Sustainable Fashion: the movement. from Greta Eagan on Vimeo.

Idea submitted by Gretchen Eagan

Background

What is sustainable fashion? Why should we care about it? Is it just a trend? How are brands, designers and retailers practicing and developing sustainable fashion?

…And, can a blueprint be created to act as a guideline for fashion retailers to clearly identify an area or all areas to engage in sustainability?

Over the past 5 months, with intensive literature review, attendance of numerous conferences and one-to-one interviews with industry leaders in fashion and sustainability, I can finally answer all of the above questions- including the last one.

Born from the aforementioned research, the Sustainable Fashion Blueprint is a newly suggested model which provides an overview of six areas in which sustainable practices can be implemented. This clear layout allows brands, retailers and designers to easily identify areas where they can engage in sustainability practices- focusing on one area or incorporating all of the areas to create a complete sustainability loop.

Watch this short film, constructed from the research of this project, to better understand what sustainable fashion is and how the Sustainable Fashion Blueprint can assist in bringing eco-fashion practices mainstream

Sustainable fashion is a movement- not a trend, and companies will fall behind if they do not actively engage in the sustainability revolution. At this point in time, there is no alternative to acting sustainably going forward, to ensure that we manage our resources in an ecological, environmental and economic way. With its propensity to change, fashion is the perfect host for such a strong and all- encompassing movement.

How we decide to participate in the movement is uncertain but crucial. What is certain, is that if we do not change the way we produce, design, source, use and discard our textiles and resources, fashion itself will cease to exist, along with the creativity, identity, expression and innovation that accompanies it.

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” We all have the opportunity to partake in the Sustainable Movement and to shape the future we want for our future and the future of our children. Perhaps putting something like the Sustainable Fashion Blueprint into place is a first step.

Cities are for people

This YGL GRI develops collaborative strategies for promoting efficient urban mobility (e.g. battery standards, cross-industry collaboration, effective multi-modal transportation etc.) How would CO2 efficient urban means of transport ideally be if they were rethought systemically? How do we improve safety for all (motorized vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians) and reduce localized concentrated air and noise pollution and yet reduce congestion and travel time? Can we create powerful alternatives by cross-industry collaborative efforts, using existing technologies?

“Our cities are becoming more and more crowded. A city needs cars like a fish needs a bicycle primarily because you can’t use all that speed because of the many obstacles. (…) in 20-30 years people will not primarily use cars to get around in the cities”. Dean Kamen

Background

In January, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, United Kingdom Prime Minister and Group of 20 Chairman Gordon Brown appealed for “business to formulate with us the economic and policy conditions that will incentivize their investment and that will bring the low-carbon economy into being.” To this end, he called on the Forum to facilitate a “new business-led mission in support of an ambitious climate agreement in Copenhagen, focused on the policies that will lead to business investment in a low-carbon recovery.”

Between 1990 and 2007, transport emissions increased by a third while emissions from other sectors decreased; the share of transport in total emissions rose from 1990 to 2007. More than half the global population now lives in urban environments, by 2030 an estimated 60% and by 2050 a whopping 80%. Although this is a quick and dirty approximation it does indicate the need for rethinking Urban Mobility.

The problem is even more pressing in developing countries. With an increase in population and a steady stream of people moving into cities, there is a huge pressure on mobility infrastructure in cities which will become even more acute in the coming decades. The developing world, or „first billion‟ and their cities have evolved in a particular direction in the 20th century. It is absolutely impractical, unviable and impossible that the „next six billion‟ representing the developing world can follow a similar „car-centric‟ model. There is a crying need for integrated system thinking for the (mega) cities of the future to work out mobility requirements vis-á-vis individual, city, and environment cost.

Together cities are already bigger than any individual market or alliance.

Meanwhile, urban populations are becoming increasingly uniform, as a consequence of globalization. Already, cities have more challenges in common than countries have with each other and have less difference – no foreign policy and military and such. Inter-city governance structures are slowly forming. The need to reduce CO2 emissions, a global, urban market, and new, altered traffic habits have combined to contribute to the generation of new needs and new products, under the name of “Urban Mobility”.

