#Multi-stakeholder collaborations for Goal 17

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Unleashing the Power of Partnerships: Goal 17 and the Path to Global Transformation

In today's interconnected world, achieving sustainable development requires a collaborative and inclusive approach. Among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set forth by the United Nations, Goal 17 stands out as a catalyst for progress. "Partnerships to achieve the Goal" is not just a goal in itself; it is the driving force behind the successful implementation of the other 16 goals. This article delves into the significance of Goal 17 and explores the transformative potential of partnerships in addressing the world's most pressing challenges.

The Foundation of Goal 17: Partnerships for Sustainable Development

Goal 17 stands as a powerful reminder that the challenges we face in the pursuit of sustainable development are multifaceted and interconnected. No single organization or entity possesses all the resources, expertise, or perspectives needed to tackle these complex issues alone. The recognition of this reality is the cornerstone of Goal 17, which underscores the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Partnerships for sustainable development bring together governments, businesses, civil society, academia, and individuals in a collaborative effort to address the world's most pressing problems. These partnerships are characterized by their inclusivity and the diversity of stakeholders involved. Each stakeholder brings unique perspectives, knowledge, skills, and resources to the table, creating a synergistic environment where collective action can thrive.

Public-private partnerships are a vital component of sustainable development partnerships. By forging alliances between the public and private sectors, these partnerships harness the resources and expertise of both to drive positive change. Governments provide regulatory frameworks, policy support, and funding, while businesses contribute innovative solutions, technological advancements, and financial resources. Together, they can implement sustainable practices, create sustainable business models, and promote responsible investment.

International cooperation is another crucial aspect of Goal 17 partnerships. Global challenges require global solutions, and cross-border collaborations are essential to address issues that transcend national boundaries. International partnerships foster knowledge exchange, shared learning, and joint action to tackle common problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty. These partnerships enable countries to work together, pool resources, and align their efforts to achieve sustainable development on a global scale.

Knowledge-sharing networks play a pivotal role in partnerships for sustainable development. These networks facilitate the exchange of information, expertise, and best practices across different sectors and regions. By sharing knowledge and lessons learned, partners can avoid duplication of efforts, accelerate progress, and implement evidence-based solutions. Knowledge-sharing networks also promote innovation and foster a culture of continuous learning, driving the development and adoption of sustainable technologies, practices, and policies.

Capacity-building initiatives are integral to partnerships for sustainable development. They aim to strengthen the skills, knowledge, and capabilities of individuals, organizations, and communities to contribute effectively to sustainable development efforts. Capacity-building initiatives encompass training programs, workshops, mentorship, and skill-sharing activities. By investing in capacity building, partnerships empower stakeholders to take ownership of sustainable development initiatives, driving long-term impact and sustainability.

One of the significant advantages of partnerships for sustainable development is their ability to foster innovation. When diverse stakeholders collaborate, they bring together different perspectives, experiences, and expertise. This diversity sparks creativity and innovation, leading to the development of novel approaches, solutions, and technologies. Innovation, in turn, drives progress and propels sustainable development forward by addressing complex challenges in new and transformative ways.

Partnerships also enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of sustainable development efforts. By pooling resources, sharing costs, and leveraging expertise, partnerships optimize the use of available resources. This efficiency translates into a greater impact on the ground, as projects and initiatives benefit from shared knowledge, experience, and funding. Partnerships allow for economies of scale, enabling the replication and scaling up of successful models and interventions.

Moreover, partnerships for sustainable development generate meaningful impact at multiple levels. They operate at the local, national, and global levels, ensuring that no community or region is left behind. At the local level, partnerships address specific challenges faced by communities, tailoring interventions to their unique context and needs. Nationally, partnerships enable governments to align policies and strategies with sustainable development objectives, leveraging the resources and expertise of diverse stakeholders. Globally, partnerships contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals as a collective effort, promoting global solidarity and collaboration.

In conclusion, Goal 17 recognizes the essential role of partnerships in achieving sustainable development. These partnerships bring together governments, businesses, civil society, academia, and individuals in a collaborative endeavor to address complex global challenges. By leveraging collective knowledge, resources, and expertise, partnerships foster innovation, enhance efficiency, and generate meaningful impact at local, national, and global levels. Through public-private partnerships, international cooperation, knowledge-sharing networks, and capacity-building initiatives, partnerships for sustainable development are driving positive change and paving the way for a more sustainable and inclusive future.

Enhancing Collaboration for Sustainable Development

Goal 17 serves as a call to action for governments, businesses, and individuals to join forces and collaborate effectively. Through collaboration, the barriers to achieving the other goals can be overcome. Here are some key aspects of collaboration under Goal 17:

Government Partnerships: Governments play a crucial role in fostering partnerships by creating an enabling policy environment, promoting transparency, and mobilizing resources. They can establish regulatory frameworks, incentivize private sector engagement, and prioritize sustainable development in national agendas.

Business Engagement: Businesses are key players in advancing sustainable development. Through corporate social responsibility initiatives, ethical practices, and responsible investment, businesses can align their objectives with the SDGs. By partnering with governments and civil society organizations, businesses can leverage their expertise, technology, and resources to drive sustainable solutions.

Civil Society Engagement: Civil society organizations are essential in driving social change and holding governments and businesses accountable. Their active participation in partnerships ensures that decisions are inclusive, responsive to community needs, and promote social justice. Civil society organizations can bring grassroots knowledge, advocacy skills, and community engagement to the table.

Unlocking the Transformative Potential

Goal 17 serves as a powerful enabler of change, unlocking the transformative potential of partnerships in several ways:

Knowledge Sharing and Capacity Building: Partnerships facilitate the exchange of knowledge, expertise, and best practices. They provide opportunities for capacity building, technology transfer, and learning from successful models. This exchange enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions, avoiding duplication of efforts and accelerating progress.

Resource Mobilization: Achieving the SDGs requires significant financial resources. Partnerships enable resource mobilization by leveraging public and private investments, philanthropic contributions, and innovative financing mechanisms. By pooling resources and aligning priorities, partnerships can address financing gaps and scale up impactful projects.

Innovation and Technology Transfer: Partnerships foster innovation by bringing together different sectors and disciplines. Collaborations between academia, research institutions, and businesses drive technological advancements, research breakthroughs, and sustainable solutions. Technology transfer from developed to developing countries through partnerships promotes inclusive growth and bridges the digital divide.

Successful Examples of Goal 17 Partnerships

Numerous partnerships have emerged in recent years, exemplifying the transformative power of Goal 17. Some notable examples include:

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria: This public-private partnership has mobilized billions of dollars to combat the three diseases. It brings together governments, private sector entities, and civil society organizations to support prevention, treatment, and advocacy efforts worldwide.

The Sustainable Energy for All Initiative: Led by the United Nations, this partnership aims to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy. It catalyzes commitments from governments, businesses, and civil society organizations, driving investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable infrastructure.

The Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator: In response to the global pandemic, this partnership was formed to accelerate the development, production, and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments. It brings together governments, international organizations, and private sector actors, emphasizing the importance of global collaboration in addressing health crises.

The Road Ahead: Amplifying Partnerships for Global Transformation

As we look toward the future, the significance of Goal 17 becomes even more apparent. Strengthening partnerships is essential to accelerate progress across all the SDGs and overcome complex challenges such as climate change, poverty, inequality, and conflict.

To amplify the impact of partnerships, several steps can be taken:

Policy Coherence and Alignment: Governments should align their policies, strategies, and funding mechanisms with the SDGs. This coherence ensures that national and international efforts are mutually reinforcing, enabling effective collaboration and resource mobilization.

Scaling Up Successful Models: Identifying and replicating successful partnership models can drive widespread change. Lessons learned from existing partnerships can inform the design and implementation of new collaborations, avoiding reinvention and optimizing impact.

Promoting Inclusive Partnerships: Partnerships must prioritize inclusivity and diversity. By involving marginalized communities, women, youth, and indigenous groups, partnerships can address systemic inequalities and ensure that no one is left behind in the journey towards sustainable development.

Conclusion

Goal 17, "Partnerships to achieve the Goal," acts as a linchpin for global transformation. By fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and resource mobilization, partnerships unlock the potential to address the world's most pressing challenges. Governments, businesses, civil society organizations, and individuals must come together to harness the power of partnerships and drive sustainable development forward. As we embark on this collective journey, Goal 17 reminds us that our shared future depends on the strength and effectiveness of our collaborations. Together, we can build a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable world for all.

[evoldir]

Fwd: Postdoc: ImperialC_London.Three.MicrobiomeEvolution

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Postdoc: ImperialC_London.Three.MicrobiomeEvolution > Date: 18 November 2023 at 05:17:34 GMT > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > The  https://ift.tt/iLZ4Vnp  at the Silwood Park Campus of > Imperial College London is seeking a microbial/ computational ecologist > with strong quantitative skills interested in developing analytical > pipelines to understand the role of the microbiome in supressing the > pathogens of one of the world's most important staple crops, wheat > (T. aestivum). We aim to do this through the analysis of multi-omic data > from field surveys and manipulations of the extant soil microbiome. The > project has two overarching goals: 1) to develop a lab-to-field pipeline > for microbiome optimization in arable soils, focusing specifically on > suppression of the take-all fungus,  Gaeumannomyces tritci, in the > wheat rhizosphere; and 2) to advance our fundamental understanding of > microbial community dynamics in complex environments. This project, > a collaboration between the  https://ift.tt/Fh9VisU, >  https://ift.tt/PFnyYtj,  https://graystock.info/ >  and  https://ift.tt/1HQ6s9L  labs, aims to find a > new approach to supress this disease, which causes between 5-50% loss > of production globally of one of the world's most important staple crops. > > Through field surveys of soil associated bacterial, fungal and viral > communities and microbial directed artificial selection in the lab, we > will develop soil microbiomes that exhibit suppression of take-all disease > in the greenhouse setting. Your role will be to develop bioinformatic > pipelines, data analysis techniques, and innovative models to better > understand the role of the soil microbiome in supressing  G.tritci >  using metabarcoding and metagenomic data from the field and the > lab. You will help to identify microbial taxa and/or metabolic networks > which most strongly influence crop performance. You will work closely > with other PDRAs on bacterial and fungal data and will lead the charge > to understand the role of viruses in these communities. This may lead > to companion experiments in the lab or greenhouse which you will help to > design, allowing us to better understand the role of viruses in supressing > crop pathogens. This will help you to advance your own career interests, > with opportunities to develop collaborations that extend beyond our > core group. Additionally, you will have the opportunity to connect with > stakeholders who are collaborating directly with our project (including > CABI,  Rothamsted Research) and the wider collaborative network of the > Ransome Lab. > > More details can be found here: > https://ift.tt/teWzvyp > > Reference NAT01548 > Closing date 23 November 2023 > > > ----- > > > The Bell Lab at the Silwood > Park Campus of Imperial > College London is developing soil microbiomes that protect wheat > from the devastating take-all disease caused by the fungus, > Gaeumannomyces tritci. The team will take UK-wide soil samples > to conduct soil microbiome engineering via directed artificial > selection and run field-based trials. This advert is looking for a > team member to conduct field sampling of soil microbial communities > from sites across the UK. This project is a multi-disciplinary > collaboration with the Waring , > Pawar

[jcmarchi]

Emerging practices for Society-Centered AI

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/emerging-practices-for-society-centered-ai/

Emerging practices for Society-Centered AI

Posted by Anoop Sinha, Research Director, Technology & Society, and Yossi Matias, Vice President, Google Research

The first of Google’s AI Principles is to “Be socially beneficial.” As AI practitioners, we’re inspired by the transformative potential of AI technologies to benefit society and our shared environment at a scale and swiftness that wasn’t possible before. From helping address the climate crisis to helping transform healthcare, to making the digital world more accessible, our goal is to apply AI responsibly to be helpful to more people around the globe. Achieving global scale requires researchers and communities to think ahead — and act — collectively across the AI ecosystem.

We call this approach Society-Centered AI. It is both an extension and an expansion of Human-Centered AI, focusing on the aggregate needs of society that are still informed by the needs of individual users, specifically within the context of the larger, shared human experience. Recent AI advances offer unprecedented, societal-level capabilities, and we can now methodically address those needs — if we apply collective, multi-disciplinary AI research to society-level, shared challenges, from forecasting hunger to predicting diseases to improving productivity.

The opportunity for AI to benefit society increases each day. We took a look at our work in these areas and at the research projects we have supported. Recently, Google announced that 70 professors were selected for the 2023 Award for Inclusion Research Program, which supports academic research that addresses the needs of historically marginalized groups globally. Through evaluation of this work, we identified a few emerging practices for Society-Centered AI:

Understand society’s needs Listening to communities and partners is crucial to understanding major issues deeply and identifying priority challenges to address. As an emerging general purpose technology, AI has the potential to address major global societal issues that can significantly impact people’s lives (e.g., educating workers, improving healthcare, and improving productivity). We have found the key to impact is to be centered on society’s needs. For this, we focus our efforts on goals society has agreed should be prioritized, such as the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a set of interconnected goals jointly developed by more than 190 countries to address global challenges.

Collective efforts to address those needs Collective efforts bring stakeholders (e.g., local and academic communities, NGOs, private-public collaborations) into a joint process of design, development, implementation, and evaluation of AI technologies as they are being developed and deployed to address societal needs.

Measuring success by how well the effort addresses society’s needs It is important and challenging to measure how well AI solutions address society’s needs. In each of our cases, we identified primary and secondary indicators of impact that we optimized through our collaborations with stakeholders.

Why is Society-Centered AI important?

The case examples described below show how the Society-Centered AI approach has led to impact across topics, such as accessibility, health, and climate.

Understanding the needs of individuals with non-standard speech

There are millions of people with non-standard speech (e.g., impaired articulation, dysarthria, dysphonia) in the United States alone. In 2019, Google Research launched Project Euphonia, a methodology that allows individual users with non-standard speech to train personalized speech recognition models. Our success began with the impact we had on each individual who is now able to use voice dictation on their mobile device.

