‘One of the few good things about the current financial crisis is the extent of serious soul-searching about the right way to deliver economic success. Britain has been among the worst-affected countries, losing perhaps five years of economic growth following the pricking of the credit bubble – predicted with precision by Ann Pettifor in her 2006 classic, The Coming First World Debt Crisis. Unemployment has soared, public-sector deficits have ballooned and a new age of austerity beckons. Business, politicians and the media are all calling for a rapid return to growth to create jobs, repair public finances and pay for a creaking welfare state.

Yet this regrowth option lacks conviction. It’s not just that finance – the vanguard sector of the last wave of growth – is still structurally challenged, or that debt-burdened consumers look unlikely to act as economic shock-troops once again. More profoundly, there is a dawning recognition that the growth model adopted by the industrialised countries over the past half-century no longer works. Our model of growth has simply become uneconomic, with more stuff not only failing to bring additional wellbeing in the so-called rich world, but also storing up impending environmental shocks, most notably peak oil and runaway climate change.

In his latest book, A Blueprint for a Safer Planet, Nick Stern calmly sets out the reasons why “high-carbon growth will eventually destroy itself”, as fossil fuel prices rise and the physical impacts of climate change start to bite. In spite of Copenhagen, a new economic race is under way: to deliver low-carbon growth. According to Climate Solutions 2 (a pioneering report on low-carbon industrialisation), some 20 clean energy, energy efficiency, low-carbon agriculture and sustainable forestry sectors will need to grow by 20–24% every year for the next four decades if greenhouse-gas concentrations are to be stabilised. Only three of these sectors are currently on track.

Yet one paradoxical outcome of the current economic crisis is the degree to which key governments have recognised low-carbon growth as one of the key routes out of recession. South Korea, for example, is investing 2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) over the next five years in its ‘green growth’ plan, with a clear intention to gain the economic and employment benefits of these emerging sectors.

Simply painting growth green doesn’t do the trick, however. We know that growth in GDP is a lousy measure of performance. It fails to distinguish between income and capital, thereby enabling both the liquidation of natural resources and the build-up of unsustainable levels of credit to be treated as growth. It fails to capture the social dimensions of economic activity, thereby enabling vast gulfs in inequality to be masked by per capita statistics. And it takes market valuation of prices as its touchstone, something that the credit crunch has taught us to be deeply wary of.

Tim Jackson’s Prosperity without Growth is perhaps the most elegant exposition of a route out of this maze. The spectre of growth has haunted environmentalism since the publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972, with sustainable development emerging in the 1980s as an uneasy way of reconciling economic expansion, social justice and environmental resilience. Jackson helps break through some of the entrenched positions that have encumbered this debate, by placing his attention squarely on the ends of economic activity: expanding our capabilities for flourishing as human beings. Growth in incomes and consumption still remains an important component of such prosperity for most of the world’s peoples. But Jackson questions whether growth is still “a legitimate goal for rich countries”, for reasons of human happiness as much as ecological necessity.

Jackson challenges the belief of technological optimists that strong policies can effectively decouple growth from environmental impacts. Taking climate change as a case in point, he demonstrates that average global carbon intensity would need to be 130 times lower by mid-century to meet climate goals in an equitable world of steady population and economic growth – falling from around 770 grams of CO2 per dollar of output today to just 6 grams by 2050. The apparent absurdity of this scenario should not cloud our minds to the theoretical possibility of this ‘super green growth’ scenario. As Paul Ekins has argued, “the sacrifice of the environment to economic growth is not ineluctable”.

Jackson’s focus on an extended notion of prosperity means that he is at least as interested in the weakening connection between rising incomes and wellbeing as he is in environmental limits. A range of international surveys show that beyond an annual income level of US$15,000 per head, life satisfaction barely changes between countries with quite different levels of GDP. There appears to be a clear point beyond which extra income does not deliver extra wellbeing.

In their inspirational book The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that “we have got close to the end of what economic growth can do for us” in terms of quality of life. Within the industrialised world, it is income inequality rather than absolute levels of GDP that explains differences in a range of health and social outcomes (such as trust, the status of women, mental health, drug use, educational attainment, murder rates, life expectancy and obesity). And inequality even constrains the time we have to ourselves: “People in more unequal societies do the equivalent of two to three months’ extra work a year. A loss of the equivalent of an extra eight or twelve weeks’ holiday is a high price to pay for inequality.”

