Category Archives: Resource Based Economy

$8.5 billion forest-based industry poised for investment, innovation and workforce advancements

BANGOR A statewide forest products coalition has awarded a two-year contract for marketing, public relations and coalition building to Sutherland Weston Marketing Communications of Bangor.

Maines Forest Opportunity Roadmap, or FOR/Maine, released an action plan in September of 2018 with a goal of creating actionable steps to grow Maines forest-based economy. The plan included a combination of transportation, community outreach, workforce development, and strategic investment attraction. A federal grant from the U.S. Department of Commerces Economic Development Administration was awarded to the Maine Forest Products Council to help fund the communications and public relations effort.

FOR/Maine is very pleased to be working with a Bangor firm with a full deck of capabilities and long-standing relationships with multiple natural resource and forestry firms, stated Steve Schley, chair of FOR/Maines Executive Committee. Sutherland Weston understands the very broad, diverse goals of FOR/Maine and its partners and has the capacity to integrate all the elements into packages that will inform the public and excite potential investors.

Sutherland Weston has a 15-year history of working with businesses, organizations and causes throughout Maine. The firm will utilize that experience to develop strategies to increase awareness, participation, and collaboration among the key audiences outlined in the FOR/Maines initial report.

Were honored to be selected by this respected coalition, said Cary Weston, partner at Sutherland Weston. We look forward to sharing the many positive stories of innovation happening right here in our state. Our collective goal is to help build a strong and diverse forest products industry for Maines future.

The forest products industry accounts for more than $8 billion in economic activity in Maine. Despite trends in paper mill closures in recent years, the industry is poised for growth as new innovations, global opportunities and consumer trends to bio-based products grow.

More details on the FOR / Maine initiative can be found at formaine.org.

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Maine Forest Products Coalition selects Bangor marketing firm to lead industry growth and awareness campaign - Bangor Daily News

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. Middlebury College faculty and staff authors have again put forth a slate of books representing a diversity of interests and scholarship. Although the annual reception celebrating the authors could not take place this year, Jim Ralph, dean for faculty development and research,notes the importance of recognizing the dedication of those who have published books.

This years list of books, published in 2019, points to the remarkable imaginative and analytical powers of Middlebury Colleges faculty and staff, said Ralph.This listwith titles on topics ranging from history to geochemistry to pressing contemporary issuescould serve as a terrific starting point for readers seeking to expand their liberal education.

Books continue to be an important vehicle for conveying knowledge and stimulating insight on a topic, says Ralph. I know I speak for our community when I say how proud we are all of their achievements. The publication of these books also shines a light on the intellectual and creative vitality of our community.

Following is a list of books published by Middlebury faculty and staff in 2019:

Tara Affolter,Through the Fog: Towards Inclusive Anti-Racist Teaching.Charlotte, NC: IAPInformation Age Publishing, Inc, 2019.

Drawing from over 20 years of teaching experience in the U.S., ranging from prekindergarten to postgraduate, Affolters work illustrates personal, practical, and theoretical ways for teachers to grapple with the complexities of race and racism within their own schools and communities and develop as inclusive anti-racist teachers.

Matthew Dickerson,The Voices of Rivers: On Places Wild and Almost Wild. Boston, MA: Homebound Publications, 2019.

This work of creative narrative nonfiction interweaves elements of nature writing, personal narrative, outdoor writing, and environmental writing. In 2017, Dickerson was selected to be artist in residence at Glacier National Park (Montana) for the month of June, and then in 2018, he was selected to be artist in residence at Acadia National Park (Maine) for the month of May. This collection contains essays written in those times and places as well as essays set in some national forests, national parks, and state parks of Alaska from 2015 to 2018.

Elizabeth Endicott,Mongolia 19782017: Memoirs of a Part-Time Mongolist.Manchester Center, VT: Shires Press, 2019.

This memoir is a personal account of the authors 14 trips to Mongolia spanning the years 1978 to 2017. The book offers observations on the Mongolian way of life as it has evolved from the socialist period to a new post-socialist reality. Over 150 of the authors photographs document the social and cultural transformations in the Mongolian countryside and in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city.

Natalie Eppelsheimer,Roads Less Traveled: German Jewish Exile Experiences in Kenya, 19331947. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019.

Drawing on archival sources in Kenya, Great Britain, Germany, and the U.S., as well as other literary, governmental, journalistic, and historical sources,Roads Less Traveledexamines the experiences of German Jews who managed to escape from Nazi Germany to the British colony of Kenya. This study explores the historical background of Jewish emigration to Kenya, analyzes first-person accounts of former refugees and descriptions of life in the colony, and pays special attention to the experiences of refugee children in Kenya.

Irina Feldman,P. Baker, F. Lagos, and R. Pareja(Eds).Latin American Marxisms in Context: Past and Present.Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.

The opposition to neoliberal development patterns in Latin America has gone beyond social-democratic reformism to a revival of Marxist theoretical perspectives and political practices in the beginning of the 21st century. This book provides an insight into the rich diversity of Latin American Marxism, historically and contemporarily. Given the global interest in the revival of radicalism in Latin America, it should appeal to non-Marxist as well as Marxist scholars with interests in topics from political economy to cultural theory.

Irina Feldmanand A. M. Lopez-Zapico(Eds).Resistiendo al imperio: Nuevas aproximaciones al antiamericanismo desde el siglo xx hasta la actualidad.Madrid, Spain: Slex Ediciones, 2019.

This volume revisits discourses and practices from Latin America, Spain, and the United States labeled as anti-Americanist, analyzing these political and cultural phenomena as practices of resistance in the face of imperial advances of the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Felicia A. Grey,States and Non-participatory Memberships in the WTO.London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

This book examines non-participatory memberships, or why states choose not to use the benefits of international institutions to which they belong. To investigate this question, the author explores why states choose not to litigate within the World Trade Organizations Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). The research contributes to the literature on global governance and institutions generally, and of the WTO specifically. Additionally, the project includes comparative case analysis of WTO agreements and international disputes: China and Jamaica; Guatemala and Mexico; the United States and Mexico. This volume will interest policy makers, trade professionals, academics, and anyone who is interested in development studies.

Christian Keathley, Jason Mittell,Catherine Grant,The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy.Online:http://videographicessay.org, 2019.

This digital open-access book, adapted from a print version previously published in 2016 and revised for 2019, collects a series of writings, conversations, and examples of videographic criticism that emerged out of the ongoing Scholarship in Sound and Image summer workshops that have been offered at Middlebury since 2015. In recognition of the pedagogical work discussed in this online resource, Keathley and Mittell were awarded the Society for Cinema and Media Studies inaugural Innovative Pedagogy Award in 2020.

Gary Margolis,Time Inside.Peterborough, NH: Bauhan Publishing, 2019.

A book of poems.

Michelle McCauley,J. J. Dickinson, N. Schreiber Compo, R. N. Carol, B. L. Schwartz (Eds).Evidence-Based Investigative Interviewing: Applying Cognitive Principles.Routledge Press, 2019.

Evidence-Based Investigative Interviewingreviews the application of cognitive research to investigative interviewing, revealing how principles of cognition, memory, and social dynamics may increase the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. It provides evidence-based applications for investigators beyond the forensic domain in areas such as eyewitness identification, detecting deception, and interviewing children.

Bill McKibben,Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?Henry Holt and Co., 2019.

Falteris an account of our current peril on a hotter planet, and the way that rampant inequality, spurred by libertarian market fantasies, has left us in a particularly weak place to meet the crisis. It argues that nonviolent social movements might offer a way out. A New York Times bestseller, it was named by the Washington Post as one of the 10 best books of the year.

Laurie L. Patton,Who Owns Religion? Scholars and Their Publics in the Late Twentieth Century.Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Who Owns Religion? focuses on a periodthe late 1980s through the 1990swhen scholars of religion were accused of scandalizing or denigrating the very communities they had imagined themselves honoring through their work. While controversies involving scholarly claims about religion are nothing new, this period saw an increase in vitriol that remains with us today. Authors of seemingly arcane studies on subjects like the origins of the idea of Mother Earth or the sexual dynamics of mysticism have been targets of hate mail and book-banning campaigns. As a result, scholars of religion have struggled to describe their own work to their various publics, and even to themselves.

Lana Dee Povitz,Stirrings: How Activist New Yorkers Ignited a Movement for Food Justice.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

In the late 20th century, government cutbacks, stagnating wages, AIDS, and gentrification pushed ever more people into poverty, and hunger reached levels unseen since the Depression. In response, New Yorkers set the stage for a nationwide food justice movement, organizing school lunch campaigns, establishing food co-ops, and lobbying city officials. Stirrings uses the political history of food advocacy organizations to explain why such groups focus almost exclusively on feeding hungry people rather than on addressing the root cause of that hungerpoverty.

