Log In Sign Up

Search for any green Service

Find green products from around the world in one place

Window cleaning

Singapore Safety Glass

Tag: United Nations

‘Green infrastructure’ shift for sustainable cities

Posted on by dishanth
‘Green infrastructure’ shift for sustainable cities

Climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution are just some of the issues facing the world’s rapidly growing cities as urban populations swell.

Now, with 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions emanating from cities, a new initiative promoting integrated approaches to urban development aims to reduce their ecological footprint. And pioneers of the project hope to see it adopted by cities worldwide.

UrbanShift, led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will support 23 cities to develop a range of strategies, such as green infrastructure, low-carbon transport systems and schemes to reduce or recycle waste. The initiative is being run in partnership with the Global Environment Facility (GEF), World Resources Institute (WRI), World Bank, Asian Development Bank, C40 Cities and others.

 

You don’t solve just a transport problem and then an urban planning problem and then an energy problem; you find solutions that actually help you do all these things together.”

Aniruddha Dasgupta, president and CEO, World Resources Institute

 

The programme is being rolled out in Argentina, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, with the hope that it will create conversations about sustainable cities across the world.

“The noise around what these cities are accomplishing can very much lead to other cities adopting it on their own – and that’s obviously what we want, shifting that global discourse and actions towards a more sustainable future,” said Inger Andersen, executive director at UNEP, speaking at an event to launch UrbanShift in late September.

“We will advocate for sustainable investments to ensure that the cities we build in the future […] are aligned not only with key sustainable infrastructure but also with critical investments in nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration.”

 

Population explosion

The proportion of people living in urban areas worldwide is predicted to increase from 55 percent in 2018 to 68 percent by 2050, according to UN figures, with close to 90 percent of the growth forecast to occur in Asia and Africa.

Speaking at the launch event, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, chief executive and chair of the GEF, said rapid rural to urban migration in recent years meant environmental policies had often not been geared towards sustainability in cities. “In just a matter of a decade and a half, many of the countries in the global South have gone from these rural-based economies into an urban life,” he said.

As a city leader now, it is necessary to solve multiple problems at the same time, said Aniruddha Dasgupta, president and chief executive of WRI — for example, creating jobs in the wake of the pandemic while also protecting nature and decarbonising practices.

“You don’t solve just a transport problem and then an urban planning problem and then an energy problem; you find solutions that actually help you do all these things together,” he said.

Among its aims, UrbanShift will seek to avoid more than 130 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and restore 1 million hectares of land, while impacting the lives of over 58 million people in the target cities.

 

Building momentum

Speaking to SciDev.Net, Tobias Kühner, an international consultant and researcher in urban planning at the University of Brasilia in Brazil, said UrbanShift recognised the need to solve the challenges facing cities. However, he questioned whether it seemed different enough from previous initiatives to have a much broader impact.

“Most [urban initiatives] are developed in the global North, which I think is a big disadvantage,” said Kühner. It would be interesting, he said, to see initiatives driven by South-South collaborations and in smaller-sized cities that often get less attention.

Sheela Patel, founder and director of the India-based Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers, raised concerns that informal settlements were cited in UrbanShift’s brochure as a specific focus area in only one country — Rwanda — and often remain outside the focus of investments. “All these organisations champion adaptation and resilience-building, but a social justice lens is not obvious as a critical central element of this process,” she added.

The brochure does, however, highlight that 25 percent of city dwellers live in informal settlements, most of whom are women.

Luan Santos, a professor and researcher in sustainable finance and investment at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, believes the project could be helpful in stimulating dialogue and resources for dealing with environmental impacts. “The environmental and climate agenda in Brazil has not been prioritised in the current government, which is why the issue of financing becomes even more critical,” he said.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk.

 

 

Source SciDev.Net

How can corporates help forge a greener and fairer future of work?

Posted on by dishanth
How can corporates help forge a greener and fairer future of work?

This year’s Ricoh Eco Action Day Forum will gather leaders from the worlds of business, government and civil society to explore ways to drive inclusive growth while sustaining the environment for generations to come.

