singapore Leading resource-based manufacturing group Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) has announced plans to invest US$200 million over the next 10 years into cellulosic textile fibre research and development.

The investment, revealed ahead of the Textile Exchange Sustainability Conference in Vancouver, will support solutions in alternative cellulose or plant-based feedstock and closed-loop manufacturing. The target allocation for the investment is 70:20:10 in three areas, respectively: scaling up proven clean technology in fibre manufacturing, bringing pilot scale production to commercial scale, and R&D in emerging frontier solutions.

Bey Soo Khiang, Vice Chairman of RGE, said: This is a strategic business growth area for RGE. Our integrated portfolio of companies across pulp, fibre and yarn production puts us in a unique upstream position in the textile value chain to realise commercial scale and affordable solutions that support downstream manufacturers and brands. We aspire not just to be the largest viscose producer but also to be a leader in sustainable textile fibre production through innovation.

Through its business groups Sateri in China and Asia Pacific Rayon (APR) in Indonesia, Singapore-based RGE is the worlds largest viscose producer with a total annual production capacity at 1.4 million tonnes. Sateri and APR source wood-based dissolving pulp from sustainably managed renewable plantations in Indonesia and Brazil through RGE-managed companies, APRIL and Bracell.

Allen Zhang, President of Sateri, said: Sateri is proud to be part of this long-term commitment that RGE has made. We look forward to supporting and scaling up solutions that can help Sateri produce even more sustainably and deliver high quality and affordable products to our customers. Ben Poon, Deputy Head of APR, added, This commitment responds to two pressing environmental challenges facing the textile industry: increase in demand for both synthetic and natural fibres for textile production and increase in textile waste. Recycled textile waste as a feedstock tackles both issues simultaneously.

Through partnerships with innovators and in-house research and development, several initiatives are already underway. In August 2019, RGE invested in Finnish start-up Infinited Fiber Company (IFC) toscale up its technology. A 500-ton pre-commercial plant in Finland and customer training centre will be ready by early 2020. Infinited Fiber technology fits perfectly in RGEs shift for using alternative feedstocks. Our ability to use a diverse range of feedstock, especially mixed textile fibres, is a technological breakthrough, and as RGEs strategic partner we look forward to support their change, said Petri Alava, CEO of IFC.

In May this year, an MoU was signed with re:newcell for technical cooperation and trials on production of viscose using recycled cotton, with the aim of industrial scale production by 2025. We are very happy about adding Sateri, a world-leading fibre producer, to our group of validation partners for scaling up circular raw materials for fashion. Cooperation between many actors in the value chain is crucial to achieve significant positive impact in this industry, said Patrik Lundstrm, CEO at re:newcell.

RGE has also commenced partnership discussions with Fashion for Good, whose Innovation Platform is, at the core of its efforts, focused on sparking and scaling technologies and business models that have the greatest potential to transform the fashion industry. As the world's largest viscose producer, RGE is uniquely positioned to implement and scale our innovator's solutions across its global portfolio. There is a huge opportunity to innovate in the area of next-generation fibre solutions. The potential for change is enormous, said Katrin Ley, Managing Director, Fashion for Good.

In addition, RGEs in-house R&D teams conduct research on alternative cellulosic feedstock, such as agricultural waste and recycled cotton, as well as closed-loop manufacturing for viscose production, in collaboration with leading universities and global R&D centres.

Sally Uren, Chief Executive of Forum for the Future, said: Next-generation solutions have real potential to make a significant contribution to the realisation of a circular economy for fashion and the broader textile sector. We hear far and wide that people want systems change, not climate change. Allocating investment to accelerate the scaling of solutions into the mainstream is an important lever to pull for systems change. We need more such commitments of investment to help todays niche sustainability innovators become the number one partners of choice.

http://www.rgei.com

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RGE Commits US$200 Million to Next-Generation Textile Fiber Innovation and Technology - What They Think

Deep in the sub-Arctic boreal forest of far northern Mongolia lives an indigenous tribe who are among the worlds smallest ethnic minorities and last reindeer herding nomads. The Tsaatan, as theyre known, have been buffeted over the last century by political and economic shocks, growing resource and environmental pressures, and significant impacts of climate change. But today theyre also facing another danger which they feel may be just as big a threat as any of these to their survival: the conservation policies of the Mongolian government.

This June, the two of us environmental historians who work on climate change and conservation spent five days traveling by air, four-wheel-drive, and finally horseback to reach the Tsaatan camps near Siberia, where the nomads live in teepee-like ortzes, migrating with their reindeer across the boreal forest. Our goal was to witness the summer migration to high elevation pastures, while learning how the Tsaatans herding livelihoods are changing.

Climate change is posing perhaps the most widely known threats to Mongolias nomadic cultures. In the past seven decades, average temperatures in the country have risen 2.24 degrees C more than twice the global average. This warming has intensified both summer droughts and extreme winter conditions, contributing to waves of nomadic herders abandoning their herds and moving to the capital city of Ulaanbataar. In recent decades the city has been overwhelmed by more than 600,000 migrants, leading to a sharp increase in the burning of dirty coal and contributing to a spiral of intensifying climate displacement.

Meanwhile, a mining boom has stimulated Mongolias economy and offered good jobs to some of the former nomads, but has also worsened carbon pollution, urban migration and pressure on ecosystems.

With all of these stresses, what we found from the Tsaatan surprised us. While they are concerned about climate change and mining, they told us they believe misguided conservation policies have become a more serious threat to their nomadic culture.

The Tsaatan live far from roads, sharing the boreal forest with endangered Siberian ibex, argali sheep, red deer and musk deer. Miners began exploiting the region for gold, jade and uranium in the 1990s, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This contributed to an increase in wildlife poaching and degradation of the high alpine meadows, mountains and streams that the Tsaatan rely on and see as sacred.

In response to a request from the Tsaatan, in 2011 the Mongolian government set up a Special Protected Area and canceled all 44 mining licenses in the region. But the government also went further: concerned by poaching and habitat loss, it eliminated hunting and fishing as well, and excluded reindeer from most of the area.

Those changes had a huge impact on the Tsaatan.

Reindeer are a domesticated subspecies of caribou (Rangifer tarandus), and the Tsaatan are the southernmost reindeer-herding people in the world. Today, about 250 Tsaatan herd about 2,000 reindeer. But rather than eating their reindeer, as other reindeer herders do, the Tsaatan milk them, ride them and use them as pack animals.

For millennia, Tsaatan nomads moved with their family herds up to 10 times a year, frequently crossing what became the border between Mongolia and Russia. During our visit to the region, Gombo, a Tsaatan elder, told us that when Stalin gained power in what was then the Soviet Union, many Tsaatan on the Soviet side of the border fled to Mongolia, fearing they would be forcibly settled and assimilated. But this also cut them off from much of their traditional land.

As Gombo told us, until 1960 the Tsaatan in Mongolia were people without a state, unrecognized by the government as legal residents. When they eventually were granted citizenship, some began to settle, while others continued to migrate with their reindeer, earning a salary from reindeer collectives. Some of the nomads supplemented their income by working for the Mongolian government, hunting sable whose pelts would be exported to the Soviet Union.

The demise of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the transition from communism in Mongolia to a market-based economy led to even greater disruption across the country. In the boreal forest, the struggle to survive led to an increase in poaching, and as the economy began to recover in the 2000s, the government struggled to craft conservation policies that could protect both natural and human communities.

As an example, government surveys suggest that the move to forbid hunting in the Special Protected Area has helped ibex. But according to the Tsaatan we spoke with, it has also devastated their culture. As a herder named Ganbat told us, Fathers cant take their sons hunting anymore, so children dont learn about hunting, or about the habits of animals anymore. We dont know how to teach our sons if we cant take them hunting.

Ironically, that means place-based knowledge that is essential to conservation is also vanishing.

Zaya, another herder, told us that human health is suffering as well, as key nutrients from wild meat such as moose and deer are lost. To fill the gap, some Tsaatan began eating their reindeer, a practice that was anathema to most.

Restrictions on access to pastures have had even greater impacts. Instead of frequent seasonal migrations, the nomads now are allowed only four, leading to overgrazing and poorer reindeer health. Bambag, a reindeer herder who also acted as our guide, told us the administration now orders us to move to certain places. We dont get to decide whats best for our reindeer. So thats difficult for us.

Community members also bitterly complained about the ways that local rangers enforced the Special Protected Area regulations tracking their movements with trail cameras, fining them, forcing them to travel for days to the village to seek permission to move their herds, and imprisoning anyone caught hunting. There is nowhere that they can escape from the eyes of the State, Zaya told us.

The Tsaatan made clear that they understand the need for some protected area regulations. But as a woman named Erdenechimeg told us, they want to be partners in designing conservation policies.

One of the hard lessons of conservation history across the world is that national parks and protected areas were often created at the expense of indigenous peoples. Yosemite National Park, for example, was created by forcing out indigenous tribes, casting them as enemies of wildlife. Today we see the same process happening in Mongolia funded in part by the Yosemite Parks Association, which has raised money to pay rangers salaries.

Weve come to believe that sustaining nomadic reindeer herders in Mongolia while also protecting endangered wildlife requires the government re-think conservation policies that exclude human communities and livelihoods from protected areas. Reindeer across the north have been central to human cultures for millennia. Today, they also help all of us slow climate change, because their grazing reduces heat-absorbing dark ground cover in the winters.

The Mongolian government is working hard to protect endangered wildlife, but the Tsaatan nomads insist their reindeer culture is equally endangered and important. If consulted as equals, they and their reindeer can help sustain the boreal forest and the global climate.

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Originally posted here:

Conservation policies threaten indigenous reindeer herders in Mongolia - The Conversation US

At the start ofK 2019, Packaging Europe asks some major players in the plastics packaging industry a few pertinent questions about the big issues the industry faces today and finds out about their sustainability drive and innovations.

We speak to Haim Zaafrani, vice president of rigid packaging sales at Husky, Bertram Stern, packaging and circular economy manager at Arburg,Helmut Huber, COO Brckner Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG and Frank Schuster, vice president at Engel Packaging.

What are the key market challenges for the plastics industry today and how is it coping with them (e.g. political-macroeconomic volatility; fluctuating oil prices; and the war on plastics)?

Frank Schuster: The long period of economic growth is now experiencing a slowdown, as has been predicted for many years. Overall, ENGEL is clearly feeling the effects of the slowdown and we currently see no signs of a short-term economic recovery. The primarily political causes make forecasting difficult. The automotive industry is hardest hit. While we are currently well on track in the packaging sector, projects here are also being postponed due to uncertainty. Among the driving forces behind growth and innovation which are facing the slowdown are digitalisation, increasing quality awareness worldwide and the establishment of a circular economy for the plastics industry. The extent to which these issues can counteract the decline is equally difficult to assess today. We are technologically very well equipped to support our customers in solving the new challenges. On the subject of circular economy alone, we are presenting five exhibits at the K with innovative technologies which clearly show that digitalisation is an important enabler for closing material cycles at very different levels. ENGEL has been dealing with this topic for a long time and was one of the first plastics machinery manufacturers to sign the New Plastics Economy global commitment of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. It networks the players, and this is precisely the prerequisite for planning the entire product life cycle through to recycling as early as the product development stage. In future, we will cooperate even more closely with the other companies along the value chain.

Haim Zaafrani: The sustainability of plastics packaging has been challenged, and we cant ignore that. The impact of plastics packaging on the environmentand oceans has been emotionalised. This has triggered ambitious sustainability commitments from most of the large players, and predictably, politicians have also responded strongly with legislation.

In the past, not enough focus was put on what happens to a package after its contents have been consumed. Our industry should help build bridges from consumer package back to raw material, to waste free, convenient, food safe packaging solutions. The industry has gone through major transformation and is now focusing on eliminating plastic pollution. The first step is putting the material back by motivating society to get the packaging back into a consolidated recycling stream. This means creating incentives for consumers to get the packaging back in a convenient, simple process. The second is utilising the collected material by incorporating more post consumer recycled resin into packages. This will generate an end market demand to create the right economy for recycling and a self-sustaining circular economy.

Bertram Stern: One thing is clear to us: All of us in the plastics sector especially in the packaging sector are confronted with the huge and perhaps single most important complex of topics faced by our industry and by society in general: circular economy and resource efficiency. One of the challenges is that plastic is often seen only in terms of being a waste product. Instead, plastic must be used sensibly and responsibly, and in the best-case scenario, it belongs in a closed recycling loop. However, a circular economy can only function properly if all elements within the value-added chain work properly.

Helmut Huber: Trade conflicts, the discussion about plastic waste, as well as the difficult general global political situation makes it necessary to recognise future topics, trends and application possibilities very early. Brckner Maschinenbau established a well-functioning scouting system and additionally set up a New Business Development department, ensuring that opportunities are assessed and appropriate line concepts and solutions are offered, thereby opening new markets.

What effect do you expect the EU single-use plastics directive and recycling targets to have on the industry?

Frank Schuster:So far, the laws have had little influence on ENGEL's business. Nevertheless, we are concerned about this development, because the new laws do not always provide more sustainability. A move away from polymer materials often results in a poorer CO2 balance, especially for packaging. Here we would like to see a more differentiated view from politicians and no further uncertainties on the part of consumers. Rather, it is necessary to provide people with better information and to increase recycling capacities. There will also be new technological challenges. For example, by 2021 caps must remain attached to the bottle, which requires new product designs. We are facing a paradigm shift. In future, costs will no longer necessarily be the most important driver.

