Author: jembendell

I'm a British national living in Indonesia. I am known for my work on societal collapse risk and response. That includes the Deep Adaptation paper and Breaking Together book. I cofounded Scholars’ Warning to help academics communicate about a post-Sustainability agenda for reducing harm in the face of catastrophic ecological change. I cofounded Bekandze Farm School to enable smallholders to switch to organic and resilient farming methods. Last year I quit my full Professorship to focus on deep adaptation to societal disruption and collapse.

Collaborative Consumption and Beyond

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Do you have a car pool at work? Car-sharing revenues in North America have been predicted to reach US$3.3 billion by 2016. There are many start-ups in this field, including Zipcar, which floated last year for US $174M. Enabling the more efficient exchange and sharing of products and services, in order to increase human well-being while reducing the consumption of natural resources, is a key dimension to the sustainability transition. The increasing penetration of the internet means new systems of exchanging and sharing products and services, are growing, in many areas. Facebook’s CEO has even emphasised the potential for developing new sharing enterprises as key to its future financial success, after floatation.

These developments in “collaborative consumption” bring a new dimension to the existing forms of alternative exchange systems, such as business barter networks or countertrade agreements, and community currency systems that help connect underused assets with unmet needs. Countertrade accounts for around 20% of world trade, while one national barter network now involves 1 in 5 small or medium sized companies in Switzerland, amounting to over US$1.5 billion a year. The new sphere of peer-to-peer financial-lending has taken off, and predicted to reach US$5 billion next year. It appears to be a time of disruptive innovation through new forms of sharing, exchanging, renting and co-owning.

Some of these activities are important to sustainable development, and, therefore, to the broad field of responsible enterprise (whether we label our work corporate social responsibility, sustainable business, social enterprise, shared value, responsible or impact investment, or some other term). For business executives to contribute to a positive sustainability outcome from these developments requires enhanced understanding of how to explore ways to become involved, including by adapting their own business models.

Which means there is an educational need, for those of us interested in enabling the sustainability transition. Lifeworth Consulting is conducting research on these developments, for presentation in July at the EABIS colloquium at IMD (in Lausanne), and in September at the Necessary Transition conference at GBS (in Brisbane). So, if you are currently employed, and would like to receive the results of this research, please participate in our 5 minute survey, it would really help:

http://www.lifeworth.com/survey-responsible-enterprise-collaborative-consumption

Please, click that link!

Thanks, Jem Bendell

Lifeworth founder and Adjunct Professor @ GBS

The Part of NO That Anglo Could Understand

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Ten environmental groups recently took out a full page ad in the Financial Times and the New York Times, against the plans of Anglo American and Rio Tinto to mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska. The title went “Anglo American and Rio Tinto: what part of NO don’t you understand?”

I think the answer to that question is quite simple: Many senior managers in the company, and their shareholders, don’t understand the part of “NO” that doesn’t affect their bottom line. To be heard, “NO” needs to affect the bottom line. So, to help the more ethical staff in these companies win arguments in headoffice, there needs to be a clearer threat to the mining companies’ bottom line. So, here is how to do it….

Stop Pebble Advert
Stop Pebble Advert appearing in FT and NYT

Anglo American is not susceptible to public pressure in the way that a famous consumer brand could be. But since November last year, Anglo American became the majority shareholder in De Beers. This famous diamond company is not, in most countries, a famous consumer-facing brand. However, it is fast becoming a consumer brand in Asia. De Beers has partnered with the luxury group LVMH to develop the De Beers brand as standing for prestigious high quality, and is opening 6 stores this year in China. Although the United States is still the world’s largest diamond jewellery consumer, by 2015 it will be overtaken by China, India and the Gulf. Interestingly, recent market research shows that wealthy consumers in China are concerned about the environment and beginning to make connections to their purchasing. In Japan such concern, and associated consumer behaviour, is even higher.

Would it be right to tarnish De Beers in China with the activities of its parent company? And would it be effective?