The Covid-19 pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to the world of work. As nations continue to grapple with the short-term impacts of the economic slowdown, many have yet to grasp the imprint that the crisis may have left on the future of labour markets.

Lockdowns have sped up existing trends in remote work, e-commerce, and automation, upending forecasts of what tomorrow’s economy will look like. In the years ahead, it is estimated that 25 per cent more workers will potentially need to switch occupations than previously thought.

With such dramatic change come challenges, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable. Last year’s economic crash left more than 114 million people without jobs, but the United Nations (UN) estimates that a staggering 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy risk losing their livelihoods.

As the pandemic-induced inequality gap keeps widening, this underlines the importance for countries to build back better as they emerge from the worst recession facing the world since the great depression.

If governments are to create a fairer future, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 8, focused on achieving decent work and economic growth, will need to be front and centre of the global economic recovery. The question is, what’s the role of businesses in realising this vision?

This year’s Ricoh Eco Action Day Forum will seek answers to this question. Themed ‘The Future of Work’, the event will explore how companies can help policymakers make economic growth sustainable and inclusive, and offer productive employment and decent work for all.

Taking place on 26 August, the event will bring together business leaders, sustainability experts and government representatives to discuss the business models that firms can adopt to build better and safer workplaces while driving sustainability outcomes.

The gathering, which is co-organised by Japanese multinational digital services company Ricoh and Eco-Business, also ties in with Singapore’s wider push towards sustainability as the new engine for jobs and growth, encouraging more entrepreneurs, banks and industry to transition towards greener ways of doing business.

Coming on the heels of the recently unveiled Singapore Green Plan 2030, which charts a new course for Singapore’s sustainability agenda, the event will delve into the ways firms can create green jobs, buildings, and infrastructure to help transform how people live and work in support of the city-state’s sustainability commitments.

 

It is important for business, government and sustainability experts to come together and discuss how we can achieve a sustainable and inclusive recovery post-Covid, and create decent, inclusive and sustainable work for all. – Ben Chong, managing director, Ricoh Singapore

 

“The pandemic has disproportionately impacted those with limited digital access, lower skills and education, and who are of lower income. As countries enforced lockdowns and shuttered economies, these communities have been less able to continue studying and working from home, thus widening the social and economic inequality gaps,” said Ben Chong, managing director at Ricoh Singapore.

“As such, it is important for business, government and sustainability experts to come together and discuss how we can achieve a sustainable and inclusive recovery post-Covid, and create decent, inclusive and sustainable work for all,” he said.

“While it takes collaborative efforts to overcome inequity, the onus is on companies to ensure safe and fair work conditions for their employees,” he continued. Besides putting measures in place to curb the spread of the virus, this means using technology to remove barriers and ensure fair treatment and equal access to opportunities for everyone, he added.

Covid-19 has highlighted how dependent the global economy has become on digital technology. As the world emerges from the crisis, the shift in work patterns is likely to keep driving the surge in demand for digital services, said Chong.

“As the world recovers from the pandemic, we are slowly but surely returning to the office. However, the next generation of workers will require more flexibility in terms of working hours and ways of working,” he observed.

“As a digital services company, we are empowering businesses and their employees to work better and smarter with secure, innovative digital office tools and technologies so they can work seamlessly wherever they are,” he said.

The Ricoh Eco Action Day Forum is one of Singapore’s key sustainability gatherings. It is part of Ricoh’s larger Eco Action Day Campaign, which encourages individuals and organisations in Singapore to embrace a greener future.

 

 

Source Eco Business

‘No time for invention’: path to net-zero is there for the taking, Irena chief says

Posted on by dishanth
‘No time for invention’: path to net-zero is there for the taking, Irena chief says

“There is no time to reinvent the wheel.”

This is according to Francesco La Camera, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency, based in Abu Dhabi.

Proven technology for net-zero energy production already largely exists today but it will take political will and nation-led action to reverse climate change, he told The National.