If growth is to be dethroned as the primary goal of policy in the rich world, what should take its place? Jackson’s book is a brave attempt to develop a new ecological macro-economics, setting out a framework for scaling up investments in resource efficiency, clean technologies and ecosystem enhancement. Just as the welfare state of the 20th century – with its investments in health and education – laid the foundations for today’s knowledge economy, then investing in the quality of our natural resource base will form the basis for the next wave of innovation, employment and, yes, growth.

Rich countries dedicate at least 15–20% of their GDP on investments in human capital through spending on health and education; absurdly, spending on the entire environmental foundation of our wellbeing is less than a tenth of this. The problem with current discussions of the green economy is not that the proposals are too expensive, but that they are not expensive enough as a share of economic output.

The task of confronting the human costs of growth has barely begun, however. For Wilkinson and Pickett, this means consciously focusing on reducing inequality as a way of improving wellbeing for everyone. For Jackson it also involves dismantling the culture of consumerism (for example, through controls on advertising). Perhaps the clearest strategy of all comes in the new economics foundation’s The Great Transition, ably supported by its subsequent reports Growth Isn’t Possible and 21 Hours, its call for a 21-hour working week.

One of the great failures of the past three decades has been how the enormous improvements in labour productivity generated from new technology have been reaped by a very small part of the population, increasing inequality and stress. Cutting the amount of working time is a way of sharing these benefits, breaking the cycle of work and spend, and liberating that most non-renewable of resources, time: for family, friends and sheer enjoyment.

What is refreshing about this crop of books is the shared confidence that an economics that puts growth in its place will be more prosperous, healthier and sustainable. Some of the specific recommendations may not be especially new, but taken as a whole, a clear strategy for social and environmental transformation is starting to emerge. As T.S. Eliot wrote in Little Gidding in the middle of the Second World War, “we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”.’

‘…”I hate making TV documentaries,” he says with feeling. “Because it takes quite a lot of energy to know that you’re going to get your arse kicked and people will hate you, or fight you, for large proportions of time. You know when I did School Dinners I got so much abuse for a year and a half, and the people who were getting in the way of some of the biggest progress…you know, once the show was broadcast, all of a sudden it was ‘authentic’. But until then it was just lots of – well, people hate change. So I don’t particularly enjoy doing the stuff I’m most proud of.”

…You know that government advertising campaign, Change4Life, cost £20m on billboards? I could have built over 100 Ministries of Food in towns all over the country for that. The public doesn’t need to know that we’re in a f*cking state, that we need five a day. What it needs is skin on skin, it needs beacons locally where you can find out stuff for free, and have lessons. It’s the only way forward, and it won’t blossom through cuts.”

Jamie’s Ministries of Food have been established in four cities now, where the public are taught basic cooking skills in a bid to wean them off processed food and ready meals. But the future of the original Ministry in Rotherham is now in doubt, threatened by cuts, and Oliver is incredulous.

“The reason why I’m so passionate about the Ministry of Food is that we’re fully booked, and if we had another staff member we could put another third on the numbers. We do about 8,000 people a year from one little cheap £130,000 setup grant from Rotherham council. We’re fully booked, we’re busy. It works. But they’re all looking at me now for money, and the thing is I don’t have it. I haven’t got dough sitting in banks for me or for anything else.”

Some readers may think come off it, you’re really rich, I suggest. His wealth is routinely reported to be anywhere between £25m and £45m; could he not write a cheque for £130,000?

“I can’t. I can’t. I just can’t, it’s as simple as this. I’ve got my businesses that I look after, I don’t have venture capitalists swoop in and pay for everything. Basically everything I’ve got funds my restaurants, the vulnerabilities are all mine. I’ve got 18 months of wages for my staff in the bank, but I’m not spending their money.”