Euphonia started with a Society-Centered AI approach, including collective efforts with the non-profit organizations ALS Therapy Development Institute and ALS Residence Initiative to understand the needs of individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and their ability to use automatic speech recognition systems. Later, we developed the world’s largest corpus of non-standard speech recordings, which enabled us to train a Universal Speech Model to better recognize disordered speech by 37% on real conversation word error rate (WER) measurement. This also led to the 2022 collaboration between the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon to begin the Speech Accessibility Project, an ongoing initiative to create a publicly available dataset of disordered speech samples to improve products and make speech recognition more inclusive of diverse speech patterns. Other technologies that use AI to help remove barriers of modality and languages, include live transcribe, live caption and read aloud.

Focusing on society’s health needs

Access to timely maternal health information can save lives globally: every two minutes a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth and 1 in 26 children die before reaching age five. In rural India, the education of expectant and new mothers around key health issues pertaining to pregnancy and infancy required scalable, low-cost technology solutions. Together with ARMMAN, Google Research supported a program that uses mobile messaging and machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict when women might benefit from receiving interventions (i.e., targeted preventative care information) and encourages them to engage with the mMitra free voice call program. Within a year, the mMitra program has shown a 17% increase in infants with tripled birth weight and a 36% increase in women understanding the importance of taking iron tablets during pregnancy. Over 175K mothers and growing have been reached through this automated solution, which public health workers use to improve the quality of information delivery.

These efforts have been successful in improving health due to the close collective partnership among the community and those building the AI technology. We have adopted this same approach via collaborations with caregivers to address a variety of medical needs. Some examples include: the use of the Automated Retinal Disease Assessment (ARDA) to help screen for diabetic retinopathy in 250,000 patients in clinics around the world; our partnership with iCAD to bring our mammography AI models to clinical settings to aid in breast cancer detection; and the development of Med-PaLM 2, a medical large language model that is now being tested with Cloud partners to help doctors provide better patient care.

Compounding impact from sustained efforts for crisis response

Google Research’s flood prediction efforts began in 2018 with flood forecasting in India and expanded to Bangladesh to help combat the catastrophic damage from yearly floods. The initial efforts began with partnerships with India’s Central Water Commission, local governments and communities. The implementation of these efforts used SOS Alerts on Search and Maps, and, more recently, broadly expanded access via Flood Hub. Continued collaborations and advancing an AI-based global flood forecasting model allowed us to expand this capability to over 80 countries across Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and South, Central, and North America. We also partnered with networks of community volunteers to further amplify flood alerts. By working with governments and communities to measure the impact of these efforts on society, we refined our approach and algorithms each year.

We were able to leverage those methodologies and some of the underlying technology, such as SOS Alerts, from flood forecasting to similar societal needs, such as wildfire forecasting and heat alerts. Our continued engagements with organizations led to the support of additional efforts, such as the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Early Warnings For All Initiative. The continued engagement with communities has allowed us to learn about our users’ needs on a societal level over time, expand our efforts, and compound the societal reach and impact of our efforts.

Further supporting Society-Centered AI research

We recently funded 18 university research proposals exemplifying a Society-Centered AI approach, a new track within the Google Award for Inclusion Research Program. These researchers are taking the Society-Centered AI methodology and helping create beneficial applications across the world. Examples of some of the projects funded include:

AI-Driven Monitoring of Attitude Polarization in Conflict-Affected Countries for Inclusive Peace Process and Women’s Empowerment: This project’s goal is to create LLM-powered tools that can be used to monitor peace in online conversations in developing nations. The initial target communities are where peace is in flux and the effort will put a particular emphasis on mitigating polarization that impacts women and promoting harmony.

AI-Assisted Distributed Collaborative Indoor Pollution Meters: A Case Study, Requirement Analysis, and Low-Cost Healthy Home Solution for Indian Communities: This project is looking at the usage of low-cost pollution monitors combined with AI-assisted methodology for identifying recommendations for communities to improve air quality and at home health. The initial target communities are highly impacted by pollution, and the joint work with them includes the goal of developing how to measure improvement in outcomes in the local community.

Collaborative Development of AI Solutions for Scaling Up Adolescent Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Education and Services in Uganda: This project’s goal is to create LLM-powered tools to provide personalized coaching and learning for users’ needs on topics of sexual and reproductive health education in low-income settings in Sub-Saharan Africa. The local societal need is significant, with an estimated 25% rate of teenage pregnancy, and the project aims to address the needs with a collective development process for the AI solution.

Future direction

Focusing on society’s needs, working via multidisciplinary collective research, and measuring the impact on society helps lead to AI solutions that are relevant, long-lasting, empowering, and beneficial. See the AI for the Global Goals to learn more about potential Society-Centered AI research problems. Our efforts with non-profits in these areas is complementary to the research that we are doing and encouraging. We believe that further initiatives using Society-Centered AI will help the collective research community solve problems and positively impact society at large.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the many individuals who have worked on these projects at Google including Shruti Sheth, Reena Jana, Amy Chung-Yu Chou, Elizabeth Adkison, Sophie Allweis, Dan Altman, Eve Andersson, Ayelet Benjamini, Julie Cattiau, Yuval Carny, Richard Cave, Katherine Chou, Greg Corrado, Carlos De Segovia, Remi Denton, Dotan Emanuel, Ashley Gardner, Oren Gilon, Taylor Goddu, Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink, Jordan Green, Alon Harris, Avinatan Hassidim, Rus Heywood, Sunny Jansen, Pan-Pan Jiang, Anton Kast, Marilyn Ladewig, Ronit Levavi Morad, Bob MacDonald, Alicia Martin, Shakir Mohamed, Philip Nelson, Moriah Royz, Katie Seaver, Joel Shor, Milind Tambe, Aparna Taneja, Divy Thakkar, Jimmy Tobin, Katrin Tomanek, Blake Walsh, Gal Weiss, Kasumi Widner, Lihong Xi, and teams.

[dae-zea]

Fashioning the Future

Video 1: Introduction to Fashioning the Future by Ashlee Murphy

The fashion journalist, once the gatekeepers to the fashion capitals of the world and their runways, are now fleeting to rule the World Wide Web.This expansion comes from not just the breadth of opportunities and advancements known to social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and yes, even Tumblr, but also to keep up with the relentless battle against the fashion blogger and the decline of print media. Starting the conversation for this structural shift to modern journalism is important to divulging the true impact of technology and social media - is it a friend or foe to the future of journalism?

THE FASHION BLOGGER

Call it amateur, but the rise of the fashion blogger is real. Once marginalised by their lack of degree or profession, the blogger was a rare sight on any forum of journalism. Many believed it was pure PR, disguised by the pretence of journalism. However, if new media has started anything, it’s the democratisation of the journalism sphere. 

Fashion bloggers are now seen as the voices of potential - the people that can freely, analytically and without the constraints of appeasing media standards and organisations, comment with fresh perspectives in an industry that relies on the ideal of the ‘new’. However, is this ‘freedom’ damaging to the integrity of journalism? 

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance developed the Journalist’s Code of Ethics in 1944 which has since served as a core for Australian press self-regulation. Bloggers, by their separation to traditional media professionals, and the absence of ‘quality-control’ associated with media representation, are not applicable to this code. This, along with a lack of experience and education in the areas, presses the argument on blogging as being an unprofessional practice and an unreliable source for fashion news - especially in a society where the detriments of fake news are so very real.

Author Geoffrey Millerson (1964, p. 14) argues that professional practice can be defined by 23 characteristics. Six of these are transferable across industries:

1. A skill based on theoretical knowledge.

2. Intellectual training and education.

3. The testing of competence .

4. Closure of the profession by restrictive organisation.

5. A code of conduct.

6. An altruistic service in the affairs of others.

Evaluating fashion bloggers against this criteria proved that a blogger cannot currently be defined as a profession as the nature of blogging only appeals to the sixth characteristic. Equally so, the capabilities and lack of boundaries characteristic to blog posting continues to lower the bar on what constitutes ‘journalism,' and therefore implementing the ‘professionalism’ of the job. However, their voice, as one that is accessible anywhere in the world on any device and any online platform, is on none of us can really avoid as a forum of fashion news.

The role of the fashion blogger in new media is one that is disruptive - one that will break down the barriers of ‘professional practice’ and continue to democratise the journalistic sphere until we all could just be bloggers or civil journalists across multiple news platforms. Either way, the current journalists playing field sees the bloggers with reigns over the internet, and in today’s digital world, perhaps it’s them that are the highest stakeholders.

Figure 1: Growth of readership for Australian fashion magazines in the span of 12 months. Data retrieved from Roy Morgan. 

THE TANGIBLE FASHION MAGAZINE

As seen from the data visualisation above, readership values for Australian fashion magazines in the past twelve months are staying pretty stagnant, or if not, slipping (see Frankie). This shows us the growing concern for the future of print media, and more specifically, the fashion magazine.

Industry professionals still remain adamant that print is irreplaceable. Former fashion editor for Queensland media corporations Quest Newspapers, Courier Mail and (now inactive) BMagazine, Laura Churchill, says that although she may be a ‘dinosaur’ in her thinking, she still ‘loves to be able to pick up a newspaper or a magazine and be able to read something tangible - something you can keep’. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL MINI INTERVIEW WITH LAURA CHURCHILL

Dinosaur? Maybe. Just maybe.

The battle between online media, such as blogs, and print media is undoubtedly a paradigm shift as the world continues to digitalise. This shift, and opening of new platforms, would give off the idea of more job opportunities, however in most publications, print journalism teams also contribute to their digital platforms, which perhaps is a core lesson for the future of fashion journalism (not to foreshadow or anything, wink).

The shift was given life by the rapid rise of technology and the Internet. These complimenting areas have distributed the idea of the world as an interconnected web of politics, economics and culture due to the technologies speeding up the delivery of information (Arnould et al., 2005, p. 214-215). Journalism and fashion, as two industries that rely on time, politics, economics and culture at their cores, are pretty cozy in this domain. Repeatedly, we’re seeing this shift leave print media in the dust.

A key example of this is the UK edition of the internationally renowned InStyle Magazine, which in 2016 stopped its print publication to instead focus on online-only distribution. 

“What we have achieved with InStyle over the last few years has been hugely rewarding and the team has, rightly, won numerous awards and nominations for their work across print and digital,” said editor Charlotte Moore.

“But the fashion world is changing dramatically - the way our audience interacts with it is changing and we have to change to meet that challenge. With a focus on delivering the InStyle experience across all digital platforms, we can really give our audience 24-hour access to all the fashion and beauty looks, trends and brands they clearly have such a huge appetite for.”

However, this bold decision from InStyle UK was met with criticism as leading fashion and journalism professionals believe that the future for print remains strong.

“I think that magazines, Vogue and Condé Nast, all they do is talk about online content and online projects. And I think they slightly forget their own DNA,” says Godfrey Deeny, former fashion editor-at-large of Le Figaro. 

“The DNA of magazines is the same as the DNA of luxury products: to make beautiful objects and reflect a certain amount of intelligence.”

If there were any greater example of adapting to both print and online, let it be Deeny’s ventures between them both. Deeny, other than being the former fashion editor at Le Figaro, has an extensive journalistic history as the editor-in-chief of Vogue Hommes International, and buerau chief of Women’s Wear Daily in Paris, under John Fairchild (Business of Fashion, 2018). He is currently positioned as the editor-in-chief of German magazine Achtung while still contributing fashion critiques for Le Figaro. Although boasting the impressive resume of print-focused titles, Deeny was also highly involved in the launch of online fashion website, the Fashion Wire Daily, as the European editor-at-large, AND just last year succeeded as the inaugural international editor-in-chief of Fashion Network.com. 

By embracing positions across both mediums, Deeny has been able to secure a sensational career in fashion journalism that spans over 25 years. 

IMAGE 1: Print and Online examples of fashion journalism. Image credit to Megan Dennis.

Perhaps then, a collaboration (rather than a battle!) between the print and digital sides, is at the core of a thriving future for fashion journalism. By marrying the online idea of immediacy and the reputable traditions of print, all aspiring journalists would be ‘multi-lingual’ in their approaches to media platforms. The notion of being a cross-disciplinary journalist is also referred to as multi-skilling, or up-skilling - a trend that sees the journalism industry depart from specialisation in platforms (such as broadcast journalists, print journalists etc.) to adapt to all areas of journalism for maximised flexibility (Nygren, 2014, p. 76). In a survey conducted in 2012 of 1,500 journalists, 73% could see future journalists being multi-skilled (Nygren, 2014, p. 81). Six years later, we are the future journalists. As myself, and other’s in my position begin our journalism careers with an eye for fashion journalism, the area of multi-skilling needs to be at the fore-front of our minds.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ashlee Murphy is a third year fashion and journalism student at the Queensland University of Technology. While her ultimate goal is to overthrow the great Anna Wintour in her position as Vogue Editor-in-Chief (see Ashlee’s own interesting interpretation of this above), Ashlee knows that Rome wasn’t built in a day and is happy to embrace the freelancer life until her reign of the fashion journalism industry comes. If she’s not busy reading up on critical areas of fashion studies and brushing up on her online shopping skills, she’s raising a beautiful labrador x golden retriever puppy. 

