Daily Archives: January 19, 2022

This article is a response to Will Catholic universities survive the upheaval in higher education? The next 10 years will tell, a feature by Charles C. Camosy. Read more views on this issue linked at the bottom of this article.

I recently spent a day moderating a panel of seniors at St. Peters University in Jersey City, N.J., who discussed the major concerns of their generation. The students had roots in Belgium and Morocco, the Philippines and Palestine. Their fields of study included math, education and international relations. We took up such topics as climate change, race relations, the plight of migrants, social and economic inequality in the United States and abroad and the future of work and job security. They were passionate about the need for major changes, disturbed by the level of poverty in their own city and the world, and eager to, as one student claimed, to dream big because the problems need big solutions. It was a soul-lifting experience in a diverse Catholic university that encourages critical thinking to help students fulfill those dreams.

Students like these represent the bright future of Catholic higher education, but we in university administration must be sure our institutions adapt to help them thrive. Catholic universities may have an advantage if they do this quickly. Charles Camosys article suggests a competitive advantage in the Christian and Catholic roots of these institutions. As president of Loyola University Chicago for 14 years, I saw firsthand the importance of an education based on a Christian anthropology that stresses the sacredness of each human being and the essential equality of all. I believe that an education that is grounded in Catholic social teaching and delivered in a community that offers the opportunity for the serious examination of diverse points of view and a chance for real community is precisely what will make a Catholic education distinctive and appreciated.

There is a great deal of wisdom in Dr. Camosys arguments. For a decade now, many have predicted the closure or merging of smaller institutions, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. It is happening. Indeed, bigger has its advantages. Economies of scale will require that an institution be well-endowed financially or have sufficient importance to a community to drive it to find both the funding model it needs and the political support it requires to survive.

Many of us believe that the challenge facing Catholic higher education today comes down to mission integration and preservation. We see a rapid turnover in seasoned and dedicated leadership. In some leadership positions (which includes presidents, provosts and deans), we are experiencing a 40 percent turnover since the pandemic began. Many of these seasoned leaders had anticipated retiring or returning to the faculty; some are retiring men and women religious. The pandemic has taken a toll on their energy and made the job more taxing and less rewarding. Whatever the cause, institutional wisdom and a deeply felt commitment to the mission of liberal and faith-based education could be lost if these men and women are not replaced by people with the knowledge and experience of formation within the Catholic intellectual tradition.

The ideological battles that we see today, especially among students, should not be a cause for alarm in themselves. Just a decade ago, older generations complained about the seeming lack of passion for causes of social justice among students in the millennial generation. The present intense battles over ideas could be healthy and necessary correction to a more complacent age that preceded the Covid-19 pandemic.

A Catholic university like St. Peters, and so many others, has within its storehouse an antidote to this ages flirtation with nihilism. The students at St. Peters were fortunate enough to be spared an overdose of this pessimism. There is the Gospel message of hope and renewal that, while not always made as explicit as it ought to be, seemed nevertheless to permeate their time at the university. These students were well aware of Pope Francis call to defend the health of our planet and fight for those at the margins seeking their just share of the goods of our economy. These challenges have brought faith-based leaders and our universities to a re-examination of how they might collaborate. All of this is a solid basis for the hope that Catholic higher education can survive to offer society a crucial resource: young people willing to apply what they have learned to solve the problems of our world.

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Worried about the future of Catholic higher education? Look to our students for hope. - America Magazine

At the launch event, H.E. Lamin Dibba, Minister of Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change said, This Circular Economy Network will support ournational green recovery initiative, protect natural resources and prevent climate emissions. Importantly, it will raise the profile of sustainable resource management and provide a platform for national stakeholders and waste managers in the UK to collaborate.

Currently, resources are used in a linear fashion and soon become waste, which can pollute the ground, air and water courses and impact peoples health. By shifting to a more circular economy, valuable resources can be kept in use for longer, providing livelihood opportunities and enabling The Gambia to become more self-sufficient and resilient to climate change.

WasteAid will be sharing recycling knowledge and skills, training 30 vulnerable people to generate income from wastes, and supporting local innovation through seed funding and business support to a circular economy enterprise.

Deputy Mayor Binta Janneh-Jallow of Kanifing Municipal Council said, An important facet of this new Circular Economy Network project will be support for Gambian innovation to reduce, reuse and recycle different waste materials. Recycling provides livelihood opportunities by turning waste into a resource and benefitting all aspects of society.

WasteAid and British waste management professionals will be sharing their experience and expertise with Gambian counterparts, further strengthening the ties between our two countries

The aim of this initiative is to establish a professional network of people and organisations in The Gambia who can support each other in the development of a circular economy, and is sustained after the project completes.

British High Commissioner David Belgrove said, We were pleased to host the launch of this Circular Economy Network project led by WasteAid, which will add to the momentum that has already built up for a green recovery here in The Gambia. WasteAid and British waste management professionals will be sharing their experience and expertise with Gambian counterparts, further strengthening the ties between our two countries.

Circular Economy Network members will be able to access training and take part in knowledge sharing sessions alongside experienced waste managers from the UK. Network activities will assist with regional and cross-sector cooperation, to help Government Ministries, Councils, businesses and community-based organisations work together to progress sustainable waste management in The Gambia.

Ceris Turner-Bailes, CEO of WasteAid said, WasteAid has been active in The Gambia since 2015 and the country remains at the heart of WasteAids work. The Gambia has some significant waste management challenges, but there are also ambitious policymakers, committed councils and an engaged civil society willing to deliver the change that is needed. That is why, when the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management expressed a desire to support our work, The Gambia was our top priority. We are looking forward to engaging with stakeholders in The Gambia and the UK on this unique initiative to support the development of a professional waste management sector and drive for a more circular economy.

Adam Read, President of the UKs Chartered Institution of Wastes Management said, The Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) is delighted to see this exciting partnership spring to life, and we look forward to playing an active role in delivering increasingly sustainable waste management practices in the Greater Banjul Area of The Gambia. The provision of funding for this large-scale delivery project demonstrates our continued commitment to advancing waste and resource management capability and enabling the transition to more circular economies across the globe.

WasteAid welcomes all interested parties to join the Circular Economy Network, and will be promoting activities through a communications campaign. Please contact Ingrid Henrys, WasteAids Project Coordinator in The Gambia, via gambiaCEN@wasteaid.org.

