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techcubators · 2 years ago

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Careem Stands Unfazed Amid the Economic and Political Crisis

The tech sector all over the world has been crumbling lately, with more than 200,000 tech jobs lost in the past year, the industry is confronting one of its worst crunches in history with tech giants like Meta, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Amazon announcing mass layoffs. And just like the rest of the world, Pakistan too has been struggling to keep up. With inflation at its highest in the past 4 decades, the country is also going through political turmoil and an even greater economic crisis that is on the verge of affecting the supply chains of several industries. Pakistan like several other economies was well on its way to flourishing until the COVID-19 pandemic bought the world to a halt. A major chunk of the business sector shut down due to uncertainty and daily wagers struggled to make ends meet, but life did start getting back to the new normal. And then came the Ukraine-Russia conflict which is still testing the global economies forcing companies to recalibrate and, in some cases, wholly reconsider their long-standing supply chain and partner ecosystems. Pakistan, along with the Ukraine-Russia conflict was being tested politically as a wave of unrest jolted the ruling leaders, things to date, remain the same for the country as inflation reaches a whopping 27.3%. This caused the booming start-up sector in Pakistan to collapse and several start-ups like Airlift, SWVL, Retailo, VavaCars, Truck It In, and UBER shut down operations in major cities of Pakistan making 2022 a dismal year for Pakistani startups. Foreign investors pulled out of the Pakistani market amid rising interest rates and a sharp fall in venture capital-backed stocks. But amid all the chaos, Careem managed to not only stay afloat but also became a household name facilitating not just its customers but also its captains. But this feat did not come easy to Careem, the organization had to take a step back, recalibrate and re-strategize its operations and policies to adapt to the constantly changing crisis in the country. Last year, while other startups were unable to raise funding and find a feasible revenue model, Careem announced an investment of $25 million to further simplify and improve their captains’ and customers’ experience in Pakistan. Careem also announced a significant reduction in its commission fees charged to captains, making it their all-time lowest. To further facilitate its captains, Careem has recently partnered with Gas and Oil Pakistan Limited (GOPL) to provide lucrative discounts on fuel and lubricant products to its captains operating in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan, and Peshawar. They also launched their fintech affiliate, Careem Pay, with the aim to invest $50 million in Pakistan. Having a network of more than 800,000 registered Captains across Pakistan, Careem has always been at the forefront when it comes to providing safe, secure, reliable, and affordable means of transportation to its customers and a flexible working environment for its captains. If anything, this proves that it takes resilience and strong determination to survive in the constantly-transforming world that we live in today. As businesses respond to the current crisis, they must also prepare for a new reality that focuses on agility, digitization, and multistakeholder collaboration. Read the full article

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udyamstree-edelgive · 3 years ago

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UdyamStree - Women's Economic Status in India, Women Entrepreneurship in India - EdelGive Foundation

EdelGive supports programs that encourage innovative pedagogy, operate in partnership with education functionaries for system strengthening, womens economic status in India

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development defines the way forward for economic growth, gender equality, poverty and a secure future through partnerships and collaborations. The UdyamStree campaign, aligns with and endeavors to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 05, i.e., Gender Equality, through its vision to create a gender-inclusive ecosystem and a level playing field for women entrepreneurs in the country.

An Overview of Women's Economic Status in India India being the third largest startup ecosystem in the world and having a women populace of about 48%, records a Female Labour Force Participation Rate of only about 21% that is not even half of the global average of 47%.1

Indian women do not lack will and ambition. If given equal opportunities, they can contribute significantly to innovation, economic growth, and job creation. However, the deeply embedded gender norms among other socio-cultural issues such as inequal access to finance and property, along with the lack of support from family to name a few, are some reasons which inhibit their participation in the economy.

As per the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report 2021, economic gender gap is particularly profound in India. Ranking at 140 among 156 countries, India has fallen by 28 places since 2020, and it is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries. Economic opportunities for Indian women are extremely limited at just 32.6%, slightly better than other developing countries like Pakistan (31.6%), Syria (28.5%), Yemen (28.2%), Iraq (22.8%) and Afghanistan (18%).2

The Need for Women Entrepreneurship

Boosting women’s participation in employment and entrepreneurship in India has the potential to grow the country’s GDP by $ 0.7 trillion by 2025, and simultaneously enhance levels of gender equality and women’s economic empowerment3. Therefore, there is an urgent need to be more inclusive and support women’s participation in the Indian economy. A fundamental way to utilise their untapped economic potential is to create more jobs for them and encourage their participation in entrepreneurial ecosystem.