REFERENCES

Abnett, K. (2016). “How Newspaper Supplements Took On Fashion Magazines.” Business of Fashion, February 17, 2016. Retrieved from https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/how-newspaper-supplements-are-beating-fashion-magazines-at-their-own-game

Arnould, E., Price, L., & Zinkhan, G. (2004). Consumers (2nd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Arthur, C. (2012). “A blogger or a journalist? Debate over the power and influence of tech writers”. The Guardian, February 27, 2012. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/feb/26/blogger-journalist-silicon-valley-dan-lyons

Business of Fashion (2018). Godfrey Deeny. Retrieved from https://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/godfrey-deeny

Hermida, A. (2010). TWITTERING THE NEWS. Journalism Practice 4 (3), 297–308. DOI: 10.1080/17512781003640703

Jackson, J. (2016). InStyle UK magazine to shut print edition. The Guardian, October 19, 2016. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/19/instyle-uk-magazine-digital-only-time-inc

Maisey, S. (2017). “In conversation with fashion critic Godfrey Deeny - who has spent 25 years critiquing the industry.” Lifestyle, November 11, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/in-conversation-with-fashion-critic-godfrey-deeny-who-has-spent-25-years-critiquing-the-industry-1.674746

MEAA. (2018). MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics. Retrieved from https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/

Millerson, G. (1964). The Qualifying Associations: A Study of Professionalization. London: Routledge and Paul.

Nygren, G. (2014).Multiskilling in the Newsroom: De-skilling or Re-skilling of Journalistic Work? The Journal of Media Innovations 1 (2): 75-96. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5617/jmi.v1i2.876

Roy Morgan. (2018). Australian Magazine Readership, 12 months to June 2018. Retrieved from http://www.roymorgan.com/industries/media/readership/magazine-readership

Wang, C. & Stivers, V. (2018). Inside The Fake News Campaign To Smear Russia's Biggest Fashion Influencers. The Refinery, May 7, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/05/198267/fake-news-russian-it-girls-miroslava-duma

[theartofservice]

236 Center of Excellence benefits and rewards you’ll get that show you’re successful. How many can you move to ‘Done’?

236 Center of Excellence benefits and rewards you’ll get that show you’re successful. How many can you move to ‘Done’?

You know you’ve got Center of Excellence under control when you can:

1. Address data privacy for information provided to your organization as part of the cloud excellence implementer program.

2. Empower your business users to be value creators in the data supply chain.

3. Measure the business risk of using machines to make decisions and recommendations.

4. Leverage the data that you have to provide better offers and experiences.

5. Identify sources of external data that will complement the data that you own already.

6. Align business goals and the data that exists in your organization.

7. Assess the change that has occurred and make adjustments to maximize effectiveness.

8. Effectively track and report on your research activities to provide better strategic management decisions.

9. Meet the need for business agility whilst ensuring security and compliance.

10. Classify the processes within the Strategy group, or the activities of the Business Process Center of Excellence, or the processes associated with Corporate Planning.

11. Create the data or the environments today to test use cases.

12. Protect sensitive information as sensitive PII data across your enterprise.

13. Trace the path from what you have accomplished to what you will do next.

14. Best support the development of Big Data systems.

15. As data leaders best ensure that you are fit to make the most of and avoid getting left behind.

16. Use big data to model the impact of climate change on the most vulnerable populations.

17. Transform Data into Knowledge to support decision making.

18. Ensure your technology infrastructure is scalable and can support the required business agility.

19. Integrate your enterprise and cloud applications to your data warehouse in cloud.

20. Determine whether a power user program or Center of Excellence might work well for your specific group of users.

21. Use data to optimize supply chains and make them more resilient.

22. Share data across the value chain to promote smarter consumption.

23. Accelerate the migration effort to realize the business and technology benefits more quickly.

24. Structure your internal change management organization, staff it and operate it.

25. Monetize new sources of data to new create new products and services.

26. Find only relevant data when you need it.

27. Get access to skills that can help accelerate your project without making too many mistakes.

28. Build the enterprise business case for robotic automation.

29. Ensure a data driven approach to strategic decision making.

30. Accelerate the migration effort to realize the business and technology benefits.

31. Know when everyone has turned in plans/budgets.

32. Know when everyone has turned in the plans/budgets.

33. Engage with existing online communities in support of your core business functions.

34. Create/use data display tools in development.

35. Meet the rapidly changing business demands for new applications and capabilities.

36. Achieve greater business results for your own organization.

37. Identify the key drivers of business success.

38. Identify the key operational drivers of business success.

39. Maximize the resources needed for a Data Loss Prevention initiative.

40. Get the replacement CSP to assist in the cost of data migration.

41. Plan to involve stakeholders and business units to ensure the platform is used to its best capability and purpose.

42. Ensure you are compliant from Day 1 as you start doing business in a new jurisdiction.

43. As a future focused CFO and a key strategic partner ensure that you are taking advantage of the latest and most relevant technology trends.

44. Nominate a director using the proxy access provisions of your organizations By Laws.

45. Ensure compliance with business practices and objectives.

46. Continue to secure and manage the ever growing amount of information you handle.

47. Overcome the challenges of decentralized management, multiple Business Intelligence systems, and fragmented implementations.

48. Get buy in for data and analytics initiatives.

49. Make better business decisions by effectively leveraging internal and external data.

50. Get a group of busy architects to change the way they work.

51. Best present this information to enhance understanding and use.

52. Make a bigger impact on business results.

53. Get Buy-In for Data and Analytics Initiatives.

54. Create a powerful brand based on data and evidence.

55. Govern data that is not produced or managed by the enterprise.

56. Analyze incident and event data over time, places and individuals.

57. Make life easier for you, and What else do you do to make this work better for you.

58. Define the difference between Big Data and analytics.

59. Standardize the data from different connected systems.

60. Expect your organization to increase its use of Shared Services/COEs.

61. Assure data isolation in a multi tenant environment.

62. Plan to use what you get back from the video from the back end.

63. Build in the foresight for changes that you do not have today.

64. Expect your organization to increase the use of Outsourcing.

65. Leverage your loyalty program in driving your customer strategy.

66. Ensure Access and Equity in the STEM and Digital Skills Workforce.

67. Get involved in a project with other people.

68. Actually build an enterprise wide Center of Excellence.

69. Evaluate the effectiveness of your organizations pay and rewards strategy and practices.

70. Use the process called root cause analysis.

71. Identify applications that can be outsourced to reduce expenses and meet your organizational goals for sustainability.

72. Extend the ways in which you assess the influence of teaching and learning centers.

73. Prefer project status (cost, schedule, issues) and frequency of the same to be communicated.

74. Evaluate the effectiveness of your organizations retention strategy and practices.

75. Build an ecosystem of partners and drive value from them.

76. Identify and evaluate the right partners to help you.

77. Balance the need for efficiency and exploration with fairness and sensitivity to users.

78. Control OS level access to your EC2 instances.

79. Guide your organization that uses mostly Waterfall methodology to Agile.

80. Foster innovation while balancing risk and cost.

81. Attract and retain talent in your Shared Services organization.

82. Strengthen your standards addressing quality control.

83. Accelerate migration and unlock benefit and value early.

84. Leverage existing IT technology investments supporting BI applications.

85. Streamline this process to maximize your returns.

86. Make government perform better and deliver on your key objectives.

87. Get value out of your local compliance processes.

88. Assess your existing applications against cloud migration.

89. Integrate the Public Cloud while still retaining control of your data.

90. Use Programs of Excellence: A Tool for Self Review and Identification.

91. Implement a corporate BYOD program without compromising your enterprise security.

92. Develop and test applications in the cloud.

93. Ensure continuity as you move from concept to engineering to procurement to construction to turn over.

94. Communication project objectives to your teams.

95. Monitor and control activity to ensure performance.

96. Predict, prioritize and capture the value of AI.

97. Know that the investment you are making in analytics is worth it.

98. Know that the investment you m making in analytics is worth it.

99. Know your CoE is delivering value and is heading in the right direction.

100. Dynamically modify it in real time or in a timely way.

101. Become your organization capable of achieving your vision.

102. Decide whether your organization should invest in it.

103. Expect to improve total cost of ownership with the chosen solution.

104. Change that, and remain nimble regardless of your organization size.

105. Prepare the public to make informed choices.

106. Demonstrate to your customers or stakeholders that you met or exceeded the contracted requirements (SLAs).

107. Do you see the return on investment with an analytics strategy.

108. Prioritize goals and know that a particular goal is worthy to pursue.

109. Mitigate the risk of stakeholder rejection.

110. Facilitate adoption of the Performance CoE concept.

111. Define and implement mobile applications end-to-end security.

112. Lead your organization through the change.

113. Interpret regulations: through science or organization rules.

114. Squeeze out more performance, safety, lifetime, and value from batteries.

115. Leverage professional partnerships to enhance the learning experience.

116. Measure the effectiveness of a Cloud Operating Model.

117. Measure the effectiveness of your Cloud Operating Model.

118. Rate the performance of the overall management.

119. Make sure you do not just replicate existing IT problems in your cloud environment.

120. Know your approach to analytics is paying off.

121. Measure the success of a Power BI implementation.

122. Measure trend in customer loyalty over a period of time.

123. Build a foundation that meets your current and future needs.

124. Work collaboratively to promote learning and improvement.

125. Hire today for a diminished workforce 10 years out.

126. Strengthen your standards addressing group audits.

127. Organize to support such competing goals.

128. Prevent and detect unauthorized access to data.

129. Identify, mitigate against and manage risks to your organization.

130. Successfully adopt a Cloud Operating Model.

131. Control costs through predictable resource allocation.

132. Are assemble customer journeys in new and creative ways.

133. Reskill the Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing Workforce for the Digital Economy.

134. Build Talent Pathways through Industry Recognized Credentials.

135. Design public health strategies that address such influences.

136. Measure the impact of productivity (in person days).

137. Project a financial plan when you cannot measure hours or unit costs.

138. Know that your models and algorithms are doing the right thing.

139. Understand clients sequential regimen progression across the CODE network.

140. Ensure you set up your AWS account securely.

141. Run IT as a service, not just cross departmentally throughout your organization, and across multiple organizations and even organizations outside your system.

142. Stay in control of a complex intelligent system.

143. Deal with the continuous pressure to reduce the cost of IT.

144. Pick the right one to deliver the greatest impact for your business, as applied over your data.

145. Show a return on this kind of investment sooner rather than later.

146. Get better insights to increase velocity and close rate on your pipeline.

147. Acquire an understanding of the physics of the system.

148. Use The Six Pillars to create a competitively differentiated experience.

149. Predict the probability of success or failure of new initiatives.

150. Turn this feature off if you do not want it.

151. Position your organizations to embrace such a future.

152. Show ways to increase revenue per employee.

153. Estimate the cost of a large transition like this.

154. Communicate status (frequency, level of detail) to you customers.

155. Prevent disruptions to your organizations daily operation.

156. Communicate with your organizations Directors.

157. Ensure that community members can focus on participating in IT acquisition.

158. Approach the challenges of dealing with a potentially unmanageable amount of data.

159. Get leadership visibly and meaningfully behind the journey to the cloud.

160. Accelerate the adoption of analytics by end users.

161. Use body worn cameras to increase trust between law enforcement and the public.

162. Define the centers role and responsibilities.

163. Ensure your analytics operations are secure.

164. Use costing and budgeting for short term decision making.

165. Know when to do a desk review with a closure note versus a full onsite investigation.

166. Prioritize inclusion as you build your technical teams.

167. Know when things are good enough (the point of diminishing returns).

168. Encourage employees to adopt digital initiatives.

169. Reset your password or set up your UTD account.

170. Hold managers accountable for achieving goals.

171. Satisfy the most immediate needs while you build your capabilities.

172. Decide when to release a video that may contain sensitive footage.

173. Implement this in a highly available and cost efficient way.

174. Implement a strategic, cost effective BI infrastructure.

175. Best enable Distributed Mission Command.

176. Align your employment and training strategy with priorities.

177. Decide which Center of Excellence to use.

178. Fund a Center of Excellence and Innovation.

179. Measure the success of your cultural transformation.

180. Focus your resources on your most valuable data.

181. Manage IT resources in a just-in-time model.

182. Choose a discovery tool for your environment.

183. Plan to increase automation capabilities in the future.

184. Deal with problems that arise when you are working in groups.

185. Select the best environment for net new workloads.

186. Get the most out of your various types of channel partners.

187. Plan for staffing levels in relation to contact volumes.

188. Accelerate innovation efforts in the digital age.

189. Expect to achieve organizational excellence with such disappointing numbers.

190. Get results fast without sacrificing quality.

191. Most effectively reach as many of them as possible.

192. Assess the full range of outcomes for your potential investments.

193. And/or your department contribute to this initiative.

194. Tackle the challenges of AI responsibility, ethics and governance.

195. Build and maintain trust in an increasingly transparent market.

196. Ensure you deploy Azure in line with best practices.

197. Manage politics and culture within your organization.

198. Want to show up in front of your customers.

199. Effectively train staff in such new skills.

200. Develop strategic relationships with your vendors, partners and independent developers.

201. Best utilize the functions or centers of excellence.

202. Develop capabilities to capitalize on such trends at scale.

203. Decide your target audience for promotions.

204. Best target the highest risk, most vulnerable workers.

205. Read selected lessons without opening each lesson.

206. Find out if there are deviations from plans during execution.

207. Mobilize your digital vision across your organization.

208. Develop and integrate your first mobile App.

209. Maintain and enhance/increase the CI talent pool.

210. Wish to receive notification of the correction.

211. Deliver the right intervention to prevent crime.

212. Organize to fight turnover and maximize results.

213. Facilitate this with the least amount of effort.

214. Enable an efficient transformation function.

215. Determine which incidents require a lessons learned report.

216. Coordinate all of the moving parts of a new implementation.

217. Be sure that only those who are legitimately sick receive treatment.

218. Create e infrastructures that overcome fragmentation.

219. Create the right conditions for alignment.

220. Maximize the ROI of incentive compensation.

221. Know each facility maintains its quality.

222. Model various operational scenarios and potential outcomes.

223. Manage different versions of the plans/budgets during the process.

224. Address over or under allocation variances.

225. Enhance collaborations across large facilities and CI projects.

226. Transparently intercept mobile requests and redirect them to the cloud.

227. Ensure questions or requests are quickly and correctly addressed.

228. Manage dimensions across ERPs and other systems.

229. Ensure that you migrate workloads correctly and quickly to the cloud.

230. Distinguish between what is actually good from what only seems to be good.

231. Support newcomers social emotional needs.

232. Order the required Pathway application manual for your organization.

233. Propose that you then consolidate that information.

234. Deal with the plethora of potential projects.

235. Address deviations from those guidelines.

236. Build a CI community: what are the impediments and opportunities.

To visualize the Center of Excellence work and manage it, I have built a Center of Excellence Kanban board that is broken down into 1142 Work Items that are prioritized into their Workflows. It’s for where to get started on your current or impending Center of Excellence journey.

