Carbon Quilt

Carbon Quilt is a prototype visualisation tool designed by Carbon Visuals Ltd to raise awareness of the impact of carbon emissions by showing the size of a carbon footprint that otherwise would be invisible. In an attempt to overcome the "out of sight, out of mind" syndrome and raise awareness of the 80 million tonnes of CO2 put into the atmosphere every year, they came up with the concept of the Carbon Quilt to show the depth of emissions that would cover the earth if all the CO2 settled at ground level. This can then be divided up into "patches" to show how much different countries or activities contribute.


As well as the "visualiser" tool that you can use to explore the carbon impact around the world, Carbon Visuals provide a number of services and have a number of other visualisations and interactive tools showing the carbon footprint of various installations or activities.

This depiction of the CO2 emitted by Stoke Newington School every year is the result of a project where pupils explored compelling ways of depicting the carbon footprint of the school. This image shows the depth of CO2 generated in a year if it were all placed in an area the size of a nearby park that everyone knows.

See their flickr photo stream for more.

This visualisation shows the annual carbon quilt produced by the UK in one year; an area significantly bigger than the UK itself. As Carbon Visuals explain "The carbon quilt is the layer of carbon dioxide made up of the whole world's emissions. In 2006, we emitted enough carbon dioxide to form a layer 31 mm deep, so the depth of the quilt over a timescale of a year is 31 mm. The emissions for a day make a layer one 365th as deep. Patches reveal particular contributions to the whole world's emissions. Their areas vary, but their depth is always the same as the whole layer - the quilt depth."


Visit the carbon quilt gallery on their website for more visualisation examples in both image and video form.


This video on YouTube is particularly striking and shows a real time animation of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2006 (957 tonnes per second) in terms of filling the space occupied by the UN Building in New York every half a second.

If you are interested in Carbon Quilt and have ideas of your own, why not visit their feedback forum, see what others are thinking and share your thoughts?

Visualising World Statistics

A new way to look at the world is provided by Mapping Worlds. Select the statistic you are interested in and it resizes the countries to be in proportion. For a dynamic map of the States of the USA take a look here: show.mappingworlds.com/usa/
Use the animated map below to visualise the worlds resources and other statistics from coal or oil reserves to population to CO2 emissions to GDP.

You need flash installed to get the above map to work. If you haven't got flash you can see the statistics for CO2 emissions below:

Trading Carbon Offsets for a Brighter Planet

Once governments realised the need to reduce carbon emissions they then had to face the fact that in many industries, organisations would simply be unable to reduce their emissions sufficiently without suffering a massive impact on their efficiency or profitability. The consequent impact on the economy would be unacceptable. A means was needed to create a transition from the current state of industry where carbon emissions were unregulated and unacceptably high to a future state where carbon emissions are controlled and within acceptable limits.

Various concepts and workarounds have come about because of the inability of industry to quickly reduce its carbon footprint to within acceptable limits. Recognising the potential impact on the economy of forcing businesses to conform to carbon footprint regulation, a trading vehicle was established in the form of carbon offsets to enable organisations to increase the amount of carbon dioxide or equivalent they are permitted to emit. Organisations that cannot meet the levels of carbon emissions deemed acceptable for their size can buy carbon offsets to make up the difference.

One carbon offset represents the reduction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases. The money spent on carbon offsets is invested in renewable energy programmes. The challenge with such a marketplace is to make the cost to organisations buying carbon offsets enough to sustain a renewable energy programme that could make products and services available to enable those organisations to reduce their carbon footprint in the future. The carbon trading market is a transitional vehicle permitting organisations to contribute to a common fund to target greener and renewable energy, ultimately removing the need for the market at some point in the future.

There are two markets in which carbon offsets can be traded, the compliance market described above, and the voluntary market. The voluntary market enables anyone to offset their personal carbon footprint or the carbon footprint of others by making a donation. For example, many airlines permit customers to tick a box to donate an additional amount equivalent to the carbon footprint generated by their flight. Other organisations, like Brighter Planet, provide various tools to manage your footprint including a tool for calculating your personal footprint and credit cards that result in a contribution towards renewable energy projects with each purchase. Their website includes a long list of personal actions you can take to reduce your carbon footprint. The same organisation runs a scheme whereby if you raise awareness in this area, they will donate to the carbon offset fund on your behalf.

You can click on this badge to find out more and contribute in this way yourself:

Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT)

CAT is on a mission to inspire, inform, and enable sustainable living at every level in society.