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A Circular Economy Network launched in The Gambia will help drive green growth - Circular Online

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We are value investors, which puts us in scant company in crypto where a lot of strange things go on. While much of crypto is fueled by get-rich-quick fervour, where realities of long-term demand like utility and scalability go often ignored, there are ways to play the crypto phenomenon that are more traditional. Thanks to our data science capabilities, and actual hands-on experience coding smart contracts (albeit simple ones), we do recognise that there is a certain elegance and genius underlying the mechanisms of blockchain and the ideal that the networks that make commerce could be based on it. While we still think there are long-term risks like quantum computing, which interact with political risks connected to China, investors would nonetheless be remiss to deny both the technical achievements within blockchain, as well as the underlying network effects that are fueling parts of the crypto market much like the 'meme stock' craze.

While network effects would be a foolish way to justify unmitigated hot-potato speculation on terrible tokens, there are genuine ways in which network effects can create business value and fuel real and enduring demand for certain assets within crypto. We think that cryptogaming is a very legitimate purpose, where blockchain actually lends itself, rather than limits, the design models for many popular games. This is still a very nascent world, and we think it could grow massively, together with NFTs, and that Binance Coin (BNB-USD), correlated to activity on the BSC infrastructure, is the lowest risk way to play a long-term growth in crypto utility.

Now that we're at the beginning of 2022, it's a good moment to reflect on the performance of crypto in 2021, and discuss what could happen in the coming years. First of all, we have just experienced a meaningful reversal in the performance of coins in general. This reflects the phenomenon that while some in the investment community view crypto as an end-of-the-world hedge, it is a risk asset and when the market becomes spooked, these coins actually decline a lot, as opposed to something like Gold.

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Bitcoin (BTC-USD) came down hard from almost $70k a few months ago to just above $40k now, which has been driving much of the cryptocurrency market movements. Cardano and the connected Ada (ADA-USD) has been trading down meaningfully as well, which tracks the NFT phenomenon quite closely due to the importance of Cardano communities in driving NFT movements.

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Ethereum (ETH-USD), another major platform for DApps, has been more resilient.

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Similarly, Binance has been much more resilient as well, which begins to paint a very relevant picture for our investment thinking within crypto. Coins that act as resources for conducting commercial operations on prolific, higher utility platforms like Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum are the ones that are showing more resilience, due to their more infrastructural positioning. Meanwhile, coins that are connected to more speculative thinking about the markets and fiat currencies, or are simply being traded by whales, are much less resilient in a risk-off environment.

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As far as our crypto thinking goes, we are not interested in any play that involves the thesis that a particular cryptocurrency will become a good store of value just by existing. We think that Bitcoin falls in this category, and the decentralised, unscalable and non-existing governance that surrounds it as a coin makes it untenable in party with the world economy. We think that coins that have utility by being a necessary resource in running smart contracts on a widely used blockchain are the ones that are most likely to become mainstays. In turn, we think that the most widely used blockchain will be the one that doesn't take the wild west approach to the world of crypto, but is actually governed in a way that allows it to be regulated and also scaled.

As far as governance and scalability goes, Binance with its two blockchains takes the cake in our opinion, and is a very strong contender in becoming a chief platform. The governance and consensus protocol is not particularly decentralised, but it does achieve speed and scalability which is critical to its position as an exchange and center of DApps and blockchain-based commerce. The speed can be attributed to its unique consensus protocol, where BSC uses proof of staked authority (PoSA) which hybridises a proof of authority and delegated proof of stake approach. There are validator candidates who need to be identified by Binance, which then get voted on by delegators every 24 hours to determine the top 21. All these actors are compensated with BNB when they propose blocks, which is non inflationary, and the funds come from fees earned from transactions in the block. Ethereum has tens of thousands of validators, so only having 21 seriously reduces the amount of redundant computation. The ability to identify validators could become a critical element that differentiates Binance, because they can retain the fundamental principles of a consensus protocol while also being able to monitor what interests are able to validate blocks. Moreover, Binance is working to make its platform more regulator friendly all the time by introducing means to identify users who use the exchange, critical since it is still in friction with regulators due to its role as an exchange and its implicit influence on citizens and their investing. Also, data being public on the blockchain allows data analytics and other operations that can help track and deter illicit activity even in concerted efforts across Binance accounts.

Development skills for Ethereum also happen to be very transferrable to development on Binance, so in addition to factors mentioned above such as better scalability and a more feasible path to becoming government sanctioned, Binance has a shot at becoming its own economy for businesses and people looking to do commerce with unambiguous and tractable blockchain smart contracts. By already being one of the largest hubs in the crypto world, with BNB being one of the largest coins by market cap, they are already benefiting from network effects and preferential attachment that supports winner-take-all dynamics. We think that cryptogaming is a phenomenon that will take place on the platform that is the most prolific. While Ethereum has a certain dominance in the DApp space, Binance with its many useful apps related to trading and farming, is a worthy contender for the throne. It is already a place where you can trade a lot of NFTs and other tokens related to games, even Axie Infinity after integration with Ronin. Moreover, YoHero is a contender game launched on the BSC that is getting a lot of traction. In general, we see a lot of utility in NFTs, even those not given utility by being useful assets in related games. Indeed, in many instances they function much like assets in the art market, which is notoriously pretentious and non-utilitarian in seeming contradiction to its enduring liquidity. But with cryptogaming being such a nascent category, once more actually good games come out that won't even need to rely on play-to-earn logic, especially those that leverage the inherent trading card model that goes with blockchain tokens like Axie Infinity (but maybe many other types too), there might be massive growth in a whole new category of DApps that could begin and persist on a blockchain like the BSC to drive BNB demand.

While there are many ways to play the potential cryptogaming boom, and the NFT craze that we are already seeing, we want to take the lower risk approaches. So we look at infrastructure within crypto, where we think Binance, together with its native coin Binance Coin, have the best shot at enduring demand. While Binance as a platform has its regulatory issues, as a blockchain infrastructure for relatively decentralised commerce it is the most likely to both eventually comply with general regulation as well as deliver on its purpose and achieve larger scale thanks to its consensus model. We are already seeing signs that even for cryptogaming DApps, Binance might be the platform of choice, again thanks to its scalability but also because it is a node for so much activity in the community by virtue of being associated with an exchange. With growth in DApps on the platform, and with growth of cryptogaming in general further boosting that, greater activity of running contracts on Binance fueled by the network effects of developers and users joining and growing the app base, Binance Coin is probably the most likely to justify its own >$80 billion market cap. With the infrastructure of Binance finding a middle ground between scalability and decentralisation, while already being a node for a lot of development of smart contracts, we would take the position that they could become an important economy, and Binance coin an important currency, if businesses start embracing the benefits of doing business with programmable, tractable and unambiguous smart contracts.