Peter Crowley Ryan,Environmental and Low-Temperature Geochemistry, Second Edition. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-119-56858-2, 2019.

Environmental and Low-Temperature Geochemistrypresents conceptual and quantitative principles of geochemistry in order to foster understanding of natural processes at and near the earths surface, as well as anthropogenic impacts and remediation strategies. It provides the reader with principles that allow prediction of concentration, speciation, mobility, and reactivity of elements and compounds in soils, waters, sediments, and air, drawing attention to both thermodynamic and kinetic controls. The scope includes atmosphere, terrestrial waters, marine waters, soils, sediments, and rocks in the shallow crust; the temporal scale is present to Precambrian, and the spatial scale is nanometers to local, regional, and global.

Paula Schwartz,Today Sardines Are Not for Sale:A Street Protest in Occupied Paris.

Oxford University Press, 2020. (This book was intended for release in late 2019, so it is included on this years list.)

Based on a rich documentary record, together with the oral testimony of surviving participants and witnesses, Today Sardines Are Not for Saleuses a microhistorical approach to probe multiple dimensions of a single short-lived event and its repercussions over time. The author shows how gender shaped an illegal public protest action under a French collaboration government and German occupation.

Yoko Ogawa.The Memory Police.Stephen Snyder, trans. New York: Pantheon, 2019.

The Memory Policeis a fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss. The English-language edition was a 2019 National Book Award finalist, was named one of the New York Times's100 Notable Books of the Year, and is currently a finalist for the Booker International Prize.

Allison Stanger,Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump.New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.

Winner of the Association of American Publishers PROSE award in the category of Government, Policy, and Politics.

Max M. Ward,Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.

Thought Crimeexplores the development of the Japanese Peace Preservation Law (Chianijih) from its initial passage in 1925 to suppress communism and anticolonial nationalism to its expansion into an elaborate system to ideologically convert thousands of political criminals throughout the Japanese Empire in the 1930s.The book illuminates the complex processes through which the law articulated imperial ideology and how this ideology was transformed and disseminated through the laws application over its 20-year history.

Richard Wolfson,Essential University Physics, 4th edition. Pearson, 2019.

This is the fourth edition of the less is more calculus-based physics textbook thats designed to give students a concise, progressive text with a lively writing style and real-life applications; it costs less and weighs less than standard university physics texts.

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Faculty and Staff Authors Compile Impressive List of Works - Middlebury College News and Events

As I write this article, the threat of continued COVID-19 spread and subsequent disruption to our economy persists. As face-covered individuals continue to scramble to grocery stores to stock up on needed supplies, stores are challenged with keeping stocked shelves. While shelves are being emptied, growers and dairies are forced to dump certain commodities because restaurants, hotels, and schools are shuttered, creating ripples in the wholesale/retail supply chain.

The situation has improved compared to this spring, but many question whether or not there will be a food supply shortage in the near future. Based on observations at North Carolina Cooperative Extension, there has been an increase in home food production and preservation.

According the United States Department of Agriculture, There are no nationwide shortages of food, although in some cases the inventory of certain foods at your grocery store might be temporarily low before stores can restock. Food production and manufacturing are widely dispersed throughout the U.S. and there are currently no widespread disruptions reported in the supply chain (https://www.usda.gov/coronavirus/food-supply-chain).

This is great news for now. But it also highlights the importance of a stable food supply in the future.

Many farmers would argue the challenges have outweighed the successes in recent years. Lets not even mention the 2020 growing season! There is one challenge that I keep seeing, lurking around somewhat quietly in the background, waiting to one day rear its ugly head and threaten our stable food supply. land.

According to the 2017 United States Department of Agriculture Ag Census, 50-59% of the land in Robeson County for agricultural production is rented or leased by farmers. This means that nonfarming landowners have a significant control to the access of needed land to support our food system. With the average age of Robeson County farmers at 58 many with no successor and a downward trend in young farmers following this career path, a significant challenge awaits. At the same time, generational land is being transferred at a rapid pace to vacant landowners. I receive phone calls frequently at the office from children or grandchildren of deceased landowners inquiring about what to do with inherited farmland, lease agreements, and how to find someone to rent their property. Unfortunately, many turn to the option of selling for nonfarming development. Connecting landowners and interested farmers is critical.

To address this issue, NC State Extension has developed a valuable resource called NC FarmLink. This program is focused on connecting landowners, farmers, and service providers across North Carolina to help maintain our $89 billion agricultural industry. You can find a database of available farmland or farmers, much like a classified ad. Whether you need to find someone to take over your farm operation, find a new tenant, or find resources to help guide you through the process, NC FarmLink is here to help.

As a landowner, you will play a critical role in our future food supply. If you were concerned about the empty grocery store shelves recently, think about what it could be like in a decade or more as farmers continue to feed a growing population with less land and available resources.

Lets start making some connections. You can find out more about the program at https://ncfarmlink.ces.ncsu.edu/.

For assistance or more information, call 910-671-3276, send an email to [emailprotected], or visit http://robeson.ces.ncsu.edu/.

Mac Malloy is an Extension Field Crops agent with North Carolina Cooperative Extension, Robeson County Center. He can be reached by calling 910-671-3276 or by email at [emailprotected]

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Landowners have crucial role in a stable food supply - The Robesonian

Covid pandemic is unprecedented in human history. Any disaster including the Spanish Flue of 1918 which infected 500 million people and claimed about 20 million lives, did not affect so many countries. The Second World War saw the death of about 70 million people, but did not involve every country in the world. The covid-19, despite lower death rates, about half a million so far, disrupted social lives and national economies in countries and regions of the world.

Disruption of lives in multiple dimensions and of such huge magnitude has forced a serious rethinking on how we run our lives, states and societies. The debate between lives and livelihoods is raging in many countries. Before the pandemic, the focus of economies has been on enhancing GDP, as a measure of a countrys growth and power. In developing countries, ensuring ease of doing business was the priority of planners. That has now to be replaced by ease of living. Such shifts in approaches call for a change in roles of the institutions that govern as well as serve the people.

There are three kinds of institutions in any country-state or government, market or business, and civil society. The state produces citizens, the market creates consumers, and the civil society comprises communitarians. The roles of running people lives have been handled either by state or market, or jointly, whereas civil society has been a bystander. Under globalization, in the last three decades, the market has dominated peoples lives more than the state. Consequently, we have had more consumers than communitarians or conscientious citizens. The practices of individualism and consumerism overrode the values of compassion, solidarity and interdependence.In fact, the state has been in retreat since the heydays of Ronald Reagan in USA and Margaret Thatcher in UK. Reagans wisecrack in 1986, I am from the government and I am here to help would not generate any ridicule today. As covid-19 delivers shocks to systems of unparalleled magnitude, people would like their governments to turn up and rise to the challenge of this pandemic.

Reagans approach of diluting the state and according primacy to the market became an orthodoxy that coincided with globalization. The idea that gained currency worldwide was, the state should roll back and reposition itself, it should not try to control inequality and help the disadvantaged.

Admittedly, we have been on such a trajectory for over 30 years. Only a few social democratic states like those in Scandinavia tried to maintain some role of the state in minimizing inequality and in providing safety nets for the less fortunate and the marginalized. Or else, the individual consumer preceded the collective interest. But this pandemic tells us to go backs to the community-ness where people pulled together.The passion for high-growth led by the market has let us down massively. Nature, bio-diversity, ecological balances have been destroyed. In the pursuit of profit, the critical services like healthcare, sanitation and education have been neglected, which, in turn, has diminished the prospects of people earning sustained livelihoods.

The development economists like E.F. Schumacher, in his pioneering work, Buddhist Economics strongly advised looking after the people not the capital. This is where we need the state. Elected by the people and representing them the state should retrieve and re-assert it role.

India, like other developing countries, put emphasis on ease of doing business. Now it should shift to promoting ease of living. People would like first to live before they become richer through higher growth. The debate between lives and livelihoods is sterile. Both are complementary. People cannot survive without livelihoods, and likewise, unless they are healthy and skilled, they cannot eke out a living. Depending on doles which come in dribs and drabs or not come at all, is not an option.

At the same time, not all activities are best run by the market model. Many professional spheres like education, science, or medicine need not be run as commercial enterprises, suggested by economists like Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, or Milton Friedman. The former socialist French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin once famously said, We are not against the market-based economy, but market-based society.