One of their recent publications is a new energy strategy for a Zero Carbon Britain by 2030.

As Europe's leading Eco-Centre, "Their visitor centre has 7 acres of interactive displays, organic gardens, a cafe, shop and adventure playground. It opened in 1974 when CAT was only a small community starting to put sustainable living to the test. Now the organisation has grown in size and reach, welcoming 50,000 visitors and school children every year, providing free information to over 200,000 people and offering postgraduate courses to 500 students each year."

CAT make information sheets available on a wide range of topics from renewable energy to low impact living. They have various projects to raise awareness, conduct research, and trial new sustainability solutions, sometimes combining all of these into projects like the WISE project, building the Wales Institute for Sustainable Education; "WISE provides a location in which to explore practical solutions to vital changes to the way we live, work, travel and do business. The WISE building embodies everything that will be taught in it, offering a living example of sustainable technologies and lifestyles."

In addition to the post-graduate courses, they run short courses on subjects as diverse as ecologically sound gardening to how to position and install a wind turbine and attach it to the national grid.

Sustainable Development

The UK Government Sustainable Development Website (maintained by defra, the Department for Food and Rural Affairs) sets out the principles for sustainable development in the UK as follows:

To achieve these goals:

1. Living within environmental limits
2. Ensuring a strong, healthy and just society
   
   by:
   
3. Achieving a sustainable economy
4. Using sound science responsibly
5. Promoting good governance

This is a very challenging agenda; not just technically or scientifically, but socially and economically as well. Lets look at some of the tensions between these principles to understand in more detail what success really looks like - what it really involves us doing. By understanding the tensions, or conflicting forces between principles, we understand the problem and the challenges that must be overcome.

The first point, living within environmental limits, is almost a definition of sustainability. To live within environmental limits means that our development does not consume resources faster than they are created (or replenished) by the environment, thus providing for development that can be sustained by the environment. This is the first tension in the above principles. There is a tension between our rate of development and the environment's ability to support it. Put another way, the environment limits our development.


The second point, ensuring a strong, healthy and just society whilst phrased as a goal actually represents the second tension resulting from these principles. Given such principles only tend to arise to guide future behaviour once past behaviour has violated them,we know that there is a strong tendency for us to live outside the environmental limits, and for our development to consume resources in the environment faster than its ability to replenish them. In other words, using our current means of development, our pace of development is faster than can be sustained by the environment. A strong and healthy society presumably develops unhindered by the environment, meaning we need to find more environmentally sustainable ways of developing. A just society means that this strong and healthy pace of development is not limited to a select few but is available to all on the same terms. This is where the complexity arises in emerging environmental regulation - how to come up with rules that change behaviour to be more sustainable in an equitable way for everyone. Another tension here lies in the fact that most people want what is best for them or their family or their business without necessarily considering the wider implications. There is further tension between what is "just" and the nature of capitalism, which does not reward based on what would humanely be called just but rather on economic viability terms, or in accordance with the mass market - the majority is not known for being predominantly just. Capitalism has higher, more ruthless goals. What is best for society is not necessarily best for every individual in it. Just as evolution results in the survival of the fitest in nature, capitalism aims to assure the same for business and the economy. This is not about being just.


The third point, achieving a sustainable economy, translates the environmental sustainability goals into economic goals. In other words, we must develop in a way that can be sustained by the resources provided by the environment whilst also maintaining a healthy economy. The economy reflects behaviour not only in the UK but also how business behaviour within the UK is generating value by comparison to other economies from around the world. The economy is in a sense a measure of how successful our development has been - to what extent the effort expended in that development and the resources consumed have been turned into something that is valued by humanity (valued in the sense of they are willing to pay for it). Another tension here lies in the difference between what we value and what is sustainable. This gives rise to another choice, another avenue for investigation - we can change the way we create value to make it more sustainable, or we can change what we value.


The fourth point, using sound science responsibly, speaks to the way in which we should inform our choices about how to develop, and how to change the way we develop to be more sustainable. If we take the same observation that principles often arise from lessons learned from not following those principles in the past, then we must ensure science is not abused - that science is not used as a means to convince people of a pre-defined agenda as part of a teleological argument, but that science is used with an open and enquiring mind to discover the truth about the cause and effects in nature and between our actions, our development, and the impact on the environment in order to make informed decisions based on understanding rather than rhetoric and ulterior motive. See back to the point about capitalism and the motivations and reward mechanisms that creates.