How many tasks can you move to Done?

Check it out here: https://theartofservice.com/Center-of-Excellence-Kanban

[adalidda]

Illustration Photo: Oranges and Cocoa Agroforestry Systems in Peru (credits: Marlon del Aguila Guerrero/CIFOR / Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0))

Agroforestry to meet climate, biodiversity and farming sustainability goals

For European Union, Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine

Achieving sustainable agricultural production that fosters both climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity preservation and enhancement is a policy objective that implies finding a balance with farm productivity, socio-economic viability and wider sustainability goals. Agroforestry systems include both traditional and modern land-use systems where trees are managed together with crops and/or animal production systems in agricultural settings. These systems have the potential to increase ecosystem services - including soil carbon sequestration, water retention, erosion control, soil nutrients, pollination, pest- and disease-control - and biodiversity, while improving farming productivity, profitability and sustainability of farmers’ incomes. Implementation of agroforestry in the EU and Associated Countries needs to be boosted in order to maximise this potential. The management of agroforestry systems is critical for their positive impact on climate and the environment as well as to ensure a balance with productivity and profitability for farmers. This is essential to promote the uptake and long-term sustainability of agroforestry.

Proposals should increase knowledge of the contribution of agroforestry to ecosystem services underpinning climate change mitigation and adaptation, increased biodiversity and farming resilience and boost the implementation of this type of farming systems in different pedo-climatic zones across the EU and Associated Countries. Proposals must implement the 'multi-actor approach' and ensure involvement of farmers and all other relevant actors in the value chain. Proposals should cover the conventional, agroecological and organic sectors. Proposals should build on and expand existing knowledge, tools and initiatives developed by Horizon 2020 projects, and where relevant ensure coordination with those projects/initiatives. Proposals should include a clear plan to collaborate with other projects selected under this topic. In order to achieve the expected outcomes, international cooperation is strongly encouraged. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

Proposals should address at least five of the following activities:

Design agroforestry systems for climate change (mitigation and adaptation) and increased (agro-)biodiversity that also ensure farming resilience to fluctuating climate, environmental and socio-economic conditions, farm income stability and enhanced ecosystem services, in different regions and pedo-climatic conditions; Develop methods and indicators that allow the identification of newly established agroforestry systems and monitor their performance over time. Analysis of trade-offs and synergies (e.g. between ecosystem services and between the environmental and socio-economic benefits) should be included; Develop models and tools adapted to real farm conditions and considering the full amount of food, feed (for systems including livestock), timber or biomass and ecosystem services produced, to allow the configuration and efficient management of agroforestry systems that take into account aspects such as tree renewal, adaptation to biotic and abiotic stresses, selection and improvement of agricultural varieties and animals most suited for agroforestry, recovery and improvement of biodiversity, soil water related aspects, and erosion control, in different regions and pedo-climatic zones; Building on existing tools and methods where available, enhance quantification of the contribution of agroforestry to ecosystem services underpinning climate change (mitigation and adaptation) in relation to aspects such as carbon sequestration potential, stability of organic carbon in the soil (top- and sub-soil), reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, soil erosion control, pest and disease control, increased organic matter in (top- and sub-) soil, and nutrient recycling, and develop indicators. When animals are present, animal production, health and welfare aspects should be considered; Enhance quantification of the contribution of agroforestry to increased (agro)biodiversity, including on pollinators, and the linkages with soil quality and water quality and quantity, and develop indicators, as well as guidance for species selection; Improve knowledge of the economic, environmental and social performance of agroforestry systems and their contribution to sustainable food and feed / non-food biomass production, analysing their productivity and profitability for farmers and factors influencing farmers’ decision-making, and considering aspects such as crop / tree and livestock / tree combinations, factors explaining yield response variability, tree size, animal production, a mix of traditional and new systems and applications, etc. Identify needs for new equipment, machinery and management tools; Building on existing tools where relevant, develop a model to measure the impact of policies on agroforestry, both in terms of barriers or incentives to maintain existing agroforestry systems and to establish new ones. Sharing of experience among stakeholders as regards relevant common agricultural policy (CAP) support to agroforestry should be promoted. The potential of labelling of products linked to agroforestry in support of and complying with the current relevant legal framework and, when the scope of activities would cover the food system, the future EU framework for sustainability food labelling, should be investigated; Design and implement a plan to boost networking and research and innovation (R&I) support to agroforestry at regional level, building on and expanding existing networks and initiatives where available and relevant, and involving policy makers, regional authorities, institutions, researchers, consumers and other key stakeholders; Develop a training package and guidelines to support farmers in designing business plans linked to value chain development to put in place and manage agroforestry systems in different regions.

Expected Outcome

A successful proposal should contribute to the European Green Deal and international objectives to foster climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture. It should in particular support the farm to fork's strategy objective of a transition to a fair, healthy and resilient European agriculture, notably its objective to promote agroforestry as a sustainable farming practice that can foster climate change mitigation and carbon sinks in the primary sector, by optimising and deploying agroforestry for climate neutrality and mobilising its mitigation potential as a farming system based on the sustainable management of natural resources. Activities should improve the knowledge base to inform decision-makers and other relevant stakeholders on how agroforestry can contribute to better manage scarce resources such as soil and water in a changing climate. As such, activities should deliver dependable and transparent knowledge base for EU policy design and implementation (common agricultural policy (CAP), European Green Deal objectives, farm to fork and biodiversity strategies, etc.).

Project results are expected to contribute to at least two of the following expected outcomes (depending on the activities covered):

Improved qualitative and quantitative data availability of the contribution of agroforestry to climate change (mitigation and adaptation), soil conservation and (agro-)biodiversity (including genetic diversity within species) and to greater economic, environmental and social sustainability of farming; Improved configuration and management of agroforestry systems, including systems involving animal production, through models and tools; Enhanced capacities of various actors to measure the economic, environmental and social performance of agroforestry, in particular at farm level and in relation with the support scheme designed under the CAP as regards environment and climate objectives, through appropriate methods and indicators; A strengthened and more robust agroforestry innovation ecosystem and increased end-user acceptance and implementation of agroforestry in the EU and Associated Countries.

Application Deadline: 6 October 2021 17:00:00 Brussels time

Check more https://adalidda.com/posts/Zzw7nhax4o9StW2Lk/agroforestry-to-meet-climate-biodiversity-and-farming

[ibefworld]

What is The Development of The Rural and City Industry?

Work that is decent is widely regarded as an essential driver of sustainable development with the ability to raise families and communities out of poverty. Poverty is primarily a rural issue since the majority of the worlds impoverished live in rural regions. According to the ILO, more than 80% of the poor in developing and emerging nations reside in rural regions. 

A significant proportion of the rural poor still relies on low-productivity subsistence farming for a living. The poorest rural families lack access to productive assets and often depend on wage jobs for income. Many of the 300-500 million wage laborer’s in agriculture rely on plantation employment. 59%, or over 98 million child laborers (ages 5 to 17), work in rural regions, mostly in agriculture. Forced labor is also common in agriculture.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and eradicating severe poverty globally would therefore need a greater governmental emphasis on rural development. Putting decent employment in the rural economy at the top of national and international policy agendas is critical for finding long-term answers to the enormous problems that impact hundreds of millions of people across the globe. 

A variety of causes contribute to rural poverty. Informality; weak institutions, including inadequate law enforcement and compliance; a lack of an enabling environment for companies; undeveloped production processes; insufficient infrastructure; and restricted access to services like education, banking, and health care are examples of these. 

The challenges confronting rural economies are complex and intertwined, necessitating coordinated, cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder, and context-specific solutions. Close collaboration and coordination across all government agencies are required to ensure that initiatives have the desired effect. 

Rural economies are still heavily reliant on basic agricultural output. As a result, rural development is often seen as being beyond the purview of labor ministries. Nonetheless, without their active participation, the productive transformation of both agriculture and the rural non-farm sector cannot be completely successful. Improving the quality of agricultural employment – which is often among the least protected, underpaid, dangerous, and of low status – is critical to attracting rural youngsters. 

Effective solutions to developing problems such as shifting work relationships resulting from outsourcing, particularly on plantations, are also needed. Good jobs support agricultural development, which in turn raises rural incomes, encourages increased consumption, and has a large economy-wide multiplier impact. 

Given the increase in global food consumption, the agriculture industry provides unexplored job possibilities. However, in order to attract a new generation of farmers like Gurung, the industry must be modernized in order to enhance its lucrativeness and dynamism, as well as it's standing as a source of good employment. Investing in rural youth education and skills is critical to sparking productive change and fostering economic diversification in rural regions. 

Rural economies are more than simply agriculture. Rural regions are distinguished by a wide range of economic activities, including agriculture processing and marketing, tourism, mining, and services. 

Labor ministries should take the lead in ensuring that social and labor concerns are properly represented in rural policy. They may also guarantee the participation of social partners in rural development, which is necessary for these policies to succeed. 

Many national and international players are engaged in rural development, with many of them focused on alleviating the condition of smallholder farmers. Within this vast and congested field, ILO interventions should be founded on comparative advantage: its normative approach to development, it's unique convening ability to bring together the key players, and its mission and experience in the world of work. 

Its Decent Work Agenda includes a plethora of mechanisms, methods, and techniques to aid governments, businesses, and employees in their efforts to create sustainable rural lives. Efforts should be concentrated on bridging knowledge gaps in rural wage employment, which is poorly understood and insufficiently assessed, in order to provide nations with appropriate policy guidance in this area.

The majority of industrial growth in emerging nations is linked to large cities, especially ports and capital cities. Outside of the major metropolitan conurbations, it may be difficult to locate competent management or specific expertise. Only the bigger cities have sufficient electricity and fuel supplies, water supply, transportation, and commercial facilities for major businesses. 

Much contemporary industry is the result of foreign investment or management and technology. Parent businesses often choose locations near a good port and airport, and communication may be difficult outside of the main city. The larger cities attract office growth and often offer sufficient services and even manufacturing "shells" for trade or industrial estates. 

Much of the large-scale industry is fundamental, such as exporting to other areas or beyond. A significant portion of the non-basic industry, which mostly serves local requirements, is informal, small-scale, unregistered, or unregulated, operating in buildings designed for other purposes or in the open. It often utilizes charcoal or fuelwood and is extremely productive, but productivity measurements are typically inadequate or non-existent.

[mishraabram]

Five features of the best lending software solutions

With the right integrations, underwriters can verify and access information on creditworthiness through just a few clicks within the same lending platform, without the need to sign into a third-party platform. So when choosing the right lending platform for your business, look for API integration features/possibilities with data providers you are currently using or the ones you would like to sign up in the future, as well. Automating and digitizing lending processes is crucial to gain momentum and grow in the ever-expanding lending market. The current lending market is not just limited to traditional banks. A quick look at the market will show you the burgeoning numbers of alternative lenders, peer-to-peer lenders and credit unions competing for a slice of the market.

To stay ahead and swim above the competition, it is critical that lenders ensure that their lending software technology is easy to use both in-house, as well as for the end-users, i.e., borrowers.

Although the core function of all lenders is the same; lending, the market they cater to, the workflow they follow, the size of their business, and other such factors determine what kind of lending platform will suit them the best.

As such, the “one size fits all” feature is not a big winner here. The best lending software solutions are ones that meet the lender’s particular business needs. In a market, ripe with fintech solution for lenders offering some of the most cutting edge lending software solutions, finding the right vendor for your business is not a cakewalk.

The digital lending platform market is growing at a 20% CAGR (2019-2025) and set to hit the US$17 Bn mark by 2025. – GM Insights

In this week’s article, we talk to you about 5 features that you must check off on your list when you are searching for the best software solution provider for your lending business.

Key Feature#1: Customization

Loan transactions don’t just occur between lenders are borrowers. There are several other parties involved such as loan referral partners, mortgage loan teams, branch bankers, etc. Therefore, having a singular interface for the lender and borrower alone will not be enough to make the lending platform its true-to-word digitized and automatized self.

The interface of the lending platform should be created such that it can wholesomely cater to each of the above-mentioned stakeholders in the lending process. Customized dashboards for each stakeholder can help ensure on-time task completion, be it application management, following up with customers, or collaborating with loan referral partners with enough transparency.

Lenders should specifically look for lending software technology that supports such role-based workflow that in turn reduce turnaround time for loan origination, thus providing lenders with shorter loan cycles.

Key Feature#2: Integration

For a vastly siloed process like that of lending companies, finding the right lending software solution that helps them remove the complications of multivariate workflows and bring consistency through in-house and vendor integration is quintessential.

The right kind of lending software solution for your business will fit in like Lego blocks integrating upstream and downstream systems including core banking systems, CRMs, data verification providers, LOSs, pricing engines, and document generation providers. On one hand, they will be modelled to perfectly fit the legacy systems that were in place early on and at the same time, they form the new foundation that allows constant change and improvement through continuous software updates that help lending companies stay ahead of track.

In short, the right kind of lending software solution will be like your bridge between the old and the new.

To find the kind of lending platform that supports this need, look for ones that offer API integrations. Need for custom integrations helps lending software vendors understand the unique need of their lending partners and create APIs right from scratch.

This will let users continue using their legacy lending software now empowered with the latest APIs, UI, and UX, and also help them build a strong foundation that will let them grow, evolve, and move ahead along with the changing needs and demands of the lending industry.

Yet another kind of integration that is critical when it comes to lenders is having continuous access to data providers, both financial and consumer, whose data play a significant role in not only underwriting and establishing loan terms, but also, in creating automation using machine learning.

