Wales Sustainable Business Summit

Carwyn Jones:

We're interested in maximising the long term wellbeing of our people. Talking of vibrant communities and avoiding damage or degradation to our planet whilst making profit.

Wales has been strong on tackling climate change, with a moral imperative even where the solution is complex. We know that the world cannot afford to wait and we need to do what we can in Wales - this has huge implications in all areas, and is vital to the success of our economy. Nicholas Stern's 'risk of -20% to world economy' needs to be taken seriously.

'To turn the crisis into an opportunity we need a vision and the determination to push it through'

In the field of renewables, there are huge opportunities for Wales, and the environmental benefits need to be mirrored by and econimic spin off. We want to see companies leading the world, showing susccessful companies who are contributing towards a sustainable future, making profit on the way.

One of the greatest prizes of all is to safeguard our planet for future generations.

Facing up to the truth

We're lucky in Wales to have the likes of Kevin Anderson advising the Climate Change Committe, the cross-party group of Assembly Members and key organisations who advise the Welsh Assembly on action. Kevin has never been one to pull hs punches, and for that he's respected by many people this side of the border, even if the action he calls for is a tough ask, as highlighted by a recent article in Guardian, in which he says:

"Too many models use an extrapolation of old data and this gives results that are too optimistic," said Anderson. "When I present my findings I am often pulled apart for taking away people's hope. But what these models are giving us is false hope. Surely that is worse?"

For the full article, click here

Wales tops the list

The Canadian Globe & Mail newspaper has put Wales at the top of its list of adventure destinations for 2011:

"The Welsh countryside boasts some of the U.K.'s best mountain biking. The rugged sea cliffs of the Gower Coast provide a stunning backdrop for rock climbing, with routes for all abilities, and the Pembrokeshire Coast is a perfect place to try coasteering: don a wetsuit and helmet, scramble up cliffs, and fling yourself into the sea"

Come on in, the water is lovely....

Towards a Sustainable Society - event

There's an interesting event coming up in West Wales on 11 November with David Boyle from the New Economics Fondation, Liz Burnett from NESTA, Peter Davies, the new chair of Wales' Climate Change Commission along with the redoubtable Charlie Mason and Marc Mordey from The Environment Network for Pembrokeshire. A bargain at a fiver for voluntary sector folk, and stil a snip for those from business paying £30. More info from www.tenp.org.uk

Learning from the future

Spending a day working with the champions of sustainability education from 20 colleges across Wales; these are the folks who are embedding real change into the workplace, and this post captures the ideas - heads of environmental education, business and many other work areas.

Short presentations from Pembrokeshire College and Yale College underpinned the impoetance of good monitoring and reporting of what happens so that the people taking action know what's happening. Yale created a 'green handprint' to stamp on projects where good practice is happening - they've developed a Moodle site with resources and embedded ESDGC into environmental management - using real information from building management systems etc as part of day to day work. The harder stuff, they're finding are topics such as resolving the loss of money from selling Coke to the reduction in plastic waste and dietary opportunities that would develop as a result. "We're also crossing the learning-teaching issue and are going to be working on paper next - realising it's a systems approach that's needed". Learning projects are what gets the students involved.

Gobal exchange programmes have developed using the College's international offices, so that students are now starting to run projects for themselves - one of the best indications that things are starting to work.

climate change is difficult because it's not in our nature to do favours for people who are not born yet.

Understanding relevance and complexity are two of the most important areas - one exercise asked students to cut out articles on climate, wealth SD and other issues and stick onto a flip chart and make the links between the articles on the flip charts with string to see where the connections lie. To understand Fair Trade, give away chocolate according the rules of the 'chocolate game' - the supermarkets get 10 squares, the farmers get one etc.

Eco footprinting exercises are working well - CAT's 'Where's the Impact?" is one good way of communicating this - understanding where the ingredients of my Kinder Egg comes from - plastic - cocoa - milk - sugar - aluminium - and then work out the connections between those products and personal action and choices.