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Where Is Cryptocurrency Headed In 2022? Our Favorite Is Binance Coin - Seeking Alpha

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Around the world, energy systems are increasingly impacted by the effects of a changing climate. Energy systems, especially the electric-power system, are vulnerable to natural stressors such as wildfires, severe storms, extreme temperatures and long-term disruptions of the hydrological cycle.

As we have experienced in recent years, there have been more and more natural stressors on our systems, like the cold snap in Texas last year and the wildfires and droughts in the West, said Mort Webster, professor of energy engineering. Increasingly, these stressors are causing major regional power disruptions and there is good reason to think these may increase in the future with more climate change.

Impacts of climate-related water stress and temperature changes can cascade through energy systems, although models have yet to capture this compounding of effects. A team of researchers led by Penn State has developed a coupled waterpowereconomy model to capture these important interactions in a study of the exceedance of water temperature thresholds for power generation.

Models are typically operated independently of one another, said Karen Fisher-Vanden, professor of environmental and resource economics and public policy, director of the Institute for Sustainable Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Science (SAFES), and principal investigator of the Program on Coupled Human and Earth Systems (PCHES), a U.S. Department of Energy supported project that funded this work. Under different scenarios of changing weather patterns and extremes, the impacts on the human and natural systems can vary and the interactions between systems can be critical. This research integrates multiple existing models to capture the interactions and feedbacks.

The team conducted a case study for the western United States based on the Western Electricity Coordinating Council reliability system, which corresponds to the 12 states of the United States that are west of the Rocky Mountains as well as portions of British Columbia, Alberta and northern Mexico, to explore how vulnerable the system is and when and where it is vulnerable. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Energy.

Our team developed a framework to investigate what we need to do for our systems to be ready for the next 50 to 100 years of shocks and how to make them more resilient, said Webster, lead author on the study. For example, chronic water shortages in the western United States have gone unabated, and an increased frequency and severity of droughts and heat waves could result in insufficient cooling water for thermal generators, restricting power supply.

Multisector dynamical systems, such as the coupled waterpowereconomy system in this study, are composed of overlapping and intersecting networks. The intersecting framework in this study looked at the regional network of watersheds and basins, the electric-power grid, and the regional economy.

Our study is the first to look at how water stress, in a detailed representation, ripples through the power system all the way to economic losses, Webster said. Our coupled model framework captures interactions across water, power and economic systems while retaining spatial, temporal and sectoral detail.

The teams analysis of the impacts of a range of climate forcing patterns on the coupled waterpowereconomic system demonstrated that higher water temperatures can lead to a causal chain of events, from electric-power generators being offline because of the cooling-water intake-temperature limits, to higher electricity costs and unmet electricity demand, to economic adjustment and productivity reductions in electricity-using sectors.

The team found that many climate patterns that result in generator outages from higher water temperatures do not result in any significant impacts. For any given external shock, the interconnected networks in the waterpowereconomic system mitigate the impact by providing redundancy and transferring the impact spatially.

An important implication of this result is that a reduction in available generation capacity on a given day does not necessarily indicate any significant cost, Webster said. Our system is pretty resilient since we have built a lot of redundancy into it. It takes a big shock to actually disrupt things so that energy does not get to the consumer.

According to the researchers, most of the economic impacts result from a demand for electricity that cannot be met at specific times and locations.

We found that intermittent interruptions in electricity supply at critical times of the day, week and year account for much of the economic impacts, Webster said. Net consumption loss can be as much as 0.3% annually across the broader regional economy, with up to a 3% increase in the average cost of electricity and more than a 1% loss of production from regional manufacturing.

They also found that impacts may be in different locations from the original water stress.

As interdependent systems become more stressed from many stressors occurring all at the same time, all it takes is one more push to create a problem and that problem may show up somewhere else because the system is a single interconnected network, Webster said. So as more wildfires, droughts, floods and cold snaps stress the system, we may see more frequent impacts. Although over the last 50 years, we have not had very many catastrophic outages, we do need to prepare for what may be coming and build even more redundancy than we have now into the system.

The results underscore the importance of accounting for feedbacks between overlapping and interacting system networks. Importantly, this type of coupled model approach allows investigators to retain the spatial, temporal and sectoral richness represented in each of these individual models that would be unachievable in one comprehensive model where detail is usually sacrificed for computational tractability.

Penn States Institute for Computational and Data Sciences provided computational consulting and software engineering support for this work.

Other authors on the study include Vijay Kumar and Joseph Perla, graduate students from Penn State, and Richard B. Lammers from the University of New Hampshire.

This study was conducted as part of a $20 million, five-year project with the U.S. Department of Energy. The team recently received a $17 million cooperative research agreement from the DOE to study climate risk and adaptation strategies.

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Integrated modeling of climate impacts on electricity demand and cost - Penn State News

Ambition has been a defining feature of the UAE since 1971, and every initiative launched since has embodied this virtue in full. The UAE Net Zero by 2050 strategy, a national drive to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, is the latest case in point of our penchant to achieve the seemingly impossible.

Addressing climate change is of collective consequence aside from irreversibly harming the planet, its impact on global wealth is predicted to be beyond significant.

We can expect as much as $23 trillion in reduced annual global economic output worldwide as diseases spread, rising sea levels consume urban centres and crop yields fall, according to Swiss Re, one of the worlds largest providers of insurance.

The UAE Net Zero Strategic Initiative lays the road map to a more hopeful future and, simultaneously, sustainable developments to protect the national economy. It further enhances the countrys standing as an attractive destination for investment and, ultimately, an ideal, future-ready place to live.

At Dubai Science Park, a science-focused business district, home to more than 400 companies covering sciences, energy and environmental sectors, we are already seeing a number of our business partners adopting environmentally friendly practices and integrating sustainability into their core strategy.

Handasiyah is a leading engineering distributor that provides clean energy solutions to reduce electricity and water consumption.

It provides products like cooling towers and water filtration systems to major projects such as the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, Green Planet in City Walk and Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. The company is expanding its product portfolio in power, renewable and sustainable energy and building solutions, making it easier for a country renowned for outstanding real estate developments to ensure greener practices.

International heavyweight EP&T Global harnesses the power of advanced data technology to help businesses reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions in built environments. For more than 25 years, the international brand has established itself as a leader in the field, pioneering and enhancing technology that identifies opportunities to reduce energy consumption, collects invaluable data to enhance environmental performance.

According to EP&T, buildings use more than one-third of the worlds energy and water and emit over a quarter of carbon dioxide. Their innovation-driven solutions enable businesses across the region to make smarter decisions in how their buildings operate, an asset to Dubais ever-expanding urban plan.