Data is extremely important in helping lenders make informed decisions regarding loan terms, interest rates, and reduce their risk while maximizing revenue.

Key Feature#3: Continuous updates

In the world of evolving tech, stagnation is not an option. While as a lender you might be focused on implementing a robust lending software technology that starts giving you immediate results through quicker turnaround time, time-to-value, lesser errors and more revenue, you should also take into consideration if the lending software provider is equipped to keep up with the changing market demands and dynamics. Continuous update and improvement is not just a bonus feature anymore. It should be actively considered as a core feature when selecting a lending software solution.

• Is the lending software future proof?

• Is it improving your current lending solution?

• Is it serving both your short- and long-term goals?

Whether you want to replace your legacy lending software, or you would like to improve and build upon it, make sure the new lending platform you are considering checks off the three-pointers mentioned above.

Key Feature#4: Automation

Fintech lending and automation go hand-in-hand. Automation plays a massive role in reducing turnaround times and errors caused by manual paperwork, and also helps lenders make informed decisions by seamlessly integrating third-party tools and vendors, thereby bringing all the critical components to the table, at once. Streamlining workflows that cause major delays in loan origination given their dependence on manual inputs is a key issue that automation eliminates from the lending process.

Apart from automation, some other must-have technologies and features that lenders should look for while selecting their lending platforms are Cloud-based software (SaaS), Responsive UI/UX, and access to analytics that give them a bird’s eye view of the performance and efficiency of their lending platform by measuring KPIs such as deal quality, platform performance, an in-depth view of what’s causing competitive losses, if any.

Key feature#5: Configuration

It is in this step that the hardcore technical details lie. If you are using a legacy lending platform or building/implementing one from scratch, consider these five pointers:

• What kind of technical expertise is needed for configuring the lending software?

• Does the new lending platform support decision rules?

• What kind of support do they extend for creating/modifying decision rules?

• Down to what level can you configure the platform?

• How flexible is it to address the needs specific to individual requirements?

While most lending software solution providers offer this multi-level configuration assistance, it is usually the ones that build their APIs and lending modules from the ground up to meet the needs of the lenders who can make both configuration and implementation an easy process for lenders. Look for lending platforms that help you make changes to dashboards, rules, display fields, menus, access controls, etc.

Conclusion

Apart from the technical viewpoint shared in this article about the key features you should look for in your lending software provider, there are some abstract yet core requirements, too, that you should check for. Among them are – experience in the lending industry, understanding of the current industry needs, constant search of new and innovative ways of introducing disruptive tools to the market, and easy access to account executives who have a clear understanding of your business’s particular needs.

With the 5 features in this article along with the ones that are crucial yet not often discussed (mentioned above) you can certainly find yourself the best lending software solution for your lending business.

Click HERE to reach us!

[phgq]

Private partners step up efforts to help gov’t end hunger by 2030

#PHnews: Private partners step up efforts to help gov’t end hunger by 2030

MANILA – Various private companies have promised to proactively support the government efforts as they stepped up endeavors to help address involuntary hunger and malnutrition in the country.

This commitment was made as the government, through the Task Force Zero Hunger and alongside its partners in the private sector and other non-profit organizations, launched the "Pilipinas Kontra Gutom" (PKG), a multi-sectoral anti-hunger initiative, which aimed at addressing involuntary hunger and food security in the Philippines on Monday.

Margot Torres, private sector lead for the PKG movement, said the private sector has responded to the government's call for joint initiatives to end malnutrition and hunger being experienced by some Filipinos in different parts of the country.

Torres said the private sector has translated the "key responsibility areas" of the National Food Policy into frameworks that can serve as a "springboard" for synergized initiatives and communication to end hunger issues among Filipinos.

She said the PKG movement will be functional into four "A" frameworks:

--Availability relates to food production by improving the productivity and income of the farmers and fisherfolk. It will also ensure a resilient food system.

--Accessibility relates to distribution as well as ensuring 100 percent access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food year-round.

--Adequacy addresses hidden hunger with the vision of ending malnutrition experienced by children under five years old as well as pregnant women and lactating mothers.

--Assistance that addresses hunger and ensures a resilient food system during crisis periods such as the current pandemic or natural disasters.

"While the long-term goal is to end hunger by 2030, we have set an immediate realistic goal of uplifting one million Filipinos from hunger and malnutrition by 2022," Torres said.

She said the PKG programs will be pushed through in the priority areas with the highest poverty and malnutrition incidence.

The Task Force Zero Hunger has identified 32 priority areas while the private sector has identified 17 more areas in 49 provinces nationwide.

"As the multisectoral collaboration continues, we have mapped out where in the Philippines there are existing programs to guide us in synergizing our efforts for both the present as well as the future," she said.

Torres said they are targeting to include the public and partake in the PKG movement as she invited them to join the "Lahat kasali, lahat kasalo" initiative.

"We are preparing a consumer campaign and this will really invite the public to also participate even as low as 20 or 25 pesos to feed a hungry child so we're in the works,” she said.

Torres noted that the campaign is set to be launched by April this year.

Zero hunger movement

Meanwhile, Task Force Zero Hunger chairperson and Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said resolving issues on involuntary hunger in the country is a "collective responsibility" among the general public, the government, and the private sector.

"[It is] an imperative for all of us—the government needs the help of the private sector and other stakeholders to achieve our shared goals for zero hunger in the country," he said.

Under the national food policy, Nograles said various programs and projects are lined-up to assist the food producers to sustain their livelihoods.

The PKG movement also targets to achieve zero undernourished Filipino children by 2030 with the involvement of promoting breastfeeding and providing nutritious meals for every household.

The private companies involve are Aboitiz, AXA, Bayer, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Cargill, Century Pacific Food, Inc., Coca-Cola, East-West Seed, Dole Philippines, Harbest, JG Summit Holdings Inc., Johnson & Johnson Philippines, Jollibee Foods Corporation, Kraft Heinz, McDonald’s Philippines, Mega Global Corp. Metrobank, Mondelez, Nestlé Philippines, NutriAsia, Pilmico Foods Corporation, RFM Corporation, San Miguel Corporation, SM Supermalls, Unilever Philippines, Universal Robina Corporation (URC), Unilab, and Vitarich.

While organizations and industry associations have joined the movement are AGREA, Go Negosyo, League of Corporation Foundations, Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF), Philippine Partnership for Sustainable Agriculture (PPSA), Scaling Up Nutrition, Supply Chain Management Association of the Philippines (SCMAP), and UN Global Compact.

Among the non-government organizations and foundations that have joined the movement are ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation, Aboitiz Foundation, Ayala Foundation, Caritas, Gawad Kalinga, GMA Kapuso Foundation, Jollibee Group Foundation, Kabisig ng Kalahi, Manila Water Foundation, Metrobank Foundation, Pilipinas Shell Foundation, Project PEARLS, Rise Against Hunger Philippines, and Ronald McDonald House Charities.

PKG's digital and media partners, on the other hand, include Cobena Business Analytics and Strategy, Inc. Grab Philippines, GCash, PayMaya, Lazada, Shopee, Facebook, Google, TikTok, ABS-CBN, GMA Network, Business World, Manila Bulletin, Philippine Star, Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) and IKOT.PH.

Since the anti-hunger initiative was launched in November last year, the PKG has been grown into a movement and joined by around 70 partners from private companies, non-profit groups, and various organizations. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Private partners step up efforts to help gov’t end hunger by 2030." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1131640 (accessed February 24, 2021 at 03:08AM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Private partners step up efforts to help gov’t end hunger by 2030." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1131640 (archived).

[catherinedmccracken]

October 2020 Learning Network Resources

Tuesday, November 17 @ 4PM EST

Please join us for a webinar with Andrew Whitman, Pharm.D., Clinical Pharmacist in Oncology/Palliative Care at University of Virginia Health System. Register here.

  Blogs, Issue Briefs, Opinion Pieces and More…

Berwick D. Choosing Wisely International Keynote Presentation. October 2020 (Link expires November 12)

  “You need this drug,” and other things clinicians should stop saying. Lown Institute. September 2020 “You don’t have to be a professional to do all these things. You just need to know about the drug side effects, which often can be found online as well as the drug insert. And family members are usually best positioned to notice drug side effects, because they may see a change and think, ‘Mom or Dad didn’t seem to be like that before.’ But they may not feel empowered to talk about these changes with the clinician, or they had not been warned about side effects before. Patients and families can help prevent adverse drug events by keeping a lookout for new symptoms — but it will only work if the clinician is willing to listen.”

  Journals

Liu N, et alt. Unnecessary use of radiology studies in the diagnosis of inguinal hernias: a retrospective cohort study. Surgical Endoscopy. September 2020 ”Nearly 50% of all patients who receive any related imaging prior to surgery had potentially unnecessary diagnostic radiology studies. This not only exposes patients to avoidable risks, but also places a significant economic burden on patients and our already-strained health system.”

Markham JL, et alt. Variation in Early Inflammatory Marker Testing for Infection-Related Hospitalizations in Childrenv. Hospital Pediatrics. September 2020 “Inflammatory marker testing varied widely across hospitals. Hospitals with higher inflammatory testing for one infection tend to test more frequently for other infections and have longer LOS, suggesting opportunities for diagnostic stewardship.”

Amadio, et alt. Impact of Appropriate Use Criteria for Transthoracic Echocardiography in Valvular Heart Disease on Clinical Outcomes. Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography. September 2020 “Patients with appropriate TTE for VHD were more likely to undergo subsequent cardiac testing within 90 days and valve intervention within 1 year than those with a rA TTE. The 2011 appropriate use criteria for TTE have important clinical implications for outcomes in patient with VHD.”

Salazar JW, et alt. Two Remedies for Inappropriate Percutaneous Coronary Intervention—Closing the Gap Between Evidence and Practice. JAMA Intern Med. September 2020 “In this issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, we highlight 2 articles that demonstrate how to close the gap between evidence and practice to reduce low-value care in the context of percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) for patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD),2,3 a procedure with a long history of low-value use and potential harm.”

Kerr EA, et alt. Identifying Recommendations for Stopping or Scaling Back Unnecessary Routine Services in Primary Care. JAMA Internal Medicine. September 2020 “In this study, a total of 178 unique opportunities to deintensify routine primary care services were identified, and 37 of these were validated as high-priority deintensification recommendations. To date, this is the first study to develop a model for identifying, specifying, and validating deintensification recommendations that can be implemented and tracked in clinical practice.”

Baker M, et alt. Appropriate CT cervical spine utilisation in the emergency department. BMJ Open Quality. September 2020 “Over 40 000 CT scans are performed in our emergency department (ED) annually and utilisation is over 80% capacity. Improving medical appropriateness of CT scans may reduce total number of scans, time, cost and radiation exposure. A validated clinical decision-making tool implemented into the medical record can improve quality of care. This study lays a foundation for other imaging studies with validated support tools with similar potential improvements.”

Crowe B, et alt. Things We Do for No Reason™: Routine Correction of Elevated INR and Thrombocytopenia Prior to Paracentesis in Patients with Cirrhosis. Society of Hospital Medicine. September 2020 “Case series representing diverse institutional experiences with thousands of patients consistently demonstrate that bleeding after paracentesis is rare (<1%), mortality from bleeding occurs very infrequently, and neither INR nor platelet counts predict bleeding risk during paracentesis in cirrhosis. These studies demonstrate that abandoning routine correction of coagulopathy does not lead to worse outcomes, can avoid potentially significant transfusion-related adverse events, and can save scarce resources. Returning to our clinical scenario, the hospitalist should not transfuse FFP or platelets and should not delay the diagnostic paracentesis.”

  Media Coverage

Connecticut Choosing Wisely Collaborative Winds Down Operations After Six Years of Promoting Widespread Adoption of Choosing Wisely® Campaign Across Connecticut. CISION. October 2020 “The Connecticut Choosing Wisely Collaborative (CCWC), a diverse multi-stakeholder group committed to the widespread adoption of Choosing Wisely® in Connecticut, has accomplished its goals and has decided to wind down. The group was formed in 2014 to raise awareness in Connecticut about the Choosing Wisely® campaign and to be a catalyst to accelerate the adoption of Choosing Wisely in the State. The CCWC has worked to promote Choosing Wisely as a vehicle to support efforts across Connecticut to improve health care quality, lower health care costs and advance health equity.”

New Choosing Wisely pharmacy recommendations. New Zealand Doctor. September 2020 “More than 40 New Zealand pharmacists have worked together to develop new Choosing Wisely pharmacy recommendations. Initially the group of New Zealand pharmacists reviewed recommendations from other pharmacy groups world-wide. They then narrowed them down to the ones they believe work in a New Zealand context and would have the most impact.”

Mayo Clinic Q&A: Is an Annual Checkup Really Necessary? Chicago Health. September 2020 “Overall, it is important to stay up to date on all your recommended screenings and vaccines, and a regular checkup will ensure this occurs. But more importantly, the time spent face to face building a relationship with your primary care provider will allow you to create an individualized care plan that meets your needs and optimizes health outcomes.”

The post October 2020 Learning Network Resources first appeared on Choosing Wisely.

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[csrgood]

New Consumer Goods Coalition to Accelerate Systemic Effort to Remove Deforestation and Forest Degradation From Key Commodity Supply Chains

Today, as part of Climate Week 2020, The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) officially launched the Forest Positive Coalition of Action, including 17 global consumer goods brands, retailers and manufacturers that will work together and use their collective voice to accelerate systemic efforts to remove deforestation, forest degradation and conversion from the key commodity supply chains of palm oil, soy, and paper, pulp and fibre-based packaging, and drive transformative change across the industry. 