The fifth point, promoting good governance, is necessary to turn thought into action and to remain true to courses of action that once decided for the balanced greater good, will no doubt have some adverse side effects in particular areas. Governance in many ways is about maintaining perspective and managing behaviour towards an outcome with all the factors in mind. It is very easy to look at one variable in a system and optimise for that whilst throwing all the others out of the window. It is easier to focus on improving the economy whilst ignoring sustainability. Equally if we focus entirely on what is best for the environment, there would be a massive negative impact on the economy. There needs to be a balanced approach that considers both perspectives not just in the short term but in the long term. A healthy economy today is of no use to anyone living in a world where the environment can no longer sustain us in the future. A long term view must be taken over governance that plots a course permitting healthy economic growth whilst ensuring this is sustainable within the context of our environment and the resources we are consuming. This requires serious innovation and change - we need better, more efficient and smarter ways of developing, and we need to take a serious look at our values and how society and education shape these.

Sustainable development will not be achieved through policy and governance alone; it will not be achieved by science and innovation or "Green IT"; it needs social reform. The capitalist economy will always be driven by consumer demand. The consumer will not act in the best interests of the environment - or humanity; they will act in the best interests of themselves (as conditioned by society). Whilst strong governance and principles and sound science are all essential, they are insufficient without an increased awareness in society and a change in the behaviour of every person. This requires a level of increased awareness so strong it changes fundamental patterns of behaviour and judgements about what is cool and what is of value. All of these are building blocks in the solution that must operate in concert to resolve these tensions and achieve sustainable development.

Open Sustainability

Open-Sustainability aims to "harnesses collective intelligence by providing an open approach to which anyone can contribute" via the Open-Sustainability.Org wiki. To this end they have created a Sustainability Governance Framework that can be freely used and collaboratively developed or customised for your specific organisation. They also aim to use the same kind of crowd sourcing techniques as wikipedia to create a listing of sustainable enterprises, or enterprises with sustainability initiatives. They ask a number of questions about each such organisation including an assessment of what stage they are at in this sustainability roadmap:

1. Viewing Compliance as Opportunity
2. Making Value Chains Sustainable
3. Designing Sustainable Products and Services
4. Developing New Business Models
5. Creating Next Practice Platforms

Everyone is invited to join the wiki and fill in a sustainability profile form for their firm or any other firm they are aware of with sustainability initiatives or behaviours. You can go here and profile a sustainable enterprise now. There is even space for contact details so that collaboration between different organisations at different stages in the sustainability roadmap could collaborate and learn from each other.

Sustainability Indexes

The Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) were launched in 1999 to track the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide and provide a socially responsible investment vehicle.

Dow Jones have demonstrated that Corporate Sustainability is an "investable concept", linking the results to strengthening not just the environment but also the societies and economies of both the developing and developed world.


They say that "Corporate Sustainability is a business approach that creates long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments". They define a set of criteria and weightings broadly categorised into economic, environmental and social measures to assess the corporate sustainability of an organisation. These assessments are carried out on an ongoing basis and entry into the index is conditional on maintaining performance against these metrics.

The oil company BP plc. was removed from the DJSI on May 31, 2010 due to the extent of the oil-spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and its foreseeable long-term effects on the environment and the local population. Whilst negative publicity created by such disasters often has an immediate impact on shareholder value, the market and public opinion is often fickle. Its removal from the DJSI however could represent a longer term impact as third party investment portfolios guided by DJSI as an arbiter and focussed on sustainability continue to invest elsewhere.

Such indexes create a more consistent influence on investment behaviour and in turn on the corporate behaviour of public firms, not just informing socially responsible investment decisions but influencing the behaviour of public firms towards Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Put simply, this is Carrot and Stick Corporate Social Responsibility and the DJSI is a judge of which tool is most appropriate.

Whilst Dow Jones may have led the way by creating the first sustainability index, this has now become a firmly established part of economic theory and practice.

The FTSE setup the FTSE4Good Index Series, which has been designed to measure the performance of companies that meet globally recognised corporate responsibility standards. Their aim is to make their brand the choice for responsible investment products.

Scaling this up to performance of countries and Government's abilities to meet their environmental goals: Between 1999 and 2006, variations on this thinking have been further developed by the Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy with Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), and the World Economic Forum resulting in the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index and subsequent 2008 Environmental Performance Index.

The latest Environmental Performance Index is now available as an interactive website. The 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 163 countries on 25 performance indicators tracked across ten policy categories covering both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality. These indicators provide a gauge at a national government scale of how close countries are to established environmental policy goals.

Sustainability is moving more and more towards science, business, management, economics and law.