Ehfaaz is a high-tech start-up that transforms food and fast-moving consumer goods waste into organic fertilisers and cleaning products. They are a fast-growing company working with major corporations the likes of PepsiCo in diverting waste from landfills.

Of particular value to our own science community, Ehfaaz provides pharmaceutical suppliers, manufacturers and logistics centres with services to destroy expired or unsellable products safely and securely. Items like plastic bottles and chip bags, which cannot be turned into compost nor efficiently destroyed, are upcycled to create consumer products like shoes and bags.

Established in 2014, Avani is spearheading the move from petroleum-based plastic to bio-based solutions for food packaging and hospitality products.

With more than 20,000 restaurants in Dubai alone, this initiative can tremendously balance the residual impact of plastic on the local environment. At Avani, technology transforms plant-sourced renewable resources into biodegradable and compostable items, such as takeaway cups and boxes, wooden cutlery, and shopping and laundry bags used daily.

Similarly, DSP-based start-up DGrade recycles plastic water bottles into a high-quality yarn called Greenspun. The upcycled yarn can produce more than 200 types of fabric using 50 per cent less energy, 20 per cent less water, emitting 55 per cent less carbon, opening new doors for the fast fashion industry, notorious for its ecologically damaging practices and resource consumption.

This is but the tip of the iceberg of remarkable businesses spearheading the UAEs efforts to achieve net-zero emissions and counter the looming impact of climate change across a range of industries.

Along with their outstanding efforts and tech-driven solutions, it is up to us collectively to ensure that our fervour to adopt sustainable practices, businesses and lifestyles remains vigorous.

Business districts and free zones can promote the growth of environmentally conscious companies by offering business-friendly policies and support to boost success. They effectively attract talent, innovative businesses and inward investment, paving the way for an even more competitive economy and in turn, boosting economic growth at large.

Our vision is to continue helping businesses grow and achieve real, actionable change by investing in best infrastructure, delivering enabling policies and organising opportunities for our business partners to converge.

Marwan Abdulaziz Janahi is the Managing Director of Dubai Science Park (DSP)

Updated: January 19th 2022, 7:30 AM

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How UAE businesses are leading the sustainability charge - The National

California is the largest and the most diverse agricultural economy in the nation with revenue exceeding $50 billion larger than the combined agricultural economies of the other 10 western states.

But the state and its residents, especially the disadvantaged, are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

A $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) will enable a new project at UC Merced to create an integrated program to develop multi-faceted pathways to climate-smart agriculture solutions.

Cooperative Extension Specialist Tapan Pathak, with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is leading the effort. He plans to involve farmers and ranchers, technical service providers and students in a variety of training and educational activities.

Pathak plans to conduct needs assessments with local stakeholders, workshops and climate-smart agriculture training, as well as service-learning opportunities for students through the extension program.

Farmers and ranchers, including the socially disadvantaged, are under constant pressure to adjust to uncertain weather and climate events to minimize risks, but often have limited access to technical assistance and fewer resources to adapt to climate change, Pathak explained. The critical initial step for developing a climate-smart agriculture program for them is to understand and document their perceptions, experiences and knowledge of climate-change exposures, potential impacts and social vulnerabilities.

The researchers also need to know what tools and resources would assist them in making strategic decisions, and what types of education and outreach activities would help them choose and implement climate-smart agriculture practices.

Pathak and his team will conduct needs assessments in three phases: a statewide survey to get information from a diverse group of farmers and ranchers, then focus groups and informal personal interviews.

Another group of people the program aims to reach are technical service providers those front-line farm and ranch counselors who are often asked questions on climate change, weather variability and local implications, but often have limited training on climate change.

There is overwhelming evidence of the importance of integrating climate change into research, education and outreach activities carried out by Cooperative Extension, local, state and federal resource staff-managed programs or operations to improve sustainability, to adapt and to mitigate climate change impacts, Pathak said. However, individuals in these groups are content area experts and by and large do not have specific training in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. For example, federal resource staff are required to consider climate change in project planning and aspects of operations but have no to very limited training on climate change, and even less on how to incorporate such information into federal workflow.

Finally, the student experience will form a large component of this effort. As the next generation of a climate-ready workforce, students need education and training in both climate change and agriculture, as well as practical learning opportunities.

Pathak plans to provide opportunities for University of California undergraduates as well as California Community College students through a UC Merced Summer Institute on Climate and Agriculture certificate course; a UC Davis credit-based course called Science and Society: Climate Change and Agriculture; and a certificate course for community college students, professionals and non-degree seeking students. The Summer Institute on Climate and Agriculture will pay students from any major to learn about climate and agricultural science, including topics such as climate science fundamentals; interaction of weather and climate with agriculture; the food-energy-water nexus; hands-on weather and climate data analysis for detecting trends; climate change impacts on agriculture; automation and data analytics; climate and water: conflicts and implications; and climate change communication.

In addition, we will organize field trips, such as visiting and learning from local farming operations, county Cooperative Extension offices and USDA-ARS research facilities, irrigation districts and reservoirs, and visiting a National Weather Service office, he said. Each of these visits will give students the opportunity to meet, network with and learn from experts, scientists and professionals, all of which could benefit their future careers.

The project is part of an investment in Cooperative Extension and USDA Climate Hubs efforts to bolster climate research and share climate-smart solutions directly with the agricultural communities. The USDA recently invested $9 million in several such projects as part of NIFAs Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), the nations leading competitive grants program for agricultural sciences.

These new NIFA-funded projects will work toward net-zero emissions in agriculture, working lands and communities adapted to climate change, training a diverse workforce that can communicate and incorporate climate considerations into management and climate justice that is appropriate for unique U.S. agronomic conditions, said NIFA Director Carrie Castille.

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New Climate-focused Agriculture Program Aims to Train Students, Professionals and Farmers | Newsroom - UC Merced University News

A monument was placed in the heart of downtown Dallas in late November, memorializing the spot where Allen Brooks was lynched by a white mob on March 3, 1910. Brooks death captured in a black-and-white souvenir photograph as he hung from a telephone pole, surrounded by a huge crowd of onlookers was turned into a postcard.

A memorial for Santos Rodriguez, the 12-year-old Mexican American boy murdered in 1973 by a Dallas police officer during a Russian roulette-style interrogation, was installed in December overlooking Pike Park, once a community nexus for the nearly gone Little Mexico neighborhood. A ceremony for the 6-foot statue is scheduled for late January.

These steps are small, say Dallas leaders and activists, but not insignificant. They are signs that the city is slowly, belatedly reckoning with its racist past.