The Coalition, led by the respective company CEOs and co-sponsored at the CGF Board level by Carrefour and Mars, Incorporated, brings the world’s largest consumer goods brands together with a collective market value of US$1.8 trillion. Its ambition is to utilise its collective reach and knowledge, global networks and resources, to engage and collaborate with producers, suppliers and traders, as well as governments and civil society, to advocate for forest positive solutions. The Forest Positive Coalition for Action members are:

Carrefour

Colgate-Palmolive Company

Danone

Essity

General Mills

Grupo Bimbo

Jerónimo Martins

Mars, Incorporated

METRO AG

Mondelēz International

Nestlé

P&G

PepsiCo

Sainsbury’s

Tesco

Unilever

Walmart 

The Forest Positive Coalition of Action has committed to act in the following key areas:

Engage with suppliers and traders to ask they implement Forest Positive actions across their entire commodity operations;

Join forces to address forest conservation challenges in key production landscapes;

Encourage governments and stakeholders to create an enabling environment for forest conservation;

Ensure transparency and accountability by regularly reporting on progress.

As part of their commitments, members of the Coalition will work constructively with governments – both in producer nations and importing nations – to encourage them to put in place practical measures to support a forest positive future. The Coalition will advocate and support practises to change behaviours and processes at a macro-level to support global forests and not one specific area.

Grant Reid, President & CEO, Mars, Incorporated and CGF Board Co-Sponsor of the Forest Positive Coalition, said, “We believe forest protection is a driver of economic growth, not a sacrifice to growth. Forest protection provides healthy ecosystems and supports productive landscapes and resilient communities. In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, we must ensure that efforts to protect forests are part of the global response. This response requires all actors with an interest in ending deforestation and who are committed to being part of the solution to come together”.

Alexandre Bompard, Chairman and CEO, Carrefour and CGF Board Co-Sponsor of the Forest Positive Coalition, said, “We are actively changing our model in order to become forest positive businesses. We are fully committed to engaging supply chain actors, taking action on the ground and working collectively to catalyse change. Multi-stakeholder action is critical, particularly political engagement at the national and regional levels, as is strong support from the investment community". 

The Forest Positive Coalition for Action will be officially announced as part of Climate Week 2020 where members of the Coalition, UK and Indonesia government representatives and the Tropical Forest Alliance will meet to discuss and take questions from the public on the Coalition, its ambitions and the roadmap to reaching the Coalition’s goals.

Wai-Chan Chan, Managing Director, The Consumer Goods Forum said, “Deforestation continues to be a critical issue facing our planet today. Our event at New York Climate Week will showcase exactly how our Coalition is committed to on-the-ground actions that deliver impact at scale and will explain how we intend to be successful. We are also bringing a variety of voices to the table to ensure we engage from the get-go and effectively listen to the concerns of those fighting to mainstream the issue of deforestation and who support nature-based, innovative solutions. We are in this fight together”.

The event, held on Zoom, will run from 10:00 EST to 11:00 EST on Tuesday 22nd September 2020. Please sign up here: cwnyc.tcgfforestpositive.com

  -- Ends --

For more information, please contact:

Michael Lamb or Lucy Wright: cgf@golin.com / lwright@golin.com / +44 75124 30936 Lee Green, Communications Director, The Consumer Goods Forum: l.green@theconsumergoodsforum.com

For more information on the Climate Week 2020 event, please visit: https://www.climateweeknyc.org/event/breaking-chains-cgf-forest-positive-coalition-action

For more information on the Coalition, its members and its aims, please visit:

www.tcgfforestpositive.com

About The Consumer Goods Forum:

The Consumer Goods Forum (“CGF”) is a global, parity-based industry network that is driven by its members to encourage the global adoption of practices and standards that serves the consumer goods industry worldwide. It brings together the CEOs and senior management of some 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers, and other stakeholders across 70 countries, and it reflects the diversity of the industry in geography, size, product category and format. Its member companies have combined sales of EUR 3.5 trillion and directly employ nearly 10 million people, with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain. It is governed by its Board of Directors, which comprises 58 manufacturer and retailer CEOs. For more information, please visit: www.theconsumergoodsforum.com.

source: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/45815-New-Consumer-Goods-Coalition-to-Accelerate-Systemic-Effort-to-Remove-Deforestation-and-Forest-Degradation-From-Key-Commodity-Supply-Chains?tracking_source=rss

[babymilkaction]

WHO Executive Board Meeting: Biennial Reporting on the International Code under threat

WHO Executive Board Meeting,

3 February 2020 – 8 February 2020,  WHO Headquarters, Geneva   Event website

WEBCAST  HERE SEE Press release HERE

IBFAN made interventions on Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nurition (Agenda Item 18 see Friday pm webcast move to 2.48), Food Safety (Agenda Item 19) and WHO Reform/Non State Actors in WHO’s Governing bodies (Agenda item 22.1, Saturday Morning Webcast move to 2.12  )

ENGLISH FRENCH

Biennial reporting on the International Code under threat

2020 is a reporting year for Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN), and an opportunity to adopt a new Resolution or Decision.  We know that some Member States – and of course the baby food industry – would rather that, after nearly 40 years, our issue is taken off WHO’s agenda entirely. So we were alarmed to see the proposed Draft Decision in the Director General’s report calling for reporting to end  in 2026.  Alongside environmental and conflict threats, new and old forms of marketing continue to threaten infant and  young child health and survival.  For very good reasons the  International Code (Article 11.7) calls for a review every two years so that Member States are alerted and ready to act.(1). (Page down for the intervention we will make)

A new Resolution or Decision could call for:

WHO to collect data on baby food industry-funded digital marketing and data collection and assist Member States in legislating to end it;

Codex to follow WHO recommendations and curb the global trade of unhealthy products;

emergency responses that respect women´s autonomy while supporting breastfeeding and appropriate infant and young child feeding;

safeguards to prevent spillover and marketing of products targeting malnourished children (2)

policies that lower greenhouse gases and promote biodiverse, minimally processed, culturally appropriate foods;

acknowledgement of the risks of multi-stakeholder partnerships’ on nutrition policy setting and the need for sound conflict of interest policies

careful interpretation of WHO’s exclusive breastfeeding targets

a continuation of biennial reporting on the International Code and Resolutions.

Article 11.7 of the Code states: “The Director-General shall report in even years to the World Health Assembly on the status of implementation of the Code; and shall, on request, provide technical support to Member States preparing national legislation or regulations, or taking other appropriate measures in implementation and furtherance of the principles and aim of this Code.

The list of WHA Resolutions in the Decision omits the 2002 Resolution: WHA 55.25 This may be an oversight, but this is an important one that specifically calls on Member States (4) to ensure that the introduction of micronutrient interventions and the marketing of nutritional supplements do not replace, or undermine support for the sustainable practice of, exclusive breastfeeding and optimal complementary feeding;  

The IBFAN team (Alison Linnecar (Convenor of our Climate Change and Contaminants Working Group), and Dr Marina Rea of IBFAN Brazil)  is covering other issues at the  Executive Board Meeting including WHO’s Framework of Engagement with Non State Actors.

Provisional Agenda of the 73rd World Health Assembly

17-21st May State of the Code by Country Chart 2018

Note Item 18.Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.

__________________________________________________-

IBFAN intervention for  Agenda item 18:  Maternal Infant and Young Child Nutrition

PDF of SHORT statement  as delivered:

Thank you for letting us comment on this important issue. 2020 is a reporting year for the International Code and Member States need to be alerted to new marketing tactics that threaten children’s health and survival.

After nearly 40 years, some would like this issue taken off WHO’s agenda – something that would suit the baby food industry very well.

We appeal to this EB to make a small amendment to the Draft Decision because it suggests that biennial reporting ends by 2026.  Why must it include any dates?  A crucially important requirement of the International Code is this biennial reporting and has resulted in 19 Resolutions that clarify and update it.  These Resolutions help governments adopt laws that protect health and save lives.

To use a blanket approach to change one of WHO’s flagship recommendations is very risky  and could signal undue Private Sector influence. If WHO wants to sunset its decisions please start with the ones that do little or nothing to protect health.

Just listening the Member States now, its clear that harmful promotion will not stop until every country has strong laws that are enforced. Although 85% have taken some action, under pressure from industry many of these measures are voluntary or not strong enough to tackle new marketing tactics, including the harmful marketing of products targeting malnourished children.

Longer version MIYCN:

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to comment on the proposed decision the DG report. 2020 is a reporting year for the International Code and a new Resolution or Decision is needed to alert Member States to new marketing tactics that threaten children’s health and survival. After nearly 40 years, some would like to see this issue taken off WHO’s agenda, so we were alarmed that the Draft Decision suggests that biennial reporting ends by 2026. In an effort to ‘streamline’  two quite separate issues have been mixed up: The Implementation plan – which has a natural end date of 2025 – and reporting on the International Code – which in Article 11.7 calls for even year reporting  – with no end date.

This blanket approach fundamentally changes one of WHO’s most important Resolutions. This is too risky and must be changed. Harmful promotion will not stop until every country has strong laws that are enforced. Too many countries still lack such laws. Does anyone really believe that safeguards to protect breastfeeding and independent information are no longer needed? Perhaps this is the impact of WHO’s NSA business partners on WHO’s governance?

IBFAN calls on this EB to adopt a Decision or Resolution that addresses the following threats to maternal and child health:

Baby food industry-funded digital marketing and data collection;

Increased global trade of unhealthy products that exacerbate global warming (formulas contribute to environmental degradation and replace environment friendly breastfeeding);

Inappropriate emergency responses that fail to respect women´s autonomy or safeguard breastfeeding and appropriate infant and young child feeding;

Over-emphasis on micronutrients & supplements rather than biodiverse, minimally processed, culturally appropriate foods;

The marketing of products targeting malnourished children

Multi-stakeholder partnerships and lack of sound conflict of interest policies

Inappropriate interpretation of WHO’s exclusive breastfeeding targets

__________________________________________

Agenda Item 22.1 WHO Reform – involvement of non-State Actors in WHO’s Governing bodies

(NSAs reduced to ONE Minute) :  Governance PDF   Move to webcast 2.12

Thank you.  The proposed Governance changes sadly reduce the chances of meaningful engagement with Civil Society.  Official Status for commercial entities was never foreseen in the Constitution and is a huge leap into the dark. Corporations are almost given human rights and the wear the same colour badges as civil society – confusing everyone. This gives them unprecedented intelligence gathering and influence and transforms their power and finances – supposedly all for the public good. Remember that Partnerships are, by definition, arrangements for ‘shared governance’ to achieve ‘shared goals.’

So please NO to a Global Health Forum –  In 2011 in Moscow companies portrayed their weak voluntary promises as the answer to the obesity crisis. Such conclusions will NOT help inform Member States properly.

And please NO sunsetting of key resolutions, especially those on marketing.

WHO must correct its faulty conflict of interest definition,  safeguard its independence and its unique role as the coordinating authority in setting global health norms. What is happening now is a bad model for Member States. IBFAN and Civil Society are here to help

__________________

Agenda Item: 19. Accelerating efforts on food safety. Food Safety EB146 PDF

IBFAN, a network of 270 groups in 170 countries, supports the MMI statement and welcomes the opportunity to comment on this important topic. We appreciate WHO’s work in this area, including at Codex. We have collaborated with WHO many times,  including on the ongoing problem of intrinsic contamination of powdered formula.

With regard to the safety of processed foods and new technologies a precautionary approach should be taken. The risks and unintended consequences of novel food technologies are invariably difficult to assess and the task of ensuring safety standards that are truly in the public interest is easily compromised if effective Conflict of Interest safeguards are lacking.

We repeat the calls to WHO and FAO to maintain its funding to Codex. Sadly many national and regional food safety agencies are compromised and some are run jointly with corporations.  This can only threaten their independence, credibility and trustworthiness. WHO is well placed to remind its Member States that food safety bodies must be publicly funded to be credible.

Indeed, the bigger the corporation, the bigger the incentive to hide problems.

Thank You

  For more information contact: Patti Rundall, Baby Milk Action/ IBFAN Global Council: prundall@babymilkaction.org +447786523493 Alison Linnecar, IBFAN WG convenor on Climate and Contaminant issues­­­­­­: alinnecar@gmail.com Dr Marina Rea, IBFAN Brazil/IBFAN Global Council: marifrea@usp.br

  __________________________________

MIYCN statement FRENCH version:

IBFAN se réjouit de pouvoir commenter le rapport du Directeur général et la proposition de décision qu’il contient. 2020 est une année de rapport pour le Code international et une nouvelle résolution ou une décision est nécessaire pour alerter les États membres sur les nouvelles stratégies de marketing qui menacent la santé et la survie des enfants. Nous savons qu’après 40 ans, certains souhaiteraient que cette question soit retirée de l’ordre du jour de l’OMS, nous avons donc été alarmés par le fait que le projet de décision implique que les rapports biennaux devraient prendre fin d’ici 2026.

Il semble que deux questions bien distinctes se soient mélangées: le Plan d’implémentation – dont la date limite convenue est fixée à fin 2025 – et le rapport sur le Code international – qui exige, dans son Article 11.7, un rapport complet les années paires, sans limite dans le temps.

Utiliser une approche globale unique pour modifier l’une des plus importantes résolutions de l’OMS est trop risqué, il faut changer cela.

Étant donné que les formes inappropriées de marketing promotionnels ne s’arrêteront pas avant que chaque pays n’ait une loi stricte en vigueur, et dans la mesure où de trop nombreux  pays ne disposent toujours pas de telles lois, comment peut-on croire que des mesures claires  garantissant la protection de l’allaitement maternel et une information indépendante ne soient plus nécessaires ? Voyons-nous maintenant l’impact que les partenariats de l’OMS avec des acteurs non gouvernementaux exercent sur la gouvernance de l’OMS ?

IBFAN en appelle au Conseil exécutif d’adopter une décision ou une résolution qui aborde les menaces suivantes pour la santé des enfants: • Marketing numérique et collecte de données, financés par l’industrie des aliments pour bébés • Augmentation du commerce mondial de produits et aliments malsains qui aggravent le réchauffement climatique. Les substituts du lait maternel contribuent à la dégradation de l’environnement et remplacent l’allaitement maternel respectueux de l’environnement. • Réponses inadaptées en situation d’urgence qui ne respectent pas l’autonomie des femmes ou ne garantissent pas l’allaitement maternel et une alimentation appropriée du nourrisson et du jeune enfant. • Insistance excessive sur les micronutriments et les suppléments enrichis plutôt que sur les aliments peu transformés, d’origine diversifiée et culturellement appropriés. • Marketing de produits ciblant les enfants souffrant de malnutrition.