UdyamStree - Catalysing Women Entrepreneurship in India

An initiative by EdelGive Foundation, UdyamStree aims to boost the entrepreneurial spirit in women and plot women entrepreneurship as one of the key pathways to boosting women’s economic empowerment in India. Through its commitment to bridge the gender gap in the entrepreneurship ecosystem through collective action and engagement across stakeholder groups, UdyamStree works towards creating a conducive environment for women entrepreneurship in India.

The ‘Landscape study on Women Entrepreneurship’ is a flagship initiative under the UdyamStree campaign. The multi-faceted study carries insights pertaining to complex socio-cultural and economic challenges that women face during their entrepreneurial journey and how policy implementation, advocacy and multistakeholder interventions could overcome them.

The study is a steppingstone to understand the complexities faced by women in the field of entrepreneurship and decipher the interventions required to contribute to the current existing ecosystem. It aims to shift the existing narrative around women entrepreneurship in India to that of progress, equity, and growth.

About EdelGive Foundation

EdelGive Foundation is one of India’s leading grant-making organisations, and a go-to partner of choice for Indian and foreign funders wanting to engage with the Indian development ecosystem. Our unique philanthropic model places EdelGive at the centre of grant-making, by providing initial grants to NGOs and by managing funding from other institutional and corporate funders. Consequently today, EdelGive functions as a Philanthropic Fund Manager and Advisor between grant-makers and credible NGOs. Over the last 13 years, EdelGive Foundation has supported over 150 organisations across 111 districts in 14 states of India, influencing commitments of over INR 461 crore to NGOs in the sector. For more information please visit – www.edelgive.org.

#EdelGive UdyamStree #EdelGive Udyam Stree initiatives for women #EdelGive UdyamStree Program

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mellowhumanoidsharkeclipse-blog · 3 years ago

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Illustration Photo: Dieudonné Botea's rice field being harvested in Ngazi - Congo DRC (credits: Axel Fassio/CIFOR-ICRAF / Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0))

P4G State-of-the-Art Partnerships Awards

P4G is looking for the world's most innovative partnerships delivering measurable sustainable growth and climate action impact. Our State-of-the-Art Partnerships are best-in-class examples of multistakeholder partnerships that can rapidly scale and replicate their models of change. We welcome the most entrepreneurial solutions capable of delivering transformative impact in this decade of action.

SDG 2 Food and Agriculture: BetterCycle converts organic waste into insect protein thus reducing waste and preserving wild fish populations in the ocean.

SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation: Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP) and Kenya Innovative Finance Facility for Water (KIFFWA) Partnership provides early-stage capital and expertise to Kenyan entrepreneurs to develop viable water initiatives and attract private investors.

SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy: CFI2030 Jeju transforms the city of Jeju into a net-zero hub utilizing state-of-the-art technology including renewable energy, electric vehicles, smart grids and microgrids.

SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities: Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal (SHF) Sustainable Portfolio expands energy efficient homes in Mexico by providing financial incentives and technical assistance to encourage developers to build sustainable homes.

SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production: Closing the Loop on Textile Waste in Kenya, the 2021 Partnership of the Year, reduces waste by regenerating fabric waste into virgin-quality fiber for use in textile production

JUDGES WILL CHOOSE WINNERS BASED ON THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA:

Eligibility—Address one or more of P4G’s five targeted SDGs. The partnership includes at least one commercial and one civil society partner.

Impact—Partnership has demonstrated measurable and verifiable outcomes.

Innovation—Partnership has developed innovative and commercially-viable solutions to address its target SDG.

Scalability—Partnership has grown since its launch and has demonstrated the ability to be replicated in other markets.

Financial Sustainability—Partnership implements market-based solutions that have already or will attract a level of commercial investment and/or support.