In the year and a half since George Floyds death and Black Lives Matter marches, bureaucracies and civic organizations in Dallas have begun or stepped up a wide variety of equity efforts, however incrementally.

One example: For the first time ever, departments across the City of Dallas in the 2021-22 budgeting process included equity impact assessments as part of their requests. Meanwhile, the city is expected to release its comprehensive racial equity plan this spring.

If were going to be serious about the work of equity, we have to not only hold it up as a value but we also have to make sure that we can walk the talk, right? said Liz Cedillo-Pereria, the citys chief of equity and inclusion. That were putting resources behind it, budgeting for it ... as a lifelong Dallas resident, I do think this work is groundbreaking.

Each of Dallas largest governmental entities is now making deliberate efforts to look through an equity lens during planning and decision-making, although its far too soon for these newly formed efforts to have driven substantial changes.

There is or should be a sense of urgency, activists say.

Dallas, much like every other major metropolitan city in the United States, has a lot of ground to cover in redressing social injustice.

The city has persistent gaps between residents of color and white residents across a wide spectrum of issues, including stable housing, health care, employment, educational opportunities, and incarceration and contact with the criminal justice system.

If social justice is as the United Nations defines it the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth Dallas is far from meeting that call.

Its not to say that people arent doing some good things, said Michael Sorrell, Paul Quinn College president. But if youre not fighting the fight with everything you have, youre not fighting to win.

Even since before the COVID-19 pandemic, for many living in Dallas, striving for the American dream is merely that: a dream.

Dallas is riven with massive divides along race and class. It has intense pockets of poverty and segregation, born from a deep history of racist governmental and private practices and a more recent history of inaction and apathy, which have put Black and Latino families far behind.

So much of that is intertwined with intergenerational poverty and particularly for Black Dallasites is tied to racism and historical disenfranchisement.

This isnt coincidental, and it isnt limited to Dallas. A recent Brookings Institution report found 1 in 5 Black Americans are experiencing poverty for the third generation in a row, compared to just 1 in a hundred white Americans.

From womb to tomb, communities of color face inequities at literally every stage of life in Dallas, said Drexell Owusu, chief impact officer for The Dallas Foundation. Whether its housing or jobs or transportation or health care, I think the biggest challenge faced by the communities of color in Dallas is apathy and stubbornness a tacit acceptance of the status quo. Everything we have ever done in Dallas has led us to the outcomes we are seeing now.

To this point, Dallas hasnt reversed, much less slowed, these trends.

Racial/ethnic segregation and economic segregation was recently growing in Dallas, according to researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington, who completed the North Texas Regional Housing Assessment in 2018.

Such divides have catastrophic effects, particularly on the citys future.

One in 3 children in Dallas over 100,000 kids live in poverty. Many of them likely wont get the boost they need to break that intergenerational cycle.

Research led by Harvard University economist Raj Chetty highlighted the profound impact that a childs neighborhood has on his future. If a child is fortunate enough to move to a better area early in life, the better that childs chances.

Chettys Opportunity Atlas used U.S. Census data to track 20 million Americans from childhood to age 35, to see what neighborhoods tended to offer children a better life than their parents.

Many of the citys neighborhoods fared badly, including wide swaths of southern, West and northwest Dallas. Economic mobility in those areas ranked in the bottom 20% nationally.

Chettys research revealed nine of Dallas census tracts were among the nations worst in moving children out of poverty, ranking in the bottom 1%. All were in South Dallas, Fair Park and east Oak Cliff.

Again, this is not coincidental.

Those areas overlap neighborhoods whose conditions were crafted by forced residential segregation and intentional underinvestment through redlining, balkanized by postwar construction projects, or abandoned by white flight during Dallas ISDs paltry attempts at integration in the 1960s and 1970s.

Following the protests after Floyds death and the many discussions and task forces that followed was a renewed call in Dallas to tackle equity gaps in key areas, including housing and infrastructure, education, the economy, health and public safety.

Here is a glimpse of some of the ongoing work.

Among the many challenges Dallas faces, perhaps none are thornier and central to all other problems than housing.

In a city that is as geographically bifurcated between haves and have-nots, making tangible headway on housing will be a generational challenge.

A safe, stable home can be the key mechanism for low-income families to find their way out of poverty.

And housing policy sets the scene for scores of other issues, said Mike Koprowski, national campaign director for the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Koprowski led Dallas ISDs office of transformation and innovation from 2014 to 2017, later forming a Dallas-based nonprofit focused on housing opportunity.

Housing policy is school policy, he said. Its health policy. Its hunger policy. Its climate policy. Housing influences nearly every sector of life.

In recent years, Dallas has made equity a focus in its housing and infrastructure efforts to admittedly mixed results.

Over the past 18 months, the city has taken steps to better utilize city-owned land near DART stations for mixed-income housing, particularly in southern Dallas. The city also created a public facility corporation a nonprofit entity with broad powers of financing mixed-income housing developments aimed at income levels that arent addressed by either housing tax credits or market-rate construction.

Dallas is in desperate need for more affordable housing for low- and middle-income families, with a shortage of 20,000 units at its own count.

Darryl Baker, a community activist and founder of Fair Share for All Dallas, said his group would like to see the full range of housing options in southern Dallas, not only low-income rentals, with the No. 1 goal of the comprehensive housing policy being home ownership.

One of the stated goals in the development of the citys first comprehensive housing policy adopted by City Council members in 2018 was to overcome patterns of segregation and concentrations of poverty through incentives and requirements.

Instead of the usual practice of funneling federal dollars and development into the poorest parts of town with poor oversight or worse the new policy was designed to use data analysis to identify where the city could use its limited resources to redevelop, stabilize or help spur growth throughout Dallas.

Plans to supply thousands of units per year have yet to be met, though, hampered in part by a sclerotic permitting process that went from bad to worse during the pandemic.

An audit on the comprehensive housing policy from TDA Consulting, released in mid-December, said Dallas 2018 plan was a better guide to compliance with federal, state and local regulations, but was silent on equity.

The plan offered no specific strategies on how to level the playing field for residents and communities of color, and lacked goals tied directly to increasing equity by reducing racial disparities, the report stated.

Before release of the audit, Cullum Clark director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative lauded the city housing policys stated goals but criticized it as too rigid given the shortage. That cuts out much-needed development in areas that fall out of the 15 reinvestment areas, he noted.

Theres probably no major city in America that is really kind of an A performer in creating the policy mix that could build housing at that scale, Clark said. Youve got your available toolkit. Dallas utilizes some, but not all, of those tools.

