Category Archives: Resource Based Economy

This article originally appreared on Ensia.

Bold environmental goals are becoming a hallmark of city governance. Across the U.S., cities are unveilingclean energy plans,climate targets,sustainability road mapsand other aspirational programs to guide themselves into a more environmentally friendly future. Making these kinds of plans, it seems, is relatively easy. Paying to achieve the goals they set, especially in resource-strapped communities, can be a major challenge, though.

But environmental goals dont have to be expensive moon shots. Rather, there are many small steps cities can take to reduce their environmental impacts. Some can even help out a citys bottom line. Theres a lot of things that directly pay off, says Cooper Martin, director of sustainability and solutions at the National League of Cities.

Some efforts may take time and others might require up-front investments. But there are programs and policies cities can implement today that can have a positive environmental impact without breaking the budget. Below are a few.

Lets say youre a city, youve done business as usual for the last 30 years, youre just getting started. The easiest thing for you to do is to look at your own municipally owned buildings and find ways to retrofit them, Martin says.

Replacing windows, lighting, or heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems can result in significant and long-termsavings in energyand resource costs. So can insulating or even renovating entire buildings. A building energy efficiency program launched in 2012 in Chicago had retrofitted 75 buildings by 2018,savingan estimated 70,000 metric tons (77,000 tons) of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

There are programs and policies cities can implement today that can have a positive environmental impact without breaking the budget.

We know that the money saved over the life cycle of that building is going to be dramatic, Martin says. And the savings start immediately, with the next months utility bill.

The next step is to reinvest those savings into sustainability projects that dont pay back as quickly. You can create a revolving fund for things like water infrastructure or transportation enhancements, Martin says.

A slower pay off, but one that comes at just the cost of drafting a new policy, is to change city zoning codes.

In the U.S., most cities finance themselves based on property taxes. They need that value. And rezoning to allow for more density, to allow for different kinds of mixed-use development that uses infrastructure more efficiently is really important, says Martin.

Higher density development uses fewer resources, Martin says, and pulling in more property tax revenue creates new opportunities for cities. You can use that revenue for all kinds of things to improve the local economy or to reinvest into sustainability, he says.

From London to Stuttgart to Portland, cities around the world are implementing speed limits for health, safety and environmental reasons. Simply lowering speed limits by just a few miles per hour can result in significant emissions reductions.

A studyof reduced limits in London found that polluting nitrogen dioxide and disease-causing PM10 emissions were about 8 percent lower, and carbon dioxide emissions were about 1 percent lower, for small cars traveling 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) than for those driving 30 miles per hour (48 kilometers per hour).

Lowered speed limits also boost public safety, particularly for pedestrians. Even slight increases in speed can greatly increase the likelihood of death in pedestrians,according to researchers at the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. They found that a person is66percent more likely to be killedif struck by a car driving 30 miles (48 kilometers) per hour than one driving 25 miles (40 kilometers) per hour.

Local governments are also consumers, and the day-to-day tasks of running a city require supplies and services. Purchasing policies can be written to ensure city purchasing is less harmful for the environment. For example, the city of Boulder, Colorado, hasan Environmental Purchasing Policythat guides the citys procurement towards environmentally friendly products, evenrequiring certain itemslike stationery and toilet paper to be made of recycled material.

Though on a larger scale, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts found that its Environmentally Preferable Products Procurement Policysaved more than US$18 millionin fiscal year 2017 and more than US$12 million in fiscal year 2018. Organizations are already having a huge impact through purchasing. If they can leverage that influence to support other goals of the government or organization, thats a win-win, says Sarah OBrien, acting CEO of the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council.

More aggressive moves like going fully paper-free can cut costs of paper, printers, toner and the electricity used to run printers and copiers.

Saving money and reducing environmental impact can be as simple as eliminating unnecessary printing. Across a city hall, there are plenty of instances where printing a document can be avoided. Single-use meeting agendas can be digitally projected, and many city documents and reports can be posted on websites.

More aggressive moves like going fully paper-free can cut costs of paper, printers, toner and the electricity used to run printers and copiers. Areport from the Institute for Local Governmentfound that the paperless policy enacted by the city of Rancho Cucamonga, California, saved an estimated US$11,000 annually. Even small savings like these can add up over time.

Sometimes reducing environmental impacts is the responsibility of the entire community. In addition to the simple strategies listed above, cities should face the fact that reducing environmental impacts will cost money, says Jeff Hughes, director of the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A lot of the environmental services are essential services, he says. Theyre hard to pay for, but at the end of the day people find a way to pay for water and wastewater treatment. So they should be able to pay for services that benefit the environment, too, Hughes says.

In recent years, Hughes has noticed more cities setting up dedicated environmental fees or service charges to pay for these essential services with environmental dividends. The city of Raleigh, North Carolina, for example, charges astormwater utility feeto homeowners based on the amount of impervious surface on their property a fee that accounts for the cost of processing stormwater that flows off the site and into the sewer system.

Each city is unique, and the right mix of low-cost environmentally friendly practices will be unique, too. No matter the city, payoffs abound for those that take time to look for and implement practices that benefit residents and the environment, too.

Read more from the original source:

6 inexpensive things cities can do to become more sustainable - GreenBiz

Too often the concept of a circular economy is muddled up with some kind of advanced recycling process that would mean keeping our industrial system as it is and preserving a growing consumption model.

This idea is based on a belief that recycling will take care of everything.

One of the most startling examples of this is the part of the European Unions Circular Economy Action Plan which aims to increase recycling rates: up to 70% of all packaging waste by 2030 and 65% of all municipal waste by 2035. In a properly built circular economy, one should rather focus on avoiding the recycling stage at all costs. It may sound straightforward, but preventing waste from being created in the first place is the only realistic strategy.

While we obviously need to continue recycling for quite some time, putting the emphasis on genuine circular innovations that is, moving us away from a waste-based model should be our sole objective.

In a linear economy, we do not account for the side-effects generated by a product once sold to an end customer. The aim is to sell a maximum number of products at minimal cost. Continuous pressure to reduce costs leads to the creation of many of these side-effects called externalities by economists. The higher a companys rate of production and the higher its efficiency, the more successful it will be at selling its goods in a fiercely competitive environment.

The global population is expected to reach close to 9 billion people by 2030 inclusive of 3 billion new middle-class consumers.This places unprecedented pressure on natural resources to meet future consumer demand.

A circular economy is an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design. It replaces the end-of-life concept with restoration, shifts towards the use of renewable energy, eliminates the use of toxic chemicals and aims for the elimination of waste through the superior design of materials, products, systems and business models.

Nothing that is made in a circular economy becomes waste, moving away from our current linear take-make-dispose economy. The circular economys potential for innovation, job creation and economic development is huge: estimates indicate a trillion-dollar opportunity.

The World Economic Forum has collaborated with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation for a number of years to accelerate the Circular Economy transition through Project MainStream - a CEO-led initiative that helps to scale business driven circular economy innovations.

Join our project, part of the World Economic Forums Shaping the Future of Environment and Natural Resource Security System Initiative, by contacting us to become a member or partner.

This worked well in the 20th century when resources were easily available and raw material prices kept decreasing. Waste, as an economic externality, was not the producers responsibility. Managing waste cycles, dumping it out of sight or, at best, recycling it but only when it was cost-effective were under the control of our national institutions.

Visionary manufacturers, who understand the upcoming challenges of increasing their economic resilience, know better: a product that is returned for repair will cost less to fix and sell again, than manufacturing it from scratch.

In our current model, we extract resources, transform them into products, and consume or use them, prior to disposing of them. Recycling only starts at the throwing-away stage: this is a process that is not made to preserve or increase value nor to enhance materials.

We need to understand that recycling is not an effective strategy for dealing with unused resource volumes in a growth model. We will find ourselves in a never-ending pursuit of continuously generated waste, rather than seeing the avoidance of waste as a path to beneficial innovations on many levels.

Of course, it is easier to think about recycling. This avoids changing the whole of our volume-based production model. But in a world where we have to shift our consumption patterns and use less energy, recycling no longer has all the answers.

Since we cannot stop the volume of waste overnight, investments in the recycling industry are needed. But truly meaningful investment in developing a circular economy takes place outside of the recycling space. Indeed, the more we recycle and the more we finance recycling factories, the more we stay linear. We mistakenly believe this is the best route to solve our problems - but by staying in a recycling-based economy, we will delay the transition to an advanced circular economy.