Mr La Camera took up his post in 2019 and is a little over halfway through his four-year term. He joined Irena at a decisive time for climate change and the achievement of the Paris Agreement. He is tasked by the agency to “redefine the structure and operations” to keep its 180 member countries actively engaged in the fight.

The inter-governmental body, now 12 years old, promotes renewable energy and technology and helps countries plan and carry out energy transitions.

“At the end of this decade, the world will know if the Paris Agreement will be reached or not,” said Mr La Camera. Political will around the climate change agenda “is much better” than when he took up his post two years ago, he said.

‘When we look at implementation, we notice it is very far from what is written down on paper”
Franceso La Camera, director general of Irena

Global renewable energy capacity rose by 10.3 per cent to 2,799 gigawatts in 2020, according to Irena. China and the US, the world’s two biggest economies, were the best-performing countries in terms of renewable energy growth.

Globally, more than 260 gigawatts of wind capacity were added, a 50 per cent increase compared with 2019. Solar energy made up more than 48 per cent of last year’s renewable capacity additions, accounting for 127 gigawatts.

“The reality is overcoming my expectations,” Mr La Camera said of the renewable energy capacity added in 2020.

Over time, countries are also increasing ownership of their climate agendas.

A key piece of the Paris Agreement are the “nationally determined contributions”, or NDCs. These are plans that outline climate actions and policies that each nation aims to enforce in response to climate change.

Central to the UN’s plan for the NDCs was the concept of national determination. But “a failure of the NDC was the big role of the consultants”, as well as the lack of real buy-in from governments, said Mr La Camera.

“When we look at implementation, we notice it is very far from what is written down on paper,” he said.

To that end, Irena is increasing its efforts to tailor recommendations and projects for regions and nations. In addition to its work with net-zero scenario planning, “there is support for national planning. Doing it in a way that we don’t do consultancy, we work together. It is really important that the planning is owned”.

As an agency that works among governments and the private sector, not as a political organisation, he said the rigour and objectivity of Irena’s analysis is what sets it apart from a crowded field of players aiming to set the agenda.

The “future of the agency”, Mr La Camera said, is on an online platform Irena unveiled in 2019 to connect renewable energy project owners, potential financiers or investors, services providers and technology suppliers.

Mr La Camera said the marketplace has fielded more than 200 ideas for projects since its start.

He likened it to zooming in a camera – from the global analysis done by the agency’s number crunchers, primarily based in Bonn, Germany, down to the planning and financing of a renewable energy project on the ground and monitoring its output once operational.

He pointed to the recent inauguration of one of the largest solar projects in West Africa and the first renewable energy complex in Togo, which became fully operational earlier this month.

 

The Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed solar photovoltaic power plant in Togo, one of the largest in West Africa, has the capacity to provide electricity to about 160,000 homes and small businesses. Courtesy: Abu Dhabi Fund for Development

 

The 50-megawatt Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed solar power plant, financed under the Irena-ADFD Project Facility, has the capacity to provide electricity to about 160,000 homes and small businesses, significantly reducing the country’s dependence on firewood, charcoal and fuel imports for energy consumption.

“This project is showing that in Africa this [energy transition] is possible,” said Mr La Camera.

Abu Dhabi financed the project and is a climate leader in the region, placing itself “in the middle” of the climate conversation, he said.

Over the past six years, the UAE has led the way in driving down the price of solar energy through some of the most competitive bids on utility-scale projects. Mr La Camera said he believes the region can help lead again in lowering the cost of hydrogen as well.

Record low tariffs for solar power projects among oil-exporting states of the Middle East could allow for the development of low-cost green hydrogen, which refers to the clean fuel produced entirely from renewable sources.

“Renewables are the cheapest source of power,” he said.

Declining costs for renewables are a challenge to coal’s dominance as a cheap source of fuel, particularly in developing economies.

Irena is also engaging with the world’s biggest economies. India, Indonesia, the US and China are of particular interest because they are “countries that are more like continents”.