Infrastructure plans, too, have slowly begun to take more equitable approaches.

Thanks to federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, the city allocated $37 million to expedite the installation of water and wastewater services to 46 unserved but occupied areas. Those projects will now be completed within the next four years, as opposed to the decade-long forecast in 2020. All but three of those are in southern Dallas.

Public-private partnerships sparked several park projects across southern Dallas. Most notable are the Southern Gateway deck park near the Dallas Zoo and the South Oak Cliff Renaissance Park. The first phase of Fair Parks revitalization a 14-acre community park built on land that Dallas wrested from Black families 50 years ago to turn into parking lots for the State Fair of Texas is scheduled to open by spring 2024.

The citys massive sidewalk master plan, adopted by the council in June, considers equity in scoring needs, prioritizing sidewalks in communities with high percentages of low-income residents, people of color and those lacking other forms of transportation.

But as with most other sectors of government adequate funding is the sticking point to progress. Reaching all the goals in the sidewalk master plan alone could run $2 billion.

Perhaps nowhere in the city are institutions more engaged in equity work than in the public education systems and colleges.

The efforts are broad, ranging from the Dallas County Promise an initiative among 11 area school districts, Dallas College and 11 four-year universities from across the state to provide last-dollar scholarships to cover costs that financial aid does not to Early Matters Dallas, a broad coalition pushing for early childhood education.

That push is needed.

The gaps on standardized tests between white students and children of color in 144,000-student Dallas ISD are large. Economic factors play a huge role, as 88% of the districts Latino and Black students are from low-income families more than 50 percentage points higher than for DISDs white students.

School shutdowns and the shift to virtual learning during the pandemic have likely widened those achievement gaps, experts say.

In December 2017, Dallas ISDs board of trustees passed a sweeping racial equity resolution, acknowledging the historical effects of racial and economic segregation on its students. They pledged to relentlessly pursue improvements to fix them.

That led to the creation of DISDs racial equity office, one of the first of its kind in the state. While its taken time for that office to find its way, the effort is now gaining traction as it systematically reevaluated programs and initiatives while setting equity goals along the way.

Were asking questions that are really centered around students, student outcomes and particular groups of students that we know and the data will tell us that have been historically disenfranchised or historically underserved, said DISD board member Karla Garcia.

Following Floyds death, trustees passed a Black Lives Matter resolution and started work to address disciplinary policies that disproportionately affected Black students. In 2018-19, Black children made up about 22% of DISDs students but nearly 52% of out-of-school suspensions and 35% of in-school suspensions.

That effort resulted in the first-of-its-kind ban of discretionary suspensions, replaced by reset centers at each of the districts campuses that are staffed with educators who specialize in social-emotional learning practices.

In planning Dallas ISDs record-setting $3 billion bond, the district prioritized improvements with the help of a Community Resource Index developed by Dallas nonprofit Child Poverty Action Lab that measures a neighborhoods access to health care, food, transportation and recreation.

The pandemic prompted DISD to create Operation Connectivity, an attempt to bridge the digital divide in underserved parts of the city by providing internet access and devices to students who lacked technology at home. The efforts found a willing partner in Gov. Greg Abbott, who helped launch the program statewide.

North Texas is an engine of job growth and prosperity. However, Blacks and Latinos, particularly low-wage employees living in southern Dallas, are too often left behind.

In 2018, an economic opportunity assessment by the Communities Foundation of Texas and the Center for Public Policy Priorities (now named Every Texan) found that nearly a quarter of all workers in the Dallas metropolitan area earned an annual median wage of less than $25,000.

And the K-shaped recovery that the U.S. economy has seen since the pandemic has exacerbated those existing gaps. Low-wage workers were more likely to lose income during the pandemic and are more likely to feel the crunch of inflation in the coming year.

Earlier this year, the City Council passed a comprehensive economic policy that called for the creation of a new economic development corporation. Its primary focus would be to attract business and create job opportunities to southern Dallas through, among other items:

Its long overdue and much-needed, Mayor Eric Johnson told The Dallas Morning News in June.

Nevertheless, the citys economic future likely hinges on being able to develop its own skilled workforce.

DISD has leaned heavily into its P-TECH and early college high school models, which are designed to graduate students with both a high school degree and either an associates degree, 60 college credit hours or an equivalent industry certification.

Paul Quinns work college model requires students to hold a job, with corporate partners paying them a stipend while offsetting a large portion of students tuition. Students graduate with degrees and work transcripts from the historically Black college but little in the way of debt.

The University of North Texas at Dallas prides itself on being one of the nations most affordable colleges. The student body is 79% Latino or Black and hyper-local, with about 90% of its students coming from the Dallas area.

You shouldnt be in this business if you dont have the ability to evolve or have the ability to speak to the issues that people are actually impacted by, Sorrell said, noting that equity should be at the forefront for all education institutions.

On the first weekend of December, Parkland Hospital held pop-up clinics in the parking lots of two Dallas-area Walmarts and a flea market to provide COVID-19 vaccinations.

They werent there by happenstance, said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.

Parkland had crunched the numbers, identifying the areas with low vaccination rates and high-risk communities.

Everything that we look at on the health front, from the countys side, looks at it through a health equity lens, Jenkins said.

It comes as little surprise that the economic and housing disparities also carry a significant health impact.

High-poverty areas in Dallas overlap with areas of high food insecurity and inaccessibility. According to 2019 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, large portions of southern, southeast, west and northwest Dallas are considered low-income and low-access, where the nearest supermarket is more than a mile away.

The citys zoning has a large environmental impact, with industrial manufacturing zoning largely clustered in West Dallas and near the southern portions of the Trinity River.

Meanwhile, the rate of uninsured in Texas is 1.75 times the national average, and Dallas Countys rates are even worse. Only 64.6% of Latinos in Dallas County have health insurance.

A lack of regular family doctors and medical clinics in southern Dallas, particularly for those who dont have the means to pay, limits preventive care leading to greater risks of death from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and influenza and pneumonia.

Black residents, and those living in southeast Dallas, have the highest risks for dying early or living with a disability caused by disease than anyone in Dallas County, according to a 2019 Community Health Needs assessment from Parkland and Dallas County Health and Human Services.

And COVID-19s impact has disproportionately landed on the countys Black and Latino populations.

Parkland is trying to expand its reach with its 12th health center recently opened at RedBird Mall. Work to develop the systems 12th school-based clinic on one of Dallas Colleges campuses is also underway, Jenkins said.

When Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot took office in 2019, he made waves by tackling the nexus of crime and poverty.

