Master in Environmental Management

If you are in the EU, you may have reasons to be concerned about the air you breathe. In a recent report released by the European Environment Agency (EEA), the status of air quality and the trends since 2001 are presented.

The key message of the report is that, despite improvements in sulphur dioxide emissions and low levels of carbon monoxide, benzene and heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, nickel, lead), about a third of EU city inhabitants are exposed to high concentrations of particulate matter, ground level ozone and Benzo(a)Pyrene (BaP), a carcinogenic substance, among other.

Attainment situation for BaP, 2010:

The report however provides data on the success of SO2 reduction. See the graph below:

This exposure to air pollutants reduces life expectancy by 2 years in the most pollutesd areas according to the EEA Executive Director Professor Jacqueline McGlade. The EEA also reminds us that air pollution causes ‘heart disease, respiratory problems, lung cancer, breathing difficulties and other illnesses. Some pollutants can lead to eutrophication, reduced agricultural crop yields, decreased forest growth and have an impact on the climate’.If you are interested in readdfing the report click here.

See below the latest post by our Professor Dr. Manuel Bea:

The iconic image of a polar bear swimming into the open Arctic sea, unable to find an ice floe, is frequently linked to climate change, as a reminder of its future consequences. It has been shown in several documentaries and two well-known films that deal with the current environmental situation (“An inconvenient truth” and “Love Earth”).
For a number of years, the shrinking of Arctic ice sheet has been foreseen as one of the significant consequences of global warming. Unfortunately, scientists claim that the ice melting is happening faster than initially predicted and that the ice cover in the Arctic could completely disappear in summer in 4 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice

The scientist who provides this information (Professor Peter Wadhams) is a physicist who has been working on Polar research since 1970. During this time, he has been mapping the thickness, distribution and type of sea ice in the Arctic using remote sensing and data provided by submarines (which have been tracking down these data for years in order to locate spots to surface). These data series along with climate data have fed a simulation model, which predicts the ice thickness evolution and its incoming collapse.

In a recent brief, Intermon Oxfam (an international confederation of organisations working to reduce poverty), warns us that failure to significantly reduce GHG emissions is likely to lead to more extreme weather events that will increase food price volatility. This will disproportionately affect those who are worse off, over 900 million people worldwide that are suffering from hunger…

By using the GLOBE Computable General Equilibrium model of the global economy, Oxfam’s commissioned paper analyses how prices for key commodities could evolve in the next decades.

Baseline modelling results from the report state that:

• Average price of staple foods could more than double in the next 20 years compared with 2010 trend prices – with up to half of the increase caused by climate change (changing mean temperatures and rainfall patterns).

Between 2010 and 2030, average world market export prices:

• For maize could rise by 177%, with up to half the increase due to climate change;
•  For wheat could rise by 120%, with around one-third of the increase due to climate change;
• For processed rice could rise by 107%, with around one-third of the increase due to climate change.

One or two extreme weather events in a year are hypothesised to potentially cause price spikes equivalent to two decades of price increases. The report also offers regional data.

If you are interested in reading this short document  click on:

20120905-ib-extreme-weather-extreme-prices-en

More information on scenarios and the full report, as well as other papers can be downloaded here.

As holidays come to an end, new initiatives in the field of environmental action and management emerge.Fundación Entorno- Spanish Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), a leading institution in the field of sustainable development within the firm, will be presenting a new initiative for consumers. The motto of the initiative is ‘join (us) in saving, for a healthy and sustainable life’. They offer guidelines and tips on how to become a more responsible consumer.

If you are interested in attending the presentation of this initiative, the details of the venue are:

Date: 10th of September 2012

Time: 19:00pm

Place: COAM – Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid (C/ Hortaleza, 63, Madrid)

Should you wish to attend you should either call: +34915756394 or send them an email: soledad.zuleta@fundacionentorno.org

Scientists have been shocked by the rate of ice melt in Greenland in July 2012. The following images show how in just 4 days 97% of ice surface had thawed. Click here for an article published by The Guardian that provides a preliminary assessment of what has happened, including reflections on the pace of climate change.

‘The Greenland ice sheet on July 8, left, and four days later on the right. In the image, the areas classified as ‘probable melt’ (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. The areas classified as ‘melt’ (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected surface melting. Photograph: Nasa’

The Master in Environmental Management team is thrilled to congratulate our new Professor in Green Business Entrepreneurship in his achievement! Details below…
Sustainable Reference wins the Spanish Pitch Night presenting SURE!

On Wednesday, July 25, Andy Backer, CEO of Sustainable Reference, participated in the Spanish Pitch Night, an event held at Rocket Space in San Francisco. Spanish Pitch Night was a competition between 10 Spanish entrepreneurs, presenting their company’s business plan. Andy Backer presented SURE!, Sustainable Reference’s point system to encourage positive sustainable activity within people’s work and life, by awarding recognition and incentives to sustainable behavior. SURE! is an interactive, fun and a transparent online platform that helps pave the way towards a sustainable future. This idea won over the judges landing SURE! with a first prize.

Each contestant only had precisely three minutes to make the pitch, and two minutes for a question and answer forum following the pitch. The judges were pitching expert Angelika Blendstrup, and Spanish Investor Marcel Prunera. Ten companies participated in the competition, four of which take part in the Spain Tech Center program: Bevalley, Toolea, Mobadme and Sustainable Reference. Also included were four companies from the Spanish program, Imagine. And Yuzz, a Spanish contest for young entrepreneurs, had two representatives compete.

This first place represents the second award for SURE! in less than a week. The company was declared a finalist, with a special mention, in the 2nd Green ICT Application Challenge, a contest seeking out sustainable solutions that address global warming. Among three other companies, SURE! will be given an award which will take place in Paris, France, on September 19, 2012.