This month, Irena and China announced that they will prepare a comprehensive energy transition road map to help China achieve its medium- and long-term national renewable and decarbonisation goals.

China, currently the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and biggest oil importer, pledged to hit its carbon dioxide emissions peak by 2030 and has vowed to become carbon-neutral before 2060.

Mr La Camera said the agency is “quite confident” in China’s ability to hit its goals.

Globally, Irena forecasts that the transition to net-zero carbon emissions will be dominated by renewable power from wind and solar, green hydrogen and bioenergy.

 

A combination of different technology is needed to keep the planet on a 1.5°C climate pathway – nothing entirely new is needed, but incremental improvements to efficiency and the will of markets and governments can go a long way in this “decade of action”.

Mr La Camera is also a firm believer that the market will not turn back. Investors and the private sector are anticipating the energy transition and are actively looking for investment, allocating capital away from fossil fuels and towards energy transition technology and sources such as renewables.

An analysis of the S&P Clean Energy Index in 2020 by Irena found that clean energy stocks were up by 138 per cent, as compared to the fossil fuel-heavy S&P Energy Index which was down by 37 per cent.

“Will climate change? The process is unstoppable,” said Mr La Camera.

But he said one questions lingers: “will we be in time to win the fight?

 

 

Source The National News

 

Climate justice and human rights movements must go hand-in-hand

Posted on by dishanth
Climate justice and human rights movements must go hand-in-hand

Both the Paris Agreement and the advancements towards mandatory due diligence have the potential for a huge, transformational effect across our economy.

The climate justice and human rights movements have been on separate paths for far too long. Both have made considerable progress in the past decade, but if we are going to see the type of transformational change that our times require in either, the two must come together.

Recent advancements indicate that this is starting to take place.

The climate movement reached a watershed moment when the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016. Over 196 governments around the world set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, an unprecedented challenge of coordination and action.

They also sent a bold message to actors across all sectors – from finance and business, to civil society and philanthropy – that it was time for action.

 

For instance, a company’s failure to decarbonise could be seen as contributing to human rights and environmental violations under a mandatory due diligence regime.

 

Concurrently, the field of business and human rights rapidly accelerated in 2010 when the United Nations endorsed the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), a framework to prevent and address the risk of adverse impacts of business activities on human rights.

Governments have been encouraged to translate the UNGPs into national action plans or roadmaps. At the same time, demands on the corporate sector to implement human rights due diligence, a central component of the UNGPs, intensified.

Lawmakers saw an opportunity to recognise the expectation of due diligence behaviour on the part of companies, and governments started legal mandates, including the French Devoir de Vigilance law of 2017, the Dutch Child Labour Law of 2019.

Most recently, the European Parliament indicated through a large majority the likelihood of adopting an EU-wide mandatory due diligence law that would cover human rights and environmental issues.

Both the Paris Agreement and the advancements towards mandatory due diligence have the potential for a huge, transformational effect across our economy.

As governments and the private sector race to decarbonise and minimise their harmful greenhouse gas emissions, legal requirements on mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence are being instituted that can themselves spur this action through incentives and sanctions.

For instance, a company’s failure to decarbonise could be seen as contributing to human rights and environmental violations under a mandatory due diligence regime.

The researcher Chiara Macchi has termed this merger “climate due diligence” and argues it as an emerging notion requiring corporations to assess and address risk, as well as to integrate the climate change dimension into vigilance planning, corporate reporting, external communication and investment decisions.

This concept is being tested in real-time in France. Oil giant Total is being sued by French nonprofit and law firm Sherpa together with 14 French local authorities and four NGOs.

The suit alleges that Total’s failure to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its operations is a violation of the French Devoir de Vigilance law, France’s seminal legislation that required a duty of care from French companies for human rights and environmental harms.

Sandra Cossart, Sherpa’s Director, said: “This law specifically obliges companies to prevent the risks of human rights and environmental violations caused by their activities, and to do so in an appropriate manner. Total is legally required to identify the risks resulting from its contribution to global warming and to take the necessary measures to reduce its emissions.”