Remember, the states with stronger healthcare systems managed the covid epidemic better-Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan etc. Also countries with special universal safety nets like those in Scandinavian region and Germany dealt better with poorer sections of their societies than the countries without such welfare schemes.Now, in the wake of this system- threatening pandemic, people demand from their states rights to lives and livelihoods, the natural and constitutional human rights. The states can provide those only with people-centered planning and strategies. Needs of human beings must precede the needs of business. Societal well-being must be the goal of economies, not the size of GDP.

There have been initiatives and experiences of putting people first. The Bhutanese king Jigme Singye Wangchuk coined the concept in 1979 of GNH in lieu of GDP. Gross National Happiness (GNH) should the measure of a countrys development, he suggested. Recall Helena Norberg Hodges experience in Ladakh based on dependence on local resources than global technology. Her books, Local is our Future: Steps to an Economic Happiness (2019), and Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh, published in 1991, which speak for localization, not globalization, are models to look at. She forcefully argued that globalization has no future, climate chaos is intensifying, stress and anxiety disorders are of epidemic proportions. Why are we in thrall to the global market? Why do we cling to the wreckage? These are the questions we must address after the horrifying trail of panic and pain left the world over by covid-19.

A call for greater role of the state may give rise to statism of another kind, more a big brother state than a great society. The governments may want greater control of civil liberties and political rights and entrench themselves in power, like Victor Orban did in Hungary. Chinas response to criticism of mishandling covid has been suppression of dissent, and elimination of dissenters. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi too has ignored the Opposition in dealing with the pandemic. Therefore, in redefining the role of the state, we should talk about state capacity, not state power.

Furthermore, the Government as the representative body of the people having their mandate should play as team leader, not the leader. The society is greater than the government which comprises the majority of a certain party or an alliance. It is again a procedural majority, not an absolute one. At any time, we advocate a partnership between the government, the market and the civil society and the partnership is needed more in such emergencies as the present pandemic. The state has limited outreach and its resource is stretched in disaster situations, hence it must rope in the business for augmenting resources and the CSOs for reaching out to the unreached.

Finally, one would advocate a state based on pluralism-technological, economic, social and political. Switching back to local leading to isolationism or dirigisme is not the antidote. The state should play the role of a balancer or reconciler of multiple ways of planning and living. Such pluralism as well as synthesis have been our heritage, and let us preserve them.

Prof. D.K.Giri is the Secretary General of the Association for Democratic Socialism (ADS), New Delhi. ADS is a non-party political think tank doing research and advocacy on progressive politics.

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Covid Redefines the State | DK Giri - Mainstream

The UKs capability to manufacture vaccines has received a substantial boost today (Thursday 23 July), as the government announces an additional 100 million to ensure that any successful COVID-19 vaccine can be produced at scale in the UK.

The investment will fund a state-of-the-art Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre to accelerate the mass production of a successful COVID-19 vaccine in the UK. Due to open in December 2021, the Centre will have the capacity to produce millions of doses each month, ensuring the UK has the capabilities to manufacture vaccines and advanced medicines, including for emerging diseases, far into the future.

Located in Braintree, Essex, the government initiative will upgrade an existing facility to create a fully-licensed manufacturing centre. Doing so will increase the UKs ability to respond to diseases like coronavirus and to prepare for potential future pandemics while creating new, high-skilled jobs to fuel the UKs economic recovery.

The new centre will complement the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC), which is currently under construction in Oxfordshire thanks to a 93 million investment from the government. Once complete next year, the facility will have the capacity to produce enough vaccine doses to serve the entire UK population at scale.

While the centre is under construction, the government has invested an additional 38 million to establish a rapid deployment facility, opening later this summer, that will support efforts to ensure a successful vaccine is widely available to the public as soon as possible.

Business Secretary Alok Sharma said:

We are taking all necessary steps to ensure we can vaccinate the public as soon as a successful COVID-19 vaccine becomes available.

This new Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult Manufacturing Innovation Centre, alongside crucial investment in skills, will support our efforts to rapidly produce millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine while ensuring the UK can respond quickly to potential future pandemics.

To support these enhanced vaccine manufacturing capabilities, the government will invest an additional 4.7 million for the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult to ensure that the UK has the best skills and expertise through the development of virtual and physical national Centres for Advanced Therapies Training and Skills, in partnership with industry.

The facilities and online training platform will provide industry-standard skills and experience in advanced gene therapy and vaccine manufacturing, including sterile techniques for Good Manufacturing Practice which is the minimum standard that a medicines manufacturer must meet in their production processes.

Employment in the cell and gene therapy sector is predicted to reach over 6,000 jobs by 2024, with over 3,000 in manufacturing and bioprocessing.

Matthew Durdy, CEO, Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult commented:

This commitment from government through the Vaccines Taskforce will enable continued growth and productivity in the cell and gene therapy sector, as well as providing vital resource for vaccine manufacturing and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are delighted to be able to deploy the specialist capabilities of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult in such an important initiative. Accelerating the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, increasing skills and employment, and facilitating growth of the advanced medicines industry will make a valuable contribution to the recovery of the economy.

Kate Bingham, Chair of the Vaccines Taskforce said:

Todays announcement is another important milestone for us. The work of the Vaccines Taskforce is focused on protecting the UK against COVID-19 through vaccination as quickly as possible.

In order to vaccinate our high-risk populations at the earliest opportunity, the government has agreed to proactively manufacture vaccines now, so we have millions of doses of vaccine ready if they are shown to be safe and effective. The acquisition of this state-of-the-art manufacturing centre will not only help us with this, but also ensures we are well-placed as a country to be able to cope with any pandemics or health crises in the future.

As well as addressing the immediate need to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, the new Cell and Gene Therapy Centre, developed with Innovate UK and the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, will be at the forefront of the growing UK cell and gene therapy industry. Scientists and researchers based in the centre will accelerate the time taken for new treatments to be delivered to patients by developing cutting-edge therapies to treat life changing diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

The UK is at the forefront of international efforts to research and develop a COVID-19 vaccine and has provided 131 million funding to University of Oxford and Imperial College London to accelerate their work on 2 vaccine candidates.

This follows news on Monday (20 July) that the government secured early access to 90 million vaccine doses from the BioNTech/Pfizer alliance and Valneva as part of its strategy to build a portfolio of promising new vaccines to protect the UK from COVID-19. In addition, treatments containing COVID-19-neutralising antibodies have been secured from AstraZeneca to protect those who cannot receive vaccines.

The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult was established as an independent centre of excellence to advance the growth of the UK cell and gene therapy industry, by bridging the gap between scientific research and full-scale commercialisation.

With more than 230 employees focusing on cell and gene therapy technologies, it works with partners in academia and industry to ensure these life-changing therapies can be developed for use in health services throughout the world. It offers leading-edge capability, technology and innovation to enable companies to take products into clinical trials and provide clinical, process development, manufacturing, regulatory, health economics and market access expertise. Its aim is to make the UK the most compelling and logical choice for UK and international partners to develop and commercialise these advanced therapies.

The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult works with Innovate UK. For more information please visit the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult or Innovate UK.

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Over 100 million cash boost to manufacture millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine - GOV.UK

"From day one, any discussion of herd immunity or survival of the fittest or, you know, 'Say farewell to the elderly,' are the things that just did not sound right for us," Jordan's Prime Minister Omar Razzaz tells NPR. "So we went for a very different model in Jordan, based on social solidarity."

Jane Arraf/NPR

Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Razzaz sits in the front room of his family home in a middle-class Amman neighborhood of traditional white stone houses with small gardens and low walls. Unusually, in a region where senior officials typically live in gated compounds far from public view, the residential street has been kept open to traffic to minimize disruption to Razzazsneighbors.

Razzaz, an MIT and Harvard-educated economist, was appointed by Jordans King Abdullah II to head a new government two years ago, following anti-government protests that were sparked by IMF-mandated tax increases seen as bypassing the rich. Although hed served previously as education minister, Razzaz was seen as a relativeoutsider.

The small, resource-poor kingdom is surrounded by dangers from neighboring countries: a war in Syria, conflict between the U.S. and Iran in Iraq, and Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank it occupies something Jordan says poses a danger to the entireregion.

But those issues have taken a back seat to controlling the coronavirus a feat Jordan has accomplished with an early and severe lockdown. The country of roughly 10 million has registered 1,131 coronavirus cases, with 11deaths.

Razzaz sees vulnerable groups in other countries paying a disproportionate price for policies that dont prioritize them, and says Jordans approach from the start was to protect the mostvulnerable.

From day one, any discussion of herd immunity or survival of the fittest or, you know, Say farewell to the elderly, are the things that just did not sound right for us, Razzaz tells NPR. So we went for a very different model in Jordan, based on social solidarity, in fact, helping the weakest. We did everything we can to make sure our children, our elderly, our refugees you know, the haves and the have-nots areprotected.