Application Deadline: July 31, 2022

Check more https://adalidda.com/posts/sBYjut7Tyopz5Zg4z/p4g-state-of-the-art-partnerships-awards/call

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logicpublishers · 3 years ago

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ICANN Fellowship Program 2022: Eligibility And How To Apply Online

The goal of the ICANN Fellowship Program is to strengthen the diversity of the multistakeholder model by fostering opportunities for individuals from underserved and underrepresented communities to become active participants in the ICANN community. Fellows are exposed to the workings of the ICANN community, are assigned a mentor, and receive training across different areas of knowledge and skill…

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tkmedia · 4 years ago

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How recent actions against Big Tech in the US, UK, and EU could inadvertently lead to more fragmentation and ossification of the internet (Mark Nottingham/mnot's blog)

Monday, 21 June 2021 Standards Law A big change in how the Internet is defined - and who defines it - is underway. For a while now, it’s been apparent that Internet and Web standards have stagnated at the ‘top’ of the stack. While the IETF has been busy revising HTTP and replacing TCP down below, a tremendous amount of innovation is going on up top, and it’s all in private hands. This is where most of the apparent value in the Internet now resides: when you ask people what is the Internet? they don’t say anything about end-to-end, reliable delivery, stateful resources, or the browser platform; they say ‘social networking, search and shopping’, or more likely, ‘Facebook, Google and Amazon.’ Services like social networking, instant messaging and online marketplaces don’t have to be entrusted into the hands of these companies – they could be distributed and/or federated systems like the lower layers of the Internet, where there isn’t a ‘choke point’ that allows a single entity to control them. There are even existing standards for many of these functions, but they haven’t succeeded. Sometimes, that’s because they weren’t capable enough, or able to evolve quickly enough (see Moxie’s great talk about this), or because someone used market power to shift power away from an open solution that didn’t fit their business model (Google Reader, anyone?). With this in mind, I’ve been watching the investigations of the competition issues surrounding big tech platforms around the world with great interest. It seems to me that an obvious remedy to a concentration of power is to distribute that power by requiring market participants to use open interoperability standards, and competition regulators have the power to force the issue. This won’t solve all problems with the big platforms, of course, but it’s a great start. Lots of people seem to agree; if you have some reading time, browse through papers from folks like Chris Riley, Peter Swire, the Internet Society, Kerber & Schweitzer, Ian Brown, Kades & Scott Morton, and Chinmayi Sharma - to name just a few. However, establishing good standards isn’t easy. Balancing different stakeholders’ views, broadness of applicability, implementation concerns, security and privacy, interoperability, and the need to actually ship something is difficult even when everyone gets along. Additionally, the outcome needs to be legitimate on the same scale that the Internet is – globally. As we’ll see, that’s an aspect that requires very careful management. Over the years, the Internet community has evolved a set of institutions and associated architectural principles to embody these tradeoffs. It’s not that every Internet or Web specification has to go through the W3C or the IETF, or that every standard that these bodies produce is successful (far from it). What these bodies provide is an ever-growing knowledge and experience of what not to do, both technically and organisationally, when you’re creating technical standards for the Internet. In this context, I found two recent announcements about competition efforts to reign in big tech both interesting and concerning. The CMA and the Privacy Sandbox The saga of Google’s Privacy Sandbox and the UK Competition and Market Authority’s investigation into its competition impact deserves a paper of its own, but I want to focus on the CMA’s announcement last week. In a nutshell, Google’s efforts to improve privacy by removing support for third-party cookies in Chrome have attracted the CMA’s attention, because doing so can be seen to give Google an upper hand in the advertising and publishing markets, since Google will retain access to first-party tracking information. Last week’s announcement stated that Google had made some commitments to the CMA regarding how it would develop the Privacy Sandbox. Update: The EU has opened a similar investigation. The CMA’s concerns about the impact of these changes on those markets are entirely reasonable, and some parts of the Privacy Sandbox are dubious at best (e.g., see Mozilla’s assessment of FLoC). However, the Privacy Sandbox also includes functions like: - Removing third-party cookies: just like Firefox, Safari and Brave are doing, with support extending from the very first Cookie standard through to the most recent revision. - Combatting fingerprinting: just like Firefox, Safari and Brave are doing, with broad support over multiple years in Web standards. - Privacy proxies: just like Firefox and Apple are working on, with relevant standardisation activity in the IETF MASQUE Working Group among other places. These functions – which many consider to be normal or even critical browser functions – are now subject to approval by the UK’s competition regulator, at least in the most popular Web browser. By extracting commitments from Google regarding how they build Chrome, the CMA has quietly inserted itself as a ‘silent partner’ to Google. Most significantly, Google is now required to give the CMA 60 days notice before removing third-party cookies from the browser, even though other browsers have done so long ago. What’s concerning is that the CMA is creating what’s effectively a parallel process to what standards go through, but substituting its own judgement and perspective. The outcomes will be solely dictated by the CMA and the ICO, based upon consultations with those parties that they choose, and supported by British values and a British sense of what ‘privacy’ means and its priority relative to the advertising ecosystem. Whether they get it right for the rest of the world is anybody’s guess; they have a very specific set of goals and incentives which are radically different than those that brought us the Internet and the Web. Of course, just like other software vendors, browsers have to conform to the legal requirements in the various jurisdictions that they have a market in. This intervention is also fairly ‘light’; they’re not yet telling Google what it must do. So when I saw the news of these commitments, I was concerned for the reasons above, but not yet alarmed. What happened next took care of that. The ACCESS Act 2021 One of the five US bills to designed to rein in big tech that have been getting a lot of press recently is the ACCESS Act 2021. This bill requires designated platforms (likely candidates would be Google, Facebook and Amazon) to conform to interoperability standards set by new a new committee run by the FTC. If it passes, the APIs that define the next layer of the Internet will not be based upon broad community input, review, or participation. Instead, the FTC will hand-pick the participants at its pleasure, and will retain change control over the APIs.. Even if the right mix of people gets onto the committee, its role is explicitly ‘advisory’. Documentation for those APIs is only supplied to ‘competing businesses or potential competing businesses.’ There’s no guarantee they’ll be public. To be clear, I’m super-happy that Lina Khan is now the FTC Chair. Some big platform heads need kicking, and her boots are laced. That said, technical standards defined to force interoperability on big tech will inevitably become the de facto standards for the industries that they’re established within, potentially lasting far longer than the companies they’re designed to hobble (if they do their jobs well). That effectively makes the FTC a new Internet governance institution. Where is this taking us? While these developments might be appropriate in the context of domestic competition law, they could have significant negative effects on the Internet overall. I’m concerned about two possible effects: fragmentation and ossification. Fragmentation Creating government-set standards for Internet functions will inevitably lead other governments to decide that their priorities are different, or that they just don’t find someone else’s standards palatable. For example, the EU could decide that the UK got the wrong end of the stick on the Privacy Sandbox, or Brazil could decide that the US standards for social networking aren’t for it. That, in turn, would increase the pressure towards fragmentation, and the corresponding diminishment of the enormous benefits that the Internet has for global society and trade. Google will have to figure out whether to have a UK version of Chrome, or try to force the UK’s approach to privacy and advertising on everyone else. Facebook will be faced with the possibility of supporting different APIs in different countries – which will probably suit them fine, because it will help prevent a large rival from being established. The risks of fragmentation have been widely recognised for some time, and as a result, governments all over the world have agreed that the best way to govern the Internet is with a ‘multistakeholder’ model that places responsibility for technical standardisation firmly in the hands of community-led, industry-backed organisations. For example, in 2017 the G20 (including the UK and US) said that they were Reaffirming the principle in the G20 Digital Economy Development and Cooperation Initiative commitment to a multistakeholder approach to Internet governance, which includes full and active participation by governments, private sector, civil society, the technical community, and international organisations, in their respective roles and responsibilities. We support multistakeholder processes and initiatives which are inclusive, transparent and accountable to all stakeholders in achieving the digitally connected world. And, they can be viewed as bound by treaty to do so; as per the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade s 2.6: With a view to harmonizing technical regulations on as wide a basis as possible, Members shall play a full part, within the limits of their resources, in the preparation by appropriate international standardizing bodies of international standards for products for which they either have adopted, or expect to adopt, technical regulations. I’m not sure if the friction between these developments and their commitments haven’t been recognised, or if it’s just being ignored. However, if the amount of pain and mistrust involved in the IANA transition is any indication, much of the rest of the world is not content to allow the US (or any other rich Western country) solely determine the future of the Internet. Ossification The other risk is creating friction against future, beneficial changes to the Internet. For example, creating an API for Facebook might only serve to cement them (or their business model) into place as the ‘glue’ of social networking, preventing other, more decentralised models from emerging. Likewise, forcing Chrome to accommodate third-party cookies and other forms of tracking to prop up the third-party display advertising industry might prevent a natural and healthy evolution towards other forms of advertising and other means of supporting Web content. In protocol design, we call this ossification – when the ability to evolve is prevented by external factors. Mandated support for specific technical specifications or features combined with the market power that is being targeted is a dangerous brew. To put it another way: if we leave the definition of the Internet to the US Federal Trade Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority, we shouldn’t be surprised if the result is focused on companies and competition, rather than people and cooperation. Companies have a huge part to play in the Internet, but it doesn’t mean we should delegate all functions to them, especially when significant advances are being made in decentralisation. What’s the alternative? All of this raises the question: can these standards be defined within the multistakeholder system? To put it another way, are the IETF and W3C fit for this purpose? It’s a good question. These bodies are set up for voluntary, not mandatory standards, and the spectre of mandatory implementation for some parties has a huge distorting effect. As someone who’s been involved in Internet and Web standardisation for more than twenty years, I’m not sure how it would go, and there are a lot of hard questions that would need to be answered. Still, in some cases there are existing solutions that could be adapted as the basis for interoperability standards (e.g., ActivityStreams for social networking). In other cases, the threat of regulation might change power dynamics enough to produce meaningful change. For example, browsers haven’t had a strong incentive to align how they handle third-party cookies to date, but that might change if the CMA, ICO and other interested regulators made their preferences known. Beyond their standardisation processes, these organisations have pools of deeply experienced engineers who have thought about the issues involved in many relevant areas for a long time. By looking only through the lens of ‘what big companies do I need to talk to?’, the regulators miss out on valuable alternative perspectives. However, we may not find out how much these bodies could bring to the table: apparently, many of the relevant decision-makers consider these institutions to be compromised by big tech companies. I think that’s a simplistic view of two complex organisations who have many participants with different incentives and goals. That said, this view can’t be dismissed out of hand; big tech companies clearly have significant power inside standards organisations as well as in the market, and multistakeholderism may be unstable ground for legitimacy on its own. So, I think that these governance institutions need to do some introspection – to find how they can maintain (or build) legitimacy and trust, so that bodies like the CMA and FTC can plausibly defer to their open, community-based global processes for technical standardisation. If that isn’t possible, buckle up: the way the Internet is standardised is going to change a lot, and it’s not at all clear where we’ll end up. Read the full article

