Category Archives: Environment

Stick the environment where it belongs – on the balance sheet

Last month at Rio+20, 37 chief executives of banks, investment funds and insurance companies signed up to a Natural Capital Declaration. The Declaration recognises the growing relationship between biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and water quality and availability as well as … Continue reading

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What price pollution? D-day for a carbon tax

“We’re all doomed, you know. The whole, silly, drunken, pathetic lot of us. Doomed by the air we’re about to breathe.” Or so says Julian Osborne in an Apocalyptic Melbourne in the doomsday classic On the Beach. The vehemently debated July … Continue reading

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Rio+20: The future we want?

Rio+20 is done and dusted. And the wrap-up? If the future we want is anything like the 49 page document of the same name compiled by Summit leaders, it’s full of fluffy bunnies, rainbows and birthday parties. In other words, … Continue reading

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Rio+20: Here we are now. Entertain us.

Ah, 1992. While I was busy smelling like teen spirit, the adults were out making the world a better place. With 178 national delegations, the election of 39 conference Vice-Presidents, over 1,400 officially accredited NGOs, unknown numbers of journalists and … Continue reading

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Why we need holistic approaches to sustainable innovation

In proposing the concept of sustainable development, the Brundtland Commission  argued that improvement of ecosystem health, without the alleviation of poverty, the redistribution of economic opportunity, community self-sufficiency, and human freedom, could only lead to incremental results. In the approximately … Continue reading

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COP out

When someone states on arrival at Durban’s 17th Conference of Parties (COP17) that “we must be realistic about expectations for a breakthrough, or even for our success (…): a comprehensive and binding agreement [on emission reductions] may be beyond our … Continue reading

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Can Mining Companies Do Sustainability?

By Jonathon Hanks, writing for Anglo American’s A Magazine. For many people the concept of mining companies being committed to sustainable development is a classic oxymoron. Not only is their business model entirely dependent on the extraction of a finite … Continue reading

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The Procurement Department is a good place to manage Carbon Trading

Jonathan Dutton is Managing Director of CIPS Australia, the peak body for the procurement profession. The re-arrival of carbon on the federal government agenda, firstly as a tax and, secondly, in time, as an emissions trading scheme, has had all … Continue reading

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