Category Archives: Resource Based Economy

Background

The sharp global recession now expected in 2020 (negative 5.9 percent GDP per capita according to the IMF) coupled with devastating actual and potential loss of life and health damage due to COVID-19 has left the global macroeconomic and development playbook in tatters. Countries have announced $11 trillion in new fiscal measures to mitigate the impact and this figure will surely rise as additional stimulus packages get tabled.1

Governments in major advanced economies have found they can raise finance on domestic capital markets without adverse impact on inflation or on the cost of capital. In several cases, there appears to be a free lunch being served by savers prepared to receive negative real interest rates in exchange for principal security and liquidity. Estimates of the size of sovereign bonds with negative real rates exceed $10 trillion.2 On average, government spending in rich countries has risen by over 13 percentage points of GDP, and the public sector has provided a similar amount in loans and guarantees, totaling a 26.5 percentage point increase in public debt.3

The situation is more nuanced, and unpredictable, for emerging and developing economies, especially those with thin domestic financial markets. For these countries, most additional financing must come from abroad. The question at the heart of this paper is where will the money come from to respond, restore and reset programs for sustainable development? The answers lie in an assessment of international financing instruments.

There are three clear phases in the economic response to COVID-19. First, there is an immediate response to save lives. Countries must manage the health crisis by expanding public health services and flattening the curve to avoid overburdening hospital capacity through lockdowns, social distancing, and clear communication to the public of their social responsibilities. Second, there are steps to restore livelihoods and mitigate the socio-economic impact of the crisis and the multiple global economic shocks of falling commodity prices, trade, tourism, remittances, and, in some cases, capital flight, along with major losses in jobs and wages. Third, there is a build back better agenda of resetting growth along a path of improved sustainability, inclusion, and resilience.

Each of the three phases has distinct requirements for public spending and, in the context of falling revenues, for public deficit financing. The health requirements of purchasing protective equipment, therapeutics, diagnostics, vaccinations (when available), and deploying armies of contact tracers and other professionals are sizable. The mitigation steps of protecting individuals from falling into destitution, avoiding business bankruptcies, safeguarding the financial sector against bad loans, protecting the country reputation for creditworthiness and preserving market access are a major expense both above the line of fiscal deficits and below the line with guarantees and public sector loans and equity infusions. Mitigation needs a fast infusion of public funds, which argues in favor of using existing spending mechanisms like social assistance programs. Build back better offers the promise of very high returns from investments that are intentionally sustainable, that are labor intensive, and that have high fiscal multipliers. Projects that accelerate a green transition and that strengthen safety nets and health and education systems fall into this category.

The common thread is that in each phase the economic, social, and environmental returns to public spending vastly outweigh the financial costs of financing, at least in countries with reasonable governance and implementation capabilities, and access to capital at reasonable cost. There is by now a deep literature on fiscal multipliers in developing countries, that documents the magnitude of the short-term impact on GDP and jobs, as well as the medium-term impact of lower energy costs, accelerated innovation and learning, and well-known spillovers from better health and education among citizens.

With most countries today finding themselves in a Keynesian moment in which they can implement the practical experiences of effective public programs, the problem has become one of finding the funds to expand public spending, rather than coming up with new ideas for sound public projects.

Some developing country governments have been able to access off-shore dollar bond markets at reasonable rates: Mexico raised $6 billion in April; Egypt $5 billion in May with market access buttressed by strong support from multilateral and bilateral creditors.4 Other countries are in the queue for 2020, including Cote dIvoire, Turkey, and South Africa. According to the IMF, emerging market economies are likely to add 5.5 percentage points of GDP to their fiscal deficits, and 6.8 percentage points to their public debt levels, in 2020.5

Most developing countries, however, especially those below investment grade, are abandoning plans to access global capital markets. Countries that are participating in debt standstill programs, or hope to participate in these programs, are committed to abstaining from new non-concessional debt. Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan are among large developing countries falling into this category. These countries, on average, are keeping their plans for additional fiscal deficits at below 2 percentage points, thereby keeping public debt levels from rising by more than 3 percentage points.

These plans show a large shortfall compared to estimates of needs. The IMF and UNCTAD independently suggested around $2.5 trillion would be needed for developing countries to respond to the pandemic and associated economic shocks.6 The existing international financing architecture provides only a fraction of this. As of July 2020, the IMF had committed about $250 billion to 102 countries.7 The World Bank Group has announced its willingness to commit $160 billion over 15 months.8Even allowing for other multilateral development banks and agencies, the developing world faces a potential shortfall of close to $2 trillion.

For this reason, several proposals have been made for innovations that could potentially raise large amounts of financing for development. Some require a political push for more generosity from rich countries, often coupled with financial engineering to maximize impact, while others require reforms in the international economic system that would permit developing countries to mobilize resources by and for themselves.

This paper seeks to review the more promising proposals in a systematic way. We have limited the selection of proposals to those that are (i) already being discussed in official policymaking circles; and (ii) are large enough to have a material impact given the scale of the identified gap. Our purpose is to summarize enough of the details to permit the reader to understand what each proposal can and cannot do, and where the political sticking points might lie. Our hope is to contribute to a more informed discussion of how to move forward and where to focus efforts for advocacy.

Before starting, one fundamental point requires clarification. There are two global problems that need to be solved. One is avoiding unnecessary suffering and deaths in developing countries. There is a serious risk that because lockdown policies are economically costly and can generate prolonged debt crises, developing country governments might rationally choose to be less aggressive on the health front, and to accept higher deaths, with spillovers to other countries trying to contain the pandemic.9

A second problem is that capital in the global economy is being misallocated on a massive scale, and this inefficiency has high costs that can be ill-afforded at this time. The issue is the presence of a debt overhang in many developing countries. When a new creditor lends to an indebted government, it joins the queue of other creditors to get repaid, especially for general purpose lending. If the government is already facing debt service troubles, then the new creditor, too, may not be repaid on schedule even if the new project it finances yields a high return that is higher than the cost of funds. In domestic capital markets, this type of problem is overcome through first settling old debt claims in bankruptcy or other voluntary debt restructuring processes based on existing assets, before the new creditor adds additional assets to the company. But there is no equivalent in international capital markets, so debt overhang problems can persist. This prevents the efficient allocation of new capital and is costing three groups of people very dearly: those within developing countries who needlessly suffer when public spending is restrained, existing creditors who will suffer from the inability of a country to implement high return spending, and new investors who have to seek returns in other markets usually offering far lower interest rates.

The next section of this paper looks at financing proposals that could potentially expand fiscal space in developing countries. Even though it is well understood that the vast majority of spending to build back better will come from domestic resource mobilization, including in developing countries,10we focus here on international resource flows because most developing countries do not have the liquidity to tap local currency markets to a significant degree, and because there are limits in the short- to medium-run on their ability to raise more taxes. They should pursue the longer-term tax and capital market development reforms, but the response over the next couple of years will depend on access to foreign capital.

Section III expands the discussion of public financing to include how private sector financing could be better deployed. A final section offers summary assessments of scope, timeliness, and political will to advance the proposals.

Download the full working paper

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Sustainable development finance proposals for the global COVID-19 response - Brookings Institution

The Winds of Change are the long term trends and transitions gradually changing the world in which we live. They reflect the inevitable march of progress as the world evolves and society adapts and can be overlooked or forgotten when unpredictable events take centre stage as we are witnessing with COVID 19.

