Tag Archives: environmental sustainability

Evolving Partnerships & Compostable Diapers

This week on Sea Change Radio we feature two different ways that strategic partnerships can help organizations make better progress toward environmental sustainability. First, host Alex Wise talks with Jem Bendell about some strange bedfellows. More and more, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations are getting together with multinational corporations in cross-sectoral partnerships. Ostensibly, these partnerships increase the nonprofit sector’s capacity for good, and they certainly represent an increasing trend as other revenue streams dry up. But what are the implications, compromises and repercussions involved when nonprofit entities partner with these unlikely allies? Is this trend the hope for benevolent organizations or a Faustian bargain?

Next we learn about Earth-Baby, a Bay Area-based company that’s trying to cut into the number three contributor to our country’s landfills – disposable diapers. In order to accomplish their mission, this small for-profit company has partnered with a local composting company and an international compostable diaper producer to help Bay Area families with infants and toddlers leave their kids with a cleaner world.

Paving Paths to Sustainable Connections

This week on Sea Change Radio, a more ecological solution for paving driveways and parking lots, and a social networking site specifically for people working to make the world a more sustainable place. Host Alex Wise‘s first guest is Dustin Glist from Invisible Structures, a company that creates paving solutions that process stormwater naturally, allowing water recapture, preventing erosion, and even allowing you to plant grass on a roof or driveway. We ask him about what problems current paving solutions present and the practical uses of his company’s technology. After that, we hear from Martin Chilcott, the founder and CEO of 2Degrees Network, a social networking website that connects green innovators from all over the world. We talk about how this site, which finally taps the power of social networking for the green movement, might be a “game changer” in the shift to environmental sustainability.

Read the show transcript

Reducing Poverty and Protecting the Environment: Can the World Bank Do Both?

Vinod Thomas

The World Bank Group’s mission is to reduce poverty. The Bank also works toward environmental sustainability. What’s the link between them, and does its practice on the ground promote both priorities? That’s the question posed by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group or IEG in a recent audit of the Bank’s funding projects. The results? Disappointing. CWR co-hosts Francesca Rheannon and Bill Baue speak with Vinod Thomas, Director-General of the IEG about the report. The IEG is producing a follow-up report focusing directly on the effectiveness of the the World Bank Group’s environmental and social sustainability safeguards and standards.

Vinod Thomas

Environmental Sustainability: An Evaluation of World Bank Group Support

CWR Headlines:

Russian-Georgian War Could Mean a New Cold War Between Russia and the West
Wal-Mart Wants to Keep Green Definitions Fuzzy

Web Extra: Full interview with Peter Zeihan of Stratfor on the Russia-Georgia War

Steve Herz

CWR ViewPoint:  read

Steve Herz comments on how International Finance Corporation social standards fail to protect against human rights abuses. Herz recently co-authored a report on the human rights performance of the International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standards and the Equator Principles. The analysis was conducted in partnership with the World Resources Institute, the Center for International Environmental Law, the Bank Information Center, BankTrack, and Oxfam Australia. Herz practices international, environmental, and human rights law in Oakland, CA.

The International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standards and the Equator Principles: Respecting Human Rights and Remedying Violations?

Launching the Solidarity Economy

Emily Kawano, executive director of the Center for Popular Economics in Amherst, Massachusetts, discusses the launch of the US Solidarity Economy Network coming out of the US Social Forum in Atlanta in June 2007. Co-hosts Francesca Rheannon and Bill Baue ask Kawano to explain the defining features of Solidarity Economy–how big an umbrella it is, how it distinguishes itself from the competitive framework of current neoliberal economics, and how it can promote true social and environmental sustainability.

Center for Popular Economics

US Solidarity Economy Network