Andy Backer has much experience in the issue of sustainability. After completing his Master’s degree in Architecture, he began working under William McDonough, a well known environmentalist. In 2005 he founded a sustainable design and consulting firm in Bilbao, Spain called AEBdESIGN. He has worked on several sustainable projects, with institutions such as Harvard University, the Guggenheim Foundation, University of Libya, among others. In 2009 he founded Sustainable Reference, a company that is creating high impact platforms in sustainability at a global scale. It has won several international competitions including Europe 100 Red Herring 2011 and the Global Entrepreneurship Competition 2010.
The company has offices in San Francisco, Bilbao (Spain) and is opening up a third in Sao Paulo (Brazil). It has a network of 26 partners in 23 countries.

The annual OECD report on economic perspectives for Africa will be presented this week at Casa África in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. From an economic perspective it is worth noting that Africa’s average growth is expected to rebound to 4.5% in 2012 and to 4.8% in 2013 after a 3.4% growth in 2011 and a 5% growth in 2010.  According to the report, some of the risks that Africa will face in economic, socio-political and environmental terms include ‘the continued economic crisis in the euro area, political strife in some countries with potential spill-overs to neighbours, and severe weather conditions especially in the Sahel region...Additional interesting information provided in the report refers to the rising food and fuel prices that caused Africa’s median inflation rate to increase from 5.8% in 2010 to 7.9% in 2011′ which is expected to gradually ease in 2012 and 2013. Special attention is paid to youth employment. in the report. The core messages as regards youth employment are:

Five youth employment challenges
1. Economic growth has not translated into sufficient jobs for young people.
2. Large youth populations continue to increase pressure on labour markets.
3. Many jobs for young people are of low quality and many young people remain in poverty
despite working.
4. Even more young people are discouraged than unemployed.
5. Women face specific challenges in accessing the labour market: much human resource
potential gets lost.
Five key areas of action
1. Reduce the barriers to growth and job creation faced by firms and entrepreneurs.
2. Bridge the gap between education systems and the requirements of employers.
3. Provide better information to young North Africans on labour markets, as many of them have
unrealistic job expectations.
4. Create a level playing field for first-time job seekers.
5. Make government programmes promoting youth employment more effective.

The pocket edition can be accessed from:  OECD 2012 Africa Economic Outlook Pocket_Edition

Graduation day is always special. Last Friday we congratulated the 2011-2012 class of the Master in Environmental Management. This year, the graduation ceremony was particularly exciting as our best student, Rhys Manners, was also awarded the recognition of best IE University student. The management and academic team want to wholeheartedly congratulate Rhys in his achievement.

We also wish this great group of students the very best in their future careers. It has been a pleasure to share this year with you all. Thank you!

Rémi Parmentier, founding director of the Varda Group and one of the founding members of Greenpeace International, spoke at IE before students of the Master in Environmental Management at the beginning of this academic year. His insights regarding international environmental negotiations and the strategies he has used throughout his career were of utmost interest to students studying global environmental governance issues in multi-stakeholder settings. Rémi has been at Rio+20 and has kindly agreed to share his views on the outcome of the summit. If you are interested in finding out what he thought were the highlights and areas for further improvement do not hesitate to read his blog at: http://chezremi.com

The Rio+20 declaration entitled ‘The Future We Want’ is arguably somewhat better than expected by some in the past months, but it has been criticised as motherhood and apple pie with limited substance by others.

The goals, prior to the conference, included, inter alia: establishing a High Commissioner for Future Generations, upgrading UNEP so that it could become a specialised agency, effectively implementing sustainable development commitments, drawing (yet another) roadmap for a green economy and hopefully defining what this means so we recognise a green economy when we see it. Poverty, access to energy, food and water, gender equality and women’s empowerment were also on the agenda.

Important issues such as planetary boundaries, tipping points, reproductive rights and the need for a renewed urban agenda, among other, were not properly addressed or were even left out according to Major Groups.

The declaration, in its point 4 states ‘We also reaffirm the need to achieve sustainable development by: promoting sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth, creating greater opportunities for all, reducing inequalities, raising basic standards of living; fostering equitable social development and inclusion; and promoting integrated and sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems that supports inter alia economic, social and human development while facilitating ecosystem conservation, regeneration and restoration and resilience in the face of new and emerging challenges’. There is little doubt that many, if not the majority of us, would agree with this statement. But the tough questions of how to achieve the above stated goals, how much all this will cost, whether we will prioritise long term environmental benefits over short terms economic gains in the midst of a severe economic crisis remain, at least in part, unanswered.

As regards the leadership role of different countries, it can be argued that despite Brazil’s globally recognised leadership throughout the negotiations, the outcomes of the conference have been modest, at best. Europe’s role in these macro summits also has to be thought through in a world in which the economic and political weight has shifted away from Brussels, even if the European financial commitment of €400 million for sustainable energy projects is significant. The Group of 77 and China with increasing weight in international negotiations successfully opposed a more ambitious European stance regarding the transition to a green economy.

The overall institutional structure of international environmental negotiations is in need of proactive adaptation to an increasingly complex and uncertain world that strives for a hard to organise yet functional and coherent governance framework.

A couple of references that may be of interest:

1. Mr. Parker (Globalisation editor, The Economist) reflecting on the possible Rio+20 outcomes (video): http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/06/green-growth
2. IISD’s Earth Negotiations Bulleting providing an overview of the conference as well as a brief history of sustainable development conferences. You can also find some of the 700 voluntary commitments that resulted from the conference. The financial commitments amounted to a total of US$513 billion. http://www.iisd.ca/uncsd/rio20/enb/