Oliver has recently extended his campaign to America, where he made a series called Jamie’s American Food Revolution, set in the nation’s most obese town. It won him an Emmy, and has been recommissioned, but far from celebrating, Oliver is still recovering. “The town didn’t react very well to me being there, and there was one fellow on the radio who did a lot of shit-stirring that caused basically six weeks of aggro for me. No one really wanted to get involved or help, they thought we wanted to make them look stupid.” With hindsight, I ask innocently, does he feel he made any tactical errors?

“No,” he shoots back, “it was brilliant. You know, change is very hard – structures, organisations, businesses, people, anyone really. And if you’re shining a light on one of the most unhealthy places in the world, it has to be a car crash, there’s no pretty way. I knew what I was flying over there for, I knew it would be horrible, but I hadn’t done horrible without my family. When you have shit days you need to be able to go and hug your kids, do you know what I mean? I didn’t have that, and it was hard, really hard.”

And yet, I say, it’s these documentaries which make us love him. “But there’s still lots of people who don’t like me,” he counters straight away. “You can tell that if you go on any blog. I annoy lots of people. You know people often don’t like the good guys, and I try to be a good guy, I’m consistent. You know, I’ve been consistent in my direction, the beliefs that I have. And people hate that.”…

“No one understands me. No one. My wife doesn’t even understand me in terms of what I want to do. Everyone thinks everything’s about money. You think I’m going to America to make money? That is probably the worst financial use of my time in the world, going to America next year, cos there’s no money in TV, and they don’t buy books. I don’t want to break America, I don’t want to move there, I’ll be there for three months next year but I don’t want to be making that show, I want Americans to be making that f*cking show. I’m not pleased I got the Emmy cos I got the Emmy; I’m pleased because it will get other people to make these shows, and get the public active, and get McDonald’s to start doing some other shit instead of the shit they are doing.

“I have a fairly low regard for money to be honest, it doesn’t really add that much to a lot of the things that give me pleasure in life. However, if you have an idea, and you’ve got it, you can do it. If you haven’t got money and you’ve got a great idea, it’s hard to get it done. So for me I want to get in a position where I can do stuff myself. I want to be able to go into Essex and say: ‘I want all your schools.’ I want to set up a company that would be not for profit; I want to set up a company that would be like the government used to be, where we train dinner ladies militantly, where we’d fit the kitchens out and deliver on budget. But it’s not just Essex, you see, it’s trying to create things that can be rolled out elsewhere. But it all comes down to money.”

In the end, Oliver believes that change will only come through public pressure. “Although they don’t know it, the public is still king. So what I try and do is shit-stir. In America, what hasn’t happened yet is the public haven’t really told business what they want. For instance, McDonald’s America and McDonald’s UK are totally different. You’ve got one public that’s fairly well informed, which is here, so you know you’ve got organic milk, 100% free-range eggs; they do a huge amount of salads, they’ve done a huge amount of inward thinking in the last five years. So although they’ve been the enemy for many years, you’ve got to take your hat off and say well done, and carry on. America hasn’t even done that, they’ve done nothing in comparison. The only difference is the public ask for more.”

So if he had to choose only one element of his empire – the cookery shows, the restaurants, the books, Fifteen, or the campaigns – which one is closest to his heart?

“I’d love to be elitist, cos that’s where my heart is – I’m a food geek. But it’s f*ck-all use to anyone, absolutely no use to anyone, it doesn’t change anything really. I really want to get school food sorted, and it ain’t going to get sorted by the government. It needs investment, entrepreneurialism, expert management – and it’s not going to happen, cos they’ll never put their hands in their pockets or be there long enough to change anything.”‘

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2oNXksw4Jk

http://www.youtube.com/v/P2oNXksw4Jk?fs=1&hl=en_US

The first South Australian homegrown and gleaned produce swap was held on Saturday 3 November 2008, at the Clarence Park Community Centre. The Urban Orchard is a homegrown fruit and vegetable exchange, enjoying a brisk trade and much discussion over the morning.

The Urban Orchard is based on the exchange of backyard fruit and vegetable surplus. Participation is open to everyone, and participants are invited to take produce when they can use it, and contribute when they can.

The Urban Orchard is an initiative of Friends of the Earth Adelaide and the Goodwood Goodfood Co-op.

When: 10.00am-12noon, first Saturday of the month.