In a circular economy, resources do not end up as recyclables since products are made to last several lifecycles. Products lifespans are extended via maintain, repair, redistribute, refurbishment and/or re-manufacture loops, thus they never end up in the low-value, high-need-for-energy loop: recycling.

We live in a world in dire need of disruptive innovations. Closing loops next to where customers live while avoiding waste is a short and longer-term win-win for any leading re-manufacturer. Short-term because you are in direct contact with your customers, and taking back a product that needs maintenance is an opportunity to better understand their needs and help them with additional services. Long-term because you will lower your exposure to future financial risks. Any of the feedback loops that exist prior to the recycling loop are an opportunity to take back control over your stock of resources taking control away from the raw material markets, which may become highly volatile. Increased interactions with your customers, both commercial and financial, and an in-depth understanding of their needs, would increase customer loyalty and a business overall resilience.

Re-using, re-distributing and/or remanufacturing strategies are the preferred approaches in a circular economy, as they are based on parts durability. Caring for and preserving the value of product components increases corporate economic resilience, while diminishing external market risks. Whether you are acting in a highly advanced or a developing economy, these strategies make crystal-clear sense: they are less costly in the long-run because repairing a product made to last is always less expensive than producing it from scratch.

Following this approach, we must move away from activities that devalue the material, such as recycling, and instead invest in those activities that preserve it: reuse and remanufacture. These two are especially important since they create many more secure jobs. Walter R. Stahel, the godfather of the modern circular economy, introduced the metric of labor input-per-weight ratio (man-hour-per-kg, or mh/kg) to measure job creation in relation to resource consumption. He found that the ratio of mh/kg when building a remanufactured engine from used resources compared to making the same engine from virgin materials is 270:1. The impact on employment is huge.

The re-localization and the re-sizing of activities closer to customers become critical. Production sites should migrate from a highly centralized global hub to units designed to fulfill local needs. In developed markets, a possible plan could be to develop strategic partnerships with local service providers, who can provide the infrastructure. In emerging markets, where there is often an urgent need for jobs, leapfrogging straight into a national re-manufacturing strategy is the way forward. Becoming the next world factory hub is an obsolete vision today.

One way to start thinking like a leader in the next economy while creating jobs could be in order of priority:

Reuse by repairing (goods) through re-hiring (people), while sharing the radical benefits (awareness) of such a model

Redistribute by promoting access (goods) through collaboration (people), while sharing information (awareness) about this model

Remanufacture via the ease of disassembly (goods) by training (people), while sharing the acquired knowledge (awareness) through this model

Migration of recycling activities by diverting (goods) to service models, transferring skills (people) to remanufacturing processes (awareness).

All of the above make sense in a world where planetary limits have already hit most economies.

Adopting a circular strategy by avoiding reliance on recycling is the way forward.

This is about genuine innovation derived from genuine leadership.

This article was originally published in UNIDO's Making It magazine

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Written by

Alexandre Lemille, Co-founder and general secretary, African Circular Economy Network

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

See original here:

To move to a circular economy, we need to stop recycling - World Economic Forum

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Nov. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --A World Worth Imagining; Jacque Fresco - The Man with the Planwas released on 11/11/19 to an awe inspired crowd at LucasFilm's Premier Theater in San Francisco. The documentary, which was picked up for distribution by Films for Action, is about the life's work of late, legendary visionary Jacque Fresco, founder of The Venus Project, and features the inspirational last interview of his life at age 101. S.O.U.L. jointly produced the film with Roxanne Meadows (co-founder of The Venus Project) to raise awareness of their elaborate concepts and plans to alter humanity's self-destructive course, offering us a well conceived system beyond capitalism, and beyond all forms of money, in which our collective values nurture our survival and inform us how to thrive as one human family.

The film, available at souldocumentary.love/thevenusproject, is also a fundraising vehicle for The Venus Project's new 501(c)(3) organization, with a portion of each rental going to them. S.O.U.L.'s co-founder Evan Hirsch has also pledged a $50,000 matching grant to boost the effort through December 15, 2019. One near term goal of The Venus Project is the planning and construction of their Center for Resource Management, intended to showcase their comprehensive plans for a complete redesign of human civilization, acknowledging, at last, our role as responsible stewards of the Earth. The centerpiece of this blueprint for a sustainable future is Jacque's concept of a Resource-Based Economy, a system in which the planet's resources are inventoried and distributed humanely and equitably to elevate all of humanity to a high standard of living, while employing technology to handle physical labor and resource management.

Philanthropist Evan Hirsch and producer Kip Baldwin founded the non-profit S.O.U.L. Documentary because they both felt there was far too much time and resources devoted to promoting the problems that humans are creating for ourselves with the ages-old story of institutionalized fear, rather than solutions to help us thrive. To achieve their goal of sharing solutions they have discovered, S.O.U.L. has created wide ranging content, including six weekly internet shows, short films, and original music from S.O.U.L.'s band S.O.U.L. Twin Messiah for their soundtracks and beyond. Ultimately, their goal is to unite the self-proclaimed "change-makers" of the world to contribute their attention, energy, and resources toward collaborating on the common goal of bringing the vision for humanity proposed by The Venus Project to life.

For more information on S.O.U.L. Documentary and The Venus Project, please visit these links, and be inspired to consciously evolve:https://souldocumentary.lovehttps://www.thevenusproject.comFilm soundtrack available here: https://souldocumentary.love/soul-twin-messiah/

Contact: Kip Baldwin S.O.U.L. Documentary LLC Phone:408.316.0601 Fax: 415.306.7053 Kip@souldocumentary.love

SOURCE SOUL Documentary

S.O.U.L. Documentary

See original here:

"A World Worth Imagining; Jacque Fresco - The Man with the Plan" Now Available to Public, Following Moving Debut at Lucasfilm's Premier...

Too often the concept of a circular economy is muddled up with some kind of advanced recycling process that would mean keeping our industrial system as it is and preserving a growing consumption model.

This idea is based on a belief that recycling will take care of everything.

One of the most startling examples of this is the part of the European Union's Circular Economy Action Plan which aims to increase recycling rates: up to 70% of all packaging waste by 2030 and 65% of all municipal waste by 2035. In a properly built circular economy, one should rather focus on avoiding the recycling stage at all costs. It may sound straightforward, but preventing waste from being created in the first place is the only realistic strategy.

While we obviously need to continue recycling for quite some time, putting the emphasis on genuine circular innovations that is, moving us away from a waste-based model should be our sole objective.

In a linear economy, we do not account for the side-effects generated by a product once sold to an end customer. The aim is to sell a maximum number of products at minimal cost. Continuous pressure to reduce costs leads to the creation of many of these side-effects called externalities by economists. The higher a company's rate of production and the higher its efficiency, the more successful it will be at selling its goods in a fiercely competitive environment.

This worked well in the 20th century when resources were easily available and raw material prices kept decreasing. Waste, as an economic externality, was not the producers' responsibility. Managing waste cycles, dumping it out of sight or, at best, recycling it but only when it was cost-effective were under the control of our national institutions.

Visionary manufacturers, who understand the upcoming challenges of increasing their economic resilience, know better: a product that is returned for repair will cost less to fix and sell again, than manufacturing it from scratch.

In our current model, we extract resources, transform them into products, and consume or use them, prior to disposing of them. Recycling only starts at the throwing-away stage: this is a process that is not made to preserve or increase value nor to enhance materials.

We need to understand that recycling is not an effective strategy for dealing with unused resource volumes in a growth model. We will find ourselves in a never-ending pursuit of continuously generated waste, rather than seeing the avoidance of waste as a path to beneficial innovations on many levels.

Of course, it is easier to think about recycling. This avoids changing the whole of our volume-based production model. But in a world where we have to shift our consumption patterns and use less energy, recycling no longer has all the answers.

Since we cannot stop the volume of waste overnight, investments in the recycling industry are needed. But truly meaningful investment in developing a circular economy takes place outside of the recycling space. Indeed, the more we recycle and the more we finance recycling factories, the more we stay 'linear'. We mistakenly believe this is the best route to solve our problems - but by staying in a recycling-based economy, we will delay the transition to an advanced circular economy.

In a circular economy, resources do not end up as recyclables since products are made to last several lifecycles. Products' lifespans are extended via maintain, repair, redistribute, refurbishment and/or re-manufacture loops, thus they never end up in the low-value, high-need-for-energy loop: recycling.