In mid-March, Jordan was one of the first countries in the region to shut its airports and borders for all but essential goods. Arriving passengers were sent into compulsory quarantine. All but emergency workers and security forces were confined to their homes, with even grocery stores shut and the army distributing bread to poorneighborhoods.

The government cut public sector salaries and allowed businesses to reduce workers wages, but banned them from laying offemployees.

Razzaz says in the last four months, almost half of Jordans population received some form of governmentassistance.

This week, the country announced it would reopen its airport to flights from a dozen countries where coronavirus rates are also low. With no cases of local transmission on most days, Jordan has stopped enforcing mask wearing and reopened restaurants and shoppingmalls.

Razzaz says industry production is now back to pre-coronavirus standards, and Jordan is exporting pharmaceuticals and food to othercountries.

Jordan took a chance with the lockdown, he says, but felt it had little choice, given the prospect of its health care system being overwhelmed with COVID-19cases.

When we took the steps that we took, we did that not because we were certain about the outcomes. So theres always hindsight But were very, very glad we did what we did. And a lot of countries that waited longer, including the U.S., are having a harder time containing the coronavirus, hesays.

Razzaz and health officials note Jordan remains on guard for a possible resurgence of the virus as its airportreopens.

The longer-term challenge is an already fragile economy in which unemployment is rising sharply. Tens of thousands of Jordanians have lost their jobs in the Arab Gulf states, as those economies decline due to the pandemic and a plunge in oilprices.

The official unemployment rate for the first quarter of the year had already topped 19%. Some economists expect the real rate could reach 30% by the end of the year, with many of the unemployed youngpeople.

Razzaz says, though, he is not worried by the prospect of renewed demonstrations that could be sparked by the economiccrisis.

While some countries worry a lot about social unrest, we see it as people expressing views about that hardship, he says. Were going to be proactive with employment and job creation. And if you get frustrated and want to shout, we have a constitution and set of laws and institutions that allow that to happen in democraticways.

The other wild card facing the kingdom is Israels annexation threat. Jordan, along with Egypt, is one of only two Arab countries in the region to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. Jordans king says he might suspend the 26-year-old treaty if Israel takes unilateral steps to claim sovereignty over parts of the WestBank.

Israel cites Jewish ties and a strategic need for it, but most of the international community opposes such a move, which could doom Palestinian hopes for an independentstate.

Jordan, where a majority of citizens are of Palestinian origin, would be the country most affected by Israels move, and instability could ripple across theregion.

Razzaz says Jordan has not changed its insistence on the need for an independent Palestinian state alongsideIsrael.

If you dont provide a just solution for the Palestinian people and sovereignty, you are pushing them and the region towards despair and extremism. So will there be conflict under such conditions? Yes, there will be, definitely, he says. I think what His Majesty and Jordan have been doing is sounding the alarm bells.

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Jordan's Prime Minister Says His Country Contained COVID-19 By 'Helping The Weakest' - OPB News

From pv magazine 07/2020

Solar PV is scaling, fast. On track to terawatt scale Fraunhofer ISE estimates around 12 TW will be installed by 2030, while PV consultancy Amrock puts the 2050 figure at 70 TW to 80 TW it is a disruptive, low-cost, clean energy source.

Growth poses lucrative opportunities, particularly for manufacturers; yet, a dark cloud lingers. As Pierre Verlinden, Amrock MD, said during pvmagazines recent Virtual Roundtable (see p. 58), at 1 TW, the industry accounts for 94% of todays silver market, 35% of copper, and 32% of MG silicon. Even at todays GW level, waste is worrisome, toxic materials integral, and raw materials finite.

The World Economic Forums 2020 Risk Report confirms such issues are not confined to the few, but rather represent disruption for the many.

In response, multilateral global partnerships are forming to investigate how circular manufacturing models can play a revolutionary role. The goal is not just avoiding environmental destruction; equally, innovative business models, new revenue streams, resiliency and long-term economic stability are targeted.

Global thinktank SustainAbility wrote in its 2020 annual trends report: From food and fashion to electronics and the built environment, circular thinking keeping resources in use for as long as possible to extract the maximum value will continue to gain momentum in 2020.

In Europe, the unveiling of the European Green Deal and associated Circular Economy Action Plan this March has seen heightened sustainability activity. For example, Sitra, Technology Industries of Finland and Accenture released a playbook, Circular business models for the manufacturing industry, in May. In it Sitra states: Circular economy offers companies the opportunity to turn inefficiencies in linear value chains into business value. These inefficiencies look beyond production waste, focusing on underutilised capacities, premature product lives, unsustainable materials, wasted end-of-life value and unexploited customer engagements.

Reviewing a number of globally established businesses, the playbook identifies proven circular business results. These include Wrtsil achieving a 45% reduction in production development expenses and a 50% reduction in assembly time using modular engine architecture, and Caterpillar reaping 50% higher gross profits from selling remanufactured products at a 20% discount. Ford has also cut costs by around 20% by swapping aluminum for steel, while Michelin is selling tires-as-a-service, with a revenue potential of 3 billion in 10 years.

Overall, five working circular manufacturing business models are identified to achieve such results (see chart to the left). Work on circular projects in the PV and storage sectors is also underway, including three Horizon 2020 European Commission funded projects Circusol, Cabriss and Super PV and Fraunhofer ISEs Green Manufacturing Consortium. As discussed below, similarities between the industries and business models mentioned above can be drawn, and knowledge transferred.

With 8.25 million in funding, Circusol or Circular Business Models for the Solar Power Industry aims to formalize reuse, repair and refurbishment value chains for PV and storage. It also demonstrates the potential of Product Service System (PSS) business models over a four-year period.

Its report calculates there will be 8 million tons of PV waste, 13 GW of EU solar power that second-life PV could serve, and 25 GWh of second-life batteries by 2030. These resources could reap benefits if changes are made, like user not owner business models, economic stimulus and facilitation packages, rather than regulation, and transition from a few global, to many regional players. Key are reuse, repair, remanufacturing, repurposing and recycling.

To realize a vision, barriers must be understood. Circusol has identified 48 of these in R&D, design, technology, grid, collaboration, recycling, regulatory and market. These could be addressed via short- and long-term actions, as outlined in the table to the right.

In addition to value chains, Circusol investigates how circular PSSs could support change. Specifically, it wants to catalyze markets for second-life PV modules (see pp. 68-69), and the remanufacturing of disused EV batteries for stationary PV systems (watch out for pvmagazine 08/2020). It sees further potential in novel product technologies with lower environmental footprints, like mounting structures comprising renewable materials.

The intended role of a service-based business model approach is to enable coordinated product management (collection, sorting, refurbishment, testing, certification) and mitigate user concerns about the reliability, performance and lifetime of second-life PV products, writes Nancy Bocken and Lars Strupeit of Delft University of Technology, in a 2019 paper titled Towards a Circular Photovoltaic Economy: The Role of Service-based Business Models.

For example, opportunities exist in sharing excess electricity with other users through microgrids, aggregation services, and trading platforms, and enabling sharing of electric storage capacity at the community level. Delivery of these actions would require the coordination of responsibilities across several partners of the value chain, a role that a solar service firm potentially can adopt, they say.

Circusol divides cPSS into three categories: product, use, and result oriented. The first, pPSS involves selling products combined with services in the use phase, such as a product and after-sales repair. With uPSS models, the use of, or access to, products is central, like renting/leasing products; while the rPSS model focuses on services, not products, which could be a fee for service.

A benefit of service-based business models is the opportunity to gather valuable data on performance and service needs on a large number of systems, thereby enabling incremental optimization of system design and operation, say Bocken and Strupeit. They also allow for easier repair, reuse and recycling, among other benefits. See pvmagazine 06/2020 and listen to our Virtual Roundtable Sustainability Session to learn more about Circusol, and partners imec and PV Cycle.

Complementing Circusol is the Super-PV project, which aims to reduce PV module LCOE by 26% to 37% via innovation in electronics, and module and solar system design. With a budget of 11.6 million, it is focusing on areas like Module Level Power Electronics (MLPE) developments ensuring higher power output, performance monitoring and data collection on the string level, and nano-coatings for modules, which are anti-soiling, easy-to-clean and anti-reflective. These innovations are already showing promising results after the first tests. It is the second year of the Super PV project out of a total of four years, Tadas Radaviius, project manager at Lithuanian-based Solitek told pvmagazine. Work will now focus on demonstration of these innovations in desert, tropical, and cold climates.