It is particularly relevant to focus on these trends and transitions in times of uncertainty as they provide clarity around capital allocation and often drive the best long term investment opportunities.

We believe there are four fundamental winds of change that will be key drivers of resource sector performance over the next decade:

1. Global transitions and tensions which includes the implications of continued demand for resources from a growing global population; urbanisation; the emergence of China as the largest global economy; the growing wealth gap; religious and cultural tensions; globalisation tensions and tensions between economic systems.

We expect that the tensions between China and the USA and more recently Australia will continue and have significant global implications. Australia is particularly vulnerable, walking the tightrope between its major customer and a critical geopolitical alliance.

China is the biggest buyer of our iron ore, a large consumer of our coal and the single largest buyer of global commodities on the planet. Like it or not, being an economy highly reliant on the export of commodities, we have a strong reliance on China and how we manage this relationship will be critical to our economic prosperity.

2. The introduction of efficient and cost effective battery storage technology will be the catalyst for the electrification of the global transport sector and the further escalation in renewable energy market share in power production.

When the economics of battery technology stacks up then the transition to electric vehicles will be rapid. The upfront cost and concerns over range and infrastructure have limited the market penetration of electric vehicles in most countries. We believe this is about to change.

Tesla is leading the market with its battery technology and come mid September they will provide an update on their new battery packs. Speculation is that a new 1 million mile battery will be unveiled alleviating range concerns, that a rapid ramp up of battery production will be announced and that the battery pack cost per vehicle will come down to a level that brings the cost of electric vehicles into line with internal combustion engines.

Further, as the global economy commits to economic stimulus, the roll out of EV infrastructure is likely to be accelerated given its environmental credentials and political popularity. This trend will be driven by China the European Union and the UK.

3. Environmental, Social and Governance trends which include the move away from fossil fuels, the advancement of renewable fuel sources; increased community engagement and greater corporate social responsibility.

The momentum against fossil fuels is only going to accelerate. Thermal coal companies already have a discounted valuation in the market with a number of investment groups removing companies from their investment universe, and new thermal coal projects in first world countries finding it increasingly difficult to secure funding.

The discussion around what is legal and what is morally and ethically correct will gather momentum, with Rio Tintos decision to destroy the 46,000 year old Juukan gorge rock shelters a timely example.

The Australian resource sector will be an important cog in the battery storage supply chain, by responsibly providing commodities such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and rare earths to meet the growing demand.

4. Technical Innovation is the cornerstone of productivity improvement and includes, automation, cloud computing, big data, internet of things and artificial intelligence.

Australian resource companies are often at the forefront of technological innovation it supports their social license to operate by potentially reducing their environmental footprint and enhancing mine site safety, whilst also providing scope to lower operating costs critical in a commodity business.

Future advancements will improve the way companies explore for new resources and create more efficient processing techniques.

The Argonaut Approach

Successful high conviction investing in the resource sector requires positioning to cater for these fundamental drivers of change.

Argonaut are resource sector specialists. We have recently launched The Argonaut Natural Resources Fund, a high conviction investor in the Australian resources sector.

We invest across the resource sector, from micro caps with a market capitalisation of less than $50 million to the very largest companies with a market capitalisation exceeding $100 billion. This enables us to adjust the portfolio to reflect our assessment of market risk at any point in time whilst also seeking out pure commodity exposures in lesser known companies.

Our investment process can be described as top down meets bottom up in that we seek to identify favoured commodities and then select the best quality and best value companies exposed to that commodity.

The portfolio will often consist of a mix of those commodities and companies that are currently in favour, and those that are out of favour and represent counter-cyclical investment opportunities. We adopt a three year investment horizon and recognise that being a patient investor is an important discipline in resource sector investing.

Our favoured commodity exposures are as follows:

Gold is a must have in the portfolio given the uncertain economic conditions, the massive liquidity pumped into markets by central banks, interest rates close to zero and the tensions and transitions mentioned above.

We are bullish on copper in the medium term, given its broad based exposure to long term economic growth plus the strong exposure to the electrification thematic.

Similarly, while nickel is a much smaller market than copper, it is an integral component of the next generation of battery cathode. The battery market only accounts for around 10%-15% of current supply, but this is poised to rise rapidly as electric vehicle market share expands.

The Lithium market is currently suffering from oversupply, but as battery costs fall demand will increase with lithium expected to move back into shortage mid decade at the latest.

Rare earth producers outside China are limited, which creates an opportunity for Australia to lift production to meet global demand.

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The Winds of Change High Conviction investing in the Australian Resources Sector - Livewire Markets

When the economy starts to decline, architects often feel it before anyone else. Economic uncertainty tends to put major investments on hold, and for the multiyear process of designing and constructing a building, looming recessions are like poison.

Architecture is tied to the economy. In fact, it is one of the first industries that is affected when theres a dip in the economy or a recession, says architect Victor Body-Lawson. He runs a 12-person architecture firm in Harlem and has weathered several economic storms since opening shop in 1993. We had a lot of projects in the pipeline in the proposal stage before the pandemic, and some of those projects have actually been put on hold. Im hoping that theyll come back around.

The current economic downturn has meant that many development projects have hit the skids. According to a June survey of 31 design, planning, and development companies by Appleseed Strategy, a slowdown is coming to the business of building. More than 70% of firms saw their billings drop in the second quarter of 2020, and more than 85% expected them to drop in the third quarter.

But that doesnt mean everything is coming to a halt. According to leaders of architecture firms across the country, while some projects are undeniably hurt by the pandemic, other types of buildings are seeing even more demand than before the pandemic hit.

Lockdowns and quarantines have left many offices and hotels around the world nearly empty, and that has drained developers appetites for new ones. The issue of who is going to need office space is a big question, says Nancy Ruddy, cofounder of the New York-based firm CetraRuddy. Her firm has one large office project nearing completion, but she says they have no plans to take on other new offices for the time being.

New hotel projects are not likely to see much interest in the coming months, either. Three-quarters of respondents to Appleseed Strategys survey express low confidence about the health of the hospitality sector by the end of 2020.

Body-Lawson says one perhaps surprising building type has managed to survive the pandemic, at least in New York: affordable housing. But given the pandemics disproportionate impact on lower-income people, maybe it shouldnt be surprising at all. They are considered to be essential projects, he says. They were funded before the pandemic, so they are continuing. He says other affordable housing projects that havent yet gotten city funding are likely to, later this year or early the next.

Ruddy has also seen more work in affordable housing, as well as projects that offer a mix of affordable and market-rate rentals.

Another building type that has persevered is suburban housing. But its not the cookie-cutter tract homes of the past, according to Ruddy. Her firm has taken on several medium-density housing projects at or near suburban rail stations, so-called transit-oriented development. People see theres maybe another kind of typology for suburban housing, she says. It gives you all of the benefits, what we all love about urban cities, culture and great food and activities and things like that, but maybe in a slightly less dense environment. These kinds of developments may see an added boost of interest as some people have opted to leave the city for the suburbs during the pandemicthough this exodus may be more hype than reality.

More than half of the companies surveyed by Appleseed Strategy have seen projects in higher education dry up. Despite the uncertainty about the coming school year, some firms have seen this work actually increase.

