PRESS RELEASE: ARCHITECT DAVID SANDS of BAMBOO LIVING, STATEMENT AT RIO CIFOR 8th Roundtable on FORESTS

Frances Seymour, Director General                  

Center for International Forest Research
(CIFOR)
Sindangbarang, Bogor, 16115 Indonesia

His Royal Highness
The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project
The International Integrated Reporting Council
The Green Economy Coalition and Stakeholder Forum




June 18, 2012

Dear Director General Seymour, et al:

Regrettably, I was unable to attend the 8^th Forest Roundtable as planned due to circumstances outside my control. I cannot overemphasize the importance of the Roundtable's agenda. In my opinion there can be no discussion of sustainability unless it begins and ends with the conservation and management of our rapidly vanishing global forest resources. In particular, it was the one forum for which I humbly believed my voice carried weight, as I have the ability to say that I am the co-founder of a decade old global business that integrated the use of a historically handicraft raw material -bamboo- and engineered its natural properties into a high performance building material. Over the years, BT has found great value in the ability to market from the U.S. its developing-country Vietnam produced goods as ICC certified; and likewise agrees with CIFOR's position that similar indirect market mechanisms should be scaled up to support and promote demand side regulation for green commodities.

My company -Bamboo Technologies, LLC- is a significant example that 1) consumers will embrace new material buildings when they exude quality, perform and carry genuine green values; 2) that myriad three-bottom-line forest economies -based on non-timber forest product agroforestry- are a viable development model delivering healthy ecosystems and sustainable communities. Add to this REDD+ and a synergistic driver of genuine 3BL economic models is achievable. Coupled with integrated reporting metrics and CSR, the private sector would likely look favorably on finance for REDD+ (which according to CIFOR is an industry with a potential to deliver an additional US $13 billion in resources per annum by 2020.)

For BT, bamboo proved a high performance timber replacement material; a rapidly renewable; a carbon capture device, when caringly produced, can balance emission reduction goals with the well being of forest communities, including their participation, rights and knowledge. The principle of 'caring' production is very much an ethic that connects the raw material to forest to community to business to consumer. A new broadened stakeholder 'profit' paradigm. BT's experience has now led to the promotion of a hybrid cross cutting public private partnership model, that includes government concessional community forest cooperatives managed and monitored by regional and national NGO. This type of relationship building takes time, resources and insight, but it is the type of commitment required of transitional change, and is the check and balance security that private markets and REDD+ will and must require for transparency.

Finally, BT's research and experience has demonstrated that the treatment of forests as 'museums' that remove humankind from the forest natural econ-ecosystem is as unnatural as over-exploitation. A decade of experience and deep investigation of the critical 3BL objectives favor -and arguably cannot realistically exist without market mechanisms and a view that forest economy and products are the clear source of economic growth and poverty reduction for developing countries.

Respectfully Submitted,

/s/
David Elliott Sands
Co-Founder, Bamboo Technologies, LLC
a Rio+20 Forum representative of,
The Peerless Green Initiatives Network
a Global Compact Member

cc:

UNEP, TEEB
UNGC
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project
The International Integrated Reporting Council
The Green Economy Coalition and Stakeholder Forum

Fair Use Notice: This post contains copyrighted material that has not been authorized by the copyright owners. PGI believes this educational use on the Green Eye Web-blog constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.) If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Fair Use notwithstanding we will immediately comply with any copyright owner who wants their material removed or modified or wants us to link to their web site which we routinely do as a business practice notwithstanding.

Monsoon Betting: Climate Change Holds The Dice

The India SW monsoon thus far has demonstrated climate change does not affect systems uniformly. This fact presents a unique risk management challenge. The easterly extrusion of the monsoon's normal eastern front, weak cyclonic (and at times anti-cyclonic) winds, regionally varied rainfall that is net negative 50%+¹ is compounded by poor infrastructure that is not able to cope even under the best of conditions. (500MW deficit power for pumps²; failure to recharge bore-wells; over-exploited water table; poor management of reservoirs, dams and allocation.)

 

Even a cursory review of the effect of an irregular India monsoon, its effect on the Himalayan climatic cycle and stability, supports that systemic feedback loops are breaking down at alarming rates.

The breadbasket of India, the Cauvery Delta, requires that 400,000 acres of paddy be irrigated. This is an increase of 25% from last year. The remaining hundreds of thousands of acres (about one third of all acres under paddy) rely completely on traditional rain fed irrigation.

In addition to this literal climate crisis, heat is rising on the alawys politically charged cross state border release of dam reservoirs to satisfy dependent downstream farmers of the delta. The current reservoir readings do no foster confidence that both state's farmers will get their required quantum.³ Coupled with a weak rupee that has resulted in a near doubling of cost of chemical fertilizers (75% imported⁴) and this year is beginning to show signs of being the sum-of-all-fears.