Compared to other diamond companies, De Beers is doing a lot on its social and environmental impacts, particularly with the Forevermark diamonds that are traced to mines that are meant to abide by basic social and environmental standards. And in Bristol Bay, the mining companies are after copper, not diamonds. However, De Beers is effectively now Anglo American. And De Beers is a major profit centre for Anglo American, which makes it easier for Anglo to fund new projects like the Pebble Mine. If De Beers does well, Anglo does well, and thus Anglo can do what it wants in Bristol Bay and elsewhere.

Over many years during the campaign against Nestle, people didnt want to buy a Kit Kat from a company that marketed milk powder to mothers with only dirty water to mix it to feed their babies. Kit Kats didnt kill babies. But babies were dying from the way the products of the same firm were being used.

So, might people not want to mark something as beautiful as their engagement with a ring that co-finances ugly destruction?

We don’t know if such a campaign would be effective, but it would make the campaigners’ criticisms more relevant to the board.

So, Bristol Bay campaigners, I reckon you should drop the ads in the New York Times and Financial Times. Instead, engage the elite social networks in Shanghai and Beijing, or start a viral campaign on QQ, and other networks in China… get famous Chinese film stars to quit their LVMH promotional contracts in protest at the potential destruction.

In this strange new globalised world, even some Chinese consumers may come to the rescue of the Alaskan environment, as ultimately, we share one global environment. We should not assume people won’t care, and instead provide them opportunities to express themselves. In the end, the sustainability of the planet will depend more on Asian middle classes being concerned about the impacts of their consumption and savings on the world at large, than it will depend on the traditional Western middle class targets for ethical campaigning.

More on the campaigns:
http://www.savebristolbay.org/
http://www.stoppebble.org/

More on the issue of responsible jewellery: http://www.lifeworth.com/consult/2011/06/uplifting/

You have to go to this festival

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Am stoked to be speaking at the world’s best sustainability festival this summer in Sweden. Once you go, you wont want to go to conferences again… and music festivals might even seem a bit has-been!

What’s Future Perfect Festival?

World-leaders in sustainable enterprise, science, design, media and more; at a world-class summer music festival; with high-quality health and well-being experiences; using creative and collaborative facilitation; enabling personal action and social enterprise. FuturePerfect Festival 2012 rises from the water on 23-26 August, at Lillsved, on the island of Värmdö in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. Pack your paddles, dancing shoes, sunglasses and dreams for three incredible days and nights of inspiration, creativity, exchange, passion, and relaxation offering. This is for professionals and public, young and old, individuals and group, it’s the next stage of the conversation on living well without compromise – a celebration of potential and practical change. Lifeworth is pleased to be participating in making FuturePerfect.

Check it out at http://2012.futureperfect.se/

Or see last years, to get a better sense of how the programme is going to develop:
http://2011.futureperfect.se/

Get your organisation to send a group of you… its great inspiration.

Characteristics of Needed Leaders: Views as a Young Global Leader

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Here’s a clip of an interview I did at the World Economic Forum when accepting being made a 2012 Young Global Leader. I was asked about characteristics or attributes of needed leaders today.

For my views on the dimensions of leadership, i.e. the skills, processes and relationships of good leadership, rather than the leaders, see my blog from last year: “Leadership beyond Leaders”

Information on why Im a YGL and what it means is in Lifeworth’s announcement on the subject.

Dear Economists – please throw new light on money

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Dear Economists

It has come to my attention that you’ve taken a battering in the last few years. Apart from a handful of you, the massive failure to predict the financial crisis, and the peddling of tried-and-failed theories of how to get out of said crisis, seems to have diminished your profession’s standing. Some politicians are even listening to sociologists, who say you have have nothing useful to offer on systems for achieving greater well-being, rather than mere economic growth. Perhaps rather unkindly, some now wonder whether your assumptions about self-interest have been a severe case of projection.