Partenariats multipartites et absence de solides politiques en matière de conflits d’intérêts. • Interprétation inappropriée des objectifs de l’OMS concernant l’allaitement maternel exclusif.

__________________________________

EB members. Benin, Burkina Faso, Eswatini (Swaziland), Gabon, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Argemtina,  Brazil, Chile, Grenada, Guyana, USA,  Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Austria, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Romania, Tajikistan, Djibouti, Iraq, Sudan, Tunisia, UAE, Australia, China, Japan, Singapore, Tonga

Bolton, Trump, Johnson – how food standards get lowered

  WHO Executive Board Meeting: Biennial Reporting on the International Code under threat was originally published on Baby Milk Action

[upshotre]

Reducing Extreme Poverty, Our Cardinal Objective Says Buhari

  ......launches SDGs' planning tools   President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday in New York said that “reducing extreme poverty and hunger is one of the cardinal objectives” of his administration. This was contained in a statement signed by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and publicity, Femi Adesina.   Delivering the keynote address at the Nigeria High-Level Side-Event on “SDG Integration – Bridging the Policy Planning – Budgeting Gap for the Achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals,” which held on the margins of the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA74), the President noted: “It is for this reason that in May this year, we committed ourselves to lifting approximately 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within a 10-year period. This is a national development priority and in line with the aspirations of the SDGs. We have since established an ambitious National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) targeting the poor and vulnerable members of the Nigerian population.”   According to him, “Through the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), we are tackling and addressing the root causes of poverty in all its manifestations. For example, the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSF) component is feeding almost 10 Million school pupils daily and empowering over 90, 000 local catering staff across the country.”   On the need to overcome ad hoc planning for the SDGs, President Buhari said among others: “It was our genuine desire for scientific planning and implementation of the SDGs that made Nigeria to commence the process of domestication and customization of the Integrated Sustainable Development Goals Model in 2017.   “The Nigeria iSDG Model, the Report of which we will officially launch today, will serve as a framework for robust, fact-based policy analysis, planning and implementation at all levels of government. It is expected to be used as a planning tool to complement existing ones currently in use at the national, sectoral and sub-national levels.” The full-text of the President’s address is reproduced below. Read the full speech: It is my pleasure to be here with you to deliver this Keynote Address at this strategic High Level Event on the margins of the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. Let me join others in thanking all individuals and institutions that have worked so hard to make this event a success. Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, it is exactly four years since I joined other World Leaders during the 70th Session of the UNGA to adopt the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, we set for ourselves ambitious goal of seeing an economically sustainable, socially inclusive and environmentally resilient world. For Nigeria, and indeed Africa as a whole, the achievement of the SDGs will mean ending poverty and hunger, safeguarding our ecosystem and ensuring that our people live in peace and prosperity by the year 2030. It is for this reason that our government acted quickly in the implementation of the SDGs by establishing the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on the SDGs in January 2016. The Office is charged with the responsibility for strategic planning; horizontal and vertical inter-governmental coordination; multi-stakeholders’ partnership and resource mobilization. It is also mandated to lead robust advocacy and communications for the SDGs in Nigeria. Excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I am aware from Official Statistics that approximately 54 percent of Nigerians live below the poverty line as defined by World Bank. It is pertinent to state that reducing extreme poverty and hunger is one of the cardinal objectives of our administration. It is for this reason that in May this year, we committed ourselves to lifting approximately 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within a 10-year period. This is a national development priority and in line with the aspirations of the SDGs. We have since established an ambitious National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) targeting the poor and vulnerable members of the Nigerian population. Through the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), we are tackling and addressing the root causes of poverty in all its manifestations. For example, the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSF) component is feeding almost 10 Million school pupils daily and empowering over 90, 000 local catering staff across the country. The Conditional Cash Transfer Component, is reaching out to approximately 300, 000 poor and vulnerable households across the country. The Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme component has provided over a million loans to petty traders and small entrepreneurs across the country. Similarly, the N-Power Programme, a youth employability and enhancement programme, has empowered 500,000 youths between the ages of 18-35 with the needed skills for the job market over a 2-year period. As a government, we have since recognized that to achieve the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, we must scientifically understand our implementation context; carefully formulate policies and programmes; and judiciously apply human and financial resources. These cannot be achieved with ad-hoc planning. Economic, social and environmental dimensions of the SDGs were integrated into our Economic Recovery and Growth Plan 2017-2020. But this is only a Medium-term Plan designed to restore economic growth following the recession in 2016. It was our genuine desire for scientific planning and implementation of the SDGs that made Nigeria to commence the process of domestication and customization of the Integrated Sustainable Development Goals Model in 2017. The Nigeria iSDG Model, the Report of which we will officially launch today, will serve as a framework for robust, fact-based policy analysis, planning and implementation at all levels of government. It is expected to be used as a planning tool to complement existing ones currently in use at the national, sectoral and sub-national levels. The domestication process was led by the then Ministry of Budget and National Planning, and the Nigeria iSDG planning Model is now domiciled in the recently restructured Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning for policy coherence and sustainability. Going forward, we expect policymakers and planners to judiciously utilise this model to guide our efforts towards the achievement of the SDGs and other Internationally Agreed Development Goals. I would like finally to commend the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on SDGs, the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the strategic collaboration in the development and successful formulation of the Nigeria iSDG Simulation Model. My appreciation also goes to all the resource persons for their invaluable contributions in the domestication of the model for Nigeria. I look forward to seeing the 36 states and the FCT customize this planning tool at the state level. I thank you for your kind attention. Read the full article

[adalidda]

Illustration Photo: TerraSentia uses a proprietary combination of sensors—including RGB cameras, LIDAR, GPS, and more—to autonomously collect data on traits for plant health, physiology, and stress response (credits: Steve Long / Flickr Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))

Digitalisation as an enabler of Agroecological Farming Systems

Agroecology is a holistic approach that relies on and maximises the use of ecological processes to support agricultural production. By working more with nature and ecosystem services, it has the potential to increase farms’ circularity, diversification and autonomy, and drive a full transformation of farming systems and agricultural value chains, from input substitution and beyond. Agroecological farming systems therefore have great potential to enhance the sustainability performance of agriculture and agricultural value chains that contribute to the objectives of the EU farm to fork strategy. Compared to industrialised and most conventional agricultural production, agroecology brings a higher level of complexity to farming systems. Digital technologies and agricultural equipment can play a key role in improving the performance of agroecological approaches at farm and territorial level, and boosting their uptake by farmers, inter alia by supporting their decision-making on farming practices. These technologies, which include artificial intelligence, geo-spatial technology, advanced image analysis procedures, the internet of things (IoT), robotics and sensors, are available and can be applied to most farming approaches. However, agroecological farming systems are more likely to benefit from tailored digital technologies and technology portfolios that enable, for instance, ongoing monitoring of the transition of farming practices and their performance through databases of in-situ data, or support for farmers’ decision-making through the integration of the different elements of an agroecological farming system in a holistic, system-based approach. The cost-effectiveness and performance of these solutions need to be evaluated in order to ensure they contribute to the effectiveness and sustainability of agroecological systems and to farm and/or landscape management. Activities should contribute to road-mapping for the improved productivity and sustainability performance of agroecological farming systems by assessing the availability of digital, data-based solutions tailored to agroecological farming and the potential to adapt “standard” digital technologies used in agriculture to the specific requirements of agroecological approaches for farm and landscape management. Due attention should be paid to aspects relating to security in the use of data, interoperability and the extent to which farmers and other actors in the food chain accept and are able to use these solutions.

Proposals should ensure that any data produced in the course of the project comply with the FAIR principles. Proposals should build on the results of relevant projects funded under Horizon 2020 and ensure collaboration with projects funded under the following calls in this work programme: HORIZON-CL6-2021-CLIMATE-01-05: Agroecological approaches for climate change mitigation, resilient agricultural production and enhanced biodiversity and HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-02-01-two-stage: Agroecological approaches for sustainable weed management.

Proposals should evaluate the need for such tools, and their implementation capacity for different crops and farming systems in different pedo-climatic zones, taking account of local natural habitat types. Proposals must implement the 'multi-actor approach' and ensure adequate involvement of the farming sector.

Proposals should document specific needs for digital technologies to support agroecological farming approaches, at farm, territorial and regional / national level. Building on existing data bases of digital technologies for agricultural production, proposals should assess the availability of tools tailored to agroecological approaches and identify gaps and needs for the adaptation of existing technologies or the development of new, innovative solutions to serve the needs of agroecological farming systems. Proposals should evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the solutions proposed, and assess their potential performance in agroecological farming systems for different crops, farming systems, biogeographical regions and pedo-climatic conditions. Proposals should analyse barriers to and incentives for the uptake and effective deployment of these tools, including analysis of cost effectiveness, risks, usability and affordability for farmers, as well as social and cultural obstacles. Based on this information, proposals should compile an open repository of available digital tools to address the specific needs of agroecological farming systems, including organic, under different pedo-climatic conditions. In collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders, including farmers, the private and public sector as well as consumer representatives, proposals should develop a roadmap for R&I on digital technologies to support agroecology in the EU and Associated Countries.

Expected Outcome:

A successful proposal should support the farm to fork’s strategy objective of a transition to a fair, healthy and resilient European agriculture sector, in particular the goal of promoting agroecology, by improving understanding of the potential of digitalisation as an enabler of agroecology, a transformative, sustainable, healthy, resilient and inclusive approach to farming that can minimise farming pressure on ecosystems while generating fair economic returns for farmers.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

Robust evidence of existing innovative digital tools and technologies that specifically support the transition to agroecology for different crops, farming systems and pedo-climatic conditions; Improved understanding of the barriers, drivers, risks and usability aspects of digital tools that support the implementation of agroecological farming approaches for different crops and farming systems in different pedo-climatic regions; Greater awareness among different actors of the cost-effectiveness and the economic, environmental and social performance of digital tools that support the implementation of agroecology, as well as the barriers and incentives for their uptake and deployment; Pathways to address research and innovation (R&I) needs as regards digital tools that specifically support the transition to agroecology in the EU and Associated Countries.

Application Deadline: 6 October 2021 17:00:00 Brussels time

Check more https://adalidda.com/posts/nZdAosKAk4esNx8Ad/digitalisation-as-an-enabler-of-agroecological-farming

[eliingraham]

The SDG Imperative

May 8, 2019

I was recently asked by a journalist on LinkedIn for my thoughts on various CSR and SDG-related questions in connection with Innovation360′s Fix the Planet initiative that invites innovators to submit ideas around four of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs].

Here are my thoughts:

1. CSR vs Sustainable Development

First, I think we need to differentiate between CSR, ESG, and Sustainable Development; three concepts that are bandied about, and often conflated, or confused. 

CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] or “responsible business” is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model whereby business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards and national or international norms. CSR assumes that business is motivated by a social conscience, rather than shareholder profit. Lots of companies self-report on their voluntary CSR activities but have proven false to its real power. CSR is largely considered a myth [1] by some, as well as a marketing gimmick [2] that benefits the company, but does not actually fix the planet. 

ESG [Environmental, Social, and Governance] conflates sustainability and corporate governance issues but ignores the economic dimension. Sustainability investors are concerned with how companies manage all factors contributing to profitability: supply chain, production, employees, regulatory relationships etc. They focus on the relationship between economic, social and environmental factors, as well as financial performance. However, corporate governance, designed to balance the interests of management and shareholders is a structurally different system. ESG arose when investment managers combined two areas of research [corporate governance and sustainability research], which gave them a convenient way to communicate both activities to clients. [3]  ESG has gained a lot of traction, but it is not a considered a ‘real’ thing by many professionals in the impact space.

Sustainable Development was coined in 1972 by the Bruntland Commission as “development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. [4]  In January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs] of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, were adopted as a universal framework. The SDGs are intended to mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities, and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind, and with meaningful progress being made by 2030. The SDGs also recognize the interconnectivity of global issues, that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and addresses a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection. [5] The SDGs are also unique in that they expect action by ALL countries, poor, rich and middle-income to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. 

What differentiates the SDGs from CSR and ESG is:

Universal framework for action that is inclusive and collaborative

Universal framework for measuring impact at target/indicator level

Interconnectivity of social, economic, and environmental issues

Global call to action for: governments, business, and civil society 

Aggressive timeframe, by 2030

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2. Is CSR Spiking?

It depends what you are really asking. Is the number of CSR reports filed by companies increasing over time? Yes. Is their actual impact increasing? Hard to know. Some illuminating facts from the August 2017 Journal of Accounting and Economics [6]:

Publicly traded companies face increasing pressure to prepare CSR documents to inform stakeholders about their voluntary activities to operate in an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable manner.

Percentage of firms that voluntarily issue CSR reports has increased considerably. As of 2015, 92% of Fortune Global 250 firms issued voluntary CSR reports, up from only 35% in 1999 [KPMG, 2015]. As of 2017, 85% of the S&P 500 were filing CSR reports [7]:

Existing standards regulate only a fraction of accounting for socially relevant corporate activities disclosed in annual reports; reporting CSR performance through other channels [stand-alone CSR reports] remains largely voluntary and unregulated. 

Lack of regulation has resulted in diverse reporting practices [length, performance indicators, readability, etc.]. Additionally, verification of these reports by accounting firms is neither comprehensive nor stringent compared with verification of corporate annual reports.

While mandatory disclosures are highly regulated and subject to stringent external audits, the discretionary nature of CSR reporting provides managers with opportunities and motivations to signal their superior commitment to CSR or to pose as ‘good’ corporate citizens when their CSR performance is poor.

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3. Are Companies More Responsible or is That an Illusion?