(Editor’s note: After the lawsuit was filed in January last year, Total said it regretted the legal action taken, adding it was working in compliance with national legal standards. The case is ongoing.)

The same French law is also being applied to pursue broader climate justice and just transition issues by representatives of the community of Unión Hidalgo in Mexico. The civil lawsuit against Electricité de France (EDF)’s wind park project focuses on the non-compliance of EDF with its vigilance duties to respect human rights by seeking free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous Union Hidalgo community.

(Editor’s note: The EDF did not respond to a request for comment by the Thomson Reuters Foundation about the lawsuit).

The urgency of addressing the climate crisis is clear, and avenues to accelerate needed transformation in our economy are expanding, including through legal mechanisms like mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence.

If Europe moves to a standardised mandatory due diligence approach with a right of action, this could be an incredible tool to shift momentum on corporations in addressing their greenhouse gas emissions. Two distinct paths, the Paris Agreement and the UNGPs and the resulting momentum towards mandatory human rights due diligence, are indeed converging, and this couldn’t happen soon enough.

Amol Mehra is the Director of Industry Transformation at Laudes Foundation, while Ilan Vuddamalay is a Senior Programme Manager for Labour Rights.

This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate.

 

 

Source Eco Business

Climate change: Temperature analysis shows UN goals ‘within reach’

Posted on by dishanth
Climate change: Temperature analysis shows UN goals ‘within reach’

The Climate Action Tracker group looked at new climate promises from China and other nations, along with the carbon plans of US President-elect Joe Biden.

These commitments would mean the rise in world temperatures could be held to 2.1C by the end of this century.

Previous estimates indicated up to 3C of heating, with disastrous impacts.

But the experts are worried the long-term optimism is not matched by short-term plans to cut CO2.

For more than a decade, researchers from the Climate Action Tracker have kept a close eye on what countries’ collective carbon-cutting pledges mean for our warming world.

After the failed Copenhagen summit in 2009, the group estimated that global temperatures would rise by 3.5C by the end of this century.

 

Source: Climate Action Tracker Source: BBC

 

But the creation in 2015 of the Paris climate agreement, which was designed to avoid dangerous warming of the Earth, made a considerable impact. As a result of the international deal, countries slowly started to switch away from fossil fuels.

In September this year, the group concluded that the world was heading for warming of around 2.7C by 2100.

This figure was still far above the 2C goal contained in the wording of the Paris pact, and nowhere near the more challenging 1.5C target that scientists endorsed as the threshold to destructive warming in 2018.

Their new “optimistic analysis” now suggests a rise of 2.1C by 2100.

 

Xi Jinping remotely addressing the UN on the question of climate change. Source: REUTERS

 

So what’s really changed?

The past three months have seen some key developments.

In September, China’s President Xi Jinping told the UN that his country will reach net zero emissions by 2060, and that its emissions will peak before 2030. According to the CAT researchers, this could reduce warming by 0.2 to 0.3C by the end of the century.

Japan and South Korea have both followed suit, pledging to reach net zero by 2050. South Africa and Canada have also announced their own net zero targets.

The other significant change is the election of Joe Biden in the US.

 

Source: Climate Action Tracker / Source: BBC

 

Tackling climate change is a major part of his agenda. He has promised to bring the US to net zero emissions by 2050. That move would reduce global temperatures by 0.1C by 2100.

“We now have north of 50% of global emissions covered by big countries with a zero emissions by mid-century goal,” said Bill Hare from Climate Analytics, who helped lead the Climate Action Tracker analysis.

“When you add all that up, along with what a whole bunch of other countries are doing, then you move the temperature dial from around 2.7C to really quite close to two degrees.”

“It’s still a fair way off from the Paris Agreement target, but it is a really major development,” he told BBC News.

 

President-elect Joe Biden has selected former US Secretary of State John Kerry to be his climate envoy. Source: REUTERS

 

Potential difficulties

The CAT researchers say they have taken a fairly conservative approach but they readily acknowledge that their optimistic analysis comes with some major caveats.