Location: Clarence Park Community Centre, 72-74 East Avenue, Black Forest

Contact: Joel 0403 886 951, joel.catchlove [at] foe.org.au

There are also swap meets at Henley, Croydon and Gawler in South Australia: www.ceres.org.au/node/114

Reposted in full from Pro Bono News, 14 October 2010

‘The Victorian Government has launched a guide to social procurement in Local Government – as part of a national project to develop social procurement procedures for organisations and individuals.

Social Procurement: A Guide for Victorian Local Government

‘It strikes me that governments are determined to protect not the marvels of our world, but the world-eating system to which they are being sacrificed; not life, but the ephemeral junk with which it is being replaced…if governments had met in Japan to try to save the banks, or the airline companies, or the plastic injection moulding industry, they would have sent more senior representatives, their task would have seemed more urgent, and every dot and comma of their agreement would have been checked by hungry journalists. When they meet to consider the gradual collapse of the natural world, they send their office cleaners and defer the hard choices for another ten years, while the media doesn’t even notice that they have failed to produce a written agreement. So, much as I’m revolted by the way in which nature is being squeezed into a column of figures in an accountant’s ledger, I am forced to agree that it may be necessary. What else will induce the blinkered, frightened people who hold power today to take the issue seriously?’

Reposted in full from The Guardian, 2 November 2010

‘“Countries join forces to save life on Earth”, the front page of the Independent told us.

“Historic”, “a landmark”, a “much-needed morale booster”, the other papers chorused(1,2,3).

The declaration agreed at the summit in Japan last week to protect the world’s wild species and wild places was proclaimed by almost everyone a great success. There’s only one problem: none of the journalists who made these claims has seen it.

I checked with as many of them as I could reach by phone: all they had read was a press release, which, though three pages long, is almost content-free(4). The reporters can’t be blamed for this: though it was approved on Friday, the declaration has still not been published. I’ve now pursued people on three continents to try to obtain it, without success. Having secured the headlines it wanted, the entire senior staff of the Convention on Biological Diversity has gone to ground: my calls and emails remain unanswered(5). The British government, which lavishly praised the declaration, tells me it has no written copies(6). I’ve never seen this situation before: every other international agreement I’ve followed was published as soon as it was approved.

The evidence suggests that we’ve been conned. The draft agreement, published a month ago, contained no binding obligations(7). Nothing I’ve heard from Japan suggests that this has changed. The draft saw the targets for 2020 that governments were asked to adopt as nothing more than “aspirations for achievement at the global level” and a “flexible framework”, within which countries can do as they wish. No government, if the draft has been approved, is obliged to change its policies.

In 2002, the signatories to the convention agreed something similar: a splendid-sounding declaration which imposed no legal commitments. They announced that they would “achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss”. Mission accomplished, the press proclaimed, and everyone went home to congratulate themselves. Earlier this year, the UN admitted that the 2002 agreement was fruitless: “the pressures on biodiversity remain constant or increase in intensity”(8).

Even the desperately cheery press release suggests that all was not well. The meeting in Japan was supposed to be a summit; bringing together heads of government or heads of state. It mustered five of them: the release boasts of coralling the President of Gabon, the President of Guinea-Bissau, the Prime Minister of Yemen and Prince Albert of Monaco. (It fails to identify the fifth country: Lichtenstein? Pimlico?) One third of the countries represented there couldn’t even be bothered to send a minister. This is how much they value the world’s living systems.

It strikes me that governments are determined to protect not the marvels of our world, but the world-eating system to which they are being sacrificed; not life, but the ephemeral junk with which it is being replaced. They fight viciously and at the highest level for the right to turn rainforests into pulp, or marine ecosystems into fishmeal. Then they send a middle-ranking civil servant to approve a meaningless (and so far unwritten) promise to protect the natural world.

Japan was praised for its slick management of the meeting, but still insists on completing its mission to turn the last bluefin tuna into fancy fast food. Russia signed a new agreement in September to protect its tigers (the world’s largest remaining population)(9), but an unrepealed law effectively renders poachers immune from prosecution, even when caught with a gun and a dead tiger(10). The US, despite proclaiming a new commitment to multilateralism, refuses to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity.