I don’t like to see anyone in such a bind. Especially when I sense there is major opportunity for a turn around in your fortunes. Although I’m one of your poor-cousins (i.e. a sociologist), for the past couple of years I’ve been reading some economics, mostly on monetary systems, and mostly by those I think you call “heterodox economists.” As an active reader, I jotted down some questions that I wanted answering. As I read on, it seemed that these questions were not yet answered! I looked everywhere (well, at least not just on wikipedia) and could not find data on them. So if you work on the following questions, not only could your answers become seminal, secure yourself tenure, you might even gain a spot in the next ‘Inside Job’ movie! I hope you read on and come back with peer-reviewed articles in the coming years.

1) How much money is there is in the world, and how much debt? If the amount of debt is much higher than actual money, what mathematical models can you offer for how this will be resolved, and with what implications for overall utility?

2) Which governments do not issue bonds to private banks, or to (semi-)privately owned central banks, but issue their own money (or issue bonds to government-owned central banks that do not then sell those bonds on to private banks – the same as issuing their own money)?

3) Which governments used to issue their own money, but no longer do, and when did these changes take place?

4) How do the non-GDP aspects of the Human Development Index correlate with the periods and places of governments issuing their own money? (Just take out the “income” component from the HDI and if you have got the information on monetary policy and central bank ownership, then bingo).

I realise some of you may have a more neo-institutional approach (dare I say sociological?!), and are interested in how economics is discussed in the media, or used in public policy. So for you, I also have a couple of research questions to suggest:

5) Of the news coverage since 2008, what % of the coverage on “financial crisis” also mentions “monetary reform”? I ask, as when searching on Google, only 3% of websites mentioning “financial crisis” also mention “monetary reform”. If you find similar statistics from trawling databases of news coverage, could you create follow up questions to reveal why there is this lack of analysis?

6) How are countries receiving advice, assistance and training on monetary issues, and what interests and evidence are involved in that advice?

7) How many economists does it take to change a light bulb?

“As many as need the light.”

Ok, so I knew the answer to that one. But could the answer instead be “as many as know the light is needed?”

I’m asking these questions as they relate to my own interests in sustainable enterprise, exchange and development, and I’m not about to retrain in your wonderful arts (sorry, “science”). If you want to know why more non-economists would like you to research these issues, you can view my TEDx talk on the “money myth.” For some output from economists already engaged in related matters, I recommend “Where does Money Come from” by Professor Werner and colleagues. Other, fairly elementary, resources Ive listed on my blog.

So, dear economists, please throw new light on money. I’m waiting for illumination. Posting links to peer-reviewed work in the comments section below would be great.

Sincerely,
Professor Jem Bendell

Adjunct Professor at Griffith Business School
Distinguished Visiting Professor at IE Business School

The Word (cloud) on Davos 2012

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It’s a packed agenda at Davos. So what does this elite multistakeholder gathering tell us of what leaders are thinking about? Its impossible to go to everything on the schedule, so I put the agenda through Wordle to get a sense of the topics. Unfortunately the word “Occupy” only appeared once, so didnt make it to the word cloud.
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What do you think? Something important missing from the agenda?

The content doesnt indicate the level of interest in the topics; and some sessions are so full I missed the sign up. A session on the art and science of happiness filled up super fast, yet the mental health session still languishes with single figure sign ups. Yet might our collective insanity be the one unifying thing we can start working on to create a better world? Or are we just too busy getting on getting on? I rest my case.

Later on I’ll do another word cloud, excluding the procedural words, to reveal some key themes. But now, time to run madly to the next session…

Teaming Up for Massive Change in 2012: notes on my work with Lifeworth

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Everywhere we turn, we hear people asking “how long can it go on?” Whether it is financial crisis in the West, environmental pollution in the East, or increasing prices and natural disasters everywhere, there’s a growing sense of dystopia, and of the need for more fundamental reform of our economic and political systems. Mass protests can remove leaders, but what creates a lasting positive shift in society? And what are YOU doing about it? Rather than ask “how long can it go on”, it’s time to ask “how can we move on with essential changes?”