Haim Zaafrani: I believe the EU plastics directive will have an impact, starting with a potential consolidation of the range of plastics used for packaging, with a distinction between easy to recycle plastics like PET and plastics that are not so easily recyclable today. We foresee potentially a policy focusing on reduction or bans. We would anticipate a shift in packaging items to more recyclable materials.

The recycling and collection targets within the directive are driving innovation and investment to get more recyclate in the system, and a bigger supply of recycled PET is needed to feed demand. We already see a huge lack of supply forthis. The requirement for tethered closures is also creating panic among customers. At Husky, we focus on developing the best solutions for better closures and using recycled materials in packages.

Helmut Huber: Plastic is an extremely beneficial material, but we all have to take care how to handle it in the sense of reuse reduce recycle. We appreciate clearly defined targets, as long as they consider all involved components. For example, besides the plastic material itself the colour systems used play an important role for recycling. In addition, environmental aspects, e.g. the CO2 footprint, energy consumption in production and hygiene should not be forced into the background. In this context political guidance could support our industrys sustainability goals if this guidance is long-sighted and goal-oriented.

How do you view the overall technological progress towards a circular economy in plastic packaging? Could you talk about particular areas of innovation (e.g. design for recycling; monopolymer solutions; new sorting technologies; feedstock recycling) that you believe offer especially significant hope of progress?

Frank Schuster: ENGEL has defined four areas in which we, as a machine building company and system solutions provider, can already provide concrete support to plastics processors today for more sustainable production and closed material cycles. We use intelligent assistant systems to help us increase process consistency and thus create the conditions for using recycled materials in a broader spectrum, and for higher-value applications. We use innovative processing technologies to help further increase the proportion of recycled material in sandwich components as well as design for recycling, which means that we work closely with processors during product development to reduce material usage and enable the subsequent recycling of products. Furthermore, we will strengthen our consulting services in the area of upstream processes in order to optimise the processing of recycled materials for injection moulding.

Haim Zaafrani: For PET, the future already exists. For example, our customer Ice River Springs Water in Ontario,Canada, has been using recycled PET in their water bottles for years. There is a lot of innovation. This is why we believe innovation and sustainability go hand in hand and recently merged our sustainability department with our innovation department. Collaboration is another important area. It is important for the entire value chain to work together. We are also working on design for circularity, lightweighting and incorporating PCR. This new development at Husky will enable our customers to bring more than 60,000 tons of PET annually into the circular economy within the next 24 months. The system works by purifying recycled materials and eliminating intermediate steps.

Bertram Stern: In June 2019, the Arburg Packaging Summit focused on the currently discussed topic of plastics. The event which was attended by around 120 guests from all over the world was conceived to bring together leading experts from industry, research and professional associations, providing a platform for sharing knowledge on trends, resource efficiency and the circular economy in the packaging sector. The event demonstrated the challenges but also the new opportunities for the packaging industry. Manufacturers of injection moulding machines, moulds and materials, as well as recycling experts, must all work together along the entire value chain. At this event, it was clear for all to see that the spirit and will to do so exists. Only by working together will it be possible to develop new solutions and ensure that valuable used plastics can be recycled and efficiently re-purposed in the manufacture of new products.

Helmut Huber: The focus of Brckner Maschinenbau as film stretching technology supplier is on the production of single-origin structures with the highest recyclability: All raw materials originate from a common polymer group and can therefore be recycled to high-quality re-granulate. These mono-material structures from PP, PE or PET meet the highest requirements for thermic and dynamic stability and display excellent barrier properties. Thanks to their minimal thickness, they are also extremely resource-efficient.

How do you make sure that your pack/packaging material is as recyclable/environmentally friendly as possible?

Haim Zaafrani, Husky: At Husky, we are heavily involved with PET and we see ourselves as a sustainability partner. We offer a range of solutions to enable the circular economy.

We are dedicated to making positive impact by aligning the goals of sustainability with the many positive attributes of plastic packaging. Husky focuses on designing not just the best package butone that can be easily recycled with our downstream partners. Cooperation is key. Our modular solutions are built on global platforms to incorporate PCR and evaluating new and alternative materials. We also focus on energy efficient equipment with the goal to be carbon neutral by 2025. On top of that we are also getting ready to generate alternative materials and alternativepolymers. A lot of education and learning still must take place, but we have our innovative centre ready to deal with these alternative materials.

Bertram Stern: At Arburg we have been working for a long time on the range of topics associated with resource efficiency and circular economy because environmental protection and the gentle use of resources are deeply rooted in our corporate philosophy. Therefore we are engaging in this discussion, and not hiding from it: We have understood the problem, we have recognised its magnitude and we are contributing towards a solution with all our powers.

Our strategy in terms of resource efficiency and circular economy and all of these related aspects and activities can be grouped together in our arburgGREENworld programme, which is based on four pillars. The first three pillars refer to the quotations for our customers and go by the names of GREEN machine, GREEN production and GREEN services. The fourth pillar goes by the name of GREEN environment and incorporates our in-house processes associated with resource efficiency and circular economy.

Important topics for the three customer-specific areas are minimisation of the CO2 footprint of the machines, processing of recyclates and bio plastics, improvement in production efficiency, use of innovative processes as well as consultancy advice on all aspects of applications technology, resources and energy efficiency.

With two examples, Arburg shows practical future applications using recyclates at K 2019. The production of cups demonstrates that thin-walled moulded parts of consistently high quality can be produced when processing new PP material together with recycled PP. In the second application, a PCR material derived from household waste is used to produce a durable technical product.

Around 30 per cent recycled material is used in the production of PP cups. For this practical example of a closed circular economy, Arburg cooperates with Erema, which provides recycled PP. In a cycle time of around four seconds, eight cups are produced on a hybrid Allrounder 1020 H in Packaging version.

In the second circular economy application, a PCR material (post-consumer recyclate) derived from household waste is used to produce a technical product. The PCR available on the market is processed by an electrical two-component Allrounder 630 A in a Profoam foaming process, the second material is TPE. The injection-moulded part is a machine door handle whose two halves are mounted in the mould. This is followed by partial overmoulding with the soft component.

Helmut Huber: Our new BOPE line concept makes the production of mono-material films with superior mechanical and optical properties possible. These are excellent to sort in waste separation and are ideal to recycle. Additionally, we developed a new inline coater for the production of extremely thin functional layers. Due to the extreme thinness, the layers dont disrupt the sorting and recycling.

How does your company make the case for plastics by highlight its benefits, for example in the area of reducing food waste?

Helmut Huber: We have brought our own, Brckner Group wide campaign to life in 2017, called Yes, We Care. This project is an acknowledgement to our responsibilities in the matter of plastics and sustainability. It includes the knowledge transfer for a better understanding of the needs and benefits of plastic and its correct use. Our corresponding information material (booklets, video, traveling exhibition) are in great demand.

Frank Schuster: We cannot and will not have a world without plastics. It is only through the use of plastics that we will be able to solve some of the great challenges of our time. This includes sustainable mobility, but also world nutrition. Intelligent packaging solutions extend the shelf life of food and prevent food from spoiling before it reaches the consumer in many countries with long transport routes and poor infrastructure. We cannot dispense with these packaging materials, which are necessary for product protection, and plastics as packaging material here are the most efficient solution in most of the cases, both in the energy and material footprint as well as in production and transport. The prerequisite is to create collection systems and recycling possibilities for packaging. In cooperation with other companies in the plastics industry, we will therefore use our experience and know-how to ensure that people in all regions of the world will be able to handle plastics responsibly.

Haim Zaafrani: We believe that plastics, and in particular PET, is the best packaging material available today, with its properties being optimal from a cost, weight, carbon footprint, food safety and consumer experience point of view. It contains no BPA and is 100 per cent recyclable. It also helps to prevent food waste. In summary, plastics is needed by society, but without plastics waste. Until a few years ago, the focus was on energy, something that seems to have fallen by the wayside today. After all, PET is lighter weight than aluminium and glass. If plastic packaging didnt exist, and somebody invented a new packaging material which is safe, light weight, can hold up to 100 times its weight, helps combat food waste and is recyclable wouldnt people jump on that and think that it is great?

See the original post:

Plastics the insider perspective - Packaging Europe

Editors note: In the second of a four-part series, opinion writer Charles Wohlforth traces the history of Alaskas current fiscal predicament. How did our unique tax and dividend structure come to be? The story begins in 1980, as funds began flooding from taxes and royalties on North Slope oil. (Read the first installment of the series here.)

Russ Meekins in an undated photo (ADN archive)

A young man with a 1980 helmet of curly hair ran down the hall of the Alaska State Capitol in excitement, waving in his hand a $79 million check, the first installment of a lottery win worth more than $100 billion. Americas great northern experiment seemed decisively to have worked.

A senator who was in the Capitol that day recalled the moment. Like many old memories, it may have fuzzy edges, but the moment for Alaska remains crystalline.

Oil from the continents largest oil field flowed from state-owned ground just as its price hit a historic peak. Economists predicted Alaskas sparse population would control more wealth, per person, than the richest Arab country. The state legislature had to buy calculators with more zeros.

Russ Meekins, the House finance chairman, who supposedly waved that check, allotted discretionary money to legislators to spend as they wished in addition to their joint appropriations. Each senator got more than enough money to build an elementary school. They ran out of ways to spend it all.

Aides called home asking for ideas, which they typed straight into the budget. Anyone need something in the $150,000 range? one remembered asking around. Months later, senior vans and hockey rinks appeared that no one knew anything about.

A woman on a plane struck up a conversation with her seatmate about the need for an abused womens shelter in Anchorage. He, a senator, wondered, "Why only Anchorage? Six shelters were built across the state. Much more, too. The state launched plans to build huge bridges and dams, thousands of tract houses and even farms carved from the wilderness.

Meekins father, a pioneer lawman, had been in Alaskas first legislature, in 1960, when the brand-new state was desperately poor and faced a future based on an untested and dubious plan.

Visitors examine two radar towers, part of the Cold War-era Nike Site Summit on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014. The facility was one of three Nike sites protecting the Anchorage area during the Cold War. (ADN archive)

Congress created the new state knowing Alaskas thin economy could never pay for government of a region larger than many nations. Up to three-quarters of economic activity had derived from Cold War military work. But Americans were convinced, based on 60 years of propaganda, that Alaska contained untold wealth just waiting to be released by proper public policy, like turning a tap.

A new state government, owning more than a quarter of Alaska land, would find the natural resources to run government and create a real society, something better than the scattered, home-built towns where they lived in territorial days, the largest of which had fewer than 50,000 inhabitants. That was the Alaska experiment, the experiment that seemed, improbably, to have spectacularly succeeded 20 years later, when the younger Meekins somehow got hold of that big check.

Meekins had been 9 years old when Alaska became a state and was 23 when he was elected to the Legislature in 1972, with a gang of pot-smoking kids who had taken over the Democratic Party, calling themselves the Ad Hoc movement. At that, he was older than most Alaskans and had been there much longer more than half the population, chasing the oil, had arrived in the previous five years.

Idealism powered the Ad Hockers, overturning the stolid old-timers of the statehood generation with unkempt styles and Watergate-era indignation, but they joined the same mission, working out the same experiment. Through the 70s including two years when Meekins left politics to finish up a few college credits they helped construct a government system for a new Alaska, including oil taxes and the Permanent Fund, and dreamed up projects to modernize the state.

Anchorage in the 1970s was still a gritty boom town. Major roads consisted of strips of asphalt without sidewalks, bordered by unpaved driveways for burger joints, strip clubs and drive-in liquor stores. On a windy summer day the air would turn brown with dust from the parking lots and road shoulders. Families still lived in military surplus Quonset huts and basements topped with tar paper. With home loans hard to come by, they would dig the basement and live in it while saving up to build the first floor.

In 1977, John McPhee wrote that the city looked as if it had been lifted by a cookie cutter from El Paso, Texas, or the outskirts of Trenton, New Jersey. A lot of journalists came north in those days. Something world historical was happening in Alaska, and a lot of it was funny, with the frontier oddballs suddenly expecting so much money. Reality TV still trades on those tropes.

Oil money changed how Anchorage looks, and it happened astonishingly fast. Roads were widened, landscaped and decorated with public art. Split level houses sprouted in swamps. Parking lots were paved and planted with aisles of trees just little sticks back in the 1980s, now tall and full. Money made us look more like California.

Penland Mobile Home Park, June 1979, looking west toward Merrill Field and downtown. The Northway Mall hadn't yet been built. (ADN archive)

In 1980, I attended Steller Secondary in an abandoned elementary school in Anchorage, with tables parents and students nailed together from old doors and two-by-fours. When the money hit, we asked to have the building updated but said we would like it basically unchanged. The state rebuilt it, but almost identically. Professional artists showed up to exactly re-create the murals kids had slapped up with house paint. It was disorienting: It seemed to be the same building, only newer.

State money often landed in disorienting ways. I grew up in Anchorage, but got lost one summer back from college in a section of the city that had been built while I was away.

Visitors might regard the changes as self-evident improvements. Travel writers no longer mock Anchorage. But the great debate of the 1970s concerned retaining the flavor of Alaska during torrential change.