Higher education and other learning environments seem to be holding strong, despite the slight dip in forecasted spending for this year and next, says Mark Ripple, principal of the New Orleans-based firm Eskew Dumez Ripple, in an email. He says theres particular demand in the more resource-intensive parts of universities, such as science and technology departments and medical schools. While it may be quite easy for students to virtually attend group lectures from the comfort of their dorms, the hands-on resource-focused learning still requires a physical presence in laboratories and the like.

The overall uncertainty about the near future of education has led to more strategic planning work for CO Architects, a 122-person firm based in Los Angeles. Colleges and universities are seeing their revenue drop, and theyre beginning to look around their campuses to see whether any of their existing spaces can be adapted or reconfigured for new uses that might otherwise be built from the ground up, according to Scott Kelsey, the firms managing principal. They need to take stock, literally, of what they have and what works and what doesnt, he says. Theres a lot of assessing going on right now.

For projects still moving forward in one form or another, designs are being adjusted to account for the new demands and conditions created by the pandemic. Everything that is not fully under construction, were re-looking at with our clients, Ruddy says. Were making sure that were building things that are for, and I dont want to call it post-COVID, but for the next chapter of all of our lives. That means adding more cross-ventilation, natural light, outdoor access, and spaces in residential projects for people to work from home.

Body-Lawson says his firm has also had more time to revise designs and focus on smaller details. The mad rush to get projects out is not there, he says. Its one bright side for architects of the current downturn. They were a source of frustration in the past, but Ive come to learn how to manage them, he says. Eventually things even out.

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COVID-19 is crushing the architecture industrybut not in the ways you - Fast Company

If the COVID-19 pandemic has produced winners and losers, then young Canadian billionaire Tobias Ltke is definitely a winner.

Since the start of the pandemic in March, the 40-year-old CEO of Ottawa-based e-commerce company Shopify Inc., has watched his personal worth rise from $3 billion (U.S.) in March to $8.5 billion today.

Thats because Ltke controls 6.7 per cent of Shopifys stock, which has shot up from $460 last winter to more than $1,300 this week due to the companys boffo sales. Indeed, e-commerce has flourished during the pandemic due to people not venturing into stores.

If you are a high income earner, even in the private sector, hardly any of them have lost work, says Jim Stanford, a Vancouver-based economist and director of the Centre for Future Work. So this recession is going to dramatically and directly exacerbate wealth inequality, there is no doubt about that.

In fact, since COVID-19 deep-sixed the economy, one of the unforeseen consequences has been to make the poor even poorer and the rich even richer a reality that concerns many economists, especially as that could hamper our ability to recover from the recession. In my personal view and as an economist, the idea of having greater inequality has economic disadvantages to future economic growth, says James Orlando, senior economist at the TD Bank. There are so many positives to having a more equal society.

Yet Ltke is a mere piker compared to how some of Americas billionaires have been flourishing during the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, the worlds richest man and CEO of Amazon, has a net worth of $189.4 billion. According to Bloomberg, since the start of this year, Bezos fortune has grown by $74 billion and in just one day last month jumped $13 billion.

The Walton family, who owns the Walmart empire, has seen their wealth grow an extra $25 billion over the past year the same amount Facebooks CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, saw his wealth climb.

All told, according to a report released last spring by the Americans for Tax Fairness, Americas billionaires saw their fortunes soar by $434 billion during the U.S. pandemic lockdown between mid-March and mid-May.

At the top end, there is no impact from COVID-19 on their incomes at this point and in fact they are slightly better off, says David Macdonald, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Whereas at the bottom end, about a third of those folks are still without work or without hours.

Canadas billionaire class is clearly not suffering either. The Thomsons, Canadas richest family who oversee the Thomson Reuters media empire, saw their wealth jump from $31.6 billion this past April to $37.7 billion today. The Westons, who control the Loblaws supermarket chain, watched their fortune go from $7 billion in April to $8.4 billion right now.

In fact, Loblaws saw its grocery store sales jump 44 per cent during a two-week period in March, while the pandemic generating an extra $751 million in revenue during its first quarter.

On the other hand, more than three million jobs were lost in Canada over March and April although some of that employment has since returned. An Ipsos survey carried out in April showed that 40 per cent of Canadians under the age of 55 had only one weeks worth or less of savings to cover costs like food or rent if they lost their jobs due to the pandemic. In the U.S., almost 40 million jobs were lost by the end of May. And 40 million Americans could be evicted from their homes by the end of this year due to the pandemic, according to one report, if state authorities dont step in.

Why are the rich getting richer during the pandemic?

For one, governments have responded to the pandemic by handing out money to citizens through programs like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) so they can pay their bills. (The money) is going to the poor people, but its not staying with the poor people, says Gary Stevenson, a British economist and a former Citibank trader, noting that citizens must use this cash to pay for food, rent, mortgages and other essentials. Thats when the rich receive this money, because they own apartment buildings, food companies, e-commerce companies and banks.

So the government is coming in and subsidizing the poor, but the money doesnt stay with them but goes to the rich, who are just not spending any money, says Stevenson. They are accumulating the money in their accounts.

The other reason is the performance of the stock market. In the U.S., Federal Reserve data shows that the wealthiest top 10 per cent of American households own about 84 per cent of the value of all households stock ownership. In Canada, the top one per cent of families hold about 25.6 per cent of the wealth roughly $3 trillion (Canadian) which is also at play in the markets.

After crashing in March, the markets quickly rebounded and are now almost at their pre-pandemic levels. The huge discrepancies in wealth come from huge boosts in wealth and that comes in the ability to exploit financial markets, argues Louis-Phillipe Rochon, a professor of economics at Laurentian University. So if you look at where the financial markets were April 1 and today, there is a 30 per cent increase and that represents a tremendous boost in their wealth.

If you are able exploit stock markets and the volatility in stock markets wisely, people are going to get very much richer.

The trend of the rich getting richer, despite periodic recessions, has been going on since the 1980s. After income inequality in Canada fell from the 1930s until the early 1980s, it began an inexorable climb upwards. Inequality is now greater than the 1920s, says Dimitry Anastakis, a historian at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Today, the wealthiest 20 per cent of Canadians control 67.4 per cent of the nations wealth while the 20 per cent poorest control no wealth and are, in fact, underwater with debt.

Anastakis says income inequality has grown over the past 40 years due to globalization, which hastened the deindustrialization of Canada and the U.S. This, in turn, led to a decline in unionization among blue-collar workers, which impaired their ability to garner a larger portion of the economic pie. At the same time, governments began cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, while offshore tax havens proliferated.

Meanwhile, wages stagnated. Workers are making approximately the same real wages they did in 1975, effectively, says Anastakis. As a result, average people have increasingly resorted to credit to buy goods and services, which is why Canadians have accrued $2.3-trillion in consumer debt almost the highest per capita level in the world. Since 1990, the richest group of Canadians has increased its share of total national income, while the poorest and middle-income groups has lost share, says the Conference Board of Canada.

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Moreover, evidence suggests the rich emerge from recessions even wealthier. Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, found that in the years immediately after the 2008-09 recession, the top one per cent of incomes grew by 31.4 per cent while the bottom 99 per cent of incomes grew only by 0.4 per cent. Meanwhile, the Conference Board of Canada found that corporate directors compensation in Canada jumped 33 per cent from 2008 to 2010.