The biggest problem as they see it, is that the near-term plans to cut carbon by 2030 are just not up to the job.

“Countries have not yet adjusted their short-term actions to be on a pathway towards the long-term target,” said Niklas Höhne, from the NewClimate Institute, who also works on the Climate Action Tracker.

“Long-term targets are easier, they are far away. But short-term actions are happening right now and they affect citizens, they affect voters. And that’s why this is much more difficult,” he told BBC News.

 

Politicians have been under pressure to act on climate change from protestors, including Greta Thunberg. Source: REUTERS

 

The countries that have signed up to the Paris agreement are expected to lodge new carbon-cutting plans for 2030 by the end of this year.

It’s expected that a number will do so, including the UK and the EU.

But there are several countries who are still reluctant to set goals, and many poorer nations are still looking to invest in coal.

“There are countries that still remain bad actors, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia, Russia, and a few others,” said Bill Hare.

“And we also have a pipeline of coal plants in the region where I’m working now in Asia. It has not collapsed, it has not gone away, so yes, there’s much to be concerned about. And there’s much that can go wrong.”

 

A hydrogen-powered train – the green form of the gas could help decarbonise transport

 

What about the response to Covid-19?

According to observers, the response of countries to the Covid crisis is a huge opportunity to focus their short-term spending on renewable energy and increased decarbonisation.

“The pandemic opened a window to not only get countries to outline their long-term goal, but to actually move onto the right path so that they can actually achieve the long term goal,” said Dr Maisa Rojas, who is the director of the Center for Climate and Resilience Research at the University of Chile in Santiago.

“Are we going to harness that opportunity? My impression is that many, including the EU, are harnessing it.”

 

 

By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent

Source: BBC

Sustainable Technology: The Best Examples of Implementation

Posted on by dishanth
Sustainable Technology: The Best Examples of Implementation

“Not a day passes for me without seeing the many ways in which digital technology can advance peace, human rights and sustainable development for all.”

António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations

 

The era of green tech is on the rise now, going neck and neck with an uptick of innovative digital transformation. The integration of both, however, has rarely been an option ever before. And only in recent years there has been explosive growth in attempting to combine digital technology and sustainability. That said, the main challenge of today’s business underlies in finding the balance between these two approaches.

On a large scale, every business involves digital processes in one form or another in order to meet the specific individual needs of an enterprise. Consequently, an overall digitalization provides a great opportunity for achieving sustainability goals.

 

What is digital sustainability?

Generally speaking, the concept is defined as a set of ecologically safe and stable factors and principles that refer to the long-term perspective for social and economic development. These initiatives are realized through a wide range of digital technology implementation.

Technically speaking, every digital business wants to make a difference so it is nowadays opting for becoming environmentally sustainable. On the other hand, a tremendous necessity to think about the future of the planet and humanity arises as far as the eye can reach. An already-changing climate, the overconsumption of nonrenewable natural resources, biodiversity losses, extensive deforestation, extreme natural disasters, massive carbon dioxide emission, poor air, and water quality are the real challenges that are impossible to face alone. Here is how sustainability can benefit a business.

 

 

How digital trends impact sustainable technology growth

For sure, all the popular tech trends like AI, ML, Internet of Things, Big Data, edge computing, robotic process automation, and others come to ease our lives. That is why average users as well as large-scale enterprises pursue these innovations and changes. For instance, artificial intelligence has been the key to complex data analysis and management aimed at sustainable decision making in such areas as climate change, air, and water security, biodiversity conservation, disaster resilience, etc.

The potential digital technology investments are estimated in billions of dollars annually, for example, experts from IDC predict that worldwide expenditure on AI systems alone is predicted to reach up to $79,2 billion by 2022.

Obviously, becoming sustainable today stands shoulder to shoulder with typical business aspects, like increasing revenues, reducing costs and providing positive customer experience.