Creuzot, a former prosecutor, said after his swearing-in ceremony that far too often, the criminal justice system penalized those living in poverty, particularly people of color.

Are we creating people with criminal records because theyre poor? he asked.

His office made a series of sweeping policy changes including opting not to prosecute low-level marijuana possession or theft of personal items less than $750, and pushing for bail reform to ensure that a risk assessment is fully considered in the determination of the bail amount.

The policy changes drew the ire of state leaders like Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as law enforcement unions.

Despite national studies that show equal levels of use of marijuana among Black and white Americans, Black residents in Dallas in 2018 were four times as likely as non-Black residents to be referred by police for prosecution on marijuana possession.

A recent report from Southern Methodist Universitys Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center on one of Creuzots efforts on marijuana possession shows it didnt work as intended.

While overall referrals dropped by more than 30% in 2019, that ratio between Black and non-Black referrals actually rose to 4.4 times more likely.

Eddie Garca became Dallas first Latino police chief when he was hired in February. One of his early calls to action was the importance of community policing and building relationships with young people.

Council member Casey Thomas said community engagement was a key criterion in searching for a police chief, looking at ways in which we can use resources to as hell say weed and seed. Weed out those negative elements, while seeding in those positive things.

And to that end, the council approved a $1.6 million contract in April for Dallas CRED, a chapter of a national nonprofit focused on the reduction of youth incarceration and gun violence.

A coalition of Dallas community activists called for 10 policy changes needed in the city in the aftermath of Floyds death. They included creating a system of mental health professionals to work as first responders in lieu of officers, as long as firearms arent involved; investing in other alternatives to police response; and adopting policies to restrict the use of deadly force.

Those changes, in large part, have not happened.

The council reallocated $7 million from the Police Departments overtime budget in 2020 but that went toward code compliance, streetlights and the hiring of non-police employees for desk roles in the department a measure that Mayor Johnson railed against. However, DPDs total budget increased, both in 2020 and 2021. The current budget for the department is $567 million, the largest of all city departments.

The city expanded its RIGHT Care teams a collaboration of police, paramedics, social workers and clinicians created to deal with mental health-related 911 calls from five to 10, with an additional $2 million investment.

Carvell Bowens, a community organizer on the Right2Justice campaign from the Texas Organizing Project, said the debate around the proposed reallocations was disappointing, immediately turning into fodder for political gain.

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Reckoning with the past as Dallas looks to a more just future - The Dallas Morning News

MONTREAL, Jan. 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TC Transcontinental (TSX: TCL.A TCL.B) is proud to have climbed to 16th place on the list of the 100 most sustainable corporations in the world, as unveiled today by Corporate Knights, in addition to ranking first in the packaging industry. This performance represents a significant improvement, whereas last year the corporation ranked 45th in the same category.

According to Corporate Knights, TC Transcontinental stood out for its high percentage of clean revenue from the sale of eco-responsible products, its clean investments, and the gender diversity of its Board of Directors and senior management. The Corporation has indeed made several advances in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), including:

I am proud of TC Transcontinentals strong values, our coworkers commitment to build a sustainable future and the role we are playing in creating a circular economy for plastics, said Peter Brues, President and Chief Executive Officer of the corporation. We will continue to invest significantly in R&D that accelerates the development and commercialization of sustainable packaging and ensures that we meet the targets we set as part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundations New Plastics Economy Global Commitment.

lsabelle Marcoux, Chair of the Board, added: This recognition highlights the effectiveness, rigor and scope of the work accomplished in corporate social responsibility by our operating teams and around the Board table. In line with our corporate values, CSR is an integral part of our long-term vision, and the Board ensures that it oversees and supports the actions driven by our strong corporate strategy and governance. As our 2019-2021 Corporate Social Responsibility Plan draws to a close, our people are working to develop new, even more ambitious targets, anchored in our vision of sustainable growth and in line with our stakeholders expectations.

The Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World is a comprehensive analysis of 6,914 international organizations with revenues over $1 billion. Corporations are evaluated on a series of performance indicators specific to their sector, such as percentage of clean revenue, resource management, employee management, financial management and diversity.

To view the Corporation's 2019-2021 Corporate Social Responsibility Plan as well as the 2020 Corporate Social Responsibility Progress Report Acting Together, click here.

About TC Transcontinental

TC Transcontinental is a leader in flexible packaging in North America, and Canadas largest printer. The Corporation is also the leading Canadian French-language educational publishing group. For over 45 years, TC Transcontinental's mission has been to create quality products and services that allow businesses to attract, reach and retain their target customers.

Respect, teamwork, performance and innovation are the strong values held by the Corporation and its employees. TCTranscontinental's commitment to its stakeholders is to pursue its business activities in a responsible manner.

Transcontinental Inc. (TSX: TCL.A TCL.B), known as TC Transcontinental, has approximately 8,000 employees, the majority of which are based in Canada, the United States and Latin America. TC Transcontinental had revenues of more than C$2.6billion for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2021. For more information, visit TC Transcontinental's website at http://www.tc.tc.

For information:

Media Nathalie St-Jean Senior Advisor, Corporate Communications TC TranscontinentalTelephone: 514-954-3581 nathalie.st-jean@tc.tc

Financial CommunityYan LapointeDirector, Investor Relations TC Transcontinental Telephone: 514-954-3574yan.lapointe@tc.tc

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TC Transcontinental ranks 16th among the world's most sustainable corporations - GlobeNewswire

In a year when publisher Smilegate Entertainment is trying to bring one of the worlds most popular games to western audiences, Crossfire: Legion feels like something of a black sheep.

Crossfire, the multiplayer first-person shooter, is massive in Asia particularly in China and South Korea. It boasts 8 million concurrent players and 690 million registered users, according to Smilegate, along with numerous multimedia spinoffs. At E3 2019, however, the company announced CrossfireX, a single-player campaign being developed by Control creator Remedy Entertainment. To bring a multiplayer shooter west, it makes sense to do so with a tailored, narrative-focused first-person experience.

Crossfire: Legion, on the other hand, is aimed at a more niche space: that of old-school real-time strategy games. It helps that its being made by Blackbird Interactive, the studio behind the excellent Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak and the upcoming Homeworld 3 but still, I cant help feeling like its a shot in the dark.

During a recent press briefing, a spokesperson from publisher Prime Matter called Legion a classic RTS. I then spent several hours playing an early technical test, and I dont disagree with that taxonomy. Legion is streamlined and simple, focused more on actions-per-minute than deliberate chess moves. Its units comprise the usual infantry/vehicle/aircraft trifecta, along with commander powers that, when timed well, can turn the tide of a pitched battle.