Still, the pandemic has not affected the wealthy evenly. Canadas dominant resource sector has been hard hit, especially with a drop in oil and gas prices. Industries such as hospitality, airlines and tourism have been crippled, as have many retailers.

As a result, some CEOs have taken pay cuts. For example, Air Canadas CEO, Calin Rovinescu, was due to make $12.9-million in salary but has since fallen to $5.8-million due to the pandemics devastating impact on the airline. And in the oilpatch, many executives have taken pay cuts. The CEO of oil giant Cenovus Energy Inc., Alex Pourbaix, will have his annual base salary cut by 25 per cent, while other Cenovus team members took a 15 per cent cut.

Notably, the companies that are prospering are less dependent on large labour forces and heavily invested in the online world and geared for a world where people work from home. Which is why Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google the so-called FAANGs are seeing revenues climb and increasingly dominate the stock market. Even for the FAANGs, its still a speculative machine, says Stanford. They may have a real core a profitability at the centre of it, but its a speculative herd mentality that drives up the equity values to ridiculous heights.

Another reason for the growing disparity in wealth is due to stock buybacks which is when companies use their profits to buy up their own stock.

Between 2010-2019, companies in the S&P 500 Index distributed $5.3 trillion (U.S.) or 54 per cent of their profits, to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks. One effect was to enrich corporate executives, whose income is often dependent on stock prices.

William Lazonick, a Canadian-born economist and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network in Cambridge, MA, notes that stock buybacks mean average workers are not getting this money: instead its going to shareholders and senior executives. Moreover, he says this money is not being spent to ensure companies remain competitive by investing in R&D and productive capital or on technology or medicine which could help stop the pandemic.

Basically with the people at the top its greed, says Lazonick. (Stock buybacks) are all they are concerned about. Look at Apple, which has had $344-billion in stock buybacks since 2013 and could have invested in all kinds of new technologies.

Now, as the impact of COVID-19 continues to grind the economy, the question is whether growing wealth inequality will seriously hamper economic recovery?

Given that economies generate a finite amount of wealth, if most of that money is hoarded by a small group of people and not spread equably among the broader population, the capacity for average people to buy goods and services declines. And if the pandemic is causing more of the wealth to end up in fewer hands, this could well mean there will be less cash in peoples pockets to get the economy moving again.

Economists like Rochon feel its up to governments to intervene by redistributing the economys wealth to average citizens by placing higher taxes on the rich, and closing down things like offshore tax havens the wealthy exploit. Otherwise, he says, inequity will continue to worsen which will mean less chance for the economy to bounce back.

And so the question is not whether we will have another (economic) crisis but when will this next crisis happen? he says. And thats because inequality is not being addressed. We need to have wealth taxes, we need estate taxes There is a level of inequality that simply crashes the system.

British economist Gary Stevenson agrees, although he worries that so far Western governments have shown little inclination to redistribute wealth. So governments are in debt and running their wealth down and people are in debt and running their wealth down, and assuming that the wealth of the world has not somehow collapsed there must be one group that is accumulating wealth more quickly and thats the rich, he says.

And if you cant convince the rich to spend their money, which they are not, I dont think you get spending back into the economy and then the economic crisis is not a temporary crisis its a permanent one.

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As the pandemic continues, the rich are getting richer than ever before and economists are getting concerned - TheRecord.com

Climate change

Looking at climate change, problems are mounting globally. Forest fires, extreme heatwaves, devastating droughts and terrifying floods are commonplace in many too many countries. India alone has faced a series of crises: Northwest and Central India suffered severe heatwaves, swarms of desert locusts destroyed nearly 50,000 hectares of cropland and super cyclone Amphan battered the Eastern coast, causing an estimated 13 billion US dollars in damage and devastating the fragile Sunderban mangroves.

As we speak, devastating floods in Southern and Western India have displaced hundreds of thousands.

This is unfortunately only the beginning, for India and the world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global warming will reach 1.5C between 2030 and 2052, unless we dramatically step up action. The World Meteorological Organization and the UKs Met Office brought this timeline even closer home, with new climate predictions that point to a 20 per cent likelihood that one of the next five years will be 1.5C warmer than pre-industrial levels.

The temporary slowdown emissions during the pandemic lockdowns will have a negligible impact. We need large-scale, structural interventions that take the world permanently away from its addiction to fossil fuels.

Pollution

Finally, we have pollution and waste. Air pollution is the worlds single largest environmental health risk. Data from the WHO shows that9 out of 10 peoplebreathe air containing high levels of pollutants, and that around7 million people die every yearfrom exposure to polluted air.

In India, household and ambient air pollution is responsible for an estimate one million plus premature deaths and an enormous burden of disease and disability, concentrated disproportionately among the poor.

The common thread of consumption and production

These three crises are closely linked, and driven in large part by unsustainable production and consumption. The International Resource Panel has consistently reminded us that our relentless extraction of resources is devastating the natural world.

To address the triple crisis, we must reboot our way of life

Frankly, none of this information is revelatory. We already knew we had to change. But the impacts of COVID-19 the deaths, illnesses, economic damage and poverty have told us that we can delay no longer.

We must now and forever redefine the relationship between people and the earth. To do this, we must embed sustainability into COVID-19 economic recovery.

At this time most countries whose economies have been hit hard by the pandemic-induced economic slowdown look to revive the economy and create jobs after the pandemic. Such economic revival will be critical. But let me be clear. This economic jump-start cannot and must not be done at the expense of the environment. It is imperative for all countries, including India to not only meet their current commitments on plastic pollution, climate and land degradation but to increase and stretch these.

In this context, I also call on the government to look closely at the new draft Environmental Impact Assessment Notification 2020 to ensure it provides adequate safeguards across the full spectrum of environmental impacts.

Given that a single zoonotic outbreak can incur trillions of US dollars in costs across the globe, economic recovery focused on climate action and a healthy natural world is the best means of long-term prosperity. There are ample opportunities for governments to simultaneously address environmental objectives and ensure that recovery leads to more sustainable outcomes overall.

One Health investments crucial

Another important piece of work particularly for avoiding future pandemics is adopting integrated human, animal and environmental health expertise and policy. This is known as the One Health approach.

Conservation experts monitoring great apes, for instance, can be a valuable part of zoonotic disease surveillance in communities living nearby. Experts monitoring habitats also have a role to play. For example, in 2018, livestock experts working closely with healthcare professionals in Kenya detected Rift Valley fever and deployed livestock vaccinations and other interventions to contain its spread.

As we look at recovery from the current pandemic and how to avoid another, One Health strategies should be front and centre.

In this context, I warmly congratulate the Government of India for setting up a Steering Committee to advance thinking and action on issues at the interface of Environment and Health in India. This is a very forward looking initiative and more relevant than ever before.

Backing global processes for recovery

As I mentioned earlier, we have learned from the pandemic that promises and intent are not enough. We need action to implement our promises and we need to stretch our commitments so that we can provide for a better and more sustainable future. Therefore, nations must commit more strongly to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. The delay in the climate meeting gives nations the opportunity to adjust their Paris commitments upwards, with a focus on nature-based solutions.