It suits governments to let us trash the planet. It’s not just that big business gains more than it loses from converting natural wealth into money. A continued expansion into the biosphere permits states to avoid addressing issues of distribution and social justice: the promise of perpetual growth dulls our anger about widening inequality. By trampling over nature we avoid treading on the toes of the powerful.

A massive accounting exercise, whose results were presented at the meeting in Japan, has sought to change this calculation. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) attempts to price the ecosystems we are destroying(11). It shows that the economic benefit of protecting habitats and species often greatly outweighs the money to be made by trashing them. A study in Thailand, for example, suggests that turning a hectare of mangrove forest into shrimp farms makes $1,220 per year, but inflicts $12,400 of damage every year on local livelihoods, fisheries and coastal protection. The catchment protected by one nature reserve in New Zealand saves local people NZ$136m a year in water bills. Three-quarters of the US haddock catch now comes from within 5km of a marine reserve off the New England coast: by protecting the ecosystem, the reserve has boosted the value of the fishery(12).

I understand why this approach is felt to be necessary. I understand that if something can’t be measured, governments and businesses don’t value it. I accept TEEB’s reasoning that the rural poor, many of whom survive exclusively on what the ecosystem has to offer, are treated harshly by an economic system which doesn’t recognise its value. Even so, this exercise disturbs me.

As soon as something is measurable it becomes negotiable. Subject the natural world to cost-benefit analysis and accountants and statisticians will decide which parts of it we can do without. All that now needs to be done to demonstrate that an ecosystem can be junked is to show that the money to be made from trashing it exceeds the money to be made from preserving it. That, in the weird world of environmental economics, isn’t hard: ask the right statistician and he’ll give you whichever number you want.

This approach reduces the biosphere to a subsidiary of the economy. In reality it’s the other way round: the economy, like all other human affairs, hangs from the world’s living systems. You can see this diminution in the language the TEEB reports use: they talk of “natural capital stock”, of “underperforming natural assets” and “ecosystem services”. Nature is turned into a business plan, and we are reduced to its customers. The market now owns the world.

But I also recognise this: that if governments had met in Japan to try to save the banks, or the airline companies, or the plastic injection moulding industry, they would have sent more senior representatives, their task would have seemed more urgent, and every dot and comma of their agreement would have been checked by hungry journalists. When they meet to consider the gradual collapse of the natural world, they send their office cleaners and defer the hard choices for another ten years, while the media doesn’t even notice that they have failed to produce a written agreement. So, much as I’m revolted by the way in which nature is being squeezed into a column of figures in an accountant’s ledger, I am forced to agree that it may be necessary. What else will induce the blinkered, frightened people who hold power today to take the issue seriously?’

‘The Environment Agency has today charged nine people as part of the biggest investigation into illegal electrical waste exports from the UK to West Africa.

All nine have been charged with offences under the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations 2007 and European Waste Shipment Regulations 2006 and bailed to attend Havering Magistrates Court on 11 November.

The law is clear that broken electricals, including everyday items such as mobiles, smart phones, laptops and TVs, cannot be sent overseas for disposal. As well as precious metals such as gold, copper and aluminium, electrical waste can contain hazardous substances including mercury and lead that are harmful to people and the environment.

There is good evidence that illegal exports of electrical waste from the UK is ending up on waste sites in Africa, causing harm to those who come into contact with it.

The Environment Agency’s National Environmental Crime Team Manager, Andy Higham, said:

“Over the past two years painstaking intelligence work by Environment Agency officers has uncovered a web of individuals and companies that appear to be making considerable sums of money by exporting electrical waste overseas.

“Exporters of broken electricals put at risk the lives of those who work on waste sites in developing countries. These are often children who are paid a pittance to dismantle products containing hazardous waste. Illegal exporters also avoid the costs of recycling in the UK and undermine law-abiding business.

“It is always a crime to export broken electricals and hazardous waste from the UK to developing countries to be dumped. The last thing we want is our waste causing harm to people or the environment overseas.”

Officers from the Environment Agency’s National Crime Team began their investigations in mid-2008. They soon uncovered a network of individuals, waste companies and export businesses allegedly involved in the export of electrical waste.

In some instances, it is alleged that considerable sums of money changed hands in deals to collect and recycle electrical waste while treatment costs were avoided.’