Both conservationists and boomers believed they were fighting for the dream of the real Alaska the Alaska spirit, extolled in those days without irony in song and story. For some it meant indigenous self-reliance and for others the optimism and energy of development. For all, it represented a sense of common cause and membership in a place and culture that was valuable and unique.

In the end, that spirit dissipated. The economy stabilized through the 1990s and 2000s and the population became less transient, but the personality of the place flattened.

Anchorage and other larger towns became indistinguishable from American suburbs, not only in the way they looked, but also in their diffuse anonymity and weak connection to community. Old-timers remember how it was. The roads were bad, but when you slid into a snow bank, the next car would always stop to pull you out. Now we have better roads, but if you get stuck you probably have to call a tow truck.

Jay Hammond, near his Lake Clark home June 5, 1985, was a bush pilot and hunting guide who served two terms as Alaska's governor and helped create the Alaska Permanent Fund. (Erik Hill / ADN archive)

Jay Hammond stood for that older Alaska, which still exists in little fishing towns and isolated communities, although ever less. He was governor from 1974 to 1982, a Republican, but the only uncloseted environmentalist ever to win the office. He often said, To err on the side of conservation is easily corrected at a later date. Hammond loved coining aphorisms.

By conservation, he meant more than the environment. Hammond treasured a connected way of life in which Alaskans supported one another while living self-reliantly from local resources. That identity remained half myth, half aspiration in the inchoate pioneer culture of the urban boomtowns, but Hammond knew it well as a bush pilot serving rural, Alaska Native communities.

Hammond had opposed Alaska statehood, fearing the same development its boosters hoped for. In his style of complex, homespun political thought, he preferred a commonwealth, like Puerto Rico. He won the governorship unexpectedly, on his first run, with a call to buy back oil leases in the rich fishing waters of Kachemak Bay and with a television commercial showing his expertise at splitting firewood.

In 1976, Hammond signed the constitutional amendment that created the Alaska Permanent Fund, with no established objective other than to sop up expected oil money to prevent it from being wasted and, at the same time, to partially brake the pace of change.

His favorite idea was called Alaska Inc.," which Hammond first advanced as mayor of the Bristol Bay Borough, which he had helped found in the 1960s mostly to tax the worlds richest salmon fishing grounds. Frustrated by how much of the fisherys wealth went to processing companies and fishermen from outside the area, he proposed a fish tax that would be rebated to residents holding shares issued by the borough, as if the fishery were paying corporate dividends to those who truly owned the region.

Residents had voted it down. It was too complex. But as governor, Hammond resurrected the dividend concept, again based on a sense of ownership. As newcomers poured into Alaska, a new logic had developed among established residents, that Alaska was theirs and that they deserved a greater share of the oil wealth for arriving firstfor building the state, as they often credited themselves.

Hammond was a warm, kindly man, with a deep laugh and smiling eyes, and thoughtful in an unconventional way. He had concocted his political philosophy with friends, around kerosene light, on fishing boats and in homes far beyond the end of any road, and when he became governor, he continued the discussions by staffing an office of bright, young policy analysts who produced white papers and staged private debates about his inventions.

Alaska needed an inventor, because it was becoming something that had never existed before: a province within Americas federalist system, a representative democracy, that would, by itself, own staggering wealth. Nations had gained great resource wealth, but they were sovereign, with control of their borders. American states also contained great resource wealth, but not the state governments themselves.

During the 1800s, when the federal government privatized most American land, it gave the rights to subsurface discoveries along with it, so ranchers could become oil tycoons. Alaska homesteads instead included rights to the surface only. Teddy Roosevelt and his fellow progressives kept Alaskas underground riches safe and the Alaska experiment the act of Congress that made Alaska a state required that it never give up subsurface ownership. (To this day, individuals property in Alaska does not include the resources under it; theoretically, a suburban homeowner could be forced to allow an oil company to drill in his or her backyard.)

But this owner state, as it came to be known, still had to decide who would receive the benefit of the wealth it extracted, whether the collective or individuals, and how to prevent the sudden flow of unearned money from having a destructive impact. Hammond was preoccupied with the problem.

In 1980, under Juneaus claustrophobic winter sky, decisions had to be made, some kind of compromise between savers and spenders. Politics happened in Juneau in its own world, apart from everything. In those days, before a million cruise ship passengers a year, before chain stores or easy communications, the capital felt like a lost city. It decayed softly under moss and the wet branches of giant rainforest evergreens, with steep streets like corridors between false fronts and concrete facades, sidewalks protected from the endless drip by metal awnings.

Legislators could feel trapped. They didnt have the budget to fly home every weekend, as they do now. When they did, the airport could be closed for days, without the technology that now allows planes to land in more marginal weather. An Alaska Airlines jet slammed into a mountain near Juneau and killed everyone aboard in the early 1970s. If you were stuck, as politicians often were, below the clouds and between the walls of mountains, you craved a horizon. Strange things could happen.

Russ Meekins and his brethren divided up oil money in the House Finance Committee Room on the fifth floor and disco-danced in the gold rush-era bars on South Franklin Street at night, while Hammond, their elder, on the third floor, devised plans to keep them from repealing the state income tax.

Alaska was still small enough that Hammond could explain his plans in forums with community groups and in long, detailed newspaper columns. His reasons anticipated many of the issues of the coming decades. He was 15 years ahead of political science research that found that a lack of taxation degrades democracy, the strange truth that there is no representation without taxation.

Hammond predicted citizens would lose their sense of responsibility for government if they received its benefits only and made no contributions of their own, exactly as did occur. He also believed that taxes once repealed would be too difficult to reinstate, placing the state on an inevitable path to exhaust its one-time resource wealth for ongoing expenses.

He often said development should pay for itself, bringing new tax revenue along with new activity and people. Otherwise, he feared, a government with a finite trove of resources would function as a zero-sum game, with economic growth merely adding more players, more mouths to feed, and ratcheting downward the quality of public goods for everyone. Exactly as did happen.

But those ideas seemed abstract and speculative at the time. His strongest argument concerned how individuals were affected by the progressive income tax, which took from 3% to 14.5% of individual Alaskans income. Repealing it would excessively benefit the wealthy and would reward migrating oil workers, hated in the popular imagination for flashy lives outside Alaska between stints at Arctic jobs.

Instead, Hammond offered a Rube Goldberg machine of a tax system, attempting to reverse the impact of a straight repeal, with a credit based on years of residency applied against taxes and, when it exceeded taxes, to be paid out in cash. Newcomers and high earners would pay taxes while low- and middle-income Alaskans would get paid by the state, with bigger and bigger checks for each year of their residency.

This idea represented Hammonds first version of giving away the oil wealth to claw it back in taxes for only what the public was willing to pay for. He also knew rural Alaskans would benefit greatly from even small payments in their cash-poor villages, buying ammo for subsistence hunts and parts for snowmachines.

But as the money tidal wave hit, Hammonds ideas seemed less and less viable. Saving had been simpler when oil wasnt flowing yet, with less at stake. The Permanent Fund was relatively easy to create in the skinny year of 1976. But the Alaska pipeline began operating in 1977 and oil prices spiked to new highs after Irans Islamic revolution in 1979. Meekins and his colleagues, as one put it, felt like kids unleashed to eat all the candy they could grab.

A petition initiative called for repeal of the income tax and another for creation of a stock corporation to pursue businesses on residents behalf. Meekins said no one should be paying taxes after the 1980 legislative session. Hammond called instead for increasing Permanent Fund deposits to take 75% of oil revenue and threatened to veto an income tax repeal.

A newspaper columnist found him infuriating, pointing out that Alaska anticipated budget surpluses over the next few years 20 times larger than its income tax revenues would be during that time. Hammond was trying to avoid doing something which is both politically popular and fiscally possible.

Many Alaskans felt collectively rich but individually poor. Sen. George Hohman of Bethel represented a Yupik-majority district said to be the poorest in the United States (indigenous people who live by hunting and gathering might not call themselves poor just because they dont have money). He had displaced Hammond himself from the state Senate in 1970, when new district lines put them against each other.

Hohman wanted to spend all the oil money, using even the content of the Permanent Fund to issue low-interest loans to whoever needed them. He was a round, rumpled, small-time businessman, a white in a Native community, and probably had people in mind to whom he would like to give the loans.

As Meekins counterpart in the Senate, Hohman controlled the capital budget and sent home more money for projects that year than any other legislator. He was a skilled and slippery legislative Godfather, one of the most powerful in the Capitol, yet lived in Bethel in an unpainted shack on the tundra with a honey-bucket bathroom like most rural Alaska homes then, and some even today, it had a 5-gallon bucket for a toilet, dumped in a lagoon on the edge of town.

To have the state keep the oil money made no sense to George Hohman. Its like an Alaskan walking down the street with a hundred-dollar bill in his hand, wearing a loin cloth and no shoes. He doesnt have a flush toilet at home, Hohman told a reporter as the 1980 legislative session began. Alaskans deserve the best treatment government can afford.

Hammond countered with his incomprehensible bill linking a tax repeal to residency, combined with a Permanent Fund dividend based on shares that accumulated with years in Alaska a version of his Alaska Inc. idea. The income tax, which would hit only greenhorns, was nicknamed the Cheechako Tax, using Alaskans word for newcomers.

As Alaskas culture has changed since, the word cheechako has disappeared, and now the idea seems bizarre that newcomers would pay more taxes, but at the time the Cheechako Tax may have been the most popular element of the bill. Most legislators saw no reason to pay a dividend. But Hammond had a critical political asset. Among his closest old friends one of the fishermen who had joined him in those philosophical talks by kerosene light was the Senate president, Clem Tillion.

Clem Tillion, with his Halibut Cove home in the background. (Erik HIll / ADN archive 2010)

Tillion shared Hammonds love of unconventional ideas he had wanted Alaska to be an independent nation rather than a state and presided over a personal kingdom on Kachemak Bay, the community of Halibut Cove, which he had founded and still, for the most part, owned. As a leader, Hammond performed in a role, with his folksy smile and feigned diffidence, claiming he had never wanted to be a politician although he spent much of his adulthood seeking various offices and serving in them. Tillion played in the opposite role, projecting cavalry-charge fierceness, like Teddy Roosevelt, whom he idolized.

In 1980, Tillion and Hammond renewed their after-dinner talks. Hammond would slip away in the dark, unseen by the Capitol crowd, to walk through the wet, narrow streets of Juneau to Tillions house, there to secretly strategize.

They knew legislators had a weakness. Each wanted personal projects, the ones Meekins had allowed them to type into the budget for their own districts, without being second-guessed. But Hammond had the line-item veto, giving him power to cross out those individual appropriations without fear of override. Without going public, Tillion delivered the message to key members that the governor would kill their pet projects unless they supported his dividend and tax bill. It then slid through with seemingly miraculously ease.

Tillion fought harder to pass a jumbo, extra deposit to the Permanent Fund, a last bid to grab oil money before it could fly out the door. Hammonds idea of a 75% allocation to the fund had no chance, but a big one-time deposit was the next best way to restrain spending.

George Hohman. (ADN archive 1982)

Hohman fought back. He needed that money for his loans. Toward the end, he tried to block the deposit by hiding out with two other senators, preventing the Senate from voting by a parliamentary maneuver that required all members to be in attendance. Tillion responded with force. As Senate president, with subpoena power, he ordered the Alaska State Troopers to find Hohman. A trooper in uniform towered over pudgy little Hohman, marching him back to the Senate floor. Hohman lost the vote and the money went into the Permanent Fund.

After the legislature adjourned in 1980, newspapers editorialized with outrage over the porkbarrel bill that included spending for everyone. But it could have been much worse.

Hammonds income tax survived and much of the years new oil money was deposited in the Permanent Fund more money than was spent by the porkbarrel bill. Money got stashed as well in state-owned corporations with professional managers to make loans for economic development, housing and energy projects, rather than Hohmans loans for anyone who asked.

The legislature also decided to invest the Permanent Fund itself as an endowment, for long-term growth, not to put the money in Alaskans own business schemes. Hammonds dividend passed. It was supposed to help keep the fund invested responsibly. He said dividends would motivate Alaskans to watch fund management and keep the money safe.

But that was a brief moment. Change didnt slow down. Oil money kept coming in, ever faster. The dam built by Hammond and his allies lasted only a year. Not even that.

Next: part 3 of the series: Alaskas PFD Experiment. The Alaska Permanent Fund is admired around the world and the dividend held up as an example of a program to distribute wealth to citizens. What does Alaskas experience foretell for those Universal Basic Income ideas?

Continued here:

The top of the waterfall, 1980: Tracing the roots of Alaska's fiscal predicament - Anchorage Daily News

Readers note: As per policy we do not publish any election-related submissions in print in the final edition prior to voting day, which in the case of Cranbrook Townsman and Kimberley Bulletin is Friday, Oct. 18

Forgetting history

Rick Stewarts interview seemed to me to reveal a forgetfulness of history and and a refusal to face the future. All of us, except the indigenous peoples whom our ancestors displaced and to whom we still owe reparations, are descended from immigrants or are ourselves immigrants. This is a multicultural country. Our population includes Ukrainians who fled persecution in the early 1900s, Europeans from many countries who looked for a better life after WW II, Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin, Vietnamese boat people, Syrian and other refugees from recent conflicts and many, many others, often under the aegis of the United Nations. All these groups have made their contribution to Canada.