Are there opportunities for private – public partnership to respectively tackle urban CO2 emissions and leveraging a new market?

Idea

The main idea is to create an Urban Mobility authority in order to connect the stakeholders within urban transport and create common standards and promote a holistic approach.
Issue

Decreases CO2 emission globally, harmful pollution locally and improves lifestyle, security and health issues in cities.

Impact

It creates an Urban Mobility authority allowing for the creation of new product typologies, systems and business models for urban transport.

Criteria

The success criteria would be to create an urban mobility authority whose initiatives spur cross- disciplinary cooperation. The ambition is to find a pilot city that would implement the policy recommendations.

Challenges

To make people within very old and stable silos communicate. No immediate authority on the subject. To overcome stakeholder‟s short sited self-interest.

Change
• We need to define urban mobility as unique field rather than a subset of ecology, urbanity, transport
• We need to prioritize the greening of cities • We need to rethink business models / incentives to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration
• We need to integrate existing infrastructure, public and private offerings and potentially smart grids
• We need to cherry pick best features from private and public transport respectively and have a place for all relevant areas of multi-modal transportation including motorized and non-motorized transportation
• We need to address distinctly different demographic needs across cities and map-out city typologies
• We need to integrate new social behavior and tools into commuting • We need to apply off the shelf technologies to spur new solution • We need to bring together distinctly different and relevant fields of expertise and industries

Leaders

Siddhartha Lal, slal@eicher.in, +91 11 41437616
Jens Martin Skibsted, jm@skibstedid.com, +45 28 14 49 18

Background

The ocean crisis is as important and urgent as global warming. But most people are totally unaware. The ocean plays a critical role in making Earth habitable by providing essential goods and services for hundreds of millions of people, including food security, oxygen, carbon sequestration, and climate regulation. But climate change, overfishing, and pollution are creating ‘the perfect storm’ that is devastating the ability of the ocean to function. This task force aims to help restore the health and the productivity of the ocean, for the benefit of humans and life on the planet.

Ninety percent of the large ocean predators – such as sharks, tuna and cod – are gone, and at current fishing rates all fisheries will have collapsed by 2048. Twenty percent of the coral reefs of the world have disappeared, and 70% of living coral is predicted to die by 2020. There are 300 dead zones downstream of important agricultural and urban areas. And carbon emissions are turning the ocean more acidic, with potentially catastrophic consequences across the global food chain. This also impacts human health and the economy. For instance, the mismanagement of marine fisheries results in a $50 billion annual loss – equivalent to more than half the value of the global seafood trade. Large fish such as tuna and swordfish have too much mercury in their flesh. And people are losing their jobs because the fisheries that supported them are collapsing.

The good news is that there are economic solutions that are scalable and replicable so that we can restore ocean productivity within our lifetime. Therefore we propose to establish a global policy to restore ocean health and productivity. This global ocean policy should include the following steps:

Leaders

Enric Sala, National Geographic Society
Kristin Rechberger, YGL GRI Steering Committee

Looking For

• We need to build a global network of leaders and stakeholders, and everyone can be a partner in a different way. We know what the solutions are; we now need to implement them at the global scale. We look for:
• Access to business and political leaders – WEF members can become regional ocean leaders and engage key regional players
• Commitments from leaders to develop national ocean policies
• Funding for development and implementation of strategies to reduce our ocean footprint, including the creation of marine reserves for the benefit of people
• Engagement from technology leaders and new ideas on how to use technology to build a global ocean constituency and improve governance

Challenge for the Future:

Step 1: Who can calculate and report on the energy requirements and mechanical specifics for boiling water using a parabolic domed dish (either top or both top & bottom, focus the sun’s rays) that is sized so that the available solar energy can boil the water in the vessel?