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babymilkaction · 4 years ago

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Why the Nutrition for Growth Initiative is a threat to child health.

Powerpoint presentations:

N4G GBC (2)

Multistakeholder power

Why the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) global pledging initiative is a threat to child health

– how industry infiltrates the baby food policy space.

“At a time when poverty rates, economic disparity, conflicts and hunger are rising, N4G promotes short term treatment models again, with little attempt to create real sustainable changes in food systems. The N4G fails to recognise that the agro-industrial model bears much of the blame for the climate crisis and poor diets. Its reliance on market-led approaches and export-oriented trade of ultra-processed products inevitably leads to increased deforestation, land-grabbing, mono-cropping etc.

With the 40th Anniversary of the International Code on the 21st May coming up, yet another corporate-inspired initiative, Nutrition for Growth (N4G) threatens to undermine national governments attempts to regulate and prevent harmful marketing.

N4G describes itself as a “global effort to bring together country governments, donors and philanthropies, businesses, NGOs and beyond.” in a “rare opportunity to accelerate progress on malnutrition.”

Yet behind its glossy appearance, is hidden a plan for increased involvement and influence of food and agri-business in national health policy setting. In the case of infant and young child feeding N4G is especially dangerous.

Page 11 of the April 21 version of the N4G Commitment Guide shows a model Commitment for all to follow: (click here for N4G website)

Table 1: Examples of SMART Commitments.

The Responsible Party for Policy is: Ministry of Health, Ministry of Women and Social Affairs, Ministry of Education, with input from National Industry Associations.

The Responsible Party for Programmes is: Donor or philanthropic organization in partnership with local civil society organizations.

We are grateful to WHO, UNICEF and others for persuading the Government of Japan to exclude individual companies from the event. However, food Business Associations will be invited including those who represent and lobby for companies that market products covered by the code (breastmilk substitutes, complementary foods, ingredients, feeding equipment, milks for mothers, food supplements, therapeutic or other products marketed in ways that undermine breastfeeding etc. )

There is no mention of how these companies undermine health and the environment by promoting the consumption of ultra-processed high sugar/salt foods. (1,2) Civil society’s role is confined to being a partner to Donors in the implementation.