As to his attitude to the climate crisis and the inevitable changes it will bring to the fossil fuel industry, he seems to be clinging to the hope that things can stay the same, forgetting that spinners and weavers were displaced by machinery, carters and blacksmiths by the the combustion engine, assembly line workers by robots, just as Internet shopping is now displacing traditional retail and AI will likely take over many administrative jobs in the future. Fortunately for us, unlike the spinners and weavers, if every corporation and citizen pays its fair share of taxes, our society can support people during the transition from a fossil fuel-based economy and, in the process, provide thousands of new jobs, all the while providing ongoing education and healthcare. We are so fortunate to live in a rich, democratic country.

Our school children and their children will bear the brunt of the climate crisis unless we act immediately to reduce global warming and it seems to me that teaching them about it, thoughtfully, so as to empower them, is essential.

Coralie Kittle/Kimberley

Climate Forum

I attended the climate change forum in Nelson and left the gathering with the same sense of concern and urgency that I arrived with. Despite the alarms being set off by young activists like Greta Thunberg and Autumn Peltier, I still do not see a willingness to take bold and decisive action nor an ability to see the tremendous opportunities that a move to renewable energy will create. Its not just young activists that are sending us dire warnings, its also the planet and nature who are showing us the consequences of doing nothing more than we are currently doing.

I was proud to be a Liberal candidate in the last election and had sincere hopes that Justin Trudeau would be that new leader who would move quickly and decisively on electoral reform and climate change. The first simply disappeared and the second has moved much too slowly and has been pretty difficult to comprehend. Im still struggling to understand how buying a pipeline is consistent with declaring a climate emergency. But, I dont want to repeat the talking points and party platforms that were discussed last night. I want to do something.

I will be voting for Abra Byrne and the Green Party on October 21st. My preferred result for the election would be a minority government (which is highly likely) with a strong Green Party representation (also likely) to force action on climate change. We could end up with an opportunity to see the strength of proportional representation with parties having to work together, and quick, meaningful action on climate change. Electing Abra would place the Kootenay Columbia riding in the forefront of voting strategically to join the massive global movement now underway to get serious about climate change. The environment is everything, especially in a place like the Kootenays.

Don Johnston/Nelson

Climate Champions

A few points as we head to the polls:

The science is clear: climate change is a global emergency that affects us all and we have limited time to act. This is Canadas last federal election before its too late for real positive change. Please consider your vote carefully.

Carbon pricing and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies are critical incentives for moving to a low carbon economy. The Conservatives intend to cancel the price on carbon for consumers, and wont commit to eliminating subsidies. Projections show that the Conservative climate plan overshoots Canadas commitment to the Paris Agreement well beyond other parties. (The Green plan is the only one that reduces carbon emissions below the Paris Agreement.) The Conservatives are not interested in talking about helping the average family, worker and individual to transition to a low carbon economy. Perhaps many years ago this was a party that was fiscally responsible, and had the hard working Canadian in mind. But the times have changed and it has not kept up. Fiscal responsibility must include assigning value to the basic requirements to sustain life. The longer support for transition is delayed, the harder it will be. And Canadians will go down too.

In Kootenay Columbia Riding, Stetski (NDP) and Brynne (Green) are the climate champions. This is based on the comprehensive strong Green Party plan and collaborative cross sector experience for Abra, and for Wayne, this is based on LeadNow consultations which demonstrate his non-partisan commitment in line with a Green New Deal, as well as likelihood for winning the riding. Polls show the NDP have the most likelihood of winning this riding after the climate inattentive Conservatives. So given our limited first-past-the-post electoral system, I will vote strategically for the NDP.

Stetski is a strong climate advocate and has proven himself as a hard working MP who has also defeated a Conservative candidate in this riding in the past. The polls show he can do it again. On Oct 21, Im voting NDP: Wayne Stetski, and encourage those in support of responsible fiscal and social climate policy to consider doing the same.

Sue Cairns/Cranbrook

Role of MPs

The role of our elected MPs and MLAs is to represent all constituents, not just those who voted for them, think like them, or look like them. Our system of representative democracy depends on this. But in the 2019 election, democratic principles appear to be detached from partisan interests. As a case in point, consider the Kootenay-Columbia ridings Conservative candidate Rob Morrisons practice of blocking and banning voters on his candidate Facebook page.

Im part of a network of citizens across the riding which convenes online to discuss politics. A number of our members have attempted to contribute to conversations on Mr. Morrisons Facebook pages; the list is growing. Alas, it seems he does not want to know their views or discuss his own views. He has blocked and banned some of his potential constituents when he disagrees with them, or when they provide comments that challenge his positions.

As one person on our network said, Many people have told me that they were banned from Rob Morrisons Facebook pages. What does that say about his willingness to listen to voters? Since he clearly only wants to hear from certain people; how can he possibly represent us all? If Mr. Morrison and other similarly intolerant politicians cannot hear from us now, it seems unlikely they can represent us if they win. This kind of politics damages our democratic order and our form of representative government. We need politicians that listen to us all.

Joyce Green/Cranbrook

Fairy Tale World

Throughout the federal campaign I have been waiting for our MP to take a stand on natural resources such as the coal industry and the forestry industry. Mr. Stetskis answer has always been to have people refer to the 112 page NDP document which spells out their vision for Canada. Mr. Stetski and the NDP want to rid Canada of its extraction of fossil fuels and live off of renewable energy. There is one fundamental flaw with their entire vision, which was backed up this week by the parliamentary budget officer. With all the niceties, such as free everything you still have to be able to pay for it. Their costed promises cannot be done without the extraction of oil, gas and coal along with other hard metals that are in abundance in Canada.

In the fairy tale world of the NDP we will magically find the free money and all will be good in the world. Wayne Stetski what I would like to hear from you and not the 112 page vision statement of the NDP is the following. Do you support the fossil fuel industry which is needed to further the agenda of the NDP? How do you intend to pay for all of the freebees you plan on providing Canadians without the multibillion dollar oil, gas and coal industries fueling our economy both at home and abroad?

In the recent down turn of the oil, forestry and coal industries the only thing we hear from the NDP is a desire eliminate these industries. Rather than trying to destroy what makes Canada great, why dont you and the NDP try working with these companies rather than criticizing their every move.

David Wilks/Sparwood

Theres a vote strategically narrative going around again this election period. Ive been guilty of spinning it in the past too. What that narrative does, is create fear in people, that if they dont vote to support the NDP, that the Conservatives will get in again. The result is that their desired candidate, and I mean the Green candidate, cant possibly win if the majority of their support goes to someone else.

In speaking with many Greens who really want to vote Green, but are being convinced to vote NDP Im hearing that it really bothers them. It bothers me too. Thats why, this election, I am voting Green as I have wanted to for years.

The strategic vote narrative also includes the need for proportional representation. The Greens will bring in PR, period. No referendum after one or two voting periods.

It is this election, at this time in our global history, that I need my vote to count for the party that can do the most to combat the climate crisis. The Green party has the most aggressive climate action plan that will meet or exceed the Paris Accord. No other party will achieve that.

7.5 million people marched out of schools and businesses demanding that we act on the climate crisis. We dont have another four years to wait for a change in leadership for something to get done. It must be now.

A young woman said to a group of us one day that your vote wont affect you as much as it will affect my future.

For the Planet,

Sharon Cross/Cranbrook

Concerning Robin Goldsbury

Why I support Robin Goldsbury for our Kootenay-Columbia Member of Parliament

I had the pleasure of attending three all-candidate debates (Kimberley, Sparwood and Fernie) and recorded responses from the candidates that support my decision to vote for Robin Goldsbury. The significant topics were youth, seniors, climate change and housing. Goldsbury is experienced and knowledgeable about the issues in Kootenay-Columbia. Her authentic, local voice for our rural British Columbia riding and her passion for representing us in Kootenay-Columbia are refreshing!

When discussing the social well-being of youth in Canada, Goldsbury supported universal access to post-secondary and skills training while the Conservative candidate simply responded, youth think differently. When responding to the healthcare/opioid crisis in Kootenay-Columbia, Robin understood that trauma creates addictions, while other candidates stated, addiction is a choice (Morrison) and get criminals off the street (Stetski).

During the discussion addressing how the values of seniors will be met, Goldsbury addressed the importance of access to healthcare, health practitioners and homecare. Morrison supported getting seniors back to work, Brynne supported increasing pensions, and Stetski supported financial security for seniors. What good are jobs, pensions and financial security if we dont have access to quality, accessible healthcare a tenet of life in Canada?

In responding to the climate crisis facing us locally and globally, the candidates stated they supported pipelines, recycling and the energy sector (Conservative), a 20-step action plan and increasing carbon pricing (Green) and renovating houses and supporting future jobs in the green energy economy (NDP). Goldsbury strongly stated, We need to act! Were running out of time! (receiving applause). She supported the importance of the Columbia River Treaty renegotiation and massive programs on greening including transportation, ocean protection and residential energy efficiency while advocating Canadian resource companies who are leading the way.

While discussing Kootenay-Columbia housing issues, Goldsbury supported incentives for businesses to create employee housing and building up the supply side of affordable housing by local, municipal, Indigenous, provincial and federal governments/agencies pulling together. The other candidates suggested removing red tape, a national housing strategy and resorted to reading directly from lengthy party platform documents.

Robin Goldsbury stresses the importance of Kootenay-Columbias sustainable vitality, inclusive collaboration in government, and serious solutions to local issues. Her open, personable approach to sharing policy, research and statistics while genuinely caring for us in Kootenay-Columbia reflect her work-ethic and integrity. Goldsbury possesses the qualities of an ideal government representative who will work persistently while championing our voices in our region, province and country.

Cynthia Moore/Kimberley

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Election Letters to the Editor - BCLocalNews

By the BF StaffFrom the September/October 2019 Issue

Industrial real estate demand reached new heights in 2018 and, according to CBREs 2019 Outlook Report, this trend is continuing through 2019. There has been a tremendous demand for logistics properties of all types; Class-A big-bulk warehouses are leading the surge, which has been broad-based and extends down to secondary and tertiary markets.

E-commerce is driving growth, CBRE reported, and this includes some brick-and-mortar retailers who are expanding online operations. Net absorption resulting from e-commerce growth is expected to average between 75M SF and 94M SF in 2019, and a lack of new supply has driven vacancy levels down to 4.3 percent, a historic low. CBRE says that an increasing number of online retailers are opening physical stores to grow their business and retain more customers.

The recent trend toward multistory warehouse developmentspurred by rising building costs and the decreasing availability of landis continuing to grow in U.S. metro areas. Rents for multistory industrial facilities can be two or three times those of traditional industrial facilities.

According to the CBRE report, real estate markets are buzzing with innovation. The amount of completed new buildings has steadily increased around the world over the last three years in the industrial, office and multifamily sectors. However, unlike past cycles, it is not a speculative surge, but a more controlled rise in stock that matches the increase in demand that has come from a decade of economic growth and corporate expansion.

Picture booming industries and a large workforce thriving in their professional and personal lives. Visualize a place where commerce, community and convenience intersect the place, in fact, where Volvo Car USA built its first-ever U.S. manufacturing plant in 2015, creating nearly 4,000 jobs and $4.8 billion in annual economic impact by itself. A place with a dedicated interstate interchange, rail service and essential technology infrastructure, close to a major port and international airport.

Youve arrived at Camp Hall.

Camp Hall Industrial Commerce Park in South Carolina is a new breed of commerce parkone specifically designed to connect people, place and industry. Master-planned for ultimate functionality and the demands of 21st century industries, Camp Hall is designed so that businessand its workforcecan truly thrive. Site-development opportunities range from seven to 600 acresa wide range of parcel sizes allowing for maximum flexibility to meet industry-specific needs. Beyond flexible site opportunities, Camp Hall brings an entirely new dynamic to the concept of a commerce park for several reasons.

Camp Hall is thoughtfully designed to provide worldwide access, achieve an attractive quality of life for the workforce and make the most of the regions natural surroundings.

This is achieved through intuitive, existing infrastructure including entire arterial roadways. A dedicated interchange just opened providing direct access from I-26 for trucks while facilitating employee commutes from nearby residential developments, which are located so that commuting actually tracks against the metropolitan areas major traffic patterns. In addition to this easy interstate connection, Camp Hall offers comprehensive transportation networks for global access, including close proximity to airports and deepwater ports. Also onsite are both redundant and diverse power supply as well as fiber, major gas transmission lines, significant water as well as sewer. Rail service connecting to CSX is currently being extended.

One of the most unique elements of Camp Hall is how it incorporates state-of-the-art technology with systems to support modern enterprise. Onsite amenities underway for employees such as park-wide Wi-Fi, dedicated open space, walking trails, gas stations and health centers, and so much more are part of life at Camp Hall. All the while, the eco-friendly design maintains adaptability for future growth.

The Charleston regions commitment to a thriving business climate and economic development is evident with recent growth in the aerospace and automotive industries, just to name a couple of examples. From Fortune 500 corporations to thousands of small- to mid-sized businesses, the Charleston area offers an unparalleled quality of lifeits a place where the workforce can thrive among modern conveniences while engulfed in the rich culture of the South.

The Charleston regions geographically diverse landscape offers a year-round moderate climate and puts residents a short drive from the beach and the mountains. Camp Hall is just 27 miles from Charleston International Airport and 104 miles from Myrtle Beach International Airport. It is also located at the center of the industrial growth trend for the greater Charleston area.