 

Source: https://www.byteant.com/

 

Sustainable Technology: 10 steps going ahead of time

All countries are concerned about sustainable global actions and generate consistent strategies to fulfill the commitments of the Paris Agreement. The required steps should incorporate:

  • efficient natural resource consumption
  • mobilizing financial sources
  • the shift from fossil fuel toward perpetual energy
  • climate change risk mitigation
  • supply chain improvement
  • across-industry transformation, including IT
  • keeping the balance between the urban and rural economy
  • taking nature-oriented solutions
  • vulnerable groups and areas protection
  • minimizing emission and pollution levels

Presumably, the stakeholders of top worldwide companies feel their responsibility to provide and thus leverage from sustainable digital technology so ahead-of-time enterprises have already taken steps towards becoming clean and green.

 

5 great examples of sustainable technology implementation

Let’s have a closer look at some sustainable transformation examples and companies that successfully reap from clean technology.

 

  • Walmart, one of the biggest retail corporations represents multiple deployments of digital transformations that work to eliminate wastage and energy usage and to provide supply chain control. First of all, numerous built-in IoT sensors and shelf-scanning robots prove to be sustainable in terms of energy savings and customer experience. Also, Walmart is a successful e-retailer that provides efficient online services, like Mobile Express Returns and QR code scanning. It enables their customers to shop staying at home thus diminishes transport usage and CO2 emissions.Walmart is constantly developing innovative ideas that can be implemented not only within the retail branch. In 2018 the corporation patented the idea of a robobee – a self-manned drone for pollinating crops equipped with cameras and sensors. This tool also makes it possible to detect agricultural problems and get more sufficient control over the Walmart food supply chain that, consequently, minimizes food waste.

 

 

  • Patagonia is a sustainable clothing company with $800 million revenue that can boast with using organic materials, selling worn and recrafted outfits and organic provision. Also, the company provides worldwide fundraising through online banking and keeps an online blog The Cleanest Line where articles are dedicated to environmental crises and solutions. Being sustainably conscious, Patagonia has implemented a number of innovations in company management, such asrecycled construction materials with laminated coated windows that prevent overheating

    solar panels with photosensors and motion detectors

    LED lighting, new systems of heating, ventilation and air conditioning controlled by a smart grid

    Moreover, the company has got an AI central workstation that automatically controls all operational systems from an indoor environment to outdoor irrigation. Bathrooms and toilets are equipped with water control sensors. Even the landscape and plants around the buildings are chosen and designed to diminish water usage. Workers are encouraged to use electric cars and get financial compensation for coming to work by bike or public transport.

 

 

  • Mega City of NEOM definitely deserves the name of a sustainability dream where all possible and impossible technologies merge to serve humanity. NEOM represents how far one can go with incredible imagination and substantial finance. The mindset of building a sustainable megacity was born in Saudi Arabia which is ready to invest $500 billion into digital innovations run with the help of renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.NEOM is positioned as a future home city and workplace for more than a million inhabitants from all over the world. The implementation of ambiguous digital transformations, like IoT and AL software, is to control environmental conditions within the megacity. For example, saving water, especially in limited desert surroundings, becomes accessible due to smart sensors for water management and rainwater collection. Moreover, in NEOM the average temperature is expected to be lower and the wind speed adapted if necessary. The project’s first results are expected in several years looming at the 2030 horizon.

 

 

  • Microsoft as one of the leading software providers moves towards reducing its environmental impact and at the same time helps other companies turn “green”. Noteworthy, Microsoft’s cloud computing has already empowered energy efficiency and material waste reduction. The increased accessibility of serverless and open-source software minimizes cooling processes, ventilation, and air conditioning in fewer data centers. Adding power management function to Microsoft products enabled smart energy consumption on end devices, like monitors and hard drives.Explore how Microsoft uses artificial intelligence to create a complete directory of US forests. As a result, we can better manage them for a sustainable future.