There is mounting evidence that key social trends are having a positive impact on companies taking their “social responsibility” much more seriously. Clearly, companies face increasing pressure from employees and customers to take a stand on critical issues. [8]

Workplace Harassment/Bias

#MeToo movement

Gender pay equity

Diversity and inclusion 

Brand Activism

Gun Reform; #MarchforOurLives

Women’s reproductive freedom

Transgender rights; #WontBeErased

Paris Agreement

White supremacy

Shift from Disaster Recovery to Climate Resilience

More CSR in the C-suite

Higher Standards for Suppliers

Prioritizing Privacy and Data Protection  

In addition, as companies continue to take a stand on big issues, they are shifting the relationship between private enterprise, governments, and civil society, often speaking up where and when governments are not. Companies that pursue legitimate CSR activities “experience positive reputations, improved customer loyalty, and strong risk management processes.” In other words, ‘sustainability’ is now being associated with long-term sustainability of companies, as well. Those companies offering scalable solutions with immediate impact will succeed, giving companies a competitive edge, and making CSR more central to their business strategies. [9]

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4. Are Startups Leading the Charge or Larger Enterprises?

Right now, national and multi-national companies have the visibility, influence, and the resources to #BetheNeedle, driving sustainable change from the top down. According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, “More than three-quarters of people worldwide want CEOs to take the lead on change instead of waiting for the government to act.” [10] 

We have seen the emergence of activist CEOs taking very public stands in the form of:

The Giving Pledge

CEO Action on Diversity & Inclusion

Global CSR Summit Declaration

Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance

We have also seen high-profile global CEOs adopting sustainable business practices in support of the SDGs while also delivering value to shareholders [11]:

Paul Polman, Unilever

Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo

John Noseworthy, Mayo Clinic

Richard Davis, USBancCorp

These, and others, like Larry Fink at Blackrock, who writes an annual letter [12] to CEOs of companies in which they invest, are linking stewardship and sustainability with profitability:

“We advocate for practices that we believe will drive sustainable, long-term growth and profitability.”

Both peer pressure [from other CEOs] and pressure from the citizenry [in the form of customers] are driving change. No one pillar [business, government, civil society] can achieve the magnitude of the SDGs by 2030 by itself. 

However, business alone has the capital, resources, technology, and innovative energy to #BetheNeedle in solving the world’s most challenging issues. 

“Unnerved by fundamental economic changes and the failure of government to provide lasting solutions, society is increasingly looking to companies, both public and private, to address pressing social and economic issues. These issues range from protecting the environment to retirement to gender and racial inequality, among others.”

The question then becomes profitability. Does purposefulness necessarily compromise profits? Larry Fink argues, to the contrary, that purpose is the animating force for achieving profits:

“Profits are in no way inconsistent with purpose – in fact, profits and purpose are inextricably linked. When a company truly understands and expresses its purpose, it functions with the focus and strategic discipline that drive long-term profitability. Purpose unifies management, employees, and communities. It drives ethical behavior and creates an essential check on actions that go against the best interests of stakeholders. Purpose guides culture, provides a framework for consistent decision-making, and, ultimately, helps sustain long-term financial returns for the shareholders of your company.”

So what about startups and early stage companies? How do they stack up in terms of Sustainable Development? Whereas huge corporation have the responsibility to turn the entrenched wheels of their behemoth production models toward sustainability, young companies have the enormous opportunity to define and direct their mission, values, and strategic plans specifically toward one or more of the Sustainable Development goals, targets, and indicators, right from the start.

Startups are notoriously strapped for cash and resources, which often supersedes their integrating loftier ideals like the SDGs into their investment proposals. This is extremely shortsighted. As innovators, they typically pride themselves on being ahead of the curve. Well, be ahead of the curve, by taking the lead in a new order of things.  

A number of incubators, accelerators, and advisories are encouraging startups and early-stage companies to do just this:

UN SDG Action Campaign

UN SDG Accelerator Program

Impact Entrepreneur Center

Sustainable Development Goals Accelerator

There are undoubtedly, many more out there, working with founders, investors, and advisory networks to increase competency with, and commitment to, the SDGs. Startups and early stage companies can #BetheNeedle by driving sustainable change from the ground up.

Here are some fundamental ways new and emerging businesses can support the SDGs [13]:

Externally align your purpose with one or more of the SDG goals, targets or indicators. Communicate this intention in all your strategic documents, marketing materials, and employee training. In other words, COMMIT.

Internally align your business processes with sustainable business practices. There are a number of steps companies can take to help protect the planet, such as tracking and reducing emissions, increasing the energy efficiency of their operations, using clean energy sources, reusing materials and responsibly using resources like water.

Promote the rights and well-being of employees, customers and workers throughout your supply chains. Companies can strengthen their support of human rights by developing a human rights policy and working to integrate human rights into management education.

Act as responsible members of the communities in which you work, including using your standing as social leaders to stand up for justice and speak out against hate.

Take action to reduce the inequalities that harm lives and threaten global stability. Business leaders can provide decent jobs and fair wages, work to expand opportunities and skills training to underserved communities and push for more diversity in their ranks.

Collaborate with governments and international organizations to scale effective solutions. Time and again, we've seen the power of multi-sector partnerships to change lives, from expanding access to vaccines to turning the tide against diseases like HIV/AIDS.

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5. How Can Startups Like Innovation360 Galvanize the Public Around the SDGs?

I heartily applaud efforts that offer both tools and advisory services to innovators. Fix the Planet is certainly a “call to action” for innovative ideas on four specific SDGs. Like any initiative that wants to make a difference, it must have a clear purpose, process, and path to success. But if your goal is truly to coalesce serious ideas that have the potential to actually “fix the planet,” then it needs to convey the urgent, gritty, gut-wrenching gravitas of other organizations taking up arms in this daunting task. 

It also needs to be grounded in the firmament of reality. Fixing the planet is going to require complex partnerships between governments, business, and civil society. It going to require revamping entrenched systems that have been governing our world for centuries. Its going to require deftness in navigating the intersectionality of socio-economic-environmental relationships, while also employing the underlying principle of the 2030 Agenda: inclusivity. No one gets left behind. Any combination of ideas and initiatives that can do that would be like inventing innovation ‘fire’, for sure.

As of January 2019, global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.88°C (1.58°F) above the 20th century average and tied with 2007 as the third highest temperature since global records began in 1880. [14] According to the recent UN report, one million species “already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of biodiversity loss”. [15] In a world where "issues of mind-numbing irrelevance are more important than the collapse of our life support systems" [to quote George Monbiot] those taking up the #SDG charge need to do so with the attitude and determination, not of a startup unicorn, but of an impact ninja. We need results. Not monetary results, mandatory results.

In short, if you are going to get our attention and rally us around ideas to fix the planet, then you’d better be ready to implement for impact. We do not have time to waste. We do not have time to indulge creative fantasies. 2030 is ELEVEN years away. #BetheNeedle or go home.

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Footnotes:

[1] https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_myth_of_csr

[2] https://doublethedonation.com/tips/why-corporate-social-responsibility-is-important/

[3] https://www.sri-connect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=88

[4] https://www.sustainabledevelopment2015.org/AdvocacyToolkit/index.php/earth-summit-history/historical-documents/92-our-common-future

[5 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/

[6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1815566917300164

[7] https://www.ga-institute.com/press-releases/article/flash-report-85-of-sp-500-indexR-companies-publish-sustainability-reports-in-2017.html

[8] https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanmcpherson/2018/01/12/8-corporate-social-responsibility-csr-trends-to-look-for-in-2018/ - 202767ad40ce

[9] https://www.mbastudies.com/article/how-corporate-social-responsibility-is-changing-in-2018/

[10] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2019/02/26/businesses-and-social-change-were-at-the-starting-point-not-the-finish-line/ - 447dd61e4bad

[11] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2019/01/31/how-4-ceos-set-a-new-leadership-standard/ - 486be96fec64

[12] https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter

[13] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2019/02/26/businesses-and-social-change-were-at-the-starting-point-not-the-finish-line/ - 447dd61e4bad

[14] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201901

[15] https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1037941

[mishraabram]

Best Lending Software Solutions

Five features of the best lending software solutionsAutomating and digitizing lending processes is crucial to gain momentum and grow in the ever-expanding lending market. The current lending market is not just limited to traditional banks. A quick look at the market will show you the burgeoning numbers of alternative lenders, peer-to-peer lenders and credit unions competing for a slice of the market.

To stay ahead and swim above the competition, it is critical that lenders ensure that their lending software technology is easy to use both in-house, as well as for the end-users, i.e., borrowers.

Although the core function of all lenders is the same; lending, the market they cater to, the workflow they follow, the size of their business, and other such factors determine what kind of lending platform will suit them the best.

As such, the “one size fits all” feature is not a big winner here. The best lending software solutions are ones that meet the lender’s particular business needs. In a market, ripe with fintech solution for lenders offering some of the most cutting edge lending software solutions, finding the right vendor for your business is not a cakewalk.

The digital lending platform market is growing at a 20% CAGR (2019-2025) and set to hit the US$17 Bn mark by 2025. – GM Insights

In this week’s article, we talk to you about 5 features that you must check off on your list when you are searching for the best software solution provider for your lending business.

Key Feature#1: Customization

Loan transactions don’t just occur between lenders are borrowers. There are several other parties involved such as loan referral partners, mortgage loan teams, branch bankers, etc. Therefore, having a singular interface for the lender and borrower alone will not be enough to make the lending platform its true-to-word digitized and automatized self.

The interface of the lending platform should be created such that it can wholesomely cater to each of the above-mentioned stakeholders in the lending process. Customized dashboards for each stakeholder can help ensure on-time task completion, be it application management, following up with customers, or collaborating with loan referral partners with enough transparency.

Lenders should specifically look for lending software technology that supports such role-based workflow that in turn reduce turnaround time for loan origination, thus providing lenders with shorter loan cycles.

Key Feature#2: Integration

For a vastly siloed process like that of lending companies, finding the right lending software solution that helps them remove the complications of multivariate workflows and bring consistency through in-house and vendor integration is quintessential.

The right kind of lending software solution for your business will fit in like Lego blocks integrating upstream and downstream systems including core banking systems, CRMs, data verification providers, LOSs, pricing engines, and document generation providers.On one hand, they will be modelled to perfectly fit the legacy systems that were in place early on and at the same time, they form the new foundation that allows constant change and improvement through continuous software updates that help lending companies stay ahead of track.

In short, the right kind of lending software solution will be like your bridge between the old and the new.

To find the kind of lending platform that supports this need, look for ones that offer API integrations. Need for custom integrations helps lending software vendors understand the unique need of their lending partners and create APIs right from scratch.

This will let users continue using their legacy lending software now empowered with the latest APIs, UI, and UX, and also help them build a strong foundation that will let them grow, evolve, and move ahead along with the changing needs and demands of the lending industry.

Yet another kind of integration that is critical when it comes to lenders is having continuous access to data providers, both financial and consumer, whose data play a significant role in not only underwriting and establishing loan terms, but also, in creating automation using machine learning.

Data is extremely important in helping lenders make informed decisions regarding loan terms, interest rates, and reduce their risk while maximizing revenue.

With the right integrations, underwriters can verify and access information on creditworthiness through just a few clicks within the same lending platform, without the need to sign into a third-party platform.

So when choosing the right lending platform for your business, look for API integration features/possibilities with data providers you are currently using or the ones you would like to sign up in the future, as well.

Key Feature#3: Continuous updates

In the world of evolving tech, stagnation is not an option. While as a lender you might be focused on implementing a robust lending software technology that starts giving you immediate results through quicker turnaround time, time-to-value, lesser errors and more revenue, you should also take into consideration if the lending software provider is equipped to keep up with the changing market demands and dynamics. Continuous update and improvement is not just a bonus feature anymore. It should be actively considered as a core feature when selecting a lending software solution.

• Is the lending software future proof?

• Is it improving your current lending solution?

• Is it serving both your short- and long-term goals?

Whether you want to replace your legacy lending software, or you would like to improve and build upon it, make sure the new lending platform you are considering checks off the three-pointers mentioned above.

Key Feature#4: Automation

Fintech lending and automation go hand-in-hand. Automation plays a massive role in reducing turnaround times and errors caused by manual paperwork, and also helps lenders make informed decisions by seamlessly integrating third-party tools and vendors, thereby bringing all the critical components to the table, at once. Streamlining workflows that cause major delays in loan origination given their dependence on manual inputs is a key issue that automation eliminates from the lending process.

Apart from automation, some other must-have technologies and features that lenders should look for while selecting their lending platforms are Cloud-based software (SaaS), Responsive UI/UX, and access to analytics that give them a bird’s eye view of the performance and efficiency of their lending platform by measuring KPIs such as deal quality, platform performance, an in-depth view of what’s causing competitive losses, if any.

Key feature#5: Configuration

It is in this step that the hardcore technical details lie. If you are using a legacy lending platform or building/implementing one from scratch, consider these five pointers:

• What kind of technical expertise is needed for configuring the lending software?

• Does the new lending platform support decision rules?

• What kind of support do they extend for creating/modifying decision rules?

• Down to what level can you configure the platform?

• How flexible is it to address the needs specific to individual requirements?

While most lending software solution providers offer this multi-level configuration assistance, it is usually the ones that build their APIs and lending modules from the ground up to meet the needs of the lenders who can make both configuration and implementation an easy process for lenders. Look for lending platforms that help you make changes to dashboards, rules, display fields, menus, access controls, etc.

Conclusion

Apart from the technical viewpoint shared in this article about the key features you should look for in your lending software provider, there are some abstract yet core requirements, too, that you should check for. Among them are – experience in the lending industry, understanding of the current industry needs, constant search of new and innovative ways of introducing disruptive tools to the market, and easy access to account executives who have a clear understanding of your business’s particular needs.

With the 5 features in this article along with the ones that are crucial yet not often discussed (mentioned above) you can certainly find yourself the best lending software solution for your lending business.