We live in a world in dire need of disruptive innovations. Closing loops next to where customers live while avoiding waste is a short and longer-term win-win for any leading re-manufacturer. Short-term because you are in direct contact with your customers, and taking back a product that needs maintenance is an opportunity to better understand their needs and help them with additional services. Long-term because you will lower your exposure to future financial risks. Any of the feedback loops that exist prior to the recycling loop are an opportunity to take back control over your stock of resources taking control away from the raw material markets, which may become highly volatile. Increased interactions with your customers, both commercial and financial, and an in-depth understanding of their needs, would increase customer loyalty and a business' overall resilience.

Re-using, re-distributing and/or remanufacturing strategies are the preferred approaches in a circular economy, as they are based on parts durability. Caring for and preserving the value of product components increases corporate economic resilience, while diminishing external market risks. Whether you are acting in a highly advanced or a developing economy, these strategies make crystal-clear sense: they are less costly in the long-run because repairing a product made to last is always less expensive than producing it from scratch.

Following this approach, we must move away from activities that devalue the material, such as recycling, and instead invest in those activities that preserve it: reuse and remanufacture. These two are especially important since they create many more secure jobs. Walter R. Stahel, the godfather of the modern circular economy, introduced the metric of labor input-per-weight ratio (man-hour-per-kg, or mh/kg) to measure job creation in relation to resource consumption. He found that the ratio of mh/kg when building a remanufactured engine from used resources compared to making the same engine from virgin materials is 270:1. The impact on employment is huge.

The re-localization and the re-sizing of activities closer to customers become critical. Production sites should migrate from a highly centralized global hub to units designed to fulfill local needs. In developed markets, a possible plan could be to develop strategic partnerships with local service providers, who can provide the infrastructure. In emerging markets, where there is often an urgent need for jobs, leapfrogging straight into a national re-manufacturing strategy is the way forward. Becoming the next 'world factory' hub is an obsolete vision today.

One way to start thinking like a leader in the next economy while creating jobs could be in order of priority:

All of the above make sense in a world where planetary limits have already hit most economies.

Adopting a circular strategy by avoiding reliance on recycling is the way forward.

This is about genuine innovation derived from genuine leadership.

Reprinted with permission of the World Economic Forum. Read the original article.

From Your Site Articles

Related Articles Around the Web

Excerpt from:

To build a circular economy, we need to put recycling in the bin - Big Think

The September media headlines were not kind to Pittsburgh. Prompted by a new report on racial and gender disparities in the city, articles such as Pittsburgh: A Most Livable City, but Not for Black Women began to surface, highlighting a troublesome contradiction.1 By numerous measures, the Steel City is on the rise. But much of its growth and prosperity are concentrating downtown and in a handful of adjacent neighborhoods, while other neighborhoodshome primarily to people of color and high-poverty householdshave yet to feel the lift.2

This story is hardly unique to Pittsburgh. After decades of sprawl and suburban dominance, many U.S. cities are experiencing rebounding populations, growing employment, and new public and private sector investments in both people and places. Yet many communities are being left out of the revival.3 Throughout the country, the challenges wrought by our widening geographic inequitiescharacterized by stark income, wealth, and race-based disparities across neighborhoods, cities, and regionsare becoming even more apparent, thrusting place to the forefront of many economic policy conversations.4

One year ago this month, Brookings Metro dove into this fray with the establishment of the Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking. The impetus stemmed from the recognition that market disruptions, coupled with changing demographic and household structures, are sharpening the nations long-standing spatial dividesand that new sets of place-led policies and practices are essential to bridging them.

The patterns of concentration, dispersion, and racial and economic segregation that characterize the American landscape are not new, nor are they static. Across the country, research by our Brookings colleague Mark Muro and others has shown that large, coastal metro areas such as Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City are capturing a disproportionate share of todays digital-economy growth, while small and midsized cities and rural areas fall behind.5 Within metro areas, poverty and racial isolation remain persistent in historically distressed and disinvested urban neighborhoods, even as many downtowns, waterfronts, and innovation districts are undergoing significant revitalization and reinvestment.6 Meanwhile, many suburban communities are grappling with aging infrastructure and rising numbers of poor residents, amid auto-centric designs that lack the walkability and connectivity demanded by the businesses needed to serve them.7

Residents and workers in these areas understand that in todays economy, opportunity is increasingly dictated by geographyand theyre putting pressure on federal, state, and local leaders to take action.8 Yet lingering tensions remain, rooted in deep-seated fears about neighborhood change and the lack of community voice in the process.9People want to see their communities improve, but those who have long been excluded from growth and investment are rightfully wary about who decides the meaning of improvement, and who will reap the gains. In short, how can residents trust that the benefits of investment will finally reach them?10

We launched the Bass Center a year ago with the aim of inspiring public, private, and civic leaders to respond to this questionthat is, to work deeply with communities to make the kinds of investments in place that will generate widespread social and economic benefits. Twelve months and a lot of listening later, weve developed an outcome-oriented framework that definestransformative placemakingas a new form of integrated practice for getting there. The frameworkmeant to be adapted and refined to reflect community priorities and realitiesis designed to provide stakeholders in urban, suburban, and rural areas with a holistic template for creating connected, vibrant, and inclusive communities.

Over the past several decades, planners, community development groups, and other place-focused organizations have elevatedthe importance of place and placemaking in fostering more inclusive development. However, for all their successes, those efforts are constrained by dated structures that fail to keep pace with the changing needs of businesses, institutions, residents, and workers in regards to placeand are thus unable to substantively turn the tide on the nations unequal growth patterns. For example, for all of the evidence showing the benefits of proximity and density, many of our policies and investments still largely support decentralized developmentand the auto-dependency, environmental degradation, and fiscal waste that come with it. Further, when public and private sector leadersdo prioritize place-based investments, they often focus on either mitigating the symptoms of entrenched poverty or catering to the perceived demands of well-off workers and residents. In neither case is more equitable and inclusive economic growth the main objective.

So, what makes transformative placemaking different? And what distinguishes it from creative placemaking, tactical placemaking, and other efforts with a seemingly similar ambition? The answer can be boiled down to three distinct qualities that set transformative placemaking apart: its scope, scale, and level of integration.

When Brookings Metro established the Bass Center last year, we put forth a case for why the Center was neededthat is, the major challenges it would address and the gaps in knowledge and practice that it would work with the broader field to fill. But we needed more time to define what success might look like on the groundin other words, what locally deployed transformative placemaking should aspire to achieve. To this end, and with significant input from several other individuals and organizations, the Bass Center has developed a four-part, holistic framework that defines the practice and lays out a broad set of outcomes against which local efforts might be gauged.11 (Download the transformative placemaking framework.)

Transformative placemaking aims to:

For example, in Wytheville, Va.a small, rural community facing industry decline and a diminishing populationpublic and private sector leaders are coming together to support local entrepreneurship by providing small downtown businesses with access to capital, free business classes, and mentorship and networking opportunities. Combined with investments in street improvements and new amenities, the town is taking an integrated approach rooted in its homegrown assets to catalyze revitalization.

For example, as part of its larger riverfront revitalization strategy, the Memphis River Parks Partnership is increasing connectivity between disadvantaged neighborhoods to the north, south, and east of downtown by defining pedestrian and cycling corridors between the riverfront and surrounding neighborhoods and using a long-overlooked park as an anchor for new neighborhood investment. Combined with efforts to nurture long-term skill development, support women- and minority-owned businesses, and promote unity among diverse neighbors, they are using the riverfront to bring social and economic gains to all Memphians.

For example, in Philadelphias University City District, a local partnership of anchor institutions, small businesses, and residents are coming together to not only fund quality public spaces and programming, but to ensure they are deeply inclusive. Through the Just Spaces Initiative, UCD stakeholders are using a web-based tool to track who utilizes the public space they manage, offering more diverse and culturally relevant programs and events, and implementing historic signage programs to highlight the role of notable women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community.

For example, in Washington, D.C., Building Bridges Across the River is encouraging locally managed civic infrastructure by finding creative ways to engage community members, municipal leaders, and nonprofits throughout every step of their effort to develop the citys first elevated public park. It offers Community Leadership Empowerment Workshops to teach residents how to effectively organize and lead meaningful change, provides resources for residents and others to create inclusive, community-driven plans of their own, and is continually adapting its Equitable Development Plan to meet residents changing needs.

This framework is designed to be relevant to any community aspiring to pursue large-scale development or redevelopment that promotes widespread economic and social benefits. It is neither prescriptive nor static, recognizing that the specific strategies to achieve transformative placemakings objectivesin whole or in partmust be tailored to the distinct needs of places and populations, and constantly evolve in response to new market forces, trends, and opportunities.