Just as important is pulling out all the stops to define the post-2020 biodiversity framework. We need ambitious, clear and common targets for a nature-positive world. We need implementation support on financing, capacity development, transparency and accountability. We need buy in from sectors and groups, both public and private, that drive biodiversity loss: agriculture, infrastructure, public works, municipal planning and consumers.

The green economic recovery cannot succeed without the full engagement of the private sector

In particular, the private sector needs to be fully engaged. Business has a critical role to play as a source of finance, a driver of innovation, and an engine of economic growth and employment.

Businesses must realize they can no longer pollute their way to profit. Economy is environment, and environment is economy. To emphasize this, let me remind you of the World Economic Forums messages from earlier this year.

Industry leaders across sectors in India have made significant efforts at promoting clean and efficient energy, water and waste management, creation of green supply chains and promoting the concept of circular economy. We need such initiatives to become more broad-based and also spread to the medium, small and micro enterprise level.

India a key partner in sustainability

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In conclusion, we must use COVID-19 as a learning moment. It has shown humanity that our ill treatment of the planet has consequences. It has shown that the warnings of scientists can and do come true. It has shown that we must listen, plan and prevent.

My one note of caution is that we must be careful not to think that our ability to respond to a global pandemic is the same as our ability to respond to climate change or biodiversity loss.

With this pandemic we focus on improving enhanced treatments for those infected, increasing survival rates and on the development of a vaccine. The strategy is clearly to rely on human ingenuity and technology to help us out of the global pandemic tailspin.

But climate change will not be shooed away in one year or five. The carbon in our atmosphere, and the changes to global systems, will linger for decades. Once ecosystems have collapsed, we cannot coax them back into life in a matter of months. A future pandemic may be even more deadly and quick to spread, accelerating beyond our ability to respond.

Humanitys best bet is to minimize the risks and impacts of such crises by putting sustainability at the heart of COVID-19 recovery. New research on COVID-19 for example, suggests that a series of measures to protect the natural world and ecosystem services would cost a mere 2% of the post-COVID-19 recovery bill.

India is a major force in making this happen. It has 18 per cent of the worlds population and the highest numbers of aspiring youth. The countrys ongoing presidency of the Convention to Combat Desertification and the Convention on Migratory Species, along with its upcoming presidency of the G20 in 2022, is a tremendous opportunity for the country to steer global stewardship of the environment. As one of the biggest economies in the world, I fully expect to see India take up the leadership mantle on sustainability.

We at UNEP look forward to working with the Government of India and the Council, and our other partners in India to help the world make the right choices.

Thank you.

Inger Andersen

Executive Director

[i] Sanchit Waray, Sasmita Patnaik, and Abhishek Jain. 2018. Clean Energy Innovations to Boost Rural Incomes. Report. https://www.ceew.in/sites/default/files/CEEW_Clean_energy_innovations_to_boost_rural_incomes_15Oct18.pdf

(Peer reviewed by multiple independent national and international organisations)

[ii] Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). 2020. Climate and Business: Partnership of The Future CDP India Annual Report 2019. Report. January. https://bit.ly/33bbdWP

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From promise to action: Sustainability at the heart of COVID-19 recovery - UN Environment

The new normal, the next normal, the great reset -- what the future of work looks like beyond the profound disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic can't be predicted with certainty. But business and IT executives can be confident of this: Successful leaders don't wait for the future to happen to them. To paraphrase a widely credited maxim of modern leadership, the best way to foretell the future is to create it.

The current state is certainly daunting. COVID-19 has infiltrated almost every country in the world, and both case counts and deaths from the virus continue to increase rapidly. Economists polled by Reuters expect the global economy to fall 4.0% in 2020, or by about $3.4 trillion, roughly the equivalent of the combined economies of Canada and Australia. The U.S.'s nearly 10% drop in GDP in the second quarter of 2020 was the largest on record, more than double that during the Great Recession. Moreover, the workplace shutdowns and remote work arrangements enacted in March by many companies persist -- both Google and Facebook, for example, plan to let employees keep working remotely until July 2021. Up to 30% of employees currently working from home will become permanently remote, according to Forrester Research, and many more will have a mix of in-office and at-home days. Life and business post-COVID-19 will not pick up where we left off.

Amid the turmoil, IT and business executives fortunate enough to have a role in steering their enterprises forward have a thrilling opportunity before them: to do everything in their power to build the technology infrastructure and business processes that will support the future of work.

This guide to future of work trends looks at how C-suite thought leaders are busy inventing the way forward, and includes an examination of the following:

Throughout the report, you'll find links to TechTarget articles that dig deeper into the fast-evolving trends shaping the future of work. The links will be updated continually as that future comes into clearer focus, so plan to check back frequently.

IT was not immune to the spending cuts inflicted by Covid-19. Worldwide IT spending is widely predicted to decline in 2020, with the research firm IDC, for example, projecting a decrease of 5.1% versus the 5.1% increase in spending predicted at the start of the year. However, IT infrastructure spending is still projected to grow overall by almost 4%, according to IDC, bolstered by "resilient spending from IT service providers and enterprise demand for cloud services." Moreover, the intense focus in recent years on digital transformation strategies and the tools that support them, including cloud-based applications, mobile technologies, robotics and AI, remains strong.

"In the long term, this won't disrupt the general trend toward digital transformation -- in fact, it might just accelerate it," IDC analyst Stephen Minton told TechTarget. Minton said he believes the coronavirus pandemic will in fact provide "proof points" that companies further along in digital transformation were best positioned to withstand the crisis.

His view is consistent with that of enterprise leaders at Dell, PwC and grocery deliverer Peapod, who recently described their companies' aggressive efforts to pursue digital transformation initiatives in a TechTarget article on evolving IT strategies and future of work trends published last month:

Companies that failed to equip their employees with digital tools have found it difficult to serve customers during the pandemic, said Forrester analyst Nigel Fenwick, labeling digitally mature companies as "predators" in the new world order created by COVID-19 and the laggards as "prey."

"The strong will get stronger, and the weak will get weaker," Gartner analyst Kristin Moyer concurred, noting that the pre-pandemic leaders in digital transformation were already "creating distance between themselves and their markets." She advised organizations that hadn't committed to accelerating digital technologies prior to the pandemic to do so now if they're able.

Indeed, one of the weaknesses the pandemic has exposed "is just how legacy and brittle some of our core infrastructure turned out to be," Forrester analyst Stephanie Balouras said in an interview on future of work trends. A number of Forrester clients were "truly unprepared" to send employees home, Balouras added.

"They had to scramble to buy laptops. Their infrastructure for identity management was so complex they had to use hardware -- they weren't prepared to use software for two-factor authentication," she said. At many companies, "huge weaknesses in scalability, performance and security" were laid bare.

The upside? A lot of business executives were "actually shocked" by the state of their technology infrastructure and newly committed to "transforming the core," Balouras said. "For IT, this [pandemic] has been a shot in the arm for everything that had to happen."

Still, finding a balance between meeting the acute needs of the business during this crisis and executing on the long-term IT strategies required for future success won't be easy for CIOs and their IT teams, especially those in industries hit hard by the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.

