Journal

Barnes 1 Barnes 2

Our garden is more or less at it peak at the moment, spilling over with bluebells and sweet cicely, and with all sorts of plants and vines filling the air with perfume – particularly something that has scrambled up the eucalyptus from a neighbour’s garden. A fair number of bees around, particularly various types of bumblebee, but the fate of bees internationally is a growing concern. Their contribution to agriculture is part of the evolving ecosystem services space, something we cover in our latest report, The Biosphere Economy. Many years ago, I wanted to keep bees, even had a pair of hives and a honey extractor inherited from an uncle of Kerry Effingham’s, but life intervened. Apparently there’s a new type of hive, much simpler, which has had me musing again.

School of Management 1 School of Management 2 Professor Arthur Francis kicks us off Kyoko Fukukawa and her husband And their daughter

Travelled by train, via Leeds, to Bradford – to do a lecture at Bradford University’s School of Management. Amazing to see the landscape taken over by the acid yellow colour of rape fields. Read a stack of magazines, including Newsweek, which foresees the end of the euro and a second great depression. Theme of my talk was the Phoenix Economy, the title of our report last year, which plays into the same space, with discussion of the implication of the work of long-dead economists like Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter on long-wave economic cycles.

Very much liked the School’s new extension, shown in the first two photos, on the back of the old building, shown in the fourth. Was hosted by, among other Kyoko Fukukawa, whose book on CSR in Asia I did a foreword for some time back. Lively discussion with School of Management alumni, and others, after which I took a bus back to Leeds and then headed south, getting home around 21.30.

Amy and Sam at Vats JP, Sam, Rafael, Charmian Charmian, Alex Amy and Sam

Lovely evening at Vats in Lamb’s Conduit Street with nine of us, from Volans (Amy, Charmian, Erica, Rafael, Sam) and SustainAbility (Alex, Gary, JP). Much discussion of the nodoubt apocryphal story of English archers’ fingers and the origin of the V-sign. Nice that these days Volans can afford to treat SustainAbility. Afterwards, cycled home in a slightly light-headed state, though cool evening air helped no end.

Aron Cramer at Advisory Council meeting Oded and Tabata Brazier in restaurant

Arrived in Sao Paulo on Sunday morning and then was immersed in several days of meetings with the Instituto Ethos Advisory Board. One of the things we discussed with Ethos founder Oded Grajew was the possibility of organising a parallel conference in 2012 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 UN Earth Summit in 1992. Later we all cascaded into the annual Ethos conference. I did a couple of sessions, chairing one with Pavan Sukhdev of Deutsche Bank and UNEP, Otto Scharmer, of MIT, who focuses on what he calls ‘Theory U’, and Vania Somavilla, who is Director of Environment and Sustainability at the mining company Vale. Will try and track down and post some photographs – I took very few this week. Alejandro (Litovsky) and I also did a session to launch our new report, The Biosphere Economy.

This month sees the launch of the second Volans survey report, the first having been The Phoenix Economy. This time, we are focusing on ecosystem services, in The Biosphere Economy – which has just been spotlighted on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) website. Am currently in Brazil, where we will do a local launch of the report at the Ethos annual conference in a few days. Our third survey report, The Transparent Economy, will launch at the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) annual conference in Amsterdam later in the month.