The Lithuanian module maker is also looking into circular business models for second-life panels and refurbished batteries, while investigating alternative non-toxic materials like lead (pvmagazine 09/2020 will cover circular materials), new panel designs, and integrating radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. This latter issue ties into Circusols short-term action 1, and long-term action 3, and the creation of a central digital repository of information.

As Radaviius explains, RFID tags could contain information useful for installers and recycling companies, like technical parameters and material composition. Another option RFID unlocks is the creation of an online database documenting information on each panel or PV system, which could be accessible to a number of stakeholders like manufacturers, installers, recycling companies, and researchers.

A third Horizon 2020-funded project is Cabriss, or the implementation of a circular economy based on recycled, reused and recovered indium, silicon and silver materials for PV and other applications. The aim of the group, which includes 16 European companies and research institutes, and has access to 9.26 million in funding, is to develop a circular economy based on PV waste manufacturing and end-of-life modules. It is focusing on technologies to recover secondary materials from modules and production waste; and to manufacture modules from these.

We managed to develop all technologies required to separate, purify and recycle PV waste manufacturing and end-of-life modules, Luc Federzoni of France-based research institute CEA and David Pelletier, project manager at French solar energy institute CEA-INES, told pvmagazine. This involves opening the modules via non-thermal processes to recover over 95% of materials like silicon, aluminum, silver and indium, and the EVA. However, they say it is currently difficult to find profitable business models while recycling volumes are still small.

Several innovative, resource-saving production technologies for wafers and cells are concurrently being investigated. These mainly involve Si-kerf waste from PV manufacturing to produce low-cost silicon substrates, including ingots made from recycled Si via a hot-pressing process, say Federzoni and Pelletier. PV cells and modules with an efficiency of 18.5% and containing 100%-recycled silicon have reportedly been produced. This is a promising technology and the process is said to be ready for industrialization.

New cell technology using epitaxial deposition of silicon directly from silane, which avoids energy intensive processes and eliminates kerf loss, is another area of development. Further R&D is still needed but feasibility has been demonstrated on small solar cells, they say.

Protocols measuring the quality of recycled material and its suitability for making new solar cells tie into this work, although a standard for remanufacturing cells with recycled materials is said to be lacking. What we precisely managed to industrialize was the re-use of the materials for other sectorial applications. This is the case for Si and In.

This latter issue touches on industrial symbiosis where waste or byproducts of one industrial process become raw materials for another key to a circular economy. In solar, benefits could be reaped by collaboration with TV manufacturers, for example. The full interview with Federzoni and Pelletier is available at pv-magazine.com.

Stating that now is the time to reinvest in the European manufacturing industry and take advantage of the TW-scale opportunities ahead, Germanys Fraunhofer ISE established the Green Manufacturing Consortium in 2019. It is a German publicly funded project, comprising 20 industrial partners, four institutes and two industry associations, including First Solar, Meyer Burger, Total, Wacker, VDMA, Oxford PV and Von Ardenne.

The goal is to develop an economic-ecological evaluation methodology for a sustainable future factory 10 GW in size and easily scalable beyond that for the production of innovative PV modules. Via a comprehensive energy and material flow model of scaled and vertically integrated PV fabs we will simulate changes in production capacity, factory layout, supply systems, production facilities and processes as well as recycling of materials through recycling processes and other value-added stages, explained Jochen Rentsch, head of Department Production Technology Division Photovoltaics.

In a recent report, Fraunhofer calculated that 1.9 billion investment would be required for such a 10 GW factory, covering an area of 500,000m2 and creating up to 7,500 jobs. Director Andreas Bett said reestablishing a European PV manufacturing market represents a big opportunity to ensure energy security by reducing dependency on imports, lowering costs and addressing sustainability. Why transport large and heavy PV modules the long distance from Asia and cause CO2 emissions and added cost? For example, module costs of 0.20/W can be soon realized, and transport costs from China to Europe can be up to 0.025/W, he wrote. As the chart here shows, the emissions of manufacturing modules in Germany are also much lower than in China, because of the stricter environmental controls in place.

Fraunhofer gives a further nod to Europes R&D centers, which are working on sustainable solar technologies like those mentioned in Cabriss, including kerfless wafers and high efficiency solar cells using tandem structures.

Responding to fears that sustainability could mean more expense, the reports authors say reducing and reusing materials, combined with higher efficiencies, and longer module lifetimes means end products should not be more expensive.

Strengthening this argument, the authors point to significant decreases in Capex costs and the replacement of traditional Al-BSF cells by PERC cells in industrial production. The already significant cost reduction and the prospect of even further reducing the cost in PV production leads to the conclusion that local production can bring cost advantages. This is a new development.

The year is 2050. Solar PV has reached terawatt-scale, with legislation on air pollution and waste. Caps on carbon have been filed away, digital dust stacked high upon their long-forgotten folders. Breaking news flashes detailing toxic spills and unjust labor conditions are inconceivable to todays generation. Landfills have been eradicated; just as in nature, the concept of waste does not exist.

Every particle entering and leaving factories is beneficial to businesses, their employees and the environment, all of which are thriving. Everything fits into a continual technological or biological loop maximum value extracted to the benefit of all societal and environmental stakeholders. This is a bold vision, yet with cooperation and innovation, it is achievable. The groundwork is now already being laid.

See the rest here:

The weekend read: Making solar sizzle - pv magazine International

Around the world, 2020 has emerged as one of the most challenging years in many of our lifetimes. In six months, the world has endured multiple challenges, including a pandemic that has spurred a global economic crisis. As societies reopen, its apparent that the economy in July will not be what it was in January. Increasingly, one of the key steps needed to foster a safe and successful economic recovery is expanded access to the digital skills needed to fill new jobs. And one of the keys to a genuinely inclusive recovery are programs to provide easier access to digital skills for people hardest hit by job losses, including those with lower incomes, women, and underrepresented minorities.

To help address this need, today Microsoft is launching a global skills initiative aimed at bringing more digital skills to 25 million people worldwide by the end of the year. This initiative will bring together every part of our company, combining existing and new resources from LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft. It will be grounded in three areas of activity:

(1) The use of data to identify in-demand jobs and the skills needed to fill them;

(2) Free access to learning paths and content to help people develop the skills these positions require;

(3) Low-cost certifications and free job-seeking tools to help people who develop these skills pursue new jobs.

At its heart, this is a comprehensive technology initiative that will build on data and digital technology. It starts with data on jobs and skills from the LinkedIn Economic Graph. It provides free access to content in LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, and the GitHub Learning Lab, and couples these with Microsoft Certifications and LinkedIn job seeking tools. In addition, Microsoft is backing the effort with $20 million in cash grants to help nonprofit organizations worldwide assist the people who need it most. One-quarter of this total, or $5 million, will be provided in cash grants to community-based nonprofit organizations that are led by and serve communities of color in the United States.

Our vision for skills extends beyond these immediate steps for job seekers. Employees will also need to skill and reskill through their careers, and we want to make it easier for employers to help. Our vision is a connected system of learning that helps empower everyone to pursue lifelong learning. That is why we are also announcing today that Microsoft is developing a new learning app in Microsoft Teams to help employers upskill new and existing employees. This will bring together best in class content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, third-party training providers, and a companys own learning content and make it all available in a place where employees can easily learn in the flow of their work.

We are also pledging that we will make stronger data and analytics available to governments around the world so they can better assess local economic needs. Finally, we will use our voice to advocate for public policy innovations that we believe will advance the skilling opportunities people will need in the changed economy.

While this represents the largest skills initiative in Microsofts history, we recognize that no company can come close to closing the skills gap alone. Sustained progress will require a renewed partnership between stakeholders across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and were committed to supporting this. Following is a complete description of our thinking and plans.

The problem we need to solve

Within only a few months, COVID-19 has provoked a massive demand shock, setting off job losses that far exceed the scale of the Great Recession a decade ago. The world will need a broad economic recovery that will require in part the development of new skills among a substantial part of the global workforce.

According to Microsoft calculations, global unemployment in 2020 may reach a quarter of a billion people. It is a staggering number. The pandemic respects no border. In the United States alone, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the country may witness a 12.3 point increase (from 3.5% to 15.8%) in the unemployment rate, equating to more than 21 million newly out-of-work people. Many other countries and continents face similar challenges.

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As is often the case, the biggest brunt of this downturn is being borne by those with lower educational attainment, people with disabilities, people of color, women, younger workers, and individuals who have less formal education. The impact on communities of color in the United States is especially concerning. Just last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed that the country ended the month of May with unemployment rates in the Black/African-American and Hispanic/Latino communities that were markedly higher than for white individuals.

The employment of American women has also been impacted disproportionally by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment rates among women, which has hovered with or edged below mens unemployment rates, soared to more than 16%, almost 3 percentage points higher at the April peak.