In the Charleston market, building-permit issuance has steadily increased since 2011. The vacancy rate of residential rental units trends down year over year, while the average rent sees growth of 6 percent year over yearand thats because people are flocking to the area for its job opportunities and quality lifestyle. Theres been a 19 percent increase in population since 2009, and a 6.2 percent population increase is projected annually. New single-family closings have been steadily on the rise, too.

For the broader industrial market, vacancy rates have been steadily falling for one simple reason: Businesses understand the endless potential of the region and opportunity it provides. Four planned residential communities within less than a 30-minute drive of Camp Hall have approximately 37,000 planned residential lots. And, eight of the top 10 selling residential communities within the Charleston MSA (closing in combination over 1,000 houses annually) are within a 30-minute drive. The ample, affordable and easily accessible housing options for the Camp Hall workforce further create a cohesive community for work, play and life.

People arent just coming for the fresh air and proximity to the beachthe job opportunities are endless in the region. Job growth here exceeds both state and national levels, and is expected to increase 10-15 percent over the next 10 years.

With a healthy blend of young, skilled and seasoned employees, the Camp Hall market stands ready with a workforce of nearly 500,000 available workers. The Charleston area has a slightly higher than national average number of millennials, providing potential employers with a better ability to recruit train and retain younger employees for their operation.

The region holds a higher percentage of individuals with advanced educational attainment compared to the South Carolina and national population. More than 40,000 students are enrolled in 24 colleges, universities and technical schools in the areaand each produces highly skilled workers who help drive business growth. And thats no accident. By strategically aligning business with education, the Charleston market offers employers a workforce development advantage.

With over 15,000 jobs anticipated, 4,000 of which are already committed, Camp Halls unique approach keeps that workforce at the center of every design detail.

Continued employment growth is expected across all sectors, driven largely by hospitality, construction, education and health.

Fast-forward from Volvos big decision in 2015 to the official Camp Hall groundbreaking in June 2018, and then, to the completion of the trail systems first phase in spring 2019, past various milestones and openings, and arrive at the opening of the I-26 and Volvo Car Drive interchange in August 2019. Fast-forward several years beyond that and youre sure to find a successful, thriving commerce park that once dared to approach a blueprint in entirely new ways. Be a part of the growth. Find out more about Camp Hall by visiting CampHall.com today.

Quonset Business Park is the leading place for manufacturing in Rhode Island. Among the parks nearly 12,000 jobs, 59 percent are in manufacturing. According to a recent study from Bryant University, Quonset now represents 17 percent of total manufacturing employment in Rhode Island, and the number of jobs there is only expected to grow. The North Kingston-based park added 975 manufacturing jobs in 2018 alone.

While the number of jobs increased at the park, wages have risen as well. The average wage at Quonset Business Park is 19 percent higher than the statewide average. From 2015 to 2018, the average wage at Quonset rose twice as fast as wages in the rest of the state.

With continued public and private investments to support development and buildout at the park, Quonset could support 32,546 jobs in Rhode Island, create $1.87 billion in income for Rhode Island households and produce $6.2 billion in Gross Domestic Product by 2030, the Bryant study found. Quonset Business Park represents a successful model for economic development that anticipates the needs of businesses with an efficient development approach that encourages business and job growth. So what is it about Quonset that creates a climate for success?

First, Quonset Development Corporation (QDC) goes out of its way to cut red tape. Their Site Readiness program makes development at the park easier than ever with pre-permitted and pre-engineered parcels to speed the development process. With 246 acres of pad-ready sites, they also have the space for a new facility or expansion project. Quonsets Site Readiness Program enables companies to get shovels in the ground within 90 days of signing a lease.

Second, Quonset recognizes the strength in a broad range of industries. The industrial park can support large, high-tech, industrial operations like Electric Boat and Toray Plastics while their Commerce Park section hosts some of the states most successful companies like Ocean State Job Lot. Also, Quonset has created a new Flex Space Industrial Campus for new and growing companies who need affordable space that can adapt to the changing needs of growing businesses.

Quonsets strategic location in North Kingstown places businesses in the heart of the Northeast, giving them broad access to markets with tens of millions in population. The park is located at the midpoint between Boston and New York, offering companies a stake in both of the areas largest population centers.

Quonsets central location puts its companies at the nexus of major shipping and travel routes in the region. The onsite Port of Davisville, a top 10 auto importer in North America, provides public access to a world-class facility that is equipped to handle breakout load and special project cargo. Quonset also is close to highways like RI Rte 4 and I-95 and has direct access to the Northeast Corridor through 14 miles of freight rail running through the park. With additional proximity to major airports like T.F. Green (RI), Logan International (MA) and Bradley International (CT) and train routes like the MBTA and Amtrak, companies have the mobility they need to access new markets.

Quonset also understands that to attract the best talent, a business park has to be a place where people want to work. Their facilities include an 18-hole golf course, four beaches, a daycare facility and a free bus service provided through the RI Public Transit Authority. They are also looking forward to the construction of a new gym facility.

Finally, Quonsets leadership has a keen eye for the future. In recent years the park has grown as a hub of marine manufacturing but also as a magnet for clean energy development. The park hosted some of the construction for the nations first offshore wind farm near Block Island. Quonset Development Corporation is proud of its commitment to sustainability and powers its facilities with 100 percent renewable energy. The QDC is continuing to seek out new opportunities to bring the future of energy to Rhode Island.

Quonset Business Park is the ideal location in the Eastern United States for businesses of all sizes and at all stages of development. Their world-class infrastructure, centralized location and growth-friendly approach give businesses at Quonset a competitive edge and an optimal climate for growth. For more information about starting your next venture at Quonset, visit http://www.quonset.com.

Frederictons early investments in digital and physical infrastructure, like Knowledge Park, have enabled the growth of the Citys large knowledge-based economy and attracted global companies like Siemens, Salesforce.com and IBM.

Knowledge Park, Atlantic Canadas largest research and technology park, is the clustering environment where New Brunswicks cutting-edge research and development activities take place. Since being established in 1998, the 40-acre campus has grown to house in excess of 40 companies that employ over 800 people.

Today, Fredericton has more than 60 organizations that are engaged in research and development mostly lead by the University of New Brunswick, says Larry Shaw, CEO of Knowledge Park and Ignite Fredericton, the economic development agency for Fredericton, Oromocto and New Maryland. Knowledge Park is an integral part of Frederictons innovation ecosystem where collaboration, development and commercialization of new products occur.

When compared to other jurisdictions, the citys competitive advantage is a wealth of highly skilled labor, extensive research and development, diversified knowledge industry and a startup ecosystem that has achieved the recognition as Canadas Startup Community in 2016.

If you look in the last year, there have been more than 300 new jobs in cybersecurity alone, most of which are focused on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure, says Shaw.

In the Fall of 2020, Fredericton is set to open a $37-million Cyber Centre. This cybersecurity-dedicated space promises to have an enormous economic impact on the region. The 135,000-square-foot center dedicated to research and development of cybersecurity will support regional, provincial and national economic development priorities to attract new talent and businesses to the region.

The building represents one of the most significant economic development opportunities that New Brunswick has had in the last 20 years, says Shaw.

In support of this $37-million project, Knowledge Park has obtained a $30-million commercial loan from Opportunities New Brunswick. In addition, Knowledge Park and Ignite Fredericton have partnered with Cyber NB, a government-mandated organization focusing on economic development around cybersecurity in New Brunswick.

One such player is Siemens. This German multinational specializes in energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies. Siemens has worked closely with NB Power, the provinces renewable and traditional energy supplier, to improve its smart-grid technology. Recently, attracted by the quality of research and development being offered in Fredericton, the multinational has decided to set up their global center of competence for cybersecurity in the City. Difenda, Kognitiv Spark and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories are also planning to set up operations in the Cyber Centre.

Cyber Centre will be a level II security facility that houses private business, academia and three levels of government that will be focused on research, development, operations and commercialization in critical infrastructure cyber security protect. The facility is part of the current Knowledge Park campus expanding the footprint to more than 50 acres.

We know that the knowledge-based sector, including the research and development component, continues to be one of the most important areas for economic growth globally, and here in New Brunswick, said Shaw. Fredericton offers access to top talent, infrastructure, industry leaders and collaboration partners.

Knowledge Park is an economic development engine and its revenues are reinvested into initiatives such as Planet Hatch, an entrepreneurship center that supports startups to grow into internationally competitive companies. Planet Hatch offers mentoring and coaching, as well as programs and funding for entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurship center has proved extremely successful with more than 225 new startups over the past five years.

Fredericton is considered one of the most digitally-advanced cities in the world. Also, one of the most entrepreneurial communities in Canada, producing more than $1-billion in knowledge industry exits since 2009.

Through Knowledge Park and Planet Hatch, we are nurturing home-grown talent and growing a diverse network of high-tech providers, says Shaw, all of which benefit from an economically strong environment.

Knowledge Park works with a robust network of economic development, research and entrepreneurial support organizations, all located within Frederictons two km radius innovation district. One such organization is the University of New Brunswick. UNBs Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity, as an example, is leading research and advancements including commercialization initiatives with companies like Siemens. The Institute draws on the expertise of researchers in the social sciences, business, computer science, engineering, law and science.

Alongside St. Thomas University and the New Brunswick Community College, UNB supplies some of the sharpest and most skilled minds to the citys talent pool.

Frederictons talent pool continuously refreshes its diversity, skill and creativity with influxes of international students and skilled newcomers who come to Canada through various immigration streams. In the city, companies can hire internationally, done quickly through the Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program.

With the opening of the new Cyber Centre and the continued success of Knowledge Park and its support organizations, Fredericton is on the right path to becoming a global leader in providing high-quality research and development, as well as to maintain its status as the optimal location for research-based business.

We have so much to offer in Fredericton. Its just a matter of telling our story and showing the world the skills and the quality of infrastructure that we offer here, says Shaw.

MidAmerica Industrial Park has been building its resources in northeast Oklahoma for nearly 60 years and is looking equally far ahead. Since day one, MAIPs commitment has always been the sameto deliver whatever companies need to succeed. Companies like Google and DuPont agree that MidAmerica is a great place to be. The workforce. The infrastructure. The boundless potential. MidAmerica delivers it all.

MidAmerica is owned and operated by a self-sustaining public trust with the sole mission of increasing area employment by bringing new businesses to the region and by assisting in the growth of existing businesses. This mission opened the way for the crucial advantages of a park-owned water and wastewater system. It has also translated into park governance and service that is wholly responsive to tenant needs.

MidAmerica Industrial Park (MAIP) offers a stable, protected environment to its businesses. Because revenues are generated by water sales and park land sales and leases, the trust requires no state or federal tax dollars for support.

Because the trust also enjoys regulatory sovereignty, startups, expansions and relocations are streamlined with fast decisions and lower costseliminating red tape and fees. There are no building inspection processes requiring approval prior to construction, no impact fees, sewer hook-up charges, water hook-up charges, building permit fees, storm drainage fees or building inspection fees. Each of these lower engineering and construction costs.

Why Locate at MidAmerica. For businesses looking to locate at MidAmerica, MAIP is uniquely positioned to incentivize new business from every angle. Because MAIP incentives are added to both state and federal incentives, the packages offered to businesses are the most comprehensive in the nation.

MAIP also offers a Quick Action incentive fund that assists new companies with the costs associated with business relocation. The fund is comprised of three components: education and training, land cost offsetting and reduction and specialized infrastructure.

The education and training component encompasses the facilities at the park including: Northeast Technology Center, Rogers State University Pryor campus located in the park and MAIPs own Technology and Career Center.

Land cost offsetting and reduction helps companies considering relocation to MidAmerica. MidAmericas management team works closely with clients to determine the best possible structure for the acreage needed based on the scope of the project. This includes anything from low-cost to no cost, typically determined by overall investment and jobs created.

The third component, specialized infrastructure, includes but isnt limited to, working with companies to fulfill their needs in regard to water and wastewater at their site. Or, if a company has special needs for the site such as rail access, entry and exit access, land development, dirt removal, etcetera, MidAmerica would use the incentive fund to help offset those costs.

Qualifications and criteria for the fund depends on the value the business brings to the park. The number of jobs the company would bringspecifically, density of jobshow many employees per acre, average wage of employees and if there is opportunity for growth and expansion.

Finally, MidAmerica is in the process of developing at 162-acre development that incorporates retail, residential, parks and trails. The new development, known as The District, is a fusion of walkable retail areas and residential living combined with a natural environment that offers wide open spaces and outdoor activity. It includes 32,000 square feet of retail space, a 100-unit multi-story living complex, 100 residential homes and 10 acres of parks and outdoor spaces, which all connect via walking and biking trail systems. This development is about meeting peoples desires to be a part of thriving community and attracting the best of the best when it comes to employers and employees.

MidAmerica Infrastructure. With 9,000 acres under single ownership for almost 60 years, MidAmerica has everything a business needs to thrive. Park owned and operated water and wastewater treatment facilities, reliable power through onsite generation, ample gas supply and multiple communication providers means businesses can rest assured MAIP will have a reliable and affordable infrastructure.

MAIP recently completed the Armin Road Project which consisted of 1.5 miles of 32-foot to 42-foot-wide asphalt paved roads, storm water lines and sanitary sewer lines, and site drainage. The project opened up approximately 240 acres for shovel ready development.