‘Putting a cash value on nature may give officials heading to a biodiversity summit the jolt they need

Invest in lush tropical forests, vibrant coral reefs and clear blue streams, and they will provide a healthy return. That’s the message from a group of environmental economists who for the first time have estimated the cash value of ecosystems.

They say the figures show the case for conservation is overwhelming in pure economic terms. One case study found that protecting and replanting mangrove swamps in Vietnam cost $1.1 million – an investment which reduced spending on dyke maintenance by seven times as much each year.

Yet the scientists behind The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study (TEEB) admit frustration that most mainstream economists are blind to the value of biodiversity.

“Conservation has to be seen as an investment and not a cost,” says Rudolf de Groot of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, one of the lead authors of the study.

TEEB was initiated at the 2007 G8 summit, in Germany. “It aims to do for biodiversity what the Stern report did for the economics of climate change,” says de Groot. The group will launch the first part of its work – a report called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Ecological and Economic Foundations – at a UN summit on biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan, this month.

In it, they use prior studies to calculate cash values for biomes ranging from tropical rainforests to Arctic tundra, based on the services they provide to humanity.

Coral reefs come in top, and are valued at up to $1.2 million per hectare per year, mostly reflecting the tourism income they provide. By moderating extreme events like storms, the group estimates each hectare of reef saves $34,000 per year, on average. But even humble savannah grasslands, which protect water supplies and store carbon, have a calculated annual worth of thousands of dollars per hectare. Each hectare of coastal wetlands, meanwhile, treats dirty water to the tune of $120,000 in avoided costs each year.

The report makes clear that the value of many “ecosystem services” remains difficult to price, however. Its authors speculate that many woodlands have a high value for filtering air pollution, grasslands for pollination and rainforests for climate regulation. One appendix speculates that, at current prices on carbon offset markets, the carbon tied up in trees and soils of the Amazon rainforest would have a “stock value” of $1.5 to $3 trillion. Many ecosystems also recycle moisture to maintain the water cycle, create soil and perform many other functions vital to life on Earth – something which no ecological economist has yet managed to value.

“For all the ecosystems we investigated, restoration pays,” says de Groot. “For every dollar invested in restoration of forests, wetlands or grasslands, the benefits are between twice and 75 times higher.” Nonetheless, he says, “getting this understanding incorporated into mainstream economics remains a problem”…

The economists decided not to calculate a single global figure for the planet’s ecosystems. But a rough calculation by New Scientist based on TEEB’s figures for individual biomes puts the cash value of the Earth’s ecosystems at about half a trillion dollars.

This seems far too low, considering that the global economy – much of which is ultimately dependent on biological resources – is valued at around $70 trillion. And lower still, given that by cycling carbon the biosphere acts as a planetary thermostat.

The numbers are therefore most useful as an indicator of the most immediate economic benefits. Including unquantified ecosystem services would considerably raise the figure. After all, as Tim Killeen of Conservation International puts it: “Biodiversity has been the foundation for the world’s economy since the origin of human civilisation.”

Placing a value on earth’s biomes

Value in dollars per hectare per year. THE top end of each value range corresponds to Prime locations Source: TEEB

Coral reefs (tropical and subtropical)
$14 – $1,195,000
Key values: tourism, storm protection, fish nurseries

Coastal wetlands
$2000 – $215,000
Key values: waste purification, fish nurseries, storm protection

Other coastal systems
$248 – $80,000
Key values: tourism, fish nurseries

Inland wetlands
$1000 – $45,000
Key values: natural water reservoirs, waste treatment

Rivers and lakes
$1800 – $13,000
Key values: water supply, waste treatment, tourism

Tropical forests
$91 – $23,000
Key values: climate regulation, gene banks (for medicinal plants, for example), erosion prevention

Temperate and boreal forests
$30 – $4900
Key values: Food, gene banks, watershed protection

Woodlands
$16 – $2000
Key values: timber and other forest products, waste treatment

Grasslands
$300 – $3100
Key values: climate regulation, watershed protection

Promises, promises

In Nagoya, Japan, this month, the world’s governments will agree that they have not kept a promise they made at the World Summit for Sustainable Development at Johannesburg in 2002 to decrease the rate of species loss by 2010.