As I read leading commentators on business responsibility and sustainability sharing their insights on trends for 2012, I saw a new boldness. People are recognising the need for ambitious goals that address root causes, including economic governance failures. At Lifeworth we have been seeking to contribute to a sustainable economic transformation and published a variety of works on that theme over the past ten years. In that time I’ve seen the more critical analyses initially ignored by leaders in favour of less challenging narratives. Yet this year I think we will see more opportunity for ‘radical’ suggestions for change to be discussed and trialled. In that sense, despite the fears, it’s the year we have been waiting for. But rather than adding to the many predictions, I’ll summarise Lifeworth’s efforts that could be of relevance if you seek to team up to strive for far greater positive change than you might have before.

The first area for transformative action in which we are engaged is policy innovations for scaling responsible enterprise and finance. Rightly or wrongly, government budgets cuts are happening in many countries. The implications for them to regulate businesses for social and environmental objectives are beginning to be felt. How then can we promote and reward better business practice, without increasing the costs to government? Leveraging private standards of social or environmental performance is one option. In work for the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), we looked at public policy innovations to scale the number of firms adhering to voluntary standards like the Forest Stewardship Council. This appeared in the World Investment Report, with the full academic study published elsewhere. The idea that these forms of ‘collaborative economic governance’ are a pragmatic response to the twin challenges of sustainable development and government efficiencies, was fed into the policy discussions leading to Rio+20, happening this June. The need now is to create systems for collecting innovative public policies for scaling responsible business, analysing which work well in what contents, and disseminating this to government officials worldwide. If you can help on this project, do get in touch.

Yet we must go further than coping mechanisms in a world of irresponsible enterprise and governance failures. The second area for transformative action, therefore, is redesigning financial systems for more fair and sustainable outcomes. Although commitments to responsible investment have existed for some years, the translation into investment practice and the realities of corporate leaders has far to go. The limitations of current environmental, social and governance (ESG) practice in empowering investors to act is one of the stumbling blocks which we analysed in 2011, sparking lively debate. Our interest in ESG is because of the potential for progressive investor influence, which is a historically novel situation. In 2012 I hope we see the emergence of a progressive voice from investors on matters of public concern. Aside from investor-business relations, the public voice of the progressive investor has been slow to emerge. The Carbon Disclosure Project has shown that on climate change investors can sound a new tune on public policy. In 2012 and beyond, we could see other forums, particularly the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI), providing opportunities for progressive investors to promote policy debates that better include social and environmental priorities. Whether they will be able to counter-balance the more regressive investor resistance to financial re-regulation will be interesting to watch.

In 2012 we will continue to participate in fora that discuss the need for transformation of economic systems for sustainable development, including the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The Finance Innovation Lab in the UK, and the Griffith University conference on transition, in Australia. As I explained in an interview for Griffith, the key stumbling block to progress on tough issues is our limiting assumptions and oversights about the real causes of our crises. During the next months I’ll be asking world leaders what they think are the key activities to drive massive positive change that weren’t possible before now, and who they need to work with to make that happen. Identifying such pressure points for massive positive change will inform our philanthropy advisory during 2012, and beyond.

One area where I think there is currently a woefully lack of attention, funding and action is in “sustainable currencies”. Current monetary systems are incompatible with the goal of a fair and sustainable economy, and thus we need greater efforts at reform, as well as at developing secure, scalable and community-owned alternative currencies and barter systems. It is, no doubt, a difficult area for many to grasp; as I experienced myself. Yet in 2011 there were strides towards greater understanding by sustainable development professionals, through the work of New Economics foundation (nef), among others. My TEDx talk on the topic reached over 12,000 views in a couple of months. As austerity bites and unemployment persists, new ways of getting people working for each other without putting governments further into debt will inevitably rise up political agendas. In 2012 we will help through collaboration with Community Forge and The Finance Innovation Lab, amongst others, and promote the uptake of ‘sustainable currencies’ as an innovative social development mechanism, through fora such as the Geneva Forum on Social Change.