In practice, this framework can serve as a template for public, private, and civic sector leaders to guide program development, policy reform, and resource allocation decisions, to set impact goals and metrics for assessing them, and to measure progress over time. It encourages them to establish a more holistic vision for what a place can become, and to understand the role that intersecting transformative placemaking effortslocally designed and advancedcan play in achieving that vision.

At the end of the day, this framework is about creating livable places for everyone, not just those at the top of the ladder. It encourages places like Pittsburgh, and other cities and towns facing place-based inequities, to take a hard look at who has benefited from investment in the past, who is benefiting now, and how leaders can partner with communities to ensure that more people benefit in the future.

Go here to read the rest:

Transformative placemaking: A framework to create connected, vibrant, and inclusive communities - Brookings Institution

TORONTO, Nov. 19, 2019 /CNW/ -

Today marks the official launch of the new Institute for Sustainable Finance. Building on its mandate to align mainstream financial markets with Canada's transition to a prosperous sustainable economy, the Institute unveiled today the establishment of the Canadian Sustainable Finance Network (CSFN), an independent and diverse alliance of academics, researchers and educators who will address the most pressing questions of this field, and our time.

"The Institute for Sustainable Finance aims to create the most credible and robust body of sustainable finance knowledge in the country. Establishing the CSFN as a critical resource for Canadian leaders is one way we can help guide the massive transition to a sustainable economy," says Institute executive director, Sean Cleary, BMO Professor of Finance and Founding Director of the Master of Finance program at the Smith School of Business at Queen's University.

The 44 members from 16 universities of the CSFN, which include Queen's University, the University of Calgary, Dalhousie University, Concordia University, the University of Victoria, and the University of Manitoba, will serve as an engine and collaboration platform for academia, industry and government to move sustainable finance forward in Canada. Its initiatives include expanding research partnerships and joint funding opportunities, creating a repository of education resources and growing program offerings, and collaborating with like-minded organizations such as the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investments (GRASFI).

"Climate change is becoming a mainstream policy issue, and increasingly understood to have potentially serious financial consequences as well as being the source of significant opportunity. As a result, it is becoming an increasing focus for the global financial system, given the multi-faceted role finance plays in allocating capital and managing risk within key sectors of the economy," says Andy Chisholm,a member of the Institute's advisory board and a member of the Canadian Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance.

"Canada needs to keep up, and where appropriate, take a leadership role if we are to stay globally competitive.The longer we delay, the more risk we take on and the more opportunity we forego or cede to others in a low-carbon transition.Universities have an important role to play and will bemost effective in this space if they are encouraged to build off of and leverage each other's strengths and advances. That is why this collaborative cross-country network is critical," adds Andy Chisholm.

In addition to launching the CSFN, the Institute has undertaken education initiatives to foster a deeper base of knowledge and expertise in Canada. In addition to the development of traditional academic courses, the Institute and Queen's Executive Education are launching programs for business professionals. The first on Sustainable Investing will run April 15-17, 2020 in Toronto with more to follow. These efforts align with the Institute's overall goal to significantly boost Canada's capacityin both the long and the short-termto implement sustainable finance approaches that will enable the country to thrive through a low-carbon transition.

"Working collaboratively on sustainable finance solutions, our world-class Canadian talent will help shape the financial system Canada's future needs," says Professor Cleary.

The Institute for Sustainable Finance is based at Smith School of Business, Queen's University and is supported by the Ivey Foundation, the McConnell Foundation, and the McCall MacBain Foundation.

Quotes from Canadian Sustainable Finance Network members:

"The Network will accelerate sustainable finance in two key ways. First, it will unify the voice of Canadian researchers across the country on this important topic. Second, it will ensure Canadians are at the forefront of sustainable finance research, allowing us to determine the agenda rather than waiting for others to set the questions to be answered." -Ryan Riordan, Associate Professor & Distinguished Professor of Finance, Smith School of Business, Queen's University; Director of Research at the Institute for Sustainable Finance

"The Network will bring together people with similar interests who have different backgrounds and experiences to spark new ideas and opportunities to accelerate research and learning. For example, the idea of socially responsible investing is growing and becoming more important to Canadians in general, and thus to investors. We don't know yet how much it will cost or benefit investors. Clearing up this unknown will greatly benefit investors." - Greg Hebb, Professor of Finance at Dalhousie University's Rowe School of Business

"Canada's economy is resource-based and our risk exposure to sustainability issues such as pipelines, lumber and water is very high. The financial sector can realign its structures to ensure capital flows toward solutions that will protect Canada's economy and prosperity as well as protect portfolio values for Canadians. By joining the network, we aim to further promote and contribute to sustainable finance initiatives through cross-institution collaborations and knowledge sharing." - Gady Jacoby, Dean of the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba

"Sustainable finance is very multidimensional. It encompasses every aspect of finance from asset pricing to corporate financing, from risk management to portfolio management, so every model or concept in finance can involve elements of sustainability. We need researchers with different skills and different knowledge and experiences. A network like this one will facilitate collaboration and resource sharing." - Claudia Champagne, Vice Dean for Research at the University of Sherbrooke

"The Network is an excellent initiative that will provide Canadian scholars with a concrete and powerful platform to engage in new collaborations, both in research and education. It will accelerate meaningful and impactful research at the cross-section of sustainability and finance that will help tackle complex issues faced by businesses, investors and other financial sector participants. The timing is very critical given the nature of the Canadian economy and the climate emergency requiring a massive transition to a low carbon economy." - Basma Majerbi, Associate Professor of Finance at Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria

"We have to figure out how we attract capital to this country and environmental and social governance (ESG) performance is becoming increasingly important for access to financing particularly for those in the energy sector. The Network is going to bring together resources around ESG, helping companies and investors to be well informed in this new landscape." - Yrjo Koskinen, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Finance at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary

"Everybody's very enthused about the Canadian Sustainable Finance Network being developed. We will all be able participate, exchange and collaborate in an ecosystem to continue to develop our environment and social governance (ESG) and sustainability education not only for academics and students, but also for professionals." -Stephen Kibsey, Adjunct Professor, Concordia University

VIDEO LINK: Keynote and industry remarks from the Institute for Sustainable Finance launch event will be broadcast live starting at 6:30pm EST and can be viewed here. Questions by media representatives viewing the video can be submitted by email to amilner@argylepr.com.

For a full list of Canadian Sustainable Finance Network members and to learn more about the Institute for Sustainable Finance, please visit: isfcanada.org

SOURCE Queen's University

For further information: and to schedule interviews with Institute for Sustainable Finance spokespeople, please contact: Anna Milner, P: 647-391-9067, Email: amilner@argylepr.com

http://www.queensu.ca/

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New Institute for Sustainable Finance Will Harness Canada's "Best and Brightest" to Advance a Prosperous Transition to a Sustainable Economy...

If you read the headlines on any given day, it seems like the United States is headed for a fall, as rivals China and Russia push their weight around.

But Michael Beckley, an associate professor of political science at Tufts, doesnt buy that. To him, this is the era of the U.S. as sole superpower, and the countrys domination of the global order should continue for decades, at least.

In his recent book Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the Worlds Sole Superpower, Beckley documents the multitude of U.S. strengths and its rivals many weaknesses. Thats not to say America couldnt decline, due to domestic political divisions and corruption, and lose its sole superpower status. But overall, he says, its more likely to thrive.

Institutionally, the United States is a mess, but Chinas system is worse, he said. The United States is a flawed democracy, but China is an oligarchy ruled by a dictator for life.

Tufts Now recently spoke with Beckley about his efforts to rebalance the view of the U.S. and its global rivals.

Tufts Now: You detail many reasons why the U.S. is the worlds preeminent powerwhat are, say, the top two reasons?

Michael Beckley: First, the United States has a huge lead by the most important measures of national power. China is the only country that comes close, and America still has three times Chinas wealth and five times its military capabilities. That gap would take decades to close even if things go badly for the United States.

Second, things probably wont go badly for the United States, at least relatively speaking, because it has the best long-term economic growth prospects among the major powers. Economists have shown that long-run growth depends on a countrys geography, demography, and political institutions. The United States has an edge in all three categories.

Geographically, the United States is a natural economic hub and military fortress. Its packed with resources and has more economic arteries like navigable waterways and ports than the rest of the world combined. Its only neighbors are Canada and Mexico. China, by contrast, has burned through its resources and is surrounded by nineteen countries, many of which are hostile or unstable, and ten of which still claim parts of Chinas territory as their own.