The challenges ahead reach beyond the immediate pandemic. Crises have a way of accelerating trends already in motion, and the COVID-19 pandemic has proven no exception. Our data shows that two years worth of digital transformation have been concentrated into the past two months. By one account, the final weeks of March alone witnessed as much broadband traffic growth as would be expected in a full year.

The pandemic has shined a harsh light on what was already a widening skills gap around the world a gap that will need to be closed with even greater urgency to accelerate economic recovery. This longer-term disconnect between supply and demand for skills in the labor market appears to be driven by three primary long-term factors: (1) the rapid emergence of AI-powered technologies that are propelling a new era of automation; (2) the growing need for technological acumen to compete in a changing commercial landscape; and (3) the drop-off in employer-based training investments over the past two decades. Navigating these challenges to close the skills gap will require a renewed partnership between stakeholders across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

As we look to the future, we can draw insights from recessions in the past. Although recent recessions differed in their causes, each followed a trend of shedding low-skilled jobs and gradually replacing them with less automatable roles. In the late 1960s, roles that involved repetitive tasks involving manual work made up 34% of all jobs. These have been easier to automate, and as a result these jobs have now shrunk to 26% of all jobs. By contrast, jobs involving heavy cognition and problem-solving have simultaneously risen from 22% to 34%.

This pattern is poised to repeat itself, with an added emphasis on a jobs recovery that requires an increasing focus on digital skills. There are two reasons this appears likely.

First, in the shorter-term COVID-19 will continue to lead to unprecedented reliance on digital skills. In many situations, some workers may spend several months or longer in a hybrid economy, where some will be in the workplace while others continue to work from home. The shorter-term hybrid economy is a more digital economy. With continued consumer and employee reliance on almost remote everything, we can expect digitization of the economy to continue to advance at an accelerated speed. And as companies respond to a recession by increasing efficiency, this need for digital transformation will increase even further.

Second, the economic recovery will take place amid the longer-term and already-unfolding wave of automation based on the new technologies that underpin what some have called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Over the next five years, we estimate that the global workforce can absorb around 149 million new technology-oriented jobs. Software development accounts for the largest single share of this forecast, but roles in related fields like data analysis, cyber security, and privacy protection are also poised to grow substantially.

Of course, the magnitude and mixture of job growth will vary by country, industry, and sector. Although the impact will not be distributed evenly, digital transformation will touch virtually every corner of the global workforce from food production (324,000 new jobs) to healthcare (2 million) and the automotive industry (6 million).

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All this is made more urgent because of a challenge that has been two decades in the making, namely the decline and then stagnation in employer investments in training. Employer investments in training grew substantially throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as personal computers and the internet reshaped the worlds workplaces. This trend ceased around the turn of the century, as the dot-com recession and 9/11 marked the start of a nearly decade-long decline in employer-based investment in training.

Since 2008, the downward trend in employer-paid training has given way to a decade of stagnation, both in North America and around the world notwithstanding a small spike in the wake of the Great Recession. Alarmingly, the trend of the past few years appears to be slightly negative. This contraction occurred despite the fact that the U.S. economy, which accounts for just under half of the global training market, was enjoying an unprecedented period of growth, and technological advances were beginning to reshape the modern workplace yet again.

Exacerbating the challenge is the fact that existing training is not reaching the populations who need it most. On-the-job training far outpaces distance learning and other alternative modes, limiting options for prospective employees. Perhaps more significantly, on-the-job training is more than two times as prevalent among workers who are already in higher-skilled roles, leaving those in more automatable positions even more vulnerable to displacement.

Digital technologies will be key to narrowing the divide, not only because they can expand the reach and accessibility of training, but because proficiency in these tools is in top demand. In a recent survey of American workers by Pew Research Center, for instance, 85% of respondents cited digital skills as either extremely important or very important to succeeding in todays workplace.

But technology is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. The same Pew survey also observed that 85% of respondents regarded soft skills like collaborating with others and communicating effectively as highly important. In other words, people-oriented success skills remain as essential as ever perhaps even more so given their durability at a time when technology continues to evolve at breakneck speed. Although technology companies have an important role to play in helping close the skills gap, success will take a concerted effort among employers, nonprofits, governments, and other stakeholders. The task calls for renewed partnerships and redoubled investments in skills, ensuring that training reaches the broadest group of people with the greatest needs.

A principled approach

As we have with our work to protect privacy, security, and environmental sustainability, weve concluded that the global skills challenge calls for a principled response. As a company, well base our efforts on six key elements:

What we are launching today

Todays global skills initiative is based on months of planning across Microsoft to provide meaningful help to 25 million people globally by the end of 2020. Our activities will be focused on three areas:

Several years ago, LinkedIn operationalized the worlds first Economic Graph to track workforce trends and provide a window into emerging skills gaps. The Economic Graph is a digital representation of the global economy based on more than 690 million professionals, 50 million companies, 11 million job listings, 36,000 defined skills, and 90,000 schools. In short, it is all the data on LinkedIn and shows available jobs, their required skills, and the existing skills job seekers have.

The Economic Graph also makes it possible to spot in-demand skills, emerging jobs, and global hiring rates. These insights help connect LinkedIn members to better opportunities and assist governments and organizations as they create economic opportunity for the global workforce.

As part of this new initiative, LinkedIn is sharing free, real-time labor market data and skills insights to help governments, policymakers and business leaders understand whats happening in their local labor markets: what companies are hiring, the top jobs companies are hiring for and the trending skills for those jobs. This data can be accessed using a new interactive tool at linkedin.com/workforce. Data is available for more than 180 countries and regions (150+ cities, 30+ countries). Users can search by country or region and download the data sets.

We have also used the Economic Graph as a critical planning resource for todays skills initiative, by identifying the key jobs and horizontal skills that are most widely in demand and creating learning paths for these via LinkedIn Learning. Using this data, we identified 10 jobs that are in-demand in todays economy and are well positioned to continue to grow in the future. These 10 jobs were identified as having the greatest number of job openings, have had steady growth over the past four years, pay a livable wage, and require skills that can be learned online.

Much of our skills work is targeted at providing people with the skills for these disciplines.

To help people pursue jobs in these areas, we are making LinkedInLearning pathsalignedwith each of these roles availablefree of charge through the end of March 2021. Each learning pathincludes a sequence of video content designed to help job seekersdevelop the core skills needed for each role. Each learning path is currently available in English, French, Spanish, and German.

LinkedIn Learnings library for each learning path also includes collaborative courses, all taught by industry-expert instructors, allowing individuals to move through content and demonstrate their learning with a certificate of completion. Covering a broad range of skills from entry-level digital literacy to advanced product-based skills for technology roles, these role-based learning paths provide numerous opportunities for people along a learning continuum to reskill and upskill. We believe these are the types of resources that can place in-demand roles within reach of millions of job seekers.

In addition to theseLinkedIn Learning paths, we are offering through Microsoft Learn free and in-depth technical learning content that also supports these roles. For roles that are more technical in nature, job seekers can go deeper on specific role-based Microsoft technologies with Microsoft Learn modules, gaining the most in-demand skills on widely used technologies.

We will also enable job seekers pursuing developer roles to access the GitHub Learning Lab to practice their skills. GitHub Learning Lab is a bot-based learning tool that uses repositories to teach technology, coding, Git, and GitHub via real-life, demo-based modules. This means that as job seekers engage in learning paths, they will have the opportunity to practice newly acquired skills by completing realistic projects in a personalized GitHub repository.

To provide people with easier access to the soft skills needed to pursue a new job, we are offering free access to four horizontal LinkedIn Learning paths. These are:

Finally, we are committed to developing and making available new courses and content that will focus on the skills needed to develop, deploy, and use technology in a responsible way. We recognize that issues such as privacy, security, digital safety, and the responsible application of artificial intelligence will continue to become even more important in the months and years ahead. We are committed to leading on these issues, not only for our own technologies but in assisting others to master needed skills as well.

Todays initiative also aims to help job seekersdemonstrate their skills to potential employers.This part of our initiative has multiple parts.

First, we will offer low-cost access to industry-recognized Microsoft Certifications based on exams that demonstrateproficiencyin Microsoft technologies.We are making exams for these Microsoft Certifications available at a significantly discounted fee of $15 available to those who self-attest that their employment has been impacted by COVID-19. This represents a large discount on the price of exams that typically cost more than $100. We are committed to supporting the integrity of certifications by enabling proctoring safely in an online setting that is accessible from anywhere. The $15 fee will be paid to and will enable third parties to scale to meet the potential surge in examination resources and will support the integrity of the certification by enabling proctoring via a safe, online setting that is accessible from anywhere. We will also work with governments, nonprofits, foundations, and other private sector partners if they wish to absorb this third-party cost.