They are likely to agree a new set of targets for 2020, including stemming the loss of biodiversity, controlling invasive species and conserving at least 10 per cent of all the world’s major biomes.

Diversitas, a group of leading conservation biologists, has already condemned the proposed new targets as vague, unachievable and not based on good science. Georgina Mace of Imperial College London, a leading figure in Diversitas, told New Scientist: “I don’t think the current process or the 2020 targets are really fit for purpose.”

In a letter to Nature earlier this year, Mace, Harold Mooney of Stanford University in California and others from Diversitas said: “The targets continue to mix the biodiversity we value highly and the biodiversity we urgently need to secure the benefits people derive from functioning ecosystems. To resolve competing demands, these different priorities should be made explicit.”

Diversitas proposes distinguishing three conservation aims. Red targets would protect human safety and include conserving mangroves to shield coastlines against storms, maintaining coral reefs to prevent the loss of local fisheries, and preventing deforestation that causes landslides. Green targets would protect things that societies value – sacred forests or charismatic species like the great whales. Finally, blue targets would protect key ecosystem services, like carbon sinks in forests, soils and permafrost that help maintain the climate.’

‘…How do you create a great presentation?…The answers I found had nothing to do with technology or the internet; they were revealed in screenwriting, Greek and Shakespearean drama, mythology and literature.

Great presenters employ the basic narrative techniques used throughout history to connect with audiences and move them to action and new understanding.

The presentations that work are not the ones with the most data or the most elaborate charts and graphs; the winners are those with the most compelling and convincing narratives…’

Excerpt from CNN, 15 October 2010

• Army officer fired after publishing essay complaining about useless PowerPoints
• Nancy Duarte says bad presentations obscure or conceal key points
• She says successful presentations don’t win because of a wealth of data
• Duarte: What makes a PowerPoint work is great storytelling

‘Editor’s note: Nancy Duarte is the author of “Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences.” She is CEO of Duarte Design, a presentation design firm based in Mountain View, California, that worked with Al Gore on the presentation featured in “An Inconvenient Truth” and whose clients include Cisco, Facebook, Google, TED and the World Bank.

A few weeks ago Col. Lawrence Sellin, a Special Forces officer stationed in Afghanistan, fell victim to a particularly modern hazard of war: PowerPoint fatigue.

Col. Sellin was fired from his post at NATO’s International Security Assistance Force after he wrote an essay for the UPI wire service in which he voiced his frustration about PowerPoint-obsessed officers who spend more time worrying about font size and bullet points than actual bullets.

Col. Sellin’s was just the latest in a series of complaints about the military use of slide presentations – you may recall public ridicule of the famously incomprehensible “spaghetti slide,” and a recent New York Times article, that cited other officers just as frustrated with the emergence of the military bureaucracy’s “PowerPoint rangers.”

But PowerPoint isn’t inherently bad – just misunderstood. And bad PowerPoint presentations aren’t just a concern of the military. We’ve all sat through presentations – or suffered or even dozed through them. The truth is, most are poorly constructed and instantly forgettable.

Why does this matter? Because presentations decide elections, military strategies and multibillion-dollar business deals; they educate our children and they spread the ideas that shape society’s most important goals and directives.

Ultimately, a presentation succeeds or fails on the strength of its message and how well it’s told. And those elements have nothing to do with the brand of the software package involved in its production. You know instantly when you’re watching a great presenter at work – you may even own the ShamWow to prove it.

Sometimes, presenters try to punch up weak content with stunts. I remember one speaker who rode onto the stage on a motorcycle – and promptly lost control and crashed. (He was okay.) Another presenter rappelled down to the stage like a mountain climber. I remember the stunts, but not the messages…

Unfortunately, the development of presentations is a skill that is rarely taught and for which few sources of best practices exist. Bad presentations kill ideas, waste money and impede progress. Great ones illuminate, persuade, generate consensus and spark action.

How do you create a great presentation? I’ve been in the business for 20 years, but until recently even I couldn’t define the deep structures and elements of truly superior presentations.