In addition, The Oklahoma Ordinance Works Authority Board of Directors approved developing plans for construction of a new 100,000-square-foot spec building to be located in the park. The facility will be designed for operations utilization by a wide range of light to medium industrial clients.

MidAmericas water and wastewater treatment facilities ensure that theres plenty of capacity and capability for everyone in the 9,000-acre park.

The Water Treatment Plant is currently undergoing a $3.6 million renovation to maintain operational reliability, increase efficiency and improve safety. The renovations and updates include the installation of new meters and valves, replacement of actuators, concrete repairs and recoating of existing pipes and equipment to increase operational reliability and efficiency.

The Water Treatment Plant provides drinking water for 80 industrial customers, six of which represent 50 percent of overall water sales; three municipal customers outside the park who represent 10 percent of water sales; and six rural water districts representing 20 percent of water sales. The Plant produces 12 to 16 million gallons of drinking water a day.

In addition, MidAmericas Wastewater Treatment Plant is in the final stages of a $2.1 million improvement project to increase reliability and minimize the risk of violations with the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ).

SCADA improvements include new alarm signals to minimize equipment failure and monitoring devices to assist in plant operations. Finally, a new lift station will be commissioned to replace an existing lift station that was built in 1967.

Choose MidAmerica. MidAmericas excellent day-to-day management of park operations nurtures tenant success. The parks staff of 25 full-time professionals, under the direction of Chief Administrative Officer David Stewart, is always ready to respond to any tenant need, from administration to water/wastewater operations and maintenance to marketing and planning for future growth. The staff also keeps the parks Plant Managers Association abreast of current industry topics ranging from recent environmental legislation to international exporting practices.

There isnt a simple one word answer as to why you should make Summit East Technology Park in Tallahassee, the state capitol of Florida, your new address. Its not only about location, innovation, technology or convenience. Its about having a team of people working with you to deliver a Class A office building on schedule and the same team of people being with you and working with you throughout your stay at any of the Summit Group developments to ensure a mutually beneficial partnership.

There are so many advantages to living and working in the Sunshine State, and specifically, in Tallahassee, Florida. Obviously, the weather is at the top of the list with, on average, 233 sunny days per year in Tallahassee while the U.S. average is 205 sunny days. (Sperlings Best Places.) Florida does not have an individual state tax and tax incentives are available.

Tallahassee is the state capitol and the county seat of Leon County, and as of 2018, some 193,551 people call it home, with 385,145 in the Tallahassee metropolitan area. The population is the most highly educated in Florida and Tallahassee also is home to Florida State University, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Community College and Lively Technical College.

The Summit East team and its building partner, Mad Dog Construction, delivered the Northview Building in the Summit East Technology Park in 2013 with over 40,000 square feet of office space in less than eight months from conceptual planning to move-in. A 40,000 square foot building was completed in 2018, which met the clients targeted 12 month delivery. With all needed development rights in place, the time from start to finish on a new building is substantially compacted where most can be delivered 14-16 months from commencement. The most recent project is a 73,000-square-foot building for State offices and is meeting its time schedule for completion and move in by October 2019.

The Staybridge Suites Hotel is located onsite within Summit East and provides businesses not only the opportunity to host out of town guests, but also has fully equipped A/V conference centers available that provide seating for 8-10 people, 50 people and up to 90 people. Additionally, there is a theater room available with leather recliners and a 70 inch TV screen.

Summit East is located at Highway 90 East (Mahan Drive) and Interstate 10 and is only 25 minutes to the Tallahassee International Airport, 15 minutes to downtown Tallahassee and five minutes to major cross-town roads.

An important aspect for any business is reliable and fast connectivity to the web. Summit East provides an efficient route to meet your companys growing bandwidth demands. Each building at Summit East is currently equipped with multiple major fiber internet providers. This allows for a shorter start up time for any new business, any business relocating within the Park or any business that has opted to change providers.

Summit East has recently added multiple buildings and therefore, hundreds more employees, and the nearby area is experiencing growth as well. There are both a diner and a drive through coffee shop on site. Within two miles are at least five restaurants and numerous others within a ten minute drive. Additionally, food trucks compete for Summit East business and there is currently a different food truck on site each day of the week.

An amenity that is often overlooked but which is of upmost importance to employee morale is that of having a large and beautiful natural space to enjoy our beautiful North Florida weather. Summit East has an 8.5 acre lake where you can try your luck at catch and release bass and bream fishing. Additionally, you may want to take a relaxing stroll on organic walkways under the many large oaks or follow a regular route along the sidewalks in order to get your daily walk.

In 2009 Summit East Management was honored with The Chambers Green Business of the Year award, and in 2013 Summit East Technology Park was awarded the prestigious statewide ENVY Award for Commercial Developments by the Florida Realtors, as the top commercial developer who made the most significant contribution toward building in harmony with Floridas beautiful and sensitive environment.

To sum it up, Summit East has it all; location, innovation, technology AND convenience, PLUS a team working with you to furnish not only a Class A office building but amenities that will be enjoyed by your company, employees and guests.

Eatonton and Putnam County, GA boast a very diverse economic mix ranging from manufacturing to agriculture to technology to film. Advantages include a central location, low operating costs, tax incentives and a relaxed lifestyle.

Situated in the center of Georgia between Atlanta, Augusta, Athens and Macon, Putnam County is located 10 minutes south of Interstate 20, 78 miles southeast of Atlantas Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (the busiest airport in the world) and 185 miles northwest of the Port of Savannah (the 4th largest sea port in the United States).

Putnam County offers new and expanding businesses a healthy, economic landscape supported by a business-friendly environment. Existing Industry in Putnam County is currently investing significantly in their facilities:

Putnam County draws from a labor pool of over 67,775 employees from a six-county area. Putnam County has a lower cost of doing business due to a cost of living index of 93.1 which is 6.9 percent lower than the national average. County average wages were $671/week in 2018, well below the state average.

Local incentives include available city and county property tax abatement, 100 percent Freeport Exemption and job credits of $3,500/job for 5 years.

The Putnam County Charter School System (PCCSS) is host to an award-winning College and Career Academy. In 2019 Putnam County High School had a 92 percent graduation rate, which is higher than the state and national average.

Gatewood Schools is an award-winning Christian, independent, non-profit, college-preparatory school that provides an educational experience that prepares students for postsecondary education and lasting success.

Central Georgia Technical College (CGTC) provides workforce development at the Eatonton campus, as well as at the Putnam County High School campus. CGTC provides a quality academic and technical education, along with customized business and industry training, continuing education and adult education services.

Georgia College & State University and Georgia Military College are only a short 21-mile drive to Milledgeville. Other colleges and universities within a 50-mile radius of Eatonton include the University of Georgia, Mercer University, Wesleyan College and Middle Georgia State University.

As the areas best 100-percent digital, non-profit, healthcare provider, Putnam General Hospital has served the Eatonton and surrounding lake areas with over 40 years of excellent healthcare. Putnam General Hospital, a Navicent Health Partner, provides general medical and surgical care for inpatient, outpatient and emergency room patients. Sixteen additional hospitals are located within a 50-mile radius of Eatonton.

Putnam County is a lively, active community, which hosts many annual events and festivals. History, culture, arts, shopping and recreational opportunities abound. Lake Oconee and Lake Sinclair offer almost 800 miles of shoreline and many opportunities for swimming, boating, water skiing and fishing. Enjoy world-class golf at Reynolds Plantation, The Ritz Carlton, Cuscowilla Resort or Uncle Remus Golf Course.

Contact [emailprotected] about locating your business in Eatonton-Putnam County, Georgia.

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Editors Picks: Business, Industry And Tech Parks - Business Facilities Magazine

Corporate governance has become a topic of broad public interest as the power of institutional investors has increased and the impact of corporations on society has grown. Yet ideas about how corporations should be governed vary widely. People disagree, for example, on such basic matters as the purpose of the corporation, the role of corporate boards of directors, the rights of shareholders, and the proper way to measure corporate performance. The issue of whose interests should be considered in corporate decision making is particularly contentious, with some authorities giving primacy to shareholders interest in maximizing their financial returns and others arguing that shareholders other interests in corporate strategy, executive compensation, and environmental policies, for example and the interests of other parties must be respected as well.

These debates have taken on a new intensity in the face of changing capital markets and mega-forces such as climate change, income inequality, digitalization, and rising populism sweeping the globe. The past few years have seen a proliferation of statements, proposals, and revised codes of corporate governance such as the New Paradigm, the Common Sense Principles, the King IV Report, and the 2018 UK Corporate Governance Code, to mention just a few. While some of these statements reaffirm conventional doctrines and practices, others call for efforts to better align the activities of corporations with societys interest in a building a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable economy.

This article does not attempt to catalogue all of these proposed changes, or to cover every aspect of corporate governance. Its purpose is to describe some of todays key debates and to identify the main areas in which changes are being called for. We hope this distillation will be helpful to corporate directors and other readers who may be grappling with the issues presented either now or in the near future. How these debates are resolved will have profound effects on how business operates across the globe. The article focuses on the governance of publicly traded companies rather than state-owned or private corporations, but many of the debates and proposed changes to public company governance are relevant for those types of corporations as well.

Corporations

The corporation is one of societys most important institutions and its dominant form of business organization. Some corporations wield economic power rivaling that of many nation states. Yet the nature and purpose of the corporationand, by extension, the purpose of corporate governancehas long been a matter of debate. For at least a century, there have been two dominant schools of thought, one holding that the corporation is a legal fiction designed to facilitate what is essentially a private agreement among shareholders, and the other holding that the corporation is a real entity enabled by law to serve the needs of society. The former view gives primacy to the rights and interests of shareholders, while the latter seeks to balance the interests of shareholders with those of other stakeholders and gives greater weight to the interests of society at large.

The debate between these two views arose at the dawn of the 20th century. Following the adoption of general incorporation statutes in many jurisdictions in the late nineteenth century, those wishing to create a corporation no longer had to petition the state for a charter. Instead, they could form a corporation simply by filing the requisite forms and paying the associated fees with the relevant government authorities. The ease with which corporations could be formed thus reinforced the sense that incorporation was largely a matter of private agreement among shareholders. However, the subsequent rise of the giant railroad and manufacturing corporations and oil trusts of that era led to widespread concern about these increasingly large concentrations of capital and their impacts on society. These developments fueled the emergence of new thinking on the nature of the corporation as a palpable presence with power and influencewhat scholars termed a real entityand provided evidence that the legal fiction theory did not fully capture the significance of these large organizations.

By the 1930s an institutional view of the corporation moved into the mainstream and the notion that corporations are influential actors in society with responsibilities not just to shareholders, but also to employees, customers, and the general public gained credence with some respected business leaders and academics. But the debate shifted again with the emergence of neo-classical economics and a stagnant economy in the 1970s. A view of the corporation as the property of shareholders once again took hold, and was soon developed into a full-blown theory of corporate governance based on the idea that managers are the agents of shareholders who own the corporation and expect it to be run for their benefit. According to this theory, known among academics as agency theory, the duty of managers is to maximize returns to shareholders and the role of the board is to monitor and reward management to ensure that it does just that.

Today, the debate continues but with a new sense of urgency. In Europe and the US, fewer companies are going public but the influence of large, listed companies has been amplified by legal developments expanding the rights of corporations and by increases in corporate spending on lobbying, political contributions, and even charitable activities aimed at securing political influence. At the same time, governments are increasingly unable to address the significant and growing problems plaguing societies around the globe, and corporations are seen as having untapped potential to help mitigate these problems. While some academics and many in the financial community continue to hold that the purpose of the corporation is to maximize the wealth of its shareholders, and should be governed to that end, others call for a more robust definition of corporate purpose.

In the UK, for example, The Purposeful Company Taskforce has urged companies to be more explicit about their purpose, defined as how they contribute to human betterment and create long-term value for all their stakeholders, and called for laws requiring companies to write their purpose into their articles of association. The U.K. Corporate Governance Code was revised in 2018 to charge boards with establishing the companys purpose, values, and strategy. In France, the new Pacte Law requires that companies be managed to further the corporate interest rather than the interest of any particular stakeholder and provides for companies to write their purpose (raison dtre) into their by-laws. In the US, leading institutional investors have been calling on corporate boards for several years to clarify their companies purpose and contribution to society.

Perhaps the most noteworthy development in the US is the Business Roundtables new statement on corporate purpose issued in August 2019. The 181 CEOs who signed the statement declared their commitment not just to shareholders but to all stakeholders, thus reversing the BRTs previous espousal of shareholder primacy and the view, expressed in their 1997 statement, that the corporations purpose is to generate returns to its owners.

This debate may appear to be purely theoretical and best left to academics, but its practical implications are far-reaching. With investors, regulators, and the public calling for greater clarity of corporate purpose, boards and managers will want to give this issue serious consideration and take steps to confirm that they have a shared understanding of their purpose in governing and leading.

Questions for Boards and Managers:

Shareholders

Shareholders provide companies with equity capital and are vested with ownership rights to the shares held. While shareholders are often referred to as owners of companies, this description overstates the rights of shareholders. Legally, in most jurisdictions, shareholders are entitled to own and sell their shares, and vote on certain corporate matters as specified by law and the corporate charter. The definition and exercise of ownership rights vary greatly across companies and especially across countries. The most common shareholding structure follows the one-share-one-vote principle, with each share of equity ownership providing a proportionate voting stake to the owner. However, many companies have multiple classes of shares that give some shareholders (typically founders and their families) greater voting rights. The technology sector in the U.S. in particular has seen a growing number of companies with multiple voting classes creating concern about the appropriateness of such voting control and the rights of minority or non-controlling shareholders in such companies.