But experts agreed that in addition to the short-term tactics deployed by CIOs to support ongoing work during the pandemic -- such as pressing vendors to renegotiate IT contracts, providing collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and beefing up network bandwidth -- now is the time to invest in the technologies and skills that build resiliency in the face of systemic risk, including future epidemics and environmental disasters. The toolbox and skills, familiar to most CIOs, include the following:

Public and private cloud. In the next two to five years, Forrester expects to see widespread adoption of public cloud-based services and supporting cloud technologies -- such as microservices, serverless computing, containers and Kubernetes -- that can also be deployed in private cloud environments, according to a July 2020 report.

AI and process automation. Enterprise adoption of AI will continue to grow at businesses that have the resources to deal with the complexities of AI projects. For example, IT leaders at credit scoring company FICO and HR management software vendor ADP recently told TechTarget they are prioritizing how to find workers with the right AI skills.

The use of AI virtual assistants for customer support has surged during the pandemic, particularly in the healthcare and financial sectors. Other industries hit hard during the pandemic, such as travel and hospitality, are expected to make more use of virtual assistants to handle customer needs when business returns.

The use of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality to train employees and assist workers in the field also rose sharply in recent months as the pandemic curtailed person-to-person collaboration, according to a forthcoming article on SearchCIO.

The aggressive adoption of RPA pre-pandemic to automate routine business processes will continue apace, experts said, with RPA and its integration with AI techniques predicted to give rise to new job roles, including bot resource managers, automation engineers and chief efficiency officers.

Data science. Industry analyst Piyanka Jain made the case that in times of limited resources, a robust data science practice is crucial to identifying the projects that will yield the greatest return and mitigate risk. Jain's piece, "How data science can help your company withstand the pandemic," explains the "four Ds" of developing a data culture:

A word of caution on predictive models developed to improve operational efficiency, customer relationship management and financial performance prior to the pandemic: The sudden and dramatic changes wrought by COVID-19 have undermined the accuracy of many predictive models, experts warn. Learn about how to ensure predictive model accuracy in this TechTarget tip.

The radical adjustments to CIO agendas made during the early days of the pandemic, coupled with the successful efforts to quickly get workers up and running remotely, make it clear that IT teams were able to pivot effectively in the face of an unprecedented crisis. The challenge for CIOs and business leaders going forward is how to make the speed and agility demonstrated under pressure the enterprise's new normal.

HR, perhaps more than any other function in the enterprise, understands that going back to the way things were before COVID is not in the cards. The important role of HR during the pandemic cannot be overstated. From the first outbreaks through tentative workplace re-openings to the reevaluation of return-to-work policies as flareups occur, HR teams have taken the lead in managing the impact of COVID-19 on employees. In the early weeks of the pandemic, HR professionals did the following:

Also, at some businesses, HR leaders quickly shifted to virtual hiring. At cable provider Spectrum, for example, the transition to virtual hiring took about a week and is now at 100%. "The first time that someone actually meets another human being in our process [is when] they pick up their laptop to start their job," Spectrum VP of recruiting Jennifer Tracy told TechTarget. "And then they take their assets home and work from home." In another article, Mark Feffer, an HR technology writer and editor of HCM Technology Report, detailed four strategies for optimizing your virtual recruiting process

The recommended practice of social distancing to contain the spread of COVID-19 meant that corporate work, almost overnight, became an activity that happened at home. How much longer remote work continues due to the current crisis, or to what extent it becomes permanent when the pandemic is under control, is an open question. But the unprecedented shift of labor from office to home provides insight into future of work trends.

For starters, remote work has largely gone better than expected, even boosting productivity, prompting speculation that remote work is here to stay. For example, a Gartner survey in June of 127 company leaders from HR, legal and compliance, finance and real estate found that 82% of respondents intend to permit remote working some of the time as employees return to the workplace. Nearly half (47%) said they intend to allow employees to work remotely full time going forward.

In her article on effectively managing IT teams working from home, Nemertes Research president and founder Robin Gareiss explained that a major factor in making remote work a success is equipping IT teams with the right infrastructure to manage all the other new home offices, including: business-grade internet, access to protected systems, and a technology kit that -- along with the standard cell phone, laptop, headset, etc., of knowledge workers -- includes two monitors for effectively troubleshooting employee issues. Beyond the training provided to resolve technical issues, IT staff now also needs to be trained on techniques for dealing with remote workers.

Not surprisingly, companies with existing remote work policies, and the technologies and skilled IT teams to support remote workers, had an easier time making the leap, according to interviews with more than 60 C-suite executives. But the executives also stressed that management's ability to be transparent and empathetic and to praise and inspire employees was as critical to keeping employees focused on work as having the necessary technical apparatus.

In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that the emotional well-being of remote employees must be factored into every enterprise's pandemic business continuity plan, along with the business impact analysis, risk assessments and investment in new technology typical of BCDR plans.

Additionally, if, as expected, remote work is widely adopted after the pandemic, employees will have more flexibility in where they can take jobs, leading to a highly competitive job market in fields where demand is high. Just as "customer power" revolutionized customer service strategies, Forrester and otherconsultancies are predicting that "employee power" will force itself on companies, making employee experience a corporate priority.

To be sure, the full-time remote office worker trend has its doubters, who point to the clumsiness of Zoom meetings and the strong preference for working face to face as just two deterrents. More typical, however, is the perspective of Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He has stated that up to 50% of the company's 45,000 employees could be permanent remote workers in five to 10 years, even as the social behemoth recently secured a lease for 730,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan.

Whether 50% or 10% of your employees become permanently remote, the future of work requires organizations to permanently change how they protect corporate assets.

In a July 2020 report on COVID-19 risks, the World Economic Forum reported that rapid unplanned digital transformation of business, especially in retail, education and healthcare, has increased the risk and impact of cyberattacks. As offices closed, criminals turned their attention to remote workers; 50% of enterprises surveyed expressed concern about increased cyberattacks due to a shift in work patterns alone.

Protecting against rising threats won't be easy. Network-based security tools deployed within corporate networks typically did not travel home with employees, who tend to ignore office security policies when working from home. And the security measures and tools remote workers do have in place are likely insufficient to protect sensitive corporate data. But, as explained in this TechTarget article on securing a home network for remote workforces, there are five steps that organizations should take to mitigate risks.

Going forward, experts agree that the long-endorsed but minimally adopted zero-trust security model -- a philosophy based on giving users the least amount of access needed to accomplish a task -- must become a CISO priority in the world of remote work and digital ubiquity. Technologies that are critical to making it work include multifactor authentication, identity and access management, orchestration, analytics, encryption, scoring and file systems permissions.

Remote work has put the power and risk of a digital workplace in sharp relief, forcing businesses to make hard decisions about the tradeoffs between security and usability. But for companies that have been able to weather the coronavirus crisis, the forced experiment in moving operations to a virtual model will result in permanent change -- and, for many, an overdue reassessment of their enterprise risk strategies.

One shortcoming they will discover, according to Forrester's Balouras, is that their approach to enterprise risk management (ERM) is highly siloed and continues to rely on manual processes. "ERM is a complete digital laggard," she said. "Most of it is done manually; there is not a lot of integration of external intelligence; there is not a lot of integration of contextual information about the business." That is ripe for change. As IT and business leaders forge an ERM strategy for the future of work, they will need to keep in mind the following: The systemic risk to businesses inflicted by the coronavirus crisis is unprecedented, but there will be other global crises in the future, and preparations must be made now.