My research into this question led me in unexpected directions. The answers I found had nothing to do with technology or the internet; they were revealed in screenwriting, Greek and Shakespearean drama, mythology and literature.

Great presenters employ the basic narrative techniques used throughout history to connect with audiences and move them to action and new understanding.

The presentations that work are not the ones with the most data or the most elaborate charts and graphs; the winners are those with the most compelling and convincing narratives.

We’re a distracted, multi-tasking society. So presentations need to lure and re-lure an audience simply to keep their attention. Audiences are looking at the clock or fiddling with their handheld devices throughout a presentation. You don’t connect with your audience by throwing information at them – you do it by taking them on a journey toward your perspective.

Whether you’re a CEO, a salesperson, a general or a biochemist, you must understand how to connect with an audience, how to construct a powerful narrative argument, and how to visually display information for maximum audience comprehension.

I read recently that our nation is suffering a crisis of literacy, with only 35% percent of high school seniors able to read proficiently. Yes, you read that correctly (assuming you’re not part of the 65% of high school seniors.) But literacy really means the ability to communicate effectively. For professionals and citizens in every strata of society, true literacy now includes the ability to communicate effectively through presentations.

The stakes could not be higher for our country. If corporate executives communicate poorly, businesses and the economy suffer, and jobs are lost. If teachers communicate poorly, our children don’t learn and advance. If generals communicate poorly, our troops and their missions are put at risk. These are dangers we cannot ignore.’

‘“Fate of the World” is a nail biting set of global warming scenarios covering 200 years of Earth’s existence. At the heart of the game are 10 ‘Masterplans’ where the player calls the shots for all mankind including ‘Apocalypse’ where the gut wrenching goal is to raise the planet’s temperature a lethal degree; ‘Lifeboat’ where the goal is to save only the player while abandoning everyone else to whatever catastrophes await them; and ‘Utopia’ where a player can try to build a perfect society while battling population growth.’

The Global Sufficiency Network invites you to participate in a unique tele-seminar series entitled The Power of Enough: Embodying Exquisite Sufficiency in Your Life and in the World.

This powerful and interactive event features key experts and luminaries sharing their wisdom about creating a life and a world of having, doing and being enough– and it’s all for FREE.

Register here: http://maestropath.com/poe

This FREE tele-seminar series will explore:

• How to set yourself free from the unconscious, relentless context of scarcity, lack and limitation. Learn why you feel like you never have quite enough or even more importantly, why you feel like you are not (good, rich, thin, pretty, etc) enough as a human being.
• Why a paradigm shift out of the global cultural context of scarcity is vital for creating a just, sustainable and fulfilling world.
• How to experience yourself, your time, your money, your work, your families, your communities and all of the crises in the world from an empowered view of “enough”.
• Why sufficiency is an exquisite experience of fulfillment, peace, gratitude, generosity, flow, courage, possibility and joy.

The Power of Enough Series offers seven separate 90-minute interactive tele-seminars.

The seminars will occur each Tuesday 9-10:30 am PT November 9- December 21. Here is the list of leaders in this series. As you can see, we have a large ensemble of powerful visionaries and movers and shakers:

Nov 9 - The Power of Enough: Why Sufficiency Matters with Vicki Robins, Jennifer Cohen and Kay Sandberg

Nov 16 – A life of Having, Doing and Being Enough with Wayne Muller and Claire Zammit

Nov 23 – The Sufficiency Movement and its Role in Changing the Course of History with Lynne Twist, Marilyn Levin and Miriam Hawley

Nov 30 – The Currency of Sufficiency: Having an Empowered Relationship to Money with Nogie King and Joel Hodroff

Dec 7 – A New Paradigm for the Business World – Why Enough Works with Gina LaRoche and Mike Anson

Dec 14 – Transforming Scarcity Conscious into Sufficiency Consciousness: The evolutionary context of a world that works with Victoria Castle and Craig Hamilton

Dec 21 – Sufficiency 2.0 with Joshua Gorman, Samantha Tan and Lora Lyons

Please do share this invitation with friends and allies – all are warmly welcomed to participate. If you can’t make the live calls, register anyway and the organisers will send you the recordings.

Co-sponsors: MaestroConference, MaestroPath, Global Sufficiency Network and The Currency of Connection