Step 2: Supplemental power grid (solar, gravity feed, etc., it has to work unconnected from any external power source) to power the distilled water collection to bulk containment as well as do remote descaling coordination for each vessel)

Step 3: Source funding and manufacturing; implement a field trial. Using DNA as the original thought basis for this, the overall system theme is: using thousands of “too-small” units to achieve something useful. Using biomimetics (or “cultural mimetics”) allows us to tap into the expressions of natural genius we encounter every day.

Originally described here and submitted by Matt Weilert.

Idea Submitted by Steve Poppe

Background

We need global heroes in the area of planet sustainability. Perhaps, rather than Nobel, we need a new sponsor and award name. We’re not moving fast enough and as a planet we are a bit rudderless.

The Thomas Malthus Award?

Looking For

Have ideas to turn this into something? Leave your comments below!

Skeletons of Australia’s iconic Red Gum trees haunt the shrinking shores of Lake Pamamaroo near Menindee, New South Wales. Photo copyright J.Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue

Background

The Challenge
It is widely accepted that the climatic change that we will see in much of the first half of this century is already locked in to the climate system. Political effort must continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but we must also prepare for what is to come. We will see significant increases in water scarcity on top of that already predicted (from 700m people now to 3bn people by 2025 according to the UN), greater intense weather events such as floods, and a decline in water quality as groundwater supplies become polluted. These issues will exacerbate the development challenges we already face.

The Project
Raising awareness and improving preparedness for climate change. We will collect case studies from YGLs, their organisations and other sources (e.g. WEF water project etc) regarding how people are preparing for climate change. We will then compare the interlinkages between issues such as water, agriculture and energy, and use the insights to challenge others who are not yet prepared, to act now.

The Focus Areas
With an initial focus on water, the critical resource through which many of us will experience climate change, the project will immediately connect to the linked issues of agriculture, energy planning, migration and potentially into public health. In particular we will draw out the interlinkages and interdependencies between these issues, which are not well considered.

Collaborators and Connections
The project will draw on new insight from the WEF water project, the 2030 Water Resources Group and Circle of Blue. The project will also use the WEF and Circle of Blue websites to disseminate the case studies developed and challenges identified.

The project will link with the GRI sustainability cluster, the WEF low carbon task force and will provide material for the website linked to the new WEF Water Book, to be published July 2010.

Looking For

Share with us the story of how you are preparing for climate change. Which aspects are you focusing on? What will be the greatest risk for you? How much will it cost to adapt for climate change? What should other people like you also be doing?

Leaders

Andy Wales, Global Head of Sustainable Development SABMiller plc, YGL
Dominic Waughray, Director of Environment, WEF
J. Carl Ganter, Director, Circle of Blue

Case Study

The 2030 Water Resources Group ‘Charting our Water Future’ report* reveals that South Africa already faces a water demand – supply gap of 17% by 2030. However, if potential climate change is added in to the scenario then this gap grows to 24%. Climate change creates a compelling dynamic for action to secure water resources in South Africa more quickly. South Africa will have to resolve tough trade-offs between agriculture, key industrial activities such as mining and power generation, and large and growing urban centres.

This gap can be addressed in a variety of ways, from greater efficiency of water use in agriculture and industry, to better water planning. It is critical to accelerate dialogues between these groups to reach agreement on the contributions each can make to deal with the looming water challenge. This conversation began at the WEF Africa summit in June 2008 and continues within South Africa as well as at Davos 2010 and beyond. As an example, SAB Ltd, the South African division of brewer SABMiller, has set a target to improve its water efficiency by 25% by 2015 and is working with WWF in the Water Futures Partnership, which focuses on shared watershed risk between businesses, communities and the environment in South Africa and around the world.

The 2030 Water Resources Group was formed in 2008 to contribute new insights to the increasingly critical issue of water resource scarcity. Members include McKinsey & Company, the World Bank Group, and a consortium of business partners: The Barilla Group, The Coca Cola Company, Nestlé SA, New Holland Agriculture, SABMiller plc, Standard Chartered and Syngenta AG.

By creating a super fund that sits outside of the current economic and political model not only can the issues be resolved far faster It solves the long standing flaw that is the externalization of nature within our economic mode.