Demographically, America is the only nation that is simultaneously big, young, and highly educated. The U.S. workforce is the third largest, second youngest, most educated in years of schooling, and most productive among the major powersand it is the only major workforce that will grow throughout this century.

China, by contrast, will lose 200 million workers over the next thirty years and add 300 million senior citizens. Chinese workers produce six times less wealth per hour than American workers on average. More than two-thirds of Chinas workers lack a high school education; and one-third of Chinese young people entering the workforce have an IQ below 90, largely a result of malnutrition, poor care, and pollution.

Institutionally, the United States is a mess, but Chinas system is worse. The United States is a flawed democracy, but China is an oligarchy ruled by a dictator for life. Special interests drag down U.S. growth and fuel corruption and inequality, but the Chinese Communist Party systematically sacrifices economic efficiency and promotes corruption and inequality to maintain political control.

What about Russia? It has a huge nuclear arsenal, bullies its neighbors and asserts its power farther abroad in conflicts like that in Syria. Should we be more concerned?

Russia threatens many U.S. interestsit menaces U.S. allies, props up U.S. adversaries such as Iran and Syria, murders pro-democracy advocates, meddles in elections, and has recently seized foreign territory near its bordersbut Russia is not poised to become a rival superpower like the Soviet Union was.

Russias military budget is ten times smaller than Americas. Its economy is smaller than that of Texas and its population will shrink 30 percent over the next thirty years. Russia has no meaningful allies, and it faces NATO, the most powerful alliance in history, on its borders. The United States needs to worry about Russias nefarious activitiesespecially its election meddling and paramilitary encroachments in the Balticsbut it can do so without gearing up for another Cold War.

China and Russia seem to have become united in their opposition to the U.S. Will that create a new power balance?

Russia and China will never form a genuine alliance. They share a 2,600-mile border, compete for influence across Eurasia, and sell arms to each others adversaries. But Russia and China still harm U.S. interests by acting in concert on a limited set of issues.

For example, both countries have spent billions of dollars on media outlets, NGOs, and hackers aimed at reversing the spread of democracy and subverting U.S. political institutions. The two countries also have sanctioned U.S. allies and colluded in the United Nations to block or water down U.S. sanctions on North Korea and Iran. Most worrisome, China and Russia could simultaneously start wars with U.S. alliessuch as a Chinese war with Taiwan and a Russian war in the Balticswhich would severely overstretch U.S. forces.

Whats the value of being the worlds sole superpower?

One benefit is security. As the only country that can carry out a major war abroad, the United States has the luxury of dealing with foreign threats over there, far from its homeland, and keeping death and destruction at arms length. It is impossible to overstate how lucky Americans are that none of the major battles in any of the wars of the past 150 years were fought in their cities and towns.

Another benefit is a large margin of error. With a secure homeland and a peerless economy, the United States can do stupid things over and over again without suffering severe punishment. Only the United States could engage in a war as dubious as that in Iraq or trigger the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression, and remain the richest and most influential country on the planet and retain the support of more than sixty allies, including most of the major powers.

A related benefit is freedom of action. The United States can decisively involve itself in any region of the worldor not. Most countries have foreign policy priorities thrust upon them. They are too weak to settle issues in their own neighborhoods and have to spend most of their time doing damage control around their borders. Russia, for example, cant ignore NATO or EU expansion in eastern Europe.

Similarly, China cant ignore unrest in Hong Kong, separatism in Taiwan, North Koreas nuclear weapons, or any of the ten countries that currently claim Chinese territory. As a superpower, the United States has much more leeway to choose where, how, and on what issues it wants to involve itself.

Freedom of action also applies to U.S. citizens. Americans often take for granted that they can travel and do business in many parts of the world using English and dollars and that many international trade and investment rulesand parts of the legal systems of some countriesare based on, if not directly copied from, U.S. law. The U.S. government has many strings it can pull to protect U.S. citizens and their property abroad, too. These privileges all stem from the fact that the United States shapes international customs and institutions.

Finally, the United States gets economic kickbacks from being a superpower. Other countries help finance its debtbecause the dollar is the worlds reserve currency and the United States is an especially secure and profitable place to investand they are often eager to sign favorable trade and investment deals with it to gain access to the U.S. market and technology or to garner U.S. diplomatic backing or military protection. Perhaps most important, the dominant position the United States holds in the world economy attracts young smart people from all over the world, and the resulting influx of immigrants continually rejuvenates the U.S. workforce.

Why do you think there is a perception that the U.S. is weakseemingly unable to exert influence in international affairs, from North Korea to Crimea to Venezuela?

One reason is that people wrongly assume that a superpower will always get its way, so when the United States fails, its front-page news. Second, because the United States is so powerful, it often tries to do ridiculously difficult thingsdemocratizing the Middle East, winning a war on drugs, convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weaponsand thus fails more often and more spectacularly than do weaker countries with more modest aims.

Some parts of your book remind me of a stock analysts report on a company thats long been at the top of its game, saying theres little to stop it from dominating its sector for years, and worthy of an investment. Yet, companies that once seemed invincibleGeneral Electric, for examplecan sometimes sink because of incompetent management, increased competition, and changing circumstances. You mention in the book some scenarios that could lead the U.S. to lose power rather than maintain itcan you talk about some of those and what you see as their likelihood?

The most likely scenario would be internal decay. Some great powers have been brought down but by domestic political divisions and corruption rather than the rise of a rival power. Its not hard to imagine the United States heading down this path. Partisan divisions have surged to levels not seen since the Civil War, gridlock has become the political norm, and special interests increasingly infect U.S. institutions.

As a result, serious domestic problems are getting worse. Inequality and ethnic and cultural tensions are rising. Upward mobility, entrepreneurship, and life expectancy are declining. The U.S. debt is massive. Infrastructure is generally mediocre. Without functioning political institutions, these problems could spiral out of control.

Your view that the U.S. will maintain its status as the worlds sole superpower is not in the mainstream. Why do you think that is?

One reason is that threat-exaggeration sells. The image of an emerging Chinese superpower helps the Pentagon justify a larger budget, the media sell copy, authors sell books, investment banks sell emerging-market funds, CEOs get the government to pay for job training programs they otherwise would have to pay for themselvesI could go on.

Another reason may be psychological. The grass tends to look greener on the other side. Americans are generally more aware of their own countrys problems than they are of Chinas.

Finally, the indicators we typically use to measure powerGDP, military spending, trade volumessystematically exaggerate the power of countries with big populations, like China and India, because they count the benefits of having a big populationa large workforce and armybut not the costs. China may have the worlds biggest economy and military force, but it also leads the world in debt, resource consumption, pollution, useless infrastructure and wasted industrial capacity, scientific fraud, internal security spending, border disputes, and populations of sick and elderly. These kinds of liabilities arent counted in the big headline indicators.

Are there any historical parallels for this unipolar era? Is this era the Pax Americana?

This era is unique. The United States is much more powerful than past lead states. With 5 percent of the worlds population, the United States accounts for 25 percent of global wealth, 35 percent of world innovation, and 40 percent of global military spending. It is home to nearly 600 of the worlds 2,000 most profitable companies and fifty of the top 100 universities.

It has sixty-eight formal allies, and it is the only country that can fight major wars beyond its home region, with 587 bases scattered across forty-two countries. Yale historian Paul Kennedy conducted a famous study comparing great powers over the past five hundred years and concluded: Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing. The United States is, quite simply, the greatest superpower ever.

Taylor McNeil can be reached at taylor.mcneil@tufts.edu.

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Why the United States Is the Only Superpower - Tufts Now

For decades, British Columbia(B.C.) has prospered from a high demand for lumber. The province is home to an expansive temperate rainforest, the logging and harvesting of which enables the forestry industry to employ thousands of people with, until recently, a high degree of job security. However, the amount of merchantable logs in the province is declining due to a slew of natural disasters, and trade disputes with the United States over tariffs on softwood lumber have increased the cost of exporting lumber. These factors have resulted in a steady decline of the forestry industry that began in the late 1990s, but has experienced particularly sharp downturns in 2005 and 2018, affecting the livelihoods of thousands of British Columbians. The forestry industry also plays a significant role in the preservation of B.C.s forests, and its decline therefore poses a severe risk not only for the provinces economy, but its environmental sustainability as well.