I played custom matches against AI bots, alternating between the factions of Global Risk and Black List. I preferred the latter, which opts for guerrilla tactics over sheer numbers, and can traverse the map more quickly. In keeping with old-school games like Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness and Command and Conquer, Legion is snappy and responsive, and unit pathfinding is seamless resource-gathering trucks can stack without getting bottlenecked, and soldiers spread out in satisfying arcs before opening fire.

But, also in keeping with those games, the systemic depth only goes so far. By todays standards, Legion feels a bit too old school.

In a recent story about Company of Heroes 3, I wrote about the greatly exaggerated death of the RTS genre, and how, despite a steep decline in mainstream and esports interest in the last decade, its never been more exciting. Whereas the aforementioned World War II game is exploring nuanced squad tactics, recent entries like They Are Billions and Offworld Trading Company found seemingly endless replayable depth. Even the extremely recent Age of Empires 4, a decidedly throwback RTS, deployed engrossing economy-building.

Legion, though, based on my time with its custom matches, feels bareboned. Its units lack compelling environmental interactions; its resource-gathering is sleek but boring; each factions power curve ramps up too gradually to be exciting, and the current roster is too standard to entice me.

But, to reiterate, the demo I played is missing some key features. Blackbird is planning a card system that will allow players to customize their armies before each match, and Im still curious to see how that might shake things up. Legion will also include a single-player campaign, and if its anywhere near as good as Blackbirds work in Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, my initial misgivings could be allayed.

But much of me is doubtful: Legion, at least in this early form, doesnt just revere the games that sparked the genre it seems actively hampered by them.

Maybe thats fine. Not every game needs to be a paragon of innovation. But as a spinoff meant to introduce a whole new market to one of the worlds most massively popular franchises, I was hoping that Legion might push the design envelope. Real-time strategy games are close to my heart. I want them all to succeed. But as of now, Legion feels stuck in the past. If Blackbird is trying to appeal to the RTS fans that still pine for the days of early Command and Conquers or the first StarCraft, theyre off to a good start. If they want to bring in real-time strategy fans that have followed the genres recent creativity with rapt attention, they might be on the wrong track altogether.

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Crossfire: Legion aims to be a classic RTS, but its off to a rocky start - Polygon

Cambodia has the lowest operating costs among nine countries in Asia that are recognised as major manufacturing hubs, according to Asia-Pacific business transformation consultancy TMX.

However, the Kingdom ranks eighth in terms of competitiveness due to interlinked challenges in areas such as talent acquisition and development, logistics and digitalisation, the Singapore-based firm pointed out.

TMX looked at Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam for its The Great Supply Chain Migration Breaking down the Cost of Doing Business in Asia report published in November.

The consultancy conducted a comparative analysis of the nine countries using a variety of cost and condition indicators.

The average total operating costs for a manufacturing firm in Cambodia ranges from $65,313-220,125 per month, versus leader Singapore at $366,561-853,450 and second-ranked Thailand at $142,344-291,730, the report said.

However, as shown in the reports country competitive scorecard, Cambodia and Myanmar are lagging their peers in the region.

The risk level in Myanmar has increased significantly since the beginning of 2021. Political instability has resulted in violence and the economy has stalled because of the ongoing situation.

Limited physical infrastructure and the military regimes suspensions of internet and other telecommunications services have hindered commercial activities and business operations, the report said.

Although Singapore is undoubtedly the most expensive for manufacturing, the city-state also takes the number one spot for competitive location among the nine countries, it added.

This is due to the countrys leading score in ease of doing business, as well as availability of skilled talent, efficient logistics systems, and its role as an early adopter of manufacturing digitalisation, TMX explained.

On the other hand, Cambodia and Myanmar are at the bottom of the value chain.

Cambodia and Myanmar are categorised under the basic assembly lines stage and would be suitable for manufacturing operations in sectors such as textile[s] and garments, footwear, and resource-based processing, the report said.

Though less competitive, these two countries also offer the lowest costs.

Moreover, the two nations also offer the most affordable warehouse rental rates, at $2.5 and $3.4 per sqm per month, the report added.

Anthony Galliano, the group CEO of financial services firm Cambodian Investment Management Co Ltd, said that while Cambodia continues to develop its infrastructure and upgrade its skills, the report reflects that demonstrable progress is needed for the Kingdom to remain competitive in the future.

The countrys future competitiveness in ASEAN should not be built on a foundation of cheap labour costs but as a technologically advanced manufacturing hub, he opined.

The textile industry is a sunset industry which migrates to low cost labour countries, the Kingdoms future will be based on highly skilled manufacturing workers and embracing the digital revolution, he said.

RMAs first-ever motor vehicle assembly plant is symbolic the nations future as the country competes with neighbouring Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia for FDI [foreign direct investment] in high-end manufacturing and assembly, Galliano stressed.

He was referring to RMA (Cambodia) Plc, which according to its CEO, is all set to manufacture US auto major Ford Motor Cos Ranger pickups and Everest SUVs at its plant in eastern Pursat province that is expected to go online in early April.

TMX classified Cambodia and Thailand as dormant countries when it comes to logistics, suggesting that they are deemed relatively costly and less skilful in the field, but have potential to improve in terms of cost and performance.

Galliano added that the Law on Investment and recent tax incentives are welcome progress in signalling Cambodias strategy of human resource competitiveness and advancement and the acceleration to digitalisation.

The Ministry of Public Works and Transport continues to do a superb job developing the nations infrastructure, particularly in roads and ports.

Directionally the government is on the right track, but needs to do more in advancing businesses adoption of new technology and digital solutions and to boost the adoption of new tech among enterprises, he said.

The report also noted that utilities and telecommunications account for about 16 per cent of total costs in most countries.

Overall, electricity forms the largest proportion of costs among these components. Cambodia has the most expensive electricity rates while Vietnams electricity rates are the most affordable.

As for telecommunication costs, the more developed the countries are, the lower the telecommunication costs. As a result, Myanmar and Cambodia have the highest internet costs while Singapore and India provide the most affordable rates, TMX said.

The report went on to say that Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Vietnam offer a sizeable and relatively affordable labour pool.

These countries often offer abundant employment opportunities but fewer highly skilled talent in many sectors with talent competitiveness scores ranging between 40.9 and 33.4.

Cambodia and Myanmar have the lowest cost of labour, though they stand relatively low in talent competitiveness. A large percentage of the labour force remains low-skilled, which may be more suited for basic assembly lines, it added.

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Best operating costs in Kingdom: TMX - The Phnom Penh Post