Participants will have the ability to schedule an exam from September to the end of the year, and exam takers will have until March 31, 2021 to complete the exam. This will provide access to the exams that provide five fundamentals certifications and eight role-based certifications. These will include:

These exams will be available initially in whole or in part in seven languages English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese (simplified), and Korean.

We have found that these certifications are a powerful asset for job seekers and those looking to advance in an existing role. For example, in Global Knowledges 2019 IT Skills and Salary Report, more than half of IT decision-makers surveyed believe the main benefit of certified individuals is their ability to close organizational skills gaps seen in an everchanging technology environment. It also showed certifications helped make hiring easier, helping job seekers stand out. Among other things, these certifications, as well as completion of a learning path on LinkedIn Learning, can be added to an individuals LinkedIn profile.

We are also making available tools to help individuals identify and pursue potential jobs. This includes a recently developed job interview preparation-feature, powered by MSFT-AI, to prepare and practice for job interviews.It also includes a new feature we are announcing today called #OpenToWork, which enables job seekers to surface to employers the roles for which they would like to be considered.Through a simple LinkedIn profile photo frame, #OpenToWork enables job seekers to let employers and the LinkedIn network know they are actively seeking a new opportunity, indicate the type of job they are looking for, express their needs for support, and get help from the LinkedIn community to find new opportunities.

We believe the strength of these resources is their comprehensive nature. To help people find and navigate all of our offerings, we have made all of these resources accessible from a single location: opportunity.linkedin.com. A job seeker or anyone looking to develop these on-demand skills can start here and will be guided through the learning paths based on the roles in which they are interested.

In addition, Microsoft and LinkedIn will continue to provide on-ramps for people from nontraditional backgrounds to successfully transition from learning skills to landing a job. This will include the Microsoft Software & Systems Academy, or MSSA, which provides transitioning U.S. service members and veterans with technology skills.It also includes Leap, which Microsoft launched in 2015 to recruit, develop, upskill non-traditional talent, and create a connection to employability in the tech industry. And it includes REACH, which is a multi-year engineering apprenticeship program at LinkedIn.

Supporting these offerings with cash grants to nonprofits

While all these tools, training, and certifications will be available online to millions of people in multiple languages, we recognize the need to supplement them with additional services and support. Thats why we will provide $20 million in financial grants, plus technical support, to nonprofit organizations around the world.

In part this will enable nonprofits to translate these resources into additional languages and to localize and tailor the learning content. These groups will also provide and support teachers and facilitators to help learners complete learning pathways and certification, and provide connections to wrap-around supports, coaching, and mentoring. We expect these grants will enable the nonprofits to reach 5 million unemployed workers, with a focus on particularly vulnerable groups. This includes people with disabilities, people from low-income communities, and people from diverse backgrounds that are underrepresented in tech, including women and underrepresented minorities.

We are launching this initiative globally with several highly-regarded nonprofit partners, including:

Although this is a global initiative, its important to take special steps to make digital skills more accessible to communities of color in the United States. We are focusing on community-based nonprofits, which are local organizations created to address the unique needs of the people living in a community. They are often the most trusted and effective at driving positive impact. However, data has shown that there are disparities in the funding provided to community-based nonprofits serving in communities of color and led by people of color.

This needs to change. Therefore, as a part of this skills initiative, Microsoft will dedicate support to community-based nonprofit organizations working to increase skill development and economic opportunities for communities of color, especially Black and African American communities. We will provide $5 million in cash grants to community-based nonprofit organizations that are led by and serve communities of color in the United States. This summer, we will publish additional information on this opportunity and will select organizations for this funding by fall of this year. We recognize that this is but a small part of the long overdue investment needed to address historical racial inequities in our society. We look forward to partnering with communities and other like-minded individuals and organizations to use our voice and resources to advocate for change to support communities of color.

Using our voice on public policy issues

We are committed to sharing data and what we learn from this initiative with governments around the world. In addition, we will advocate for public policy innovations that we believe can help accelerate essential skills needs and opportunities. We plan to address three priorities:

One creative example comes from Canada, where workers who risk displacement in an economic downturn are encouraged to develop individual training plans ranging from upgrading skills in current jobs to preparing for promotions and even training for jobs outside the company. This Work-Sharing (WS) program helps employers and employees avoid layoffs when there is a temporary reduction in the normal level of business activity beyond the control of an employer. It provides income support to employees eligible for employment insurance benefits who work a temporarily reduced work week while their employer recovers. WS is a three-party agreement involving employers, employees and Service Canada. Employees must agree to a reduced work schedule and to share the available work for a specified time. The impacted employees are compensated with salary for participation in skills enhancement training, whether on-the-job or at off-site courses, during the days/hours missed because of participation in the WS program.

Good examples are plentiful. They include work in New Zealand, where the government has invested approximately $1 billion to make vocational training courses free for all agesover the next two years. In the United States, the Pledge to Americas Workers American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, established by the White House, is developing proposals focused on investments in learning pathways, skills-based hiring, and the modernization of education and training to accelerate reskilling and facilitate innovation in workforce development. Other examples include programs in countries such as Singapore and France to create Lifelong Learning Accounts or similar mechanisms that wouldallow individual employees, employers and,in some models,the public sector, to invest in training for individuals.

COVID-related stimulus spending creates an important opportunity to pursue these opportunities further. As the European Commission has recently recognized, a Next Generation EU recovery package should address the importance of digital skills. To improve and adapt skills, knowledge and competences, the commission will come forward with a Skills Agenda for Europe and an updated Digital Education Action Plan.

Coming next: A new learning app in Microsoft Teams

The programs we are launching today are focused on helping job seekers. We have a broader vision for skills. We believe we need a connected system of learning. Central to this vision is a recognition that employers have a vital role to play in helping their employees to skill and re-skill. We know that employers need additional tools and resources to help here. As we have talked with our customers, we have heard some key themes:

Just as companies today have a system of engagement for customers with CRM technology and a system of record with ERP, they will need a system of learning. This will need to provide a continuous feedback loop between the work, skills and learning required to succeed at the task at hand, as well as the credentials to accelerate career advancement.

To support this, we are developing and will preview a new learning app in Microsoft Teams later this year, to bring learning into the natural flow of work. People are already using Microsoft Teams for meetings, chat, calling, collaboration, and business processes, and we are planning to extend that to include learning. The Teams learning app will allow employers to integrate world-class content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, a customers own content, and other content providers all in one place, ranging from instructor-led training to shorter, micro-learning content. The app will empower managers to assign and track learning progress and enable employees to have conversations around the content while also earning certifications and recognition for their new skills. Whether a new employee is onboarding, a manager is looking to sharpen a teams skills, or a first-line worker is in the field needing immediate training, this new app will create a seamless experience for employees to learn in the flow of work.

Looking forward: A foundation for the skills and jobs of the future

As this detailed description makes clear, we are launching today the most comprehensive approach we have ever undertaken to meet the digital skilling needs of individuals and employers alike. We believe we can provide meaningful help to more than 25 million people globally in the coming months.

But in many ways, our ambitions are larger than this. For every part of Microsoft, including LinkedIn and GitHub, this marks a new beginning that will build on everything we have today and a new wave of technology innovation to come. We believe we can combine the best in technology with stronger partnerships with governments and nonprofits. Together we can better serve people, filling jobs and creating opportunities for individuals around the world. We should all aspire to turn a year that had a bleak beginning into a decade that has a bright finish. We bring a long-term determination and a commitment to do our part.

Watch the announcement event here and visit this site for more information.

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About LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning is an online educational platform that helps people discover and develop business, technology-related, and creative skills through expert-led course videos. With a catalogue of over 16,000 courses, and 60+ new courses released every week, LinkedIn Learning provides high-quality, relevant and up-to-date courses taught by real-world practitioners, located across the globe. Drawing on insights from millions of members, LinkedIn Learning personalizes course recommendations at scale and surfaces relevant learning content to each employee based on their connections.

About Microsoft Learn

Microsoft Learn is a free, interactive, hands-on training platform that helps people develop in-demand technical skills related to widely used Microsoft products and services including Azure, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Microsoft Dynamics, and more.

Microsoft Learn combines short step-by-step trainings, browser-based interactive coding and scripting environments, and task-based achievements to help learners advance their technical skills and prepare for Microsoft Certifications. With millions of registered learners, Microsoft Learn offers over 225 learning paths, more than 1,000 modules, and is localized in dozens of languages. Microsoft Learn is great for individual users to advance their skills, as well as organizations that want to create curated employee training paths.