Approximately 32,000 jobs have been lost in the provinces lumber sector between 2003 and 2016. In recent years, B.C. has been the site of multiple record-breaking wildfire seasons and beetle infestations, reducing the number of trees that can be logged. This has left companies scrambling to devise alternative solutions so as to continue making a profit. However, these solutions constituted the termination of employment for thousands of people, primarily in areas where forestry is the main source of household income. While companies have been able to keep their profit margins viable, it is at the cost of almost a thousand jobs per year. These job cuts endanger not only livelihoods but forests as well, the latter of which is currently managed by a strict regulatory regime that enforces sustainable practices and corporate responsibility. B.C.s licensing regime mandates that forestry companies, and by extension their employees, are responsible for maintaining the health of harvested areas. For example, loggersoften the personnel closest to initial wildfire sitesare legally required to abate potential fire hazards so as to quickly address fires before they spread.

As more surveyors and loggers become unemployed, many wildfires are left to spread across larger areas, creating a much greater problem that requires more time and resources to address. This was the case in 2018, when the province saw over 1,000,000 hectares of land burned during a severe fire season, a 93% increase from two years prior and an 80% increase from the decades average. With increasing unemployment in the forestry industry, the next fire season could be even worse than in 2018 when the province declared a state of emergency. During this season, thousands were forced to flee their homes and logging was virtually impossible, effectively stalling the industry in the province for the duration of the summer.

Additionally, the industry is still feeling the effects of a major mountain pine beetle infestation in the late 1990s that killed approximately 50% of all pine trees in British Columbia. While the invasion peaked in 2004, the end of the salvaging period has severely crippled lumber mills in the Interior. For the past two decades, foresters have been able to salvage healthy pine and clear out dead trees to make room for replanting, noted Jonathan Armstrong, the General Manager of Timberlands Planning at Western Forest Products, a major lumber company in B.C. But now, the salvaging period is ending, and the mills dont have anymore wood to process.

While the pine beetle primarily affected forests in the Interior, mills on the coast are also facing external problems: since 1982, Canada and the United States have disputed trade agreements relating to the export of softwood lumber from British Columbia. Currently, the tariffs to export softwood lumber into the U.S. from Canada are 20%, making the cost of exporting the lumber more than its actual value. So, while coastal mills rely on the sale of softwood, it is no longer profitable to produce, thus resulting in the closures of dozens of mills.

These closures undoubtedly have a major impact on B.C.s economy.Approximately 150,000 people are employed in forestry and lumber in the province with most working in small businesses with less than 20 employees. Forestry also directly supports B.C.s transportation industry, as approximately 14 million metric tonnes of forestry cargo pass through B.C. ports each year. For many towns, primarily those in rural areas or on Vancouver Island, mill closures can be devastating. These towns are largely dependent on the forestry industry, with most of their residents employed at one of the mills. With its closure, residents are often unable to sell their houses and are forced to leave their communities en masse to find employment elsewhere.

Evidently, the lumber industry has substantial influence in British Columbia, and as a result, forestry-based environmentalism does as well. While climbing temperatures have inspired the rise of a global environmentalist movement calling for more sustainable practices, environmentalism in B.C. has been prevalent since the early 1900s, when loggers advocated for increased regulation of logging operations. In 1993, B.C. became the site of the infamous War in the Woods, where 11 000 people protested the logging of old-growth forests in the Clayoquot Sound. The demonstrations arose after local First Nations and environmentalist organizations concerns about the scale of logging operations were largely ignored by forestry company Macmillan-Bloedel. It remains the largest incident of civil disobedience in Canadian history and continues to serve as inspiration for British Columbian environmentalists.

In 2016, environmentalists forged an agreement between forestry companies, the provincial government, and First Nation communities to introduce the Great Bear Rainforest Land Use Order and the Great Bear Rainforest Management Act to enact efforts aimed at conserving 85% of the Great Bear Rainforest and bar its old-growth trees from future harvesting. Furthermore, the most recent provincial election in 2017 resulted in a coalition between the New Democratic Party and the Green Party, giving an unprecedented amount of influence to environmental interest groups. It is easy to understand why environmentalism is such a prominent force in B.C.: much of the esteem of the province comes from its natural beauty, particularly from its unique temperate rainforest, and the residents of B.C have shown they will take action against foresters to protect it.

However, environmental interests and practices employed by forestry companies are not always in conflict. As 95% of B.C.s forests are publicly owned, the provincial and federal governments are able to enforce the use of sustainable practices so that logging companies ensure continued prosperity in harvested areas. These laws, specifically the Forest and Range Practices Act (FRPA), obligate any license-carrying forestry company to fulfill certain sustainability requirements. For example, licensees must replant trees in the same area as those they harvested, and are then liable for the health of the new trees until they reach maturity. While these regulations assure that foresters are legally responsible for reforestation in B.C., forestry companies have been employing sustainable harvesting practices since before the creation of FRPA in 2002. These efforts are not entirely driven by environmental concerns, but rather economic ones: forestry relies on trees being a renewable resource, and sustainable harvesting methods allow the industryto continue producing lumber in previously harvested areas.

Since the 1930s, approximately 7.5 billion seedlings have been planted by forestry companies in areas affected by logging, wildfire, or insect infestations. While many environmental campaigns encourage individuals to plant a few dozen trees, foresters plant hundreds of thousands each year, so that about 80% of all harvested trees are replanted. Furthermore, forestry companies were largely responsible for cleaning up the damage left by the mountain pine beetle infestation. The salvaging of the healthy trees and the removal of dead ones not only reduced the chances of a wildfire breaking out, but also removed many barriers for wildlife and enabled the growth of new forests: The salvaging operations [conducted by forestry companies] definitely did benefit the environment. Where you would have seen dead trees, there are now healthy, growing forests, said Armstrong.

The B.C. forestry industry was once proof that natural resource-based industries can turn a profit and serve to protect the environment, as long as they adhere to sustainable practices. However, decreasing demand for lumber and increasing costs to produce it may serve to invalidate the benefits of sustainability-driven forestry practices in the modern era. Fortunately, there are potential solutions: if the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute is resolved, forestry companies will be able to re-employ thousands of people who lost their jobs due to the need to cut costs.

Furthermore, the provincial government is in a crucial position to not only revitalize the forestry industry, but encourage innovation: [To address the decline,] the government can create an environment where businesses are able to innovate and develop new, better forest management practices, said Armstrong. While this freedom would need to be balanced with existing regulations, Armstrong believes that offering companies the opportunity to approach environmental objectives their own way will result in job creation and better sustainability practices, giving the industry more flexibility as the industry adapts to environmental changes in B.C., such as potential wildfires or insect infestations. However, formulating these practices is impossible without collaboration between forestry companies and environmentalists.

While the existing regime did succeed in enforcing environmental standards, much to the delight of B.C. environmentalists, it was primarily through oversight and detailed practice-based regulations. According to Armstrong, if regulations are rewritten to be more result-oriented instead, this would inspire foresters to collaborate with advocacy groups to innovate practices that are both sustainable and efficient. In B.C., it appears that the best way to simultaneously address a falling industry and major environmental issues is by fostering cooperation between two influential sectors in order to create practices that satisfy and benefit both groups.

You cant ignore these problems, said Armstrong. But, at the end of the day, when [environmentalists and foresters] get together, talk about these things, and work things out, thats how we help these situations.

Featured image created by Charlotte Reed .

Edited by Chanel MacDiarmid.

The rest is here:

British Columbia's Declining Forestry Industry is Bad News for the Environment - The McGill International Review

Civil Affairs Leads Integration to Generate Effects-Based Activities in the Operational Environment

Francisco M. Hernandez and Brodie T. Babb

Introduction

The role of Civil Affairs (CA) is to understand, engage, and influence unified action partners (UAP), indigenous populations and institutions (IPI), enable civil-military operations (CMO) and provide civil considerations expertise through the planning and execution of civil affairs operations (CAO).[i] DOD Directive 5100.01 and 2000.13 and Title 10, US Code, direct the employment of CA forces to support U.S. national security objectives around the globe.[ii] To ensure that CA forces are capable of generating strategic, operational and tactical effects, and are force-multiplying across the range of military operations (ROMO) and in multi-domain operations (MDO), current employment methods of appropriately integrated CA forces should be studied to capture, share and refine best practices.

Additionally, senior leaders have stated that Information Warfare is the biggest emerging threat to the United States.[iii] As an information related capability (IRC), CA forces are perfectly positioned in the information and civil environments to integrate other IRCs and help commanders and supported leaders achieve objectives in an increasingly complex and evolving global environment.[iv] The recently released white paper, Civil Affairs Operations: 2025 and Beyond makes a case that CAO is conducted not only to develop civil networks and society, but also to identify threats to civil security that require military solutions.[v] To achieve this, a complete and thorough understanding of the environments in which CA operates must occur and should facilitate the integration of CA forces with other IRCs, SOF partners, and unified action partners (UAP).

