Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Time to unleash the green growth

Be it climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, or ecosystem degradation; green economics can weave together these strands. According to ‘TEEB’ report, ecosystem delivers essential services worth $21 to $72 trillion a year while the commercial opportunities in natural resource sector alone could be between $2.1-6.3 trillion by 2050. The implication: green and growth can go hand in hand.

Seeking Competitive Gains
Given the prevailing environmental and economic challenges, countries and corporations have come up with policies and strategies in order to shift towards cleaner and greener business practices along with green innovation. The International Energy Agency (IEA) is of the view that greener business practices will have important economic pay-offs in terms of resource efficiency. IEA estimates that 17% (approximately $46 trillion) increase in energy investment is required globally between 2010 and 2050 to deliver low-carbon energy systems, which will consequently yield a cumulative fuel savings worth $112 trillion. As a competitive factor, companies are seeking competitiveness gains through clean and green technology investment.

Environmetnal Challenges

OECD, in its recent report, states that the impact of economic activity on environmental systems are creating imbalances which are putting economic growth and development at risk. As a matter of fact, existing loss of biodiversity and degradation has already had dramatic consequences for business; soil erosion in Europe is estimated to cost 53 euro per hectare per annum. A 2007 report of the World Bank estimated that the cost of excessive use of groundwater in China was in the range of 0.3% of GDP (the cost fell largely on the agriculture sector). The TEEB 2010 report estimates the annual economic loss caused by introduction of agricultural pests in the US, UK, India, Brazil et al to be more than $100 billion.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
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Friday, December 7, 2012

WORLD: FOOD WASTE

Mind your wallet if you waste...

To make the matter worse, rather horrifying, this phenomenon is not just confined to the US but can be felt and found across the globe. Consider this: half of Australia’s landfill is made out of food waste. Likewise more than 30% (worth £10 billion) of all food purchased in the UK never reaches destination (read: the stomach), 30% of total fish is lost in Africa due to discards, post-harvest loss and spoilage. If one collects all the food found in bins in the UK, the whole of Wembley stadium can be covered eight times in a year! Japan leads the race hands down by wasting 20 million tons of food annually. The other side of the story is even more interesting. The University of Arizona believes that if Americans cut their food waste by 50%, it would reduce the environmental impact by 25%, while researches in the UK estimate that if food wastage is contained, the reduction in CO2 emission would be equivalent to pulling off 20% of cars from the UK’s roads! The whole contention of donating 0.7% of GDP to developing countries will be redundant if the Hayashi Ya model is replicated all across. What an idea Hayashi Ya!


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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Monday, December 3, 2012

Next G8: Star Cruise

The summit will also include paragliding, water sports, bungee lessons

With passing time, experts now concur that French premier, and (hyper)active G8 member Nicholas Sarkozy has started looking – and behaving – eerily similar to Sylvester Stallone [Go ahead, give it a try; identify sweet Nick in the photograph]. Funnily, this behavioural similarity extends to the whole G8 belt [US, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Canada, Italy, Russia and Ethiopia... er, alright, if you caught us on this, read on, you seem to be interested], with almost every member contributing his Shylockian best to behaving like a spoilt celebrity during every summit, finally achieving nothing. So we did what we do best [no no, not that; Bush does that better] – we analysed the progress report of the past few summits to decipher what exactly has been achieved in terms of contribution to least developed nations!

G8 summit in Birmingham, England, 1998: Protesters for the first time were formally allowed to give a written letter, which requested G8 to work on the heavy debt burden of the third world. Letter accepted, case dismissed! Nothing much was discussed, leave of course the letter. Cologne, Germany, 1999: To prove that they were worried about poverty, an ‘officially’ undisclosed amount was sanctioned. According to World Bank, the ‘sanction’ was so small that it wasn’t enough to even provide five bread loaves per person per year per poor country. Okinawa, Japan, 2000: Aid amount invested in projects: Close to nil; evidently because of billions spent on militarisation of north-east Asia. Genoa, Italy, 2001: Progress on debt cancellation: Nil! Massive protests took the blame, rather than the G8 members.

Kananaskis, Canada, 2002: Among many important issues, NEPAD [New Partnership for Africa’s Development] was also on agenda. $64 billion was requested, but only $6 billion was sanctioned. The reason? Russia requested – and was presumably given – $20 billion for the upkeep of the Russian nuclear stockpiles.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.



 
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Sunday, October 7, 2012

"It’s Totally Ethical of Media Houses and Journal ists to Lobby"

When Barack Obama was running for the US presidency, the common joke in America was that win or lose, Obama was sure to get a job with MSNBC! And when he won, the joke was that “all the channels declared Barack Obama as the US President at 11 in the night; MSNBC declared him the winner six months back.” That’s representative of how blatantly MSNBC had lobbied to make Obama the US President. And every media house with an ideology and conviction does so. Yes, that’s the job of media houses and of journalists with character, ideology and convictions.