The nature of shareholding and ownership concentration has also seen significant change especially in U.S. and European capital markets. One secular trend is the growth of index funds, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), and other such passive investment funds. Between 2007 and 2017 in the U.S., over $1.3 trillion flowed into passive investors with an almost similar outflow from traditional actively managed equity mutual funds. Over the same period, the holdings of the top 10 shareholders in the largest 500 U.S. companies that comprise the S&P 500 index rose from 21% to about 30%, a change driven largely by greater ownership of the passive investors. This shift in ownership raises questions about the role of passive index investors in the stewardship of companies where they hold very significant stakes. The large passive owners and others, especially pension funds, are exhibiting greater engagement with companies. A measure of such engagement is the over 700 shareholder proposals that are filed every year during annual shareholder meetings to influence companies to pursue a range of actions especially concerning executive compensation, shareholder rights, and environmental and social concerns. But the shape of such engagement is evolving as both investors and companies develop tools of engagement.

The rise in passive ownership has been accompanied by an increase in activism by hedge fund investors that take large stakes in companies and push them to adopt strategies and capital structure favored by the hedge fund. Between 2005 and 2017, there were between 200-300 such public campaigns every year against US-listed companies, not counting the many such efforts being conducted privately. During this period, an increasing number of campaigns were waged in other parts of the world as well, particularly in Europe but also in Asia. Such activists are often criticized for forcing companies to take short-term actions such as increasing share buybacks or spinning off divisions, though the empirical evidence on the consequences of activism is mixed with evidence of both costs and benefits. Overall, the rise of ownership concentration, greater shareholder engagement, and hedge-fund activism point to an era of greater shareholder influence over companies. These developments raise questions about the accountability of shareholders, particularly those who seek to influence corporate actions, and about the prevalent model of shareholder value maximization as the goal of good corporate governance.

These developments also raise questions about the responsibilities of institutional investors to the retail, or individual, investors, who are the ultimate owners or beneficiaries of the institutions holdings. Although institutional investors style themselves both as stewards of the corporations in which they invest and as fiduciaries for their own customers and clients, some commentators question whether they can play both or, indeed either, role effectively given the inherently conflicting interests involved and the nature of the passive investors low-cost business model. The reliance of many institutional investors on proxy advisory firms to guide their voting on important corporate matters has also raised questions about their capacity to act as stewards and about the influence of proxy advisors who, themselves, have no stake in the votes they recommend. The proxy voting system and the process by which shareholders are permitted to put forth proposals for a shareholder vote have also become matters of contention, with some arguing that the criteria for permissible proposals should be loosened, and others arguing that they should be tightened. In the U.S. and other jurisdictions, regulators, lawmakers, and others have begun to examine these matters more closely.

In this context, boards and managers would be well-advised to have a thorough understanding of their companies shareholder base and a deliberate approach to shareholder engagement. They should be prepared to be challenged by activist investors, and their overall governance arrangements should strike an appropriate balance of power among shareholders, the board, and management.

Questions for Boards and Managers:

Boards of directors

The board of directors is the corporations governing body. By law, the board is vested with authority to manage the corporations business and affairs, and the boards members have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of the corporation and its shareholders. Boards are thus collegial bodies in the traditional sense that their members share authority and responsibility, and have both individual and collective accountability.

Boards typically delegate much of their authority to an executive team that carries out the day-to-day operations of the corporations business. However, some board duties cannot be delegated, and boards vary widely in the extent of their involvement in the business. The boards core functions typically include selecting, monitoring, advising, and compensating the chief executive; monitoring the companys financial structure and declaring dividends; deciding on major transactions and changes in control; monitoring the companys financial reporting and internal controls; and overseeing the companys strategy, performance, risk management, and compliance with relevant legal and ethical standards. It is sometimes supposed that a sharp line can be drawn between governing and managing, but that line is neither sharp nor fixed. Even a board that normally focuses on high-level governance matters may find itself drawn into management issues when the company is in crisis or distress.

The structure and leadership of boards, like the processes for selecting their members, vary widely by law and custom across jurisdictions. One visible and frequently noted difference is between unitary or single-tier boards, like those in the U.S., and two-tier boards such as those in Germany where companies typically have both a management board and a supervisory board. In the U.S., companies are frequently led by a single individual who serves as both chairman and CEO, whereas in other jurisdictions, the roles of chairman and CEO are more often separated and held by different individuals. In some jurisdictions, such as France or Hong Kong, it is customary for directors to be elected for multi-year terms on a staggered basis; in others, all directors are voted on annually. The laws and norms of some jurisdictions require boards to include a certain number of directors elected by employees or other constituency groups, or to have a defined mix of shareholder and employee representatives. Processes for nominating directors also vary, as do the roles and composition of board committees, although many jurisdictions require boards to have audit, remuneration, and nominating committees with at least a majority of directors who are independent.

Despite such differences, the past few decades have seen several trends in board composition that cut across jurisdictions. One is a growing presence of female directors who, once rare, are now mandated in some countries to be at least 40% of the boards total. The overall percentage of female directors remains low relative to their numbers in the workforce, but the pace at which female directors are being added appears to be accelerating and surveys suggest that adding women to boards has been beneficial for those boards. Another cross-region trend is an increase in the percentage of directors who are independent, in the sense that they have neither commercial nor family ties with the company or its management and are thus presumed to have a higher or more reliable capacity for objective judgment. Over the past decade, boards have become more independent, and independent directors have become more likely to meet in executive session separate from the management members of the board. Across the globe, high-performing boards are seeking to improve their effectiveness through more systematic self-assessment and succession planning, and by adding members with a more diverse set of skills, perspectives, and backgrounds.

Even though the functioning of boards is generally thought to have improved in recent decades, questions remain about the ability of boards, especially those of large public companies, to do the job expected of them. Dueling interpretations of the boards fiduciary duty only complicate the challenge. In 2018, for example, the UK Government announced new regulations clarifying the duties of pension fund trustees to consider the environmental, social, and governance risks and opportunities in the investment process. By comparison, the U.S. Department of Labor recently issued a bulletin urging pension fund fiduciaries to be cautious in considering environmental, social, and governance factors when making investment decisions. Although these pronouncements were both directed to pension fund fiduciaries rather than company directors, the underlying issue is one that company directors face as well and that is likely to be a source of ongoing tension in the years to come.

Questions for Boards and Managers:

Management

Corporations are complex organizations whose functioning depends on leadership and day-to-day management. Ensuring that such leadership and management are in place is perhaps the most important job of a companys board of directors. This job involves specific tasks such as appointing the companys chief executive, evaluating the executives performance, and deciding on executive pay, as well as planning for executive succession and, sometimes, removing an executive from office.

In recent years, the boards job has become more difficult in part because the CEOs job has become more difficult. As companies have become larger and more complex, and the pace of change has accelerated, the traditional activities of corporate leadership have become more challenging. In addition to market and competitive pressures, todays corporate leaders face an array of adverse forces ranging from heightened investor activism and volatile capital markets, to increased social and cultural diversity, mounting social and environmental challenges, political and regulatory uncertainty, and disruptive technologies changing industries across the globe. Despite these challenges, average tenure for departing CEOs at large US companies was 10.8 years in 2017, up from 7.2 in 2009, according to The Conference Board. However, boards are increasingly turning to outsiders rather than inside candidates for CEO appointments, especially in industries undergoing disruptive change, and the percentage of CEO successions attributable to ethical lapses, though small, has increased significantly in the past few years.

The heightened demands on corporate leaders have reinforced the importance of succession planning and raised questions about the qualities needed by todays executives. Many commentators say that traditional models are outmoded and that companies today need leaders who are equipped with a broader set of skills and capabilities and who are more diverse. Indeed, the vast majority of large-company CEOs are malejust 4.8% of the Fortune 500 had a female CEO in 2018. While some indicators suggest that boards are becoming more vigilant about succession, a 2018 survey of U.S. directors by PwC found that only a third thought their company was doing an excellent job of succession planning for the C-suite.

One of the boards most fraught tasks is developing an appropriate compensation package for the CEO and top management. Typically, this task is delegated to the boards compensation (or remuneration) committee. Deciding how and how much to pay is particularly challenging. The past few decades have seen a dramatic rise in CEO pay relative to corporate performance and to the pay of the average employee. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio at the 350 largest U.S. companies increased from 20-to-1 in 1965 to 312-to-1 in 2017. The rise has been attributed to an increase in the proportion of stock-related pay awarded to CEOs and to the widespread adoption of benchmarking which ratchets pay upward as each board seeks to ensure that its CEOs pay is above the average for the selected peer group. Some commentators defend the rise in executive pay as justified by the increased complexity and difficulty of the CEO job or by the returns generated for shareholders, but others see it as unmerited, excessive, and unfair. A number of jurisdictions have enacted Say-on-Pay laws that give shareholders a periodic vote on executive pay. These laws vary in their particulars but the evidence to date suggests that they have had little impact on executive pay levels, other than to slow the rate of growth in a few jurisdictions. A more recent effort to curb CEO pay growth in the U.S. requires companies to disclose the ratio of CEO-to-median employee pay on an annual basis. In 2018, the proxy statements of most U.S. public companies included this ratio for the first time.

Another challenge for boards is selecting performance measures and setting targets for variable awards under annual bonus and long-term incentive programs. Despite critiques of the pay for performance paradigm that underpins these programs, including studies linking aggressive targets to excessive risk-taking and destructive short-term behavior, the paradigm continues to shape the way boards approach executive pay. Proxy advisory firm ISS reports that Total Shareholder Return (TSR) remains the leading metric used by S&P 500 boards for their long-term incentive programs. Other widely used metrics are earnings, returns, sales, and cash flow measures.

At the same time more boards are also setting targets using non-financial metrics related to innovation, quality, culture, or other dimensions of corporate strategy, including social and environmental performance. The prevalence of these measures is difficult to gauge but they appear to be gaining ground. A 2017 study of 600 large U.S. companies by the sustainability non-profit Ceres found that about 8% linked executive pay to sustainability metrics beyond compliance with law, compared to just 3% in 2014. Recent amendments to Frances Afep-Medef Corporate Governance Code include a recommendation that criteria related to corporate social and environmental responsibility be integrated into executive compensation plans.

Critics of the prevailing system for selecting, evaluating, and rewarding corporate leaders point to the closed nature of the selection process, the narrowness of standard performance measures, the undue influence of executives whose own forecasts are used to set targets, the excessive complexity of many plans, and the outsized and sometime perverse rewards granted even to those who clearly fail at the job. Whether valid or not, these criticisms raise a set of questions that every board should consider in carrying out its responsibility to ensure that effective leadership and management are in place.

Questions for Boards and Managers:

Resource allocation and strategy

Corporations perform many functions in society one of which is mobilizing financial capital and allocating it to investment opportunities. Typically, senior managers work with other members of the organization to carry out this activity, while the board plays an oversight role. In some situations, however, decisions about how to use the companys resources rest with the board, either by law or under the companys by-lawsfor instance, whether to approve a major investment, declare a dividend, or authorize a share buyback. In theory, managers and boards allocate resources in a manner that advances the companys strategy, which itself is the result of a forward-looking process of identifying worthwhile opportunities and analyzing them in light of the companys distinctive capabilities and in view of the anticipated changes in the market, competitive landscape, and wider economic, political, regulatory, and social environment. The companys internal resource allocation process takes place within a capital markets context in which investors of various types are also deciding how to allocate their resources and whether to buy (or sell) the companys stock.

When corporate resource allocation is done well, companies are able to evolve and renew themselves over time, while at the same time producing a continuous flow of products and services that meet the needs of their customers and a continuous flow of profits that can be re-invested in the business or paid out to shareholders. In practice, however, resource allocation is extremely difficult, especially when it involves comparing businesses with different strategic characteristics, investments with long time horizons, or innovative projects with uncertain pay-offsto name a few of the common challenges. The difficulty is compounded by pressures from shareholders with differing objectives, time horizons, and tolerance for risk. As a consequence many managers give short shrift to strategic and human complexities when making resource allocation decisions and instead rely on standard financial tools such as discounted cash flow analysis. Costs and benefits to third partiesso-called externalitieshave not traditionally been part of this analysis. Thus, factors such as an increase in carbon emissions or potential risks to customers or employees are not typically considered in making these decisions.

In recent decades, this process and the resulting allocation of resources have come in for heightened scrutiny. As seen in numerous reportsby organizations such as The Aspen Institute, FCLTGlobal, The Conference Board, and othersa major concern has been short-termismthe idea that managers and boards are overly focused on generating near-term returns at the expense of investing in the future. It is said that boards and managers, under pressure from the capital markets, are investing too little in people, research, and innovation; paying too little attention to the longer-term human, environmental, and social costs of their resource allocation decisions; devoting too little time to understanding how evolving macro-trends are likely to affect future strategy; and too willing to cut expenses aimed at meeting future needs, such as training, research and development, and brand building, in order to boost current earnings and meet investors short-term expectations. Indeed, academic research suggests that many managers are willing to forego profitable investment opportunities if pursuing those opportunities would mean missing analysts quarterly earnings expectations, even by a small margin. The growth in share buybacks in recent years has also been cited as further evidence of a bias toward short-term shareholders and declining corporate re-investment though academic opinion on this point is divided.