What does this renewed emphasis on systemic change mean for specific industry sectors? I think the main implication is to be more ambitious in attempting to mainstream change for sustainable development. That is a third area for seeking transformative action. That has been our approach in the work we do in the luxury and mining sectors. With the organisation Fair Jewelry Action we researched and published “Uplifting the Earth: the ethical performance of high jewellery brands.” In this report we mapped out a transformative agenda for responsible jewellery, where the industry can contribute to sustainable development. From this basis, we aided De Beers’ stakeholder consultations, and worked with the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) on their training for the jewellery industry, which will be rolled out from Antwerp this year. The Spanish version of the report was launched at the world’s first Sustainable Luxury Awards, in Buenos Aires, co-organised with CSSL and the Authentic Luxury Network. The aim of these awards is to encourage sustainable innovation in the luxury sector; this year’s awards are scheduled for November. The insights from our work on transformative corporate responsibility in the luxury sector were refined for the launch of the world’s first MBA module on ‘Sustainable Luxury and Design’, which I teach at IE Business School, in Madrid. Students learn how sustainability is the smartest and most elegant paradigm within which to design anything. At the other end of the value chain, in 2012 we are working with Channel Research and the German development agency Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) to encourage disclosure on the social, environmental and economic impacts and contributions of mining companies in the Congo. There are few more challenging locations for mining to align better with the goals of peace, human rights and development.

A fourth area for transformative action in 2012 is enhancing the way UN agencies and civil society organisations engage companies. There are now many cross-sectoral partnerships, and the relationships they established hold the potential for greater changes. Largescale change goals need to be connected back to practical steps that can deliver benefits in the near term for various partner organisations. That’s the thinking behind a spate of new resources on more transformative partnering that were released in 2011, including reports from the UN Global Compact, and my own book, “Evolving Partnerships: engaging business for greater social change.” During 2011 we applied our approach to developing transformative alliances in our support for the International Labour Organisation’s fight against forced labour. In 2012 we aim to help the development of their Global Business Alliance against Forced Labour.

Despite the shocking persistence of slavery today, and the general dystopian tone we hear from thoughtful people in international fora, or indeed, because of such darkness, we need a bright vision for life on Earth. That is why we are helping the Future Perfect Festival in Sweden in August. It will celebrate the brilliance and fun of sustainable lifestyles, sustainable businesses and sustainable communities. It will shine rays of light on a better way of life, beyond the dark mountains of outmoded and destructive ways of thinking, working and living. Our ability to understand values, and articulate them in professional contexts, is important when working towards a positive vision. My colleague Ian Doyle has therefore been teaching ‘voicing your values’ class at Grenoble Graduate School of Business, and we will be integrating this into various lines of work in 2012. In our forthcoming book, Healing Capitalism, Ian and I will seek to integrate both the personal and systemic levels of analysis, to aid transformative action.

In summary, we hope our 2012 will involve the following arenas of transformative action:
1) Policy innovations for scaling responsible enterprise and finance;
2) Redesigning financial and monetary systems for more fair and sustainable outcomes;
3) Mainstreaming contributions to sustainable development within specific industry sectors (including luxury, mining etc);
4) More ambitious collaborations between UN agencies, civil society organisations and companies;
5) Visions of sustainable ways of living, pathways to achieve them, and values competence to walk that path.

To better develop our work, this year we become a Swiss non-profit association. We will remain a network of independent associates, and will continue to deliver in partnership with other service providers, for a limited number of clients who seek to create meaningful change. If you can help us have an impact in these areas, I’d love to hear from you.

Professor Jem Bendell
Founder and Director, Lifeworth.com and Lifeworth Consulting
Adjunct Professor, Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Griffith Business School
Distinguished Visiting Professor, IE Business School

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