Position

The analysis of CAO by trained CA forces drive multiple processes, including operations and targeting processes, and enabling supported commanders and decision makers to apply resources and make decisions. CA drives the operations and targeting processes by executing its core competencies alongside indigenous partners to increase the understanding of networks within the operational environment (OE), particularly those within the civil component.[vi][vii] The incorporation and integration of additional IRCs helps enhance, measure and evaluate the effectiveness of operations, actions and activities within the OE.

Targeting is the process of selecting and prioritizing targets and matching the appropriate response to them considering operational requirements and capabilities.[viii] The use of a targeting methodology is critical as CA forces are asked to achieve operational and strategic effects through deliberate tactical actions designed to build partner capacities or capabilities to counter-illicit threats impacting civil society. Integration into this process begins by understanding and integrating guidance and intent from higher leaders including U.S. Ambassadors and County Teams, Theatre Special Operations Commanders, and Partner Nation entities to align interests and develop a shared plan of action of target audiences and targets. A demonstration of this understanding builds buy-in and widens access to the critical resources required to reach an end state with the desired effects achieved.

A targeting methodology and process is a critical component to an integrated approach to understand, act, and affect key variables within an environment in support of a military end state. Because of the dynamic, complex nature of the environment described in this paper, and many of the environments in which CA forces are employed, CA elements may find greater successes utilizing the Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, Disseminate (F3EAD) targeting process. This process differs from other targeting methodologies and allows for additional entities outside the Department of Defense, like Department of State, host nation government and military and non-governmental organizations to participate, providing more opportunities for integration, analysis, and action. This critical distinction highlights how CA, through an indigenous approach and with unified action partners, builds relevant networks and teams capable of driving activities and the Commander's decision-making process in more dynamic, fluid and complex settings.

Execution of CA core competencies is what enables the detailed network analysis of relevant friendly, enemy and neutral networks and actors within an area of interest in the OE. The analysis is of a networks objectives, critical factors, capabilities and vulnerabilities that ultimately supports locating the center of gravity, and identify its strengths, capabilities, and what is required for each network to achieve its purpose. To put it another way, network analysis is what enables CAs ability to identify the relevant target audience and targets within a given OE.

Once the network's center of gravity has been identified, CA integrates and utilizes the targeting process taxonomy to refine how and where the network is engaged. This ensures that the appropriate resource is applied correctly and will be capable of generating tangible, measurable and desired results. These results must be observable and quantifiable. In an integrated approach, CA forces employ various tools and resources, often from other IRCs, to evaluate and measure activity to gauge effects. Examples include surveys, such as popular sentiment towards key variables in the OE, market indices to gauge economic factors, and overt messaging through social media platforms to message successes.

Integration in Practice

Context

Integration occurs by demonstrating 1) understanding and creating shared value, 2) enhancing and furthering operational reach, 3) maximizing effects and the measurement of those effects, and 4) by enhancing all the above through sharable and releasable systems. The operational effects and highlights to be discussed and presented as an example of integration in practice, were generated by appropriately employed CA elements working with indigenous partners in Northwest Colombia to counter the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), activities' that threatened civil society in mid-to-late 2018. The FARC's activities not only impacted the local populace, but also undermined legitimate rule of law, governance and security, preventing host-nation military commanders from achieving objectives and consolidating gains exactly what CA is designed to counter. The effects generated in mid-to-late 2018 were the result of synchronized and coordinated efforts between regional and national U.S. and Colombian Civil Affairs elements integrated with adjacent SOF and Interagency partners within specific areas of concern.

Colombia, the strategic anchor point for South America and the U.S.'s strongest regional ally, has arguably been in Phase 3 with multiple insurgent groups for more than 50 years. The region is plagued by numerous drug trafficking organizations, trans-national criminal organizations, and declared terrorist groups that continue to exploit and profit on the lucrative drug trade, illegal mining, and movement of illegal goods, namely human trafficking and smuggling that can include Special Interest Aliens (SIA).[ix] Colombias border areas generate a wide variety of security challenges due to their vastness and porous networks of unofficial international crossing points, minimal security force presence, and/or governmental indifference. While these insurgent groups historically compete for control of key terrain and population centers in order to maintain and gain market share of illicit activities, these networks are beginning to collaborate in response to increased pressure being applied by Colombian security forces at the direction of President Ivan Duque. This enhanced cooperation amongst traditionally rival threat groups further exacerbates an already complex threat environment.

Demonstrating Understanding to Increase Integration

The ability to integrate, and later generate effects, is enabled by a thorough and complete understanding of the supported commander's intent and the ability to nest that intent to support the U.S. Country Teams objectives. This creates maximum buy-in from stakeholders. This paper maintains that CA must first develop a shared value proposition, that incorporates this understanding to help bring value to joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational (JIIM) networks of trust that are able to act on this information. At echelon, the ability of the CA to demonstrate an understanding of their environment is what enables them to integrate and build a unity of effort between multiple unified action partners and identify shared goals. This results in a cohesive network capable of rapid response and resource allocation that can outpace threat network capabilities and reach target audiences.

As an example from the 2018 Colombia mission noted above, CA Company-level leadership provided and demonstrated an understanding of the current OE, target audiences and threat networks impacting civil society to the adjacent SOF headquarters and members of U.S. Country Team. This created and provided opportunities for CA to integrate into numerous interagency working groups, targeting and operations processes. This integration provided the foundation for the support and reach-back capabilities that tactical-level CA teams would leverage in their respective areas of operation where they also demonstrated and refined their understanding of the OE to host nation and U.S. partners. This example highlights the requirement to correctly emplace CA HQ and Team leadership at the appropriate echelon, in this case national and regional levels respectively. This extends operational touchpoints and effectiveness to maximize mass and economy of force. In addition, credible and timely reach-back support demonstrated value and built networks of trust capable and willing to act against shared threats.

Enhanced Targeting and Operations through CA Integration

The intelligence-operations fusion and integration of CAs analysis and understanding of the OE will only enhance and drive both U.S. and partner nation targeting cycles and operations processes. Using the Colombia example again, in mid-2018, integrated CA forces continued to build, refine and share a more detailed understanding of threat networks impacting the civil component of the OE in Antioquia, Colombia and those preventing good governance and security from reaching the desired target audiences through its network analysis. CA integration into partner nation security forces (PNSF) targeting cycles provided opportunities to share information with other JIIM partners and to support PNSF efforts to disrupt, degrade, and defeat shared threats. CA integration also provided U.S. and PNSF with the necessary reach-back to capture and react to the real-time changes in the complex and dynamic OE.

By the fall of 2018, focused Civil Affairs activities (CAA) and network analysis in Northwest Colombia directly contributed to interagency partners nomination and inclusion of a PNSF target to the national level top 10 threat list. The continued collaboration between CA, adjacent SOF elements and interagency partners further developed the target and its supporting network, while providing additional resources to partner nation planners to facilitate their efforts against the threat. The collaboration resulted in an early October Colombian Special Forces-led operation that resulted in five enemy combatants from the FARC insurgent group being killed in action. (https://listindiario.com/las-mundiales/2018/10/05/536118/abaten-a-5-de-las-farc). Over the subsequent five days, the Colombian military conducted two additional operations, further dismantling this threat network and extending the legitimacy and reach of Partner Nation Security Forces.

These actions and their results clearly demonstrated Civil Affairs' ability to integrate into a complex process, drive targeting, resources and decision-making in support of U.S. and partner nation military objectives.

Integrating IRCs to Assess and Enhance Effects

As a result of their demonstrated operational successes against the threat and threat network, Colombian military and government partners were able to capitalize on new opportunities to message and influence vulnerable populations and target audiences. Leveraging U.S. and Colombian IRCs, Colombian officials released a statement on October 7, 2018 regarding their successful operation against the threat network stating, "The Seventh Division of the National Army, rejects and condemns this kind of terrorist attacks, violating Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, against the civilian population and companies that seek to bring progress and economic stability to the region in favor of development of the communities. (https://www.colombia.com/actualidad/nacionales/capturan-a-alias-garbanzo-presunto-responsable-del-crimen-de-los-tres-geologos-207567)).