The intention is clearly to blur the identities of corporate members while increasing their influence in the shaping of and implementation of national policies. This would be dangerous for all food sectors but in the Infant and Young Child Feeding arena it is disastrous.

This would cover the marketing of foods for infants and young children, including the high-sugar Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTFs) and supplements. IBFAN is not saying that the products are never useful – they can be important if there is no other option. However it is critically important that their use and distribution is not commercially influenced. We know that the baby food industry is eager to partner with humanitarian agencies to deliver them and IBFAN is working to ensure that they are not sold on the open market or promoted with claims or other methods.

We can only conclude that fundraising is N4G’s secondary motive. The main one is to provide image transfer opportunities for food industry associations so that they can sit by the side with the governments when nutrition policies are made – this is a long-term financial benefit to industry worth far more than any donation.

Interesting that on a global level the International Special Dietary Foods Association (ISDI) that represents the baby food industry in 20 countries lost its Official Relations status with WHO in 2013

There is no evidence that the N4G strategies will bring sustainable benefits to the people most affected by hunger and malnutrition. Indeed our 3-country study on Scaling Up Nutrition, When the SUN Casts a Shadow, led us to the same conclusions. While many organisations have joined SUN in order to protect child health, IBFAN believes that averting the underlying risks of such initiatives is a relevant contribution to protect children in long term. Among other things the study found that SUN:

promotes nutrition approaches that favor short-term medicalized and technical solutions;

promotes intensive agriculture and technologies such as biofortification that benefit food and agro-industry;

neglects the commerciogenic causes of malnutrition (under and over nutrition) and its focus on market-led approaches to food fortification can undermine confidence in breastfeeding and sustainable, culturally appropriate local foods;

has limited impact on reducing malnutrition through its interventions, while carrying negative implications for human rights;

enhanced private sector access to and influence on nutrition policy setting in line with the World Economic Forum’s model outlined in its Global Redesign Initiative;

attempts to generate the illusion of a broad and inclusive people’s ‘movement’ but is in fact a public-private hybrid which legitimizes more corporate influence in public affairs;

fails to meaningfully address the concerns of communities most affected by hunger and malnutrition and undermines the efforts of those calling for effective conflict of interest regulations.

N4G is one of number of initiatives has sprung up over the years that fit well into the World Economic Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative plan. SUN GMM BMS Call to Action, Access to Nutrition Power of Nutrition. Many have been funded by the Gates Foundation and many promote the idea that market-led approaches and private sector funding is the answer to the world’s nutrition problems. N4G criteria, follow the faulty Conflict of Interest rules used by SUN, WHO’s FENSA, the BMS Call to Action and Access to Nutrition Index ATNI does commercially biased monitoring. Its methodology and presentation of results integrates the ‘perspectives and expertise of companies, CSOs and investors.’”

Further observations:

IBFAN expects that baby food industry will use very weak Para 3.5.1.d of the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Food Food Systems and Nutrition (VGFSyN) as an ‘entry ticket’ to many of these initiatives. This paragraph fails to refer to the Resolutions or the need for regulations. It also calls on everything to be ‘”in line with [existing] national legislations”, so undermining the need for new or stronger laws. SUN and N4G are both footnoted in the VGFSyN Guidelines. The Civil Society and indigenous People’s Mechanism has decided to reject the guidelines.

Harmful businesses will benefit in many ways through their association with the UN, N4G and the relief of hunger. As GAIN’s Director, Lawrence Haddad described in his global appeal for food industry funding: “The benefit to corporates would be threefold, say those behind the fund. Firstly, contributing firms would be more attractive to the growing band of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investors. Second, it would increase the bottom line – studies show that strong corporate social responsibility adds to return on assets after the first two to three years. Third, it would give employees a greater sense of purpose. Younger employees in particular are looking to reward companies that display a greater sense of social mission. They are looking for increased meaning in their work.”

IBFAN is appealing to everyone involved in maternal and child health to be aware of these often overlooked risks and not to promote these initiatives.

(1) BIG FOOD in BMJ. (2) UPF_ultra-processed_food_fact_sheet

Why the Nutrition for Growth Initiative is a threat to child health. was originally published on Baby Milk Action

#breastfeeding #infant formula #Nestle

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csrgood · 4 years ago

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Imaflora Research in Partnership With General Mills Reveals That Sustainable Agricultural Techniques Position Popcorn Maize Production in Mato Grosso Among the Ten Most Efficient in the World

An unprecedented study conducted by Imaflora in partnership with General Mills, the food industry that owns the brands Yoki, Kitano, Häagen-Dazs, Mais Vita, Betty Crocker and Carolina, and carried out through its philanthropic foundation, revealed that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in popcorn maize production in Brazil is about 70% lower than the global average. The finding is from an analysis conducted in the municipality of Campo Novo do Parecis, Mato Grosso, the region where the largest production of popcorn maize in the country is located.