PGI's perspective is that the monsoon remains viewed from polar positions – by those who mistakenly believe they are disconnected and view the monsoon as romantic or nostalgic; and those lower/bottom pyramid communities who rely on it for their annual revenue requirement just to subsist. The collision course can be avoided through cross sectional / cross cutting approaches to raising political and public awareness and action.

Drastic water conservation measures, emergency energy packages and CoOp organization of rural development interests must be deployed immediately otherwise a major climate crisis on the one hand; and a water resource management crisis on the other, is about to reach flashpoint. The shocks could have extreme consequences due to the sheer scale of population and lack of politico-social safety net. It's the 'resilience' building that UNEP, PGI and others have been advocating -urging developing countries to address. But still the entire national and international focus on 'the India economy' focuses on GDP, forex and market closing numbers, with a blissful unawareness of the connection.

Even for our U.S. readership, the event here are no far away concern. Even a cursory review of the effect of an irregular India monsoon, its effect on the Himalayan climatic cycle and stability, supports that systemic feedback loops are breaking down at alarming rates. We give thanks with our brother and sister colleagues in the NE India that the rains have been favorable - but even they- seem more concerned about the problems reported herein and the systemic approach that must be adopted. There are no regional crisis when it comes to climate change and shocks. We are seeing symptoms of a systemic illness. The time for a global land ethic is upon us that re-orients the roles of public - private, government and intergovernment resources toward a common service and repair of the natural feedback loops key to Earth -and our- survival.

Our energies and prayers are with all those gathering in Rio that a strong and committed plan of action be framed and implemented. PGI will be issuing press releases on Twitter from our representative to the UNGC Corp Sustainability Forum. Stay tuned.

1IMD June 15, 2012

2Tamil Nadu Farm Association

3Federation of Farmers in Cauvery Delta Districts, June 14, 2012

4Times India, June 13, 2012 Complex fertilizers increase 55%; reduced subsidy for non-urea fertilizer

Fair Use Notice: This post contains copyrighted material that has not been authorized by the copyright owners. PGI believes this educational use on the Green Eye Web-blog constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.) If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Fair Use notwithstanding we will immediately comply with any copyright owner who wants their material removed or modified or wants us to link to their web site which we routinely do as a business practice notwithstanding.

Gaia & the Growing Tree Bridge to Tomorrow's Economics

Survival of the fittest was a horrid illulsion. It is the reality most of us have been convinced of from birth. Always in constant conflict with our innate knowledge -deep inside our DNA laid the truth that all economy is based on networked systems of shared consumption. The gaia. By contrast our inter-human economic affairs, as well as our perception of the 'purpose' of nature, has for several centuries been based on the murderous premise of survival of the fittest -

We now have finally come to realize that Gaia could not possibly have survived as a system based on a premise of competition, and that our previously flawed beliefs has so upset the relationship of harmonic systems, that we must drastically change our human economy to be in tune with
Gaia's. (And likely assist Her in paying off the deficit we have accumulated with her.) We have finally- and hopefully not too late- awoken to the fact that all relations whether they be inter-human or inter-gaia, must be based on the Universal model of shared economics. This is the essence of true natural order ... it is the biotic system that we now attempt to mimic...not just in how we plant our gardens, but in how we plan every organizations definition and mode of profits.

The change has come. The revolution is upon us. The living bridge has been woven. The new epoch has arrived as in the past - with great suddenness.  We are living in the metaphorical flood, and from the macro to the micro the markets, policy and business dealings smack of panic and desperation by those that refused to step aboard the Ark. 

Like the living tree bridge (http://thegreeneyeofpgi.blogspot.in/2010/11/living-bridges-of-assam.html) we must use our minds to arrange and intertwine and resources -human and natural- needed to usher in a new age of commerce that pays its dividends to all. We must expediently re-learn long forgotten wisdoms and innate knowlege of how to integrate and become a harmonic part of Gaia's systems of which we are all indivisible.

The previous epoch was an Age of Enlightenment wherein we evolved through cognizance that each individual was born possessed of inalienable rights. We're now crossing over to the second age wherein we've become cognizant that all things must be granted those same rights ... the Land Ethic. An Ethic that must permeate every one of our human functions and endeavors. A sort of natural license. Certain structures are forming and gaining tractions such as L3C 's and B corps and hybrid cooperatives. These are quantum leaps for any who has experience in such things.  Just as the UCC was the codification of centuries of merchantile custom and practice, so too must be the Land Ethic. It must be the enforceable right of Gaia as a stakeholder, and that of every transaction with Gaia, or human. Just as the Doctrine of Sovereign Immunity crumbled in the face of democratic governance, so has Gaia proven our doctrine of exploitive economics fails the test of moral reality.

Fair Use Notice: This post contains copyrighted material that has not been authorized by the copyright owners. PGI believes this educational use on the Green Eye Web-blog constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.) If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Fair Use notwithstanding we will immediately comply with any copyright owner who wants their material removed or modified or wants us to link to their web site which we routinely do as a business practice notwithstanding.