As Colombian security forces' applied mounting pressure against threat networks in the Antioquia Department, CA supported Colombian military efforts to (re)connect to vulnerable/impacted communities in the region that were negatively influenced by this threat group. This included communities such as Altavista, an impoverished and marginalized rural community near the metro-hub of Medellin. This area had been providing the threat group with opportunities to capitalize on the disenfranchised populace to further their illicit activities. Operational successes furthered CA integration with partner nation elements and demonstrated CAs ability to drive resources and decisions, building Colombian military and government officials capabilities to conduct civic action projects to support to messaging and to demonstrate a commitment to at-risk communities. To further enhance the effects of successful operations and activities and win local populace support, CA integrated and was supported by U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Section to maximize messaging opportunities and exposure. (https://twitter.com/USEmbassyBogota/status/1050159221159940097). Often times, and in many environments, CA forces find themselves in the planning processes for civic action programs and related activities. With that, CA should always incorporate a public affairs capability or another IRC that will expand operational effects and reach for such activities.

In November 2018 and following the successful operations of the previous month, CA further enhanced the employment of information operations with the addition of aligned Psychological Operations (PSYOP) units to keep pressure on the FARC threat network. PSYOP elements developed and disseminated a product campaign through Colombian mediums and within the threat networks area of influence that drove ongoing U.S. and PNSF targeting efforts in the region. (https://canal1.com.co/noticias/nacional/aumenta-la-recompensa-alias-cabuyo/). Products consisted of DoD Rewards Program payouts for information related to threat network degradation, leaflet dissemination reducing threat network anonymity, and survey programs to illuminate vulnerable population sentiments related to threat network activity and legitimate government perceptions. There efforts demonstrate continued refinement and application of all available information-related capabilities to consolidate gains and maximize unity of efforts against shared threat streams.

Integrating Digital Systems to Increase Shared Understanding

The areas of operations in which CA forces operate are changing dramatically and becoming increasingly more complex. This complexity demands systems and processes that reduce assumptions and widen understanding. While previous efforts have been made to enhance partner connectivity with the introduction of shared digital platforms, Special Operations must identify a platform of choice that carries longevity, extends access, builds shared awareness, and reduces response time between U.S. SOF and Partner Nation units of action. In order to remain competitive and relevant, CA must adapt, innovate, and demonstrate value while also working to expand authorities and roles in support of targeting efforts. Critical to successful integration is the ability to closely collaborate with the appropriate Partner Nation units of action, quickly leverage interagency resources and access adjacent SOF unit support. A digital platform, sharable and releasable to partner nation, JIIM and UAP elements, is key to decision making and acting upon relevant information within the OE. Many of the operations and the effects generated in Antioquia shared throughout this paper were made possible by creating a shared digital network that demonstrated CAs understanding of the OE. This demonstrated understanding created trust, buy-in, and recommendations from CA forces that then drove targeting and operations processes.

Recommendations

Going forward, Civil Affairs will continue to integrate and work with and through our partners while leveraging JIIM resources to strengthen population support, build networks of influence and trust, and counter-threats in the regions we support. To do this, CA leaders need to continue to look at new and emerging doctrine and guiding documents and have conversations about the future of the CA force; including how we will integrate and fight against multi-domain and hybrid threats arrayed against the civil component of the OE. CA is a relevant and capable force multiplier perfectly arrayed to increase understanding in both the information and civil environments. No longer can CA elements imply a misunderstanding in its role in shaping the OE and developing solutions to complex problem-sets due to the young age of the CA branch.[x]

CA forces must continue to integrate the analysis of its operations, actions and activities with intelligence professionals and decision makers to ensure injection into the targeting process. This integration ensures outputs to increase understanding, drive operations, and properly allocate resources. If CA forces are not integrating or being integrated, it is on CA leadership to demonstrate their understanding and create shared value and necessary stakeholder buy-in. Additionally, CA should continue to integrate IRCs to better measure, enhance and demonstrate effects of activities conducted in the information and operational environments. With that, CA forces will continue to be a benefactor of layered (and nested) IRC activities to maximize effects in support of shared goals and objectives, better equipped to counter future enemies and adversaries information warfare campaigns through the range of military operations.

End Notes

[i] FM 3-57, Civil Affairs Operations, April 2019, pg. 1-2.

[iii] ASD Owen West, ASD SO/LIC, April 5, 2019 Yale Jackson SOF Conference.

[iv] FM 3-13, Information Operations, November 2016, pg. 1-3.

[v] Civil Affairs Operations 2025 and Beyond White paper. Department of the Army. U.S. Special Operations Center of Excellence. Civil Affairs Proponent, Fort Bragg, NC 28310.

[vi] CA Core Competencies: Civil Affairs Activities; Military Government Operations; Civil Affairs Supported Activities. FM 3-37.

[vii] ATP 5-0.6, Network Engagement, June 2017.

[viii] JP 3-0, Joint Operations, January 2017

[ix] Special Interest Alien (SIA) is a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests. Often such individuals or groups are employing travel patterns known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism. This does not mean that all SIAs are terrorists, but rather that the travel and behavior of such individuals indicates a possible nexus to nefarious activity (including terrorism) and, at a minimum, provides indicators that necessitate heightened screening and further investigation. The term SIA does not indicate any specific derogatory information about the individual.

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/07/mythfact-known-and-suspected-terroristsspecial-interest-aliens

[x] FM 3-57, Appendix A, History of U.S. Army Civil Affairs.

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Civil Affairs Leads Integration to Generate Effects-Based Activities in the Operational Environment - smallwarsjournal

Camden Town Brewery and London-based charity TRAID (Textile Recycling and International Development) have teamed up to tackle clothes waste and its impact on the environment by offering customers an easy way to donate old clothing and textiles.

The 12-Pack Give Back initiative sees Camden Town Brewery transforming its Camden Hells Lager 12-packs into reusable handy freepost donation parcels so customers can donate unwanted clothing to TRAID free of charge.

The empty 12-packs can be filled with unworn and unwanted garments and taken to the post office where the pre-paid packages will go straight to TRAID, which sustainably re-uses the donations, by either re-selling the reusable items in one of its 11 London charity shops, sending them to international textile companies or recycling them as fabric for industrial cloth or car seat filling.

Jasper Cuppaidge, Founder of Camden Town Brewery, commented: Were so impressed and inspired by the work that TRAID do to reduce clothes waste in the UK, encouraging us all to become more sustainable and conscious about the way we shop. Were really excited to collaborate on this project, promoting great beer and good will, for a great cause.

The growth of fast fashion cheap, mass-produced clothing lines with quick, seasonal turnarounds has created a significant environmental problem, with unwanted clothes more often than not ending up in landfill or incineration. Last year, the UK discarded 300,000 tonnes of clothes the equivalent weight of 2,500 blue whales or 600,000 grand pianos.

Though the government is working on introducing new policies to develop a circular economy in many sectors, fashion and textiles continue to be a problem area. In June 2018, Parliaments Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) carried out a report into the sustainability of the fashion industry and proposed the introduction of a one pence tax on clothing to fund the collection, recycling and reuse of textiles. The government, however, rejected the proposal, expressing a preference for voluntary rather than legislative measures.

As part of the EACs inquiry, a select committee hearing held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in November 2018 called for improved repair and reuse provisions and more consumer information on the environmental impacts of their fashion choices.

This September, TRAID revealed that nearly a quarter of Londoners admit to throwing clothes in the bin rather than passing them on. However, since the launch of the charitys 23 per cent campaign (named as such after the revelation that 23 per cent of Londoners clothes are unworn) one year before, TRAID was also able to report that the citys residents had donated one million garments, showing the potential impact such initiatives can have when consumers are adequately informed and the option to donate is made accessible.

Commenting on the latest drive, Maria Chenoweth, CEO at TRAID, said: Were delighted that Camden Town Brewery are encouraging their customers to pass unworn clothes on to TRAID for someone else to use. The fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world and responsible for around 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions every year, which is more than international flights and maritime shipping combined.

In this era of climate emergency, giving longer life to our clothes is a practical effective way to reduce the amount we consume and produce, to protect our planet and its citizens.

To celebrate the new partnership, Camden Town Brewery bar is hosting the Camden x TRAID Pop-up Shop on Saturday 7 December and will feature the Camden Capsule Collection curated by TV presenter Laura Jackson.

The special edition Camden Hells Lager 12-packs are being stocked in participating Sainsburys, Tesco, Morrisons, Ocado and Waitrose stores nationwide and will be available until March 2020.

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Camden Town Brewery and TRAID collaborate to fight fashion waste - Resource Magazine