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The IT thought leader's guide to the future of work - TechTarget

A detailed analysis of environmental research has revealed the greatest threat to the world: affluence.

Thats one of the main conclusions of a team of scientists from Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, who have warned that tackling overconsumption has to become a priority. Their report, titled Scientists Warning on Affluence, explains that true sustainability calls for significant lifestyle changes, rather than hoping that more efficient use of resources will be enough.

We cannot rely on technology alone to solve existential environmental problems like climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, writes the reports lead author, Professor Tommy Wiedmann from Australias University of New South Wales Engineering, in an article on Phys.org. We also have to change our affluent lifestyles and reduce overconsumption, in combination with structural change."

Sustainable lifestyles are situated between an upper limit or environmental ceiling and a lower limit or social foundation.

Image: Nature

A growing global challenge

There is widespread acceptance that the planet faces an ecological tipping point. To care for humanity, we must care for nature, said United Nations Secretary-General Antnio Guterres on World Environment Day in June. He stressed the importance of making changes as the world recovers from the recent pandemic: As we work to build back better, lets put nature where it belongs at the heart of our decision making.

Approximately half of global GDP is bound up in the natural world, according to the UN. In addition to the many millions of jobs dependent on nature, there are also billions of people intimately connected to and wholly reliant upon natural remedies and medicines.

Plus, the use of tree-planting and reforesting programmes could reduce the impact of global emissions and help meet the Paris Agreement target to keep global temperature increase below 1.5C.

The first global pandemic in more than 100 years, COVID-19 has spread throughout the world at an unprecedented speed. At the time of writing, 4.5 million cases have been confirmed and more than 300,000 people have died due to the virus.

As countries seek to recover, some of the more long-term economic, business, environmental, societal and technological challenges and opportunities are just beginning to become visible.

To help all stakeholders communities, governments, businesses and individuals understand the emerging risks and follow-on effects generated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Marsh and McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, has launched its COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications - a companion for decision-makers, building on the Forums annual Global Risks Report.

The report reveals that the economic impact of COVID-19 is dominating companies risks perceptions.

Companies are invited to join the Forums work to help manage the identified emerging risks of COVID-19 across industries to shape a better future. Read the full COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications report here, and our impact story with further information.

Call for systemic changes

The threat of human-made environmental harm was highlighted in the World Economic Forums Global Risk Report 2020, where it is in the top 10 of both the most-likely and the greatest-impact risks.

The chief problem outlined by the report is that any gains in resource efficiency and environmental protection offered by technology-based solutions have been outrun by the growth of consumption. The report also posits that it might be time to rethink traditional ideas about supply and demand

In capitalist societies, the theory goes that consumer need drives the rest of the economy businesses will only produce things for which there is a demand. But the reality of 21st-century global capitalism is a little more complex than that some economists argue that growth itself is the problem.

Global emissions, shown as the green dotted line, keep pace with the rise in production (purple) and global GDP (orange).

Image: Nature

Writing shortly before World Environment Day, the Forums founder and executive chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab, called for a great reset of capitalism in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. His vision of the great reset includes creating a stakeholder economy, where the market pursues fairer outcomes for all, underpinned by changes to tax, regulatory and fiscal policies, and new trade arrangements.

Schwab also calls for investments that advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability. This is something that is already taking place in parts of the world where economic-stimulus programmes are being enacted.

In addition, Schwab urges us to address health and social challenges with the innovations made possible by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. That means more public/private collaboration in pursuit of the public good.

Many other leading figures from around the world have rallied to this call, including His Royal Highness Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales.

The pandemic has devastated families and brought major economies to a standstill. But by directing resources into new and improved systems and processes, rather than shoring up the existing ones, Schwab believes a lasting change for the better is possible.

That belief is echoed by the scientists report, which shows that affluence is actually dangerous and leads to planetary-scale destruction, says co-author Julia Steinberger, Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds. To protect ourselves from the worsening climate crisis, we must reduce inequality and challenge the notion that riches, and those who possess them, are inherently good.

Catch up with the latest thinking on the world after COVID-19 in our weekly World Vs Virus podcast:

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This is now the world's greatest threat and it's not coronavirus - World Economic Forum

Did you know that many invasive plant species have taken hold in this area changing the plant communities along our coastline?

Chrissy Smith with the Friends of Netarts Bay WEBS said these invaders, often introduced as ornamental plants, can take over an area making it hard for other plants to grow and impacting the ecosystem.

These plants have the ability to shift soil composition, change the available food source for local animals and create less than desirable habitats, Smith said.

Under normal circumstances, WEBS would be hosting an in-person event this July in conjunction with the Explore Nature Series to help people identify invasive plants and map out areas of the coastline where invasive plants exist.

Last year we piloted an effort to map invasive plants with a small group of volunteers, Smith said. This year, we launched a larger program in February but it never truly had time to get off the ground before the pandemic hit.Due to restrictions with COVID-19, WEBS is hosting a virtual presentation on July 25th instead.

While we cant go out on the trails and actually look for these plants, we still wanted to give people an opportunity to learn about local invasive plants, their impacts, how to identify them and what you can do to help including volunteering in the future with the new Weed Detectives community mapping effort, said Smith.

Smith added that if you have participated in past Weed Detectives volunteer training events, this is a great opportunity to review and learn about new plants as they emerge during different seasons.

This virtual presentation on July 25th at 10 a.m. is a part of the Explore Nature Series. Explore Nature Series events are hosted by a consortium of volunteer community and non-profit organizations, and are meaningful nature-based experiences highlight the unique beauty of Tillamook County and the work being done to preserve and conserve the areas natural resources and natural resource-based economy. They are partially funded through the Tillamook Coast Visitors Association and the Travel Oregon Forever Fund.

To learn more or register for Weed Detectives, visit http://www.netartsbaywebs.eventbrite.com. And be sure to follow the Friends of Netarts Bay WEBS and the Explore Nature Series on Facebook and Instagram.

Date: July 25, 2020Location: VIRTUAL Register online at explorenaturetillamookcoast.comTime: 10amQuestions: Contact Director @ NetartsBayWEBS.org or call 541-231-8041.Register: http://www.netartsbaywebs.eventbrite.com

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Be a Weed Detective July 25th: An Introduction to Local Invasive Plants, Their Impacts, and How to Identify, Map, and Control Them - Tillamook County...

The gig economy is constantly evolving, becoming more deeply entrenched in certain areas of the economy while looking to expand into others. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this trend by forcing changes in the behavior of individuals and businesses that is certain to outlast the health crisis.

Many gig workers saw a significant increase in work opportunities and hourly pay beginning in mid-March, while many traditional workers had their hours or pay reduced, were laid off, or furloughed. One example is the recent shift to exclusive online learning by traditional primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools which has introduced computer-based learning to many for the first time. This will likely increase demand for freelance teachers and educators which has been growing consistently for many years.