Whatever the verdict on the significance of short-termism in the aggregatewhich also remains a matter of debate among academicssurveys indicate that for many boards and managers the tensions between near-term expectations and longer-term needs are acute. Such tensions are to some extent inherent in the job of governing, but the debate about short-termism suggests that the tensions can perhaps be better managed and somewhat mitigated through better oversight over strategy, more clarity about time frames, and improved communication with investors. The Coalition for Inclusive Capitalisms Embankment Project, which seeks to develop metrics that will allow companies to better communicate their ability to create value over the long term, is one of several efforts focused on this issue. But the debate also suggests the need for more radical innovation in how companies develop strategy and allocate resources. A first step is for boards to better understand these processes, the time frames that guide them, and the extent to which they include human, environmental, and social considerations. These matters raise questions of business judgment that boards and executives will increasingly be expected to address.

Questions for Boards and Managers:

Corporate performance

As fiduciaries, boards of directors are expected to keep a close watch on corporate performance. But what is corporate performance and how should it be assessed? Providers of capital, the prototypical users, seek performance information so that they can compare across opportunities to identify the best use of their capital and ensure effective ongoing stewardship of their investments. Other users may have different purposes for example, a lender wanting to ensure timely payment of interest and principal, or a corporate center allocating resources to various divisions. The board itself needs this information to assess the success of corporate strategy or to decide on executive compensation. Still others, such as a potential customer or employee, or a local community deciding whether to grant a zoning variance will likely have yet other needs. Such a variety of sources of demand for corporate performance information means that no one definition of performance or a simple measurement system will suffice.

When it comes to corporate financial performance, investors typically look to stock price measures (such as Total Shareholder Return or TSR) and accounting numbers (such as Return on Equity or Return on Assets). TSR, which is a direct measure of how much shareholders have benefitted, has become a significant determinant of executive compensation especially in the US. TSR provides an easy benchmark of relative performance across companies and over time. However, if stock price is driven by biases of investors especially of those who are short-term shareholders, then TSR is less useful as a metric of long-term value creation, the elusive benchmark against which any performance metric ought to be assessed. Measures based on accounting metrics are less subject to investor horizon concerns but are considered backward looking and subject to managerial manipulation. Moreover, accounting rules (codified as generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP) are slow to keep pace with rapid changes in business, technology, and organizational complexity. As a result, more managers are turning to alternative (non-GAAP) measures, such as adjusted income or cash operating return on assets, in an attempt to better describe the unique aspects of the business that are not captured by the conventional metrics.

Differing time horizons for assessing performance add further complexity to the challenge. Many stakeholders demand periodic assessment and reporting of performance, but operating and investment cycles do not conveniently correlate with calendar quarters or years. What then is the appropriate horizon? In most jurisdictions, listed companies are legally required to report their financial performance annually, and in many cases quarterly or at least half-yearly. But other users, such as boards of directors, have the option of measuring (and compensating) performance over longer horizons. Recognizing that no single metric (whether based on stock price or summary accounting metrics) or time horizon, is sufficient to capture the richness of business outcomes, some companies have adopted a dashboard approach based on ideas such as the balanced score card, for example, to measure interim outcomes rather than the ultimate objectives. This approach measures shorter-term indicators that will eventually lead to better overall outcomes. For instance, a company that relies on a strategy of long-term technological superiority, can measure and reward more immediate outcomes such as patent filings or the hiring and training of knowledge workers. This approach requires managers to develop a causal theory of drivers of performance, and to measure and motivate achievement of the intermediate drivers of performance that should eventually lead to long-term success.

In addition to measuring financial performance, companies are also being asked to measure their social and environmental performance on various dimensions ranging from diversity and inclusion, to customer privacy and supply chain conditions, to human rights and carbon emissions. This demand is driven in part by investors and others who believe that a companys social and environmental performance is relatedcausally or otherwiseto its long-term financial performance, and in part by those who believe that social and environmental performance is important in its own right or required as a matter of corporate citizenship for the healthy functioning of society and the broader economy. Although some academic studies purport to show the financial benefits of strong social or environmental performance, the overall evidence of a linkage is inconclusive and the matter is unlikely to be resolved by academic studies given the many ways of measuring these different types of performance and the many factors that influence how companies perform on each of them. More promising are efforts to explore the relationship between specific social and environmental factors, often referred to as sustainability factors, and financial performance. The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), for instance, is seeking to determine which environmental and social factors are financially material on an industry-by-industry basis.

Corporate performance measurement remains an exciting area of innovation and debate, both in terms of the appropriate measures and the appropriate horizon of measurement. Companies are experimenting with broader disclosure of strategy and drivers of long-term success while recognizing that investors and other stakeholders often prefer summary metrics and shorter-term outcomes as a way of identifying trouble early. How best to define and measure corporate performanceand over what time frameare first-order questions that should be on every boards agenda.

Questions for Boards and Managers:

Corporate oversight

The boards responsibility to oversee corporate risk is widely recognized, but interpretations of what this responsibility requires vary widely. Traditionally, it was seen as quite limited. For example, under the law of Delaware, legal home to more than 60% of the Fortune 500, boards were initially responsible just for addressing violations of law that came to their attention, and the focus was mainly on accounting, financial reporting, and antitrust violations. In the 1990s, the duty was expanded to require boards to ensure that management set up information and control systems to monitor for such violations, but still with an emphasis on accounting and financial misconduct. Although boards legal duties of oversight have changed little since then, public expectations have continued to evolve as businesses have grown larger and more complex, and the consequences of corporate failure more far-reaching.

Indeed, boards today are expected to oversee an extensive and ever-expanding menu of risks. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the boards of banks and financial institutions were taken to task for paying insufficient attention to excessive financial risk. The recent spate of behavioral complaints against senior corporate leaders has raised questions about board oversight of executive conduct and caught numerous boards off guard. On a different front, various companies have suffered serious breaches of cybersecurity that have exposed a lack of preparedness and resulted in significant reputational damage; others have been tripped up by data privacy concerns and are facing political and user backlash. Environmental disasters, labor abuses in the supply chain, mistreatment of customersthese are other examples of the new breed of risk management issues that are consuming the attention of boards.

The broadening menu of risks has created a challenge for traditional practices of internal controls and is testing the ability of boards to provide adequate oversight. Since the financial crisis, the internal audit and risk management functions have received significantly greater attention especially in banks and financial institutions. All large banks in the U.S. now have a risk committee of the board and a chief risk officer function, reflecting the realization that a robust risk function is strategically important for sustainable growth and profitability. Similarly, in other industries, boards have adopted new risk oversight protocols or enlarged the mandate of the audit committee beyond traditional audit and internal control matters to include the oversight of other risks. Some, like the banks, have created a dedicated risk committee while others have assigned particular categories of risk oversight to various other committees, such as conduct risk to an ethics and compliance committee, or supply chain risk to a sustainability committee. Boards have also sought to educate themselves about cyber risk and made cyber a defined area of board oversight.

Recurring cases of large-scale employee participation in reckless or illegal behaviorsuch as the mortgage-lending scandals leading up to the 2008 financial crisis or the diesel emissions scandals at several large auto makershave created a growing recognition that organizational culture is a key factor in driving risk. This insight has led to efforts by various supervisory bodies and professional organizations to educate boards about organizational culture. Reports by groups such as The Group of Thirty (G30), the UK Financial Reporting Council, and the US National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) reveal what decades of academic studies have shown: that an organizations culture and the risks associated with it cannot be understood in isolation or managed solely through traditional control and compliance mechanisms since it is a multi-faceted phenomenon resulting from numerous factors. Among the most important are the example set by the companys leaders; the companys business model and strategy; and its various systems for making decisions, hiring and motivating employees, and rewarding performance. Overseeing risk thus requires boards to go well beyond their traditional monitoring activities and to develop new ways of gauging the pulse of the organization. This task is being aided through advances in data science and computing abilities that are allowing digital compliance tools and predictive analytic capabilities to be used to help with risk management, especially in banks and financial institutions.

Most directors today recognize the importance of robust oversight, but it is unclear whether boards, as they are currently constituted and operate, are up to the task. The increasing size and complexity of companies, the expanding array of risk areas, and the difficulty boards have in getting the information needed to exercise effective oversight all bode poorly for a positive answer to this question. To be sure, other institutions, some internal and some external to the organization, also provide oversight. Large investors, proxy advisors, regulators, the media, NGOs, the general publicall play a role. However, it is doubtful that these institutions can substitute for boards and, indeed, it could be argued that these institutions can be effective only if boards themselves are effective. In the coming years, boards can expect increasing pressure to strengthen their risk oversight capabilities while at the same time driving the kind of entrepreneurial innovation needed for sustainable growth and profitability.

Questions for Boards and Managers:

Corporate reporting

Boards of directors play an important role in ensuring that investors and the public receive accurate and timely information about corporate activities and performance. In some areas, such as accounting and financial reporting, disclosures are highly regulated and standardized, and the boards role, through its audit committee, is largely to ensure that the companys reporting adheres to the relevant standards, and to make accounting policy choices as permitted under those standards. In other areas, such as disclosures about the CEOs health, potential future investments, or the companys sustainability efforts, boards must rely on their own business judgment and assessment of the informations materiality in deciding whether and when disclosures are appropriate. In recent years, boards and audit committees have faced an increasingly complex set of reporting and disclosure challenges.

One set of challenges has arisen from the globalization of capital flows. Prior to 2002, regulators around the world required domestic companies to report their financial performance using the countrys own locally codified accounting and financial reporting standards, such as the U.S.s generally accepted accounting principles (US GAAP). In 2002, however, the European Union (EU) adopted the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as the common standard for all companies traded in the EU. By 2018, 166 countries had adopted IFRS, albeit to different degrees, and the IASB had become the recognized accounting standard setting institution for most of the world. While the US has continued to require domestic listed companies to follow US GAAP in preparing financial reports, non-U.S. companies listed in the US are permitted to report using either IFRS or US GAAP. In an ongoing effort, the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been working with the IASB to harmonize US GAAP with IFRS and to develop a common set of global accounting standards that enable investors to compare the financial reports of companies across the world. In the interim, boards and auditors face vexing issues that arise, for example, when a company that reports under IFRS acquires a company that reports under GAAP.

Another set of challenges has arisen from the spread of mark-to-market or fair value accounting for a growing number of asset classes. In contrast to historical cost accounting, the dominant methodology for measuring value, fair value accounting aims to measure the value of corporate resources and value created using current market prices. Fair value accounting originated as a way of making financial statement numbers more timely and relevant, especially the values reported for tradable securities and the many new financial products developed in recent years to manage risk, such as hedges, forward contracts, futures, swaps, and options. However, fair value accounting also gives managers greater discretion to determine values, particularly when market prices are not readily available, and thus makes greater demands on auditors and audit committees to ensure the integrity of reported figures.

Similar issues are posed by the emergence of new business models arising from rapid innovations in technology. The challenges are perhaps most apparent in the medical sciences (e.g., the growth of biotechnology) and digital technology (starting with the internet and accelerating with the growth of mobile computing, the cloud, AI, and data science revolution). New business models enabled by these technologiesonline platforms and bundled products hosted in the cloud, among othersare outpacing the development of performance measures that capture their true economic value. Companies have responded by producing measurements and reporting figures that arguably better reflect their businesses but that are inconsistent with conventional reporting metrics. While non-conventional measures may have merit, they also obviate the benefits of uniform measurement rules, make it more difficult for users to draw meaningful conclusions, and call for greater vigilance on the part of boards and audit committees.

In parallel with these new challenges, companies have faced heightened demands to provide various types of non-financial information, especially about their social and environmental impacts. These demands range from calls for specific types of disclosuresabout climate-related risks, conflict minerals in the supply chain, political spending, or various pay ratios, for exampleto calls for comprehensive periodic reports on companies social and environmental performance. Over the past few decades corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, also called sustainability reporting, has evolved from an ad hoc activity undertaken by a few select companies to a routine practice at many of the worlds large businesses. Although there is no legally mandated framework for such reporting, many companies have adopted the standards put forth by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) which cover a wide range of topics from human rights and workplace equity to environmental compliance, anti-corruption efforts, and customer privacy. The proliferation of sustainability topics has prompted various efforts to narrow and systematize the field. Perhaps the most ambitious has been the push for integrated reporting, launched in 2009 by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC). The IIRC has put forth a reporting framework that integrates financial and non-financial information through a value creation model based on six capitals: financial, human, social, intellectual, natural, and manufactured.

The long history of generally accepted accounting principles suggests that it is likely to be some time before sustainability or integrated reporting becomes standardized and widely accepted as a part of doing business. In the meantime, boards and companies will face difficult decisions about reporting and disclosure on both financial and non-financial matters. Although the merits of transparency are evident, and the availability of accurate and timely information is crucial for the effective functioning of markets and society, gathering and reporting on corporate-wide information can be costly. As demands for more extensive reporting and disclosure continue to escalate, boards and companies will be challenged to find more efficient and more meaningful ways to respond.

Questions for Boards and Managers:

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A Guide to the Big Ideas and Debates in Corporate Governance - Harvard Business Review