Tags: Brad Smith, education, Global skills initiative, Training

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Microsoft launches initiative to help 25 million people worldwide acquire the digital skills needed in a COVID-19 economy - Microsoft

Alberta's hurry-up corporate tax cut is less an investment in the future than a gift to the biggest current players, say experts

Premier Jason Kenney, with his neweconomic recovery plan Monday, had some words to encourage those of us who despair that too many of Albertas eggs are in one black, tarry basket. Hisgovernment has sector-specific strategies coming for forestry, tourism, aviation and more. Having shredded the former NDP governments tech firm incentive programsand some degree of sectoral confidence with itKenney promises bold, new startup incentive grants to replace them. And to finance thisnewfound bit of interventionism, Finance Minister Travis Toews casually discarded years of his United Conservative Partys deficit-hawk dogma by noting a difference between good debt and bad debtthe sort of thing his crew would pillory Rachel Notleys New Democrats for saying.

Kenney seemed most animated about his new rescue plan for his provinces recessionary economy when he was talking about his pitch to steal financial firms away from Toronto. As of Wednesday, Albertas corporate tax rate will fall to eight per cent, down three pointsfrom the current rate and 3.5 percentage points below Ontarios.

What do you think were going after? Kenney said with such a salesman-like zeal that, if you werent looking, you might imaginehe was whipping off his suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves. All those banks and insurance companies down on Bay Street that are paying way more taxes, their workers are paying way more taxes, they are paying way more for rent, theyre fighting Toronto traffic

Were going to be telling them they can save money for their shareholders, for their workers, for their operations, by relocating financial and fin-tech jobs to places like downtown Calgary and downtown Edmonton.

RELATED:The end of Alberta exceptionalismwell, the part Jason Kenney never cared for

Why, Albertas premier was so convinced of his pitch that he declared firms would be irresponsible if they dont consider moving operations to Alberta.

Reach for the stars, right? That seemed to be the goofy economic-development lesson of cities from Winnipeg to Hamilton, Ont. to Tucson, Ariz. when they launched flashy bids during that Willy-Wonka-meets-corporate-welfare dash for Amazons secondary headquarters. There was a period around 2006, when Albertas oil economy was rocketing upwards so quickly, and big firms like Imperial Oil had shifted their bases west, that a few starry-eyed observers wondered whether a Big Five bank would naturally follow andgaspmaybe the whole axis of corporate Canada would come with it.

In that vein, its charming to see that optimism sparked again in a period when Albertas oil sector is at catastrophically low ebb. A few resource booms ago, being near the hard-chugging engine of the national economy may have been alluring enough to financial institutions to offset the inconvenience of being two time zones away from Bay Street and Wall Street. But now that Calgary has lost its lustre, Kenneys Discount Zone pitch smacks of trying to woo a modern tech giant with oodles of free parking.

Before COVID, with so many of Albertas corporate offices vacant, the appeal of low office rents in high-quality buildings had become a big economic development pitch. Then the pandemic shifted how the world works, making corporations rethink their need for oodles of office space. Soon Calgary may not be alone with its hollow core.

The tax cut on corporate profits, meanwhile, does make Alberta the bargain-basement place to make big money in Canada. The problem is that Kenney announced last year hed slash the rate to eight per cent by 2022hes simply moving it up a couple years. So this isnt new information for anybody in Bay Street plotting a big move of employees that would takeyears.

RELATED:Jason Kenney and the oil sands: look whos statist now

These are long-term, strategic thinkers.The minute the rate cut was announced theyd integrated it into their decisions, says Philip Bazel, research associate with the University of Calgary School of Public Policy. Kenneys team tends to dismiss criticism from the NDP that corporate tax cuts are mere plums for plutocrats, but rushing out the full tax cut all at once is a benefit for current players in Alberta, not future ones. The decision to do it right away is giving a gift to firms that have already made investments and are earning profits on those investments, says Michael Smart, a University of Toronto Economist. The common practice is to avoid that giveaway or windfall gain to existing companies by phasing in that rate reduction over time.

Why do it fast? Kenney says its to prove to investors Alberta wont back down from its tax cut plans the way the United Kingdom did recently, or Saskatchewan did four years ago, or Ontario did way back in 2012. Another possible reason: Kenney cannot double down on the oil sector as he might have in the past, so hes reaching for the familiarity of a key campaign pledge. Its a policy that was supposed to take $2.4 billion from the provincial treasury when it was phased in; there wasno immediate measure of what the all-at-once move will cost the already depleted Alberta coffers. (Meanwhile, those looking for child care or renewable energy in Kenneys recovery plan will be disappointed; he may have a newfound appreciation for deficitsbut hes still among Canadas most resolutely conservative leaders.)

Kenneys government calls it the job creation tax cut,citingpre-pandemic research predicting tens of thousands of jobs would be created by new or relocated companies, as well as existing Alberta firms with more money to spend. With a cut so deep and quick, however, Smart foresees little new job creation but a lot of Ontario-based companies booking profits in Alberta to pay lower tax ratesshades of the Quebec shuffle that occurred in the 1980s when that province slashed corporate taxes to undercut Ontario. Capital moves slowly; accountants move fast, Smart says.

RELATED:The coronavirus market crash leaves Alberta running on fumes

In the meantime, other premiers may be tempted to cut rates apace, creating a race to the bottom that nobody wins. But this is what happens when economic tides shift, and jurisdictions begin competing against each other for investments they might not otherwise get. For many years, the strength of Albertas fossil fuel-based economy allowed it to forego the economic-development competitions that other regions muckaround with.With the resource-driven Alberta advantage greatly eroded, race to the bottom could become a new provincial modus operandi.

Albertas premier flashed another big-dollar item to an anxious public Monday$10 billion in infrastructure, with echoes of the Harper governments response to the 2008 recession. But $7 billion of that was already booked in Albertas budget, and a further $1.5 billion is already pledged toward the provinces new stake in the Keystone XL pipeline, the ever-in-peril Canada-U.S. bitumen conduit. Even when diversification is Kenneys new watch-word, oil habits die hard.

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Jason Kenney reaches for economic heights with a race to the bottom - Maclean's

By Lotta Heikkonen, Forest Policy Adviser at Confederation of European Forest Owners (CEPF) and at Nordic Family Forestry (NSF).

Forests and forest-based industries have an important role in strengthening the low-carbon circular bioeconomy. The circular bioeconomy provides sustainable alternatives to fossil-based materials and fossil energy, helping decouple economic growth from resource depletion and environmental impact.

The overall climate benefits of forests and harvested wood products include sequestration of CO2 by forest growth thanks to sustainable forest management; the carbon storage effect of harvested circular forest-based products; the substitution effects of replacing carbon-intensive and fossil-based materials and fuels with forest-based materials. On a system level, this is the most efficient carbon emission reduction system we have today. This is why the EUs forest and forest-based sectors have crucial role to play in achieving the blocs 2050 carbon-neutrality goal.

Today, instead of just lumber and pulp, the side streams of production and chemical compounds of wood are in focus to be used as raw materials for new forest-based products. A wood-based compound called lignin is in the spotlight for developing new solutions ranging from pharmaceuticals and cosmetics to packaging and energy solutions. It is even possible to process lignin into a carbon intermediate for electrode materials used in cell phone batteries and other daily electric appliances like Stora Enso is doing at the Sunila mill in Finland.

There have been surprising end uses for new bio-based products. For example, Noireco was exploring whether their biochar could be used to replace coal in energy production when they realised that another interesting end-use for their products was soil improvement and filtering. Biochar is naturally porous and can absorb tiny particles.

What are the important values for the forest sector and society? One of the key of successes of the forest-based industry is the innovative cooperation across the value chain. Starting from the sustainable forest management to products that can be recycled or reused, the forest-based sector needs to work together to get the best value out of wood.

CEPF (Confederation of European Forest Owners) (@CEPFSecretariat) is one of four founding members of the forest-based Sector Technology Platform which has established the European research and innovation priorities of the sector towards 2030 in its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.

The reorientation towards a fossil-free, circular bio-based economy, moving away from the fossil-based economy, is indispensable. The forest-based sector actors, including European forest owners, are ready to become the most competitive, innovative and sustainable provider of net-zero carbon solutions for a climate-neutral Europe, as explained in the forest-based industry 2050 vision.

Lotta Heikkonen represents European private forest owners in EU level policy making on forest related policies. For more information about the topics raised in this article, please contact Lotta on lotta.heikkonen@mtk.fi

Guest posts do not necessarily reflect the views of the Bio Market Insights editorial team and management.

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Spotlight on feedstocks: Sustainable forest management and the efficient use of wood leads to climate benefits - Bio Market Insights