In the world, the average GHG emissions to produce corn is estimated at 1.7 tCO2e per ton of product, to which emissions from the farm contribute almost 50% or 0.81 tCO2e per ton of grain produced (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). Based on the estimates found in the study, the emissions from popcorn maize produced in Campo Novo do Parecis are potentially among the ten most efficient global corn production systems, registering around 0.25 tCO2e in greenhouse gas emissions per ton of product.

The research entitled “The system for producing white corn and popcorn: an estimate of carbon and GHG stocks”, also finds that direct planting (DP) and livestock crop integration (LCI) has the potential to maintain carbon stocks in the soil at the same levels as native vegetation. However, for some areas, more diversified and long-term crop rotation is necessary.

For this to occur efficiently, it is essential to adopt and maintain improved agricultural management and soil conservation practices. “On average, 70% of General Mills' popcorn production takes place in Campo Novo do Parecis. In partnership with producers, the company, which is responsible for 36% of the production of popcorn maize in the country, constantly develops techniques and research to improve cultivation, support local production and deliver a quality product to the final consumer. In addition, it studies scenarios with a commitment to ensuring sustainability, always thinking about all the links in its chain ”, says Franciele Caixeta, General Mills' R&D coordinator for Latin America.

The General Mills Foundation has been on a journey to make a difference through Regenerative Agriculture and to advance practices on 1 million acres of agricultural land by the year 2030, intentionally protecting and improving natural resources and agricultural communities.

Other results

For Ciniro Costa Junior, project coordinator at Imaflora, “the scaling of systems of direct planting and the integration of livestock farming in degraded pasture areas, only in Mato Grosso, would sequester about 300 million tons of carbon in the soil (or 1,100 MtCO2e) ”. This corresponds to almost 120% of the total emission reductions promised by Brazil in the Paris Agreement in the year 2030 (925 MtCO2e).

The analyzes also suggest that maintaining or expanding direct planting and, especially, the integration of crops and livestock in degraded soils in the region of Mato Grosso is an important strategy to comply with food production in the future and reduce the country's GHG emissions.

According to Imaflora, degraded pasture areas are a point of attention, but also of opportunities. These areas significantly reduce carbon stocks in the soil when compared to native vegetation, while direct planting and livestock crop integration have the potential to maintain original levels. "If production systems are improved to sequester carbon in soils even more efficiently, the cultivation of popcorn can potentially become a GHG sink, especially in degraded pasture areas," recalls Costa Junior.

In Brazil, about 60 million hectares of pasture, 10 million of which are located in the state of Mato Grosso, may be under some type of degradation and, therefore, inefficient from an agricultural point of view.

Efficiency to producers

A second phase of the project between General Mills and Imaflora has already commenced. “The objective now is to provide producers with information and practical guidance so that they become even more efficient. We are initiating these mentorships through webinars bringing as central themes of the discussions good agricultural practices in the production of grains and economic incentives for the production of sustainable agriculture ”, reinforces Franciele. In total, seven producers in Mato Grosso participate in the first stage of the project.

About General Mills

General Mills is a leading global food company whose purpose is to make food the world loves. Its brands include Cheerios, Annie's, Yoplait, Nature Valley, Häagen-Dazs, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, Wanchai Ferry, Yoki, BLUE and more. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, General Mills generated fiscal 2019 net sales of U.S. $16.9 billion. In addition, General Mills’ share of non-consolidated joint venture net sales totaled U.S. $1.0 billion.

About Imaflora

IMAFLORA (Institute of Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification) is a Brazilian non-profit organization that has been working in Brazil for over 20 years to improve the transparency and socio-environmental performance of agricultural and forestry value chains in order to promote conservation and sustainable use of natural resources, generate social benefits and avoid the effects of climate change. From traditional Amazonian communities to large-scale beef and soy production in the state of Mato Grosso, Imaflora supports a multistakeholder model and uses robust standards to encourage sustainable land use; contribute to the