Wake up to reality, my friends! In UK and USA elections, newspapers rally behind individual parties till the very end – openly. And it’s not because the party owns the media house. During the very next elections, the media houses could support the opposition. That’s how it is in all true democracies where media doesn’t fear a backlash if the party they don’t support comes to power. India is, of course, not a democracy. Behind the illusion of democracy, demons – almost one and all – rule this country, making it a unique “demonocracy”. What the government of India does is that they create cases similar to what they did with Tehelka, and makes it clear that if you try to expose the government, they will get back at you. So, before elections, Indian media – one and all (unless in regional cases where parties themselves own media) – is always polite about the ruling party even if they per se support the opposition. And this, because they fear that in case the ruling party returns post elections, they’ll have to face the music! Even the largest media house, the Times of India, has not been spared in the past, with Ashok Jain being harassed to his literal death with cases being fabricated against him for trying to act smart with the government! Compare this with the nine page special feature that The Sun ran in 1992 on the day of the UK elections with the headlines commenting, “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights?”

In 2010, while the Daily Mirror remained loyal to the Labour Party, The Sun withdrew its support for Labour – and Labour lost the elections. When Gordon Brown had shrugged off The Sun’s decision saying that The Sun doesn’t decide who wins the elections but voters do, the front page of The Sun next day read, “Labour’s lost it!” The Guardian and its Sunday sister paper, The Observer, were backing the Liberal Democrats, with the former saying it supported their stance on electoral reform. The Times and The Sunday Times had switched support to the Conservatives, and had said that David Cameron was ready to govern. That’s how Western media lobbies.

And it’s not just media houses, even individual journalists lobby depending on their convictions. Whether they are right or wrong is a totally different story – and that’s why different media houses exist, so that the public gets both sides of the story. For instance, Glenn Beck, the maverick rightwing superstar of Fox News, has even compared the Republicans’ difficulties with their own disaffected core supporters by comparing the party to a recovering alcoholic.

Before I come back to media and journalists, let’s talk about lobbying as an industry and worldwide practices!

When US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton introduced Richard Holbrooke as the special envoy for South Asia, both were expected to spout fire on Pakistan on the terrorism issue, and consequently, also were necessarily supposed to mention India and the Kashmir issue in their most important introductory press briefs in 2009. But India didn’t want the Kashmir issue to be discussed by Holbrooke, especially on the same platform as a discussion on Pakistan. Clearly, Indian government’s lobbying prowess won that day as India and Kashmir were as absent from Hillary and Holbrooke’s well decorated press briefs as a live turkey from the White House. According to Center for Congressional and Presidential studies, America spent around $2.13 billion on lobbying in 2004 alone; there currently are as many as 150,000 people involved in the industry. And the characteristic, if you can call it that, is not limited to corporations. The Center for Public Integrity reveals that over 300 universities have spent over $132 million in the last 6 years while 1,400 local governments have spent $357 million to seek favours from the government. Europe witnessed the emergence of lobbying as early as 1979 during the first European parliamentary election. In Brussels alone, there are 1,400 lobbyists and over 2,600 ‘special interest groups’.

In no unclear terms, lobbying is a legal and ethical business. The legal lobbying industry in UK is estimated to be worth $1.9 billion, employing over 14,000 people – in fact, a few MPs are often approached (read ‘physically spammed’) more than a hundred times per week by lobbyists. Researches show that Israel obtained popular US support in over 55% of ‘issues’ while Arabs or Palestinians have achieved support in less than 10% in the last 40 years, especially due to strong lobbying by Israeli think-tanks, activist organisations etc.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

‘One best way to a perfect team?

Incentives, rewards are passé. The new way to boost performance, believes an ad agency, is providing employees with an ‘open’ environment!

While we figure out how our ancestors made the best of naturally available ‘accessories’ like leaves, stones and bones, it isn’t difficult to imagine that for our ape ancestors, the body hair was enough to protect them from the temperature differences. But would you believe us if it was said that perhaps people in the prehistoric era or the great apes could perform their tasks better as a result of being stark naked? Well, a new experiment certainly suggests so! When a design and marketing company, onebestway in UK, wasn’t performing too well and was on the lookout for a way to improve its employee performance, they were “approached by Virgin and asked to take part in an hour-long documentary, filmed over a one week period in June 2009. The objective of the film was not to be naked, but to explore the possibility that they became so bonded as a team that they would be comfortable working naked!”

But does working without a stitch actually boost morale of employees? “It doesn’t boost morale, but it does create a better team. We are closer and we work more quickly because we now feel we have nothing to hide from each other. We speak openly to each other whereas in the past we may have kept things inside, hidden. Additionally, we now have more fun! We have shared something unique and fun so, in a way, the morale is better because we are generally more upbeat and proud of who we are and of what we do,” says Michael Owen, Senior Account Manager and Managing Director, onebestway. If we were to imagine the same experiment being conducted closer home, surely there will be very few takers for this rather radical (to say the least) experiment. But weren’t the employees at onebestway apprehensive too? “Yes there were apprehensions but – to be crystal clear – there was absolutely no convincing and encouraging going on at all,” continues Michael. “The nakedness was never anything more than an exciting and rather scary option. A goal yes, but not one that anyone was encouraged to do beyond what they would naturally want to do for themselves, personally. On the last day of work (with clothes on), people were full of excitement.


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