A recent article in SmartCompany predicts the gig economy will boom in the post-COVID-19 world. The author opines that post-COVID-19, business organizations will retain a leaner structure and turn to freelance professionals as their go-to resource for services including brand, creative and digital marketing. A recent article in Forbes, 6 Trends That Will Shape the Gig Economy the 2020s, offers a similarly upbeat assessment and identifies several important changes that are likely to occur over the next 10 years. While automation will continue to impact opportunities for gig workers, the author predicts some traditional management jobs will become gig work and that stigma associated with gig work will diminish. In addition, the author predicts more gig-worker-friendly legislation and regulations will be enacted (see our March 3, 2020 post for a discussion on this point) to form a changed legal landscape permitting gig workers to unionize, while allowing greater business services targeting of gig workers.

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The Gig Economy Beyond COVID-19 | Fisher Phillips - JDSupra - JD Supra

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the range of on-demand solutions and options available to budget-minded business owners is increasing,thanks to the rise of online marketplaces, affordably priced cloud apps and freelance gig sites.

Now, at a fraction of typical costs and sometimes even for free, you can getvirtually anything you need, from video to SEO or marketing help:Graphic design services starting at $5. Email marketing for a handful of cents. Sprawling libraries full of stock photos, free for commercial use. Professionally crafted websites that anyone can quickly get up and running beginning at $2 a pop.

The gig economy's moment has arrived, and all those pennies now flowing to nontraditional sources are quickly adding up to create many more opportunities for businesses as well as everyday working professionals, especially those seeking a new side hustle.

More than 57 million Americans (representing 35% of the US workforce) freelanced last year, per nonprofit advocacy organization Freelancers Union. Likewise, over 6 million skilled gig workers are now operating just in America's top 30 cities alone, according to online freelance marketplace Fiverr.com's annual Freelance Economic Impact Report, conducted in partnership with Rockbridge Associates.

According to the report, 6 in 10 freelancers expect to earn as much or more than they did in 2019, which amounted to a collective $150 billion.

Freelance Economic Impact Report 2020, Fiverr.com and Rockbridge Associates

Coupled with the continuing rise in remote work prompted by Covid-19, along with industry growth that's compounding by double or even triple digits in select global territories, it's not only clear that gig work now enjoys greater prominence than ever before, it's also becoming increasingly apparent that outsourcing is quickly becoming the new in-house.

"I don't know why anyone would build most business platforms or websites [from scratch] anymore," says Joseph Olin, executive director for the Video Game Bar Association, which represents legal practitioners in the interactive entertainment space. "The biggest challenge for most businesses is simply deciding which solutions provider to choose from."

As a result, working professionals and organizations seeking on-demand alternatives to traditional business arrangements and solutions are finding it increasingly simple to collaborate and connect. "With the expansion and globalization of gig platforms, talented professionals from around the world can offer their services to a much wider audience of potential clients," says Brie Weiler Reynolds, career development manager for FlexJobs, which has created a guide to popular freelance and gig economy job platforms. "These platforms can allow for much quicker transactions and collaborations and have a streamlining effect on the whole [project development and innovation] process."

Freelance marketplaces and the gig economy are becoming part of the new normal.

"In the future, we'll think in terms of 'platform economies' [vs. marketplaces]," says Hugh Durkin, director of product development for marketing, sales and customer service software provider HubSpot. "Because of the much lower costs [associated with using these solutions], it's not uncommon for bootstrapped, self-funded businesses to become more meaningful in terms of revenue."

It's not just budding entrepreneurs who are finding creative ways to assemble ragtag teams of freelance superstars and stretch every dollar further. Perhaps the most telling signs of sea change lie in corporate America's growing embrace of on-demand and outsourcing practices, with the share of gig workers at U.S businesses having ballooned 15% since 2010, according to the ADP Research Institute.

During the pandemic, it's provided an easy way for many clients, including Fortune 500 firms, to fill in creative gaps and source specific film footage that would otherwise be tough to produce while under stay-at-home orders.

Andrew Krause

founder of marketing communications firm AKA

Over 30% of 1099-MISC contractors doing gig-based work now are over age 55, pointing to growing opportunities for working professionals in every category and age group. But nowhere is the growth potential in the space greater than for small businesses, who are increasingly turning to freelance marketplaces and online sites to outsource (or crowdsource) common day-to-day tasks for pennies on the dollar. And whether they need help with social media management or professional voice-overs, drop shipping or app development, countless entrepreneurs across the globe are quickly adding these solutions to their list of go-to resources.

"Although we're a 22-year-old business, we consistently use stock image, music and video providers," says Andrew Krause, founder of marketing communications firm AKA. "During the pandemic, it's provided an easy way for many clients, including Fortune 500 firms, to fill in creative gaps and source specific film footage that would otherwise be tough to produce while under stay-at-home orders, let alone quickly."

Krause cautions, though, that while freelance creatives provide solutions and are a great way to outsource time-sensitive work or fill in any specific skills gaps that your company may have, results can vary. "It takes a skilled hand to assemble and watch over people."

The key to being successful, he says, is simply to be clear with freelance providers about what your project needs are. Likewise, it's important to vet freelancers' capabilities and work portfolio upfront, establish clear deadlines and milestones, and keep a close eye on project management.

Andrew Vine, head of professional speaking agency The Insight Bureau, said his company uses freelance marketplaces, off-the-shelf templates and online tools to outsource and streamline many aspects of its operations. "We use Upwork.com [freelance] staff to take on ad hoc projects in a way that temporary agencies could never accommodate, sites like SurveyMonkey to source customer feedback, and Zoho CRM [sales software] to handle customer relationship management," he says. "Similarly, we use solutions such as Calendly to [manage our schedule] and avoid the Ping-Pong match involved in setting up appointments. There are plenty of affordable, web-based solutions that help us remain agile."

Michael Morgenstern, senior vice president of marketing for expert witness provider The Expert Institute says they relied on several free resources to grow and scale their business. "We use Trello to manage our projects, Brainlabs' open-source scripts to automate certain high-tech actions, and Unsplash.com is our go-to resource for free, high-quality stock imagery."

Agile and affordable solutions such as these can often be a vital go-to resource for start-ups and other, bootstrapped ventures, helping lower barriers to market entry and offer the tools needed to compete with larger firms. Ironically though, with so many outsourced and on-demand options now available, and just a click away, the biggest challenge for many businesses is simply picking the right ones.

Happily, say many executives, it's a good problem to have, even if the options can sometimes prove overwhelming.

If you're looking to get started yourself, some online marketplaces where you can find freelancers or on-demand services includeFiverr,FlexJobs,Freelancer.com,Guru,Toptaland Upwork. Yet there are a few things to keep in mind when starting out, says Brent Messenger, vice president of public policy and community engagement at Fiverr. Knowing these willensure a more successful outsourcing experience.

If you're looking for help with online automation, or stock assets such as photos, images and plug-and-play solutions, the following sites can also be of service. Some may offer assets and solutions for free, others for a nominal fee or on a subscription basis.

Email and newsletter marketing: AWeber, Constant Contact, Drip, GetResponse, HubSpot, iContact, MailChimp, SendInBlue

Photos and videos:Unsplash, Shutterstock, StockSnap.io, DepositPhotos, Videezy, VideoHive

Logos, graphics and branding:Crowdspring, 99Designs, Behance, Canva, Easil, Adobe Spark

Web design and development:Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, GoDaddy, TemplateMonster, ThemeForest

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Budget-minded business owners' love affair with gig workers is growing - CNBC