 

 

  • To achieve global sustainability goals, sustainability technology companies of all sizes should work cooperatively, like Microsoft and Ørsted. The latter is a well-known wind technology and bioenergy provider from Denmark. Their decision to unite enables both sides to successfully meet environmental challenges. Ørsted’s greatest striving is to build “an entirely green world” with a 100 % carbon-free energy supplement by 2025. The company is diminishing oil- and coal-based activity in favor of clean energy systems. Ørsted owns more than a thousand offshore wind turbines equipped with sensors that seamlessly generate valuable data. Microsoft advanced predictive analytics and AI technology is part of Ørsted’s digital strategy of sustainable data transformation for saving time and resources. In 2020, Ørsted was ranked as the most sustainable company in the world.

 

 

What’s next

There is hardly an organization that doesn’t realize the necessity of a sustainability approach. The worldwide decision-making entities, such as the World Health Organization or the UN, are deeply concerned about ecological problems and social inequality more than ever before. Immediate measures have to be made for global financial inclusion and political involvement. The price is high but is worth paying when human well-being is at stake.

 

 

By Valeriy Ilchenko, CEO of ByteAnt
Source: ByteAnt

UN’s World Food Programme Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Posted on by dishanth
UN’s World Food Programme Wins Nobel Peace Prize

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) for its “efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday.

The win draws attention to the organization at a time when the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis have increased the number of people at risk from starvation worldwide. At the same time, UN organizations including the WFP have experienced a dip in funding in recent years as countries, including the U.S., reduce the money they give to international bodies, CNN reported.

 

 

“With this year’s award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger,” committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said when she announced the prize.

The WFP was founded in 1961, according to CNN. In 2019, it provided food assistance to 97 million people in 88 countries, the most since 2012. It is also the primary UN body in charge of meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating world hunger, the Nobel Committee pointed out, but that goal has gotten harder than ever to reach in recent years.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute director Dan Smith told CNN that the number of people experiencing hunger had begun to increase in the last four years after decades of decline, largely because of climate change.

The situation has gotten even worse because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Nobel Committee noted. In countries like Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, South Sudan and Burkina Faso, the pandemic has combined with armed conflicts to put significantly more people at risk from starvation.

WFP head David Beasley told NPR earlier this year that 135 million people had been at risk for starvation in 2020 before the emergence of COVID-19. After its spread, that number had shot up to almost a quarter of a billion.

“In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Programme has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts,” the committee said. “As the organisation itself has stated, ‘Until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos.'”

Beasley said he was “speechless” in the face of the award and credited the organization’s staff for the win.

“It’s because of the WFP family,” Beasley said in a video shared on Twitter. “They’re out there in the most difficult, complex places in the world. Whether it’s war, conflict, climate extremes — it doesn’t matter. They’re out there, and they deserve this award.”

 

 

 

 

Attenborough says $US500b a year needed to save earth

Posted on by dishanth
Attenborough says $US500b a year needed to save earth

Sir David, whose new film A Life on Our Planet documents the dangers posed by climate change and the extinction of species, issued the call as the United Nations convened a one-day summit aimed at galvanising action to protect wildlife.

“Our natural world is under greater pressure now than at any time in human history, and the future of the entire planet, on which every single one of us depends, is in grave jeopardy,” Sir David, 94, said in a statement.

“We still have an opportunity to reverse catastrophic biodiversity loss, but time is running out.”

Opening the summit in New York, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that a million species were at risk of extinction and that climate change and the loss of biodiversity were “destroying earth’s web of life”.

“We are part of that fragile web and we need it to be healthy so we and future generations may thrive,” Mr Guterres said.

The call to redirect financing away from fossil fuels and other polluting industries and into locally led conservation was launched by environmental group Fauna & Flora International and backed by more than 130 organisations.

conservation each year, but studies show that hundreds of billions of dollars may be needed to save ecosystems from collapse.

Britain, Canada and others joined the European Union on Monday in pledging to protect 30 per cent of their land and seas by 2030.

Australia, along with the United States and China declined to join the pledge.

UN officials hope to secure a global agreement on that target at a major round of negotiations on biodiversity due to take place in China in 2021.

 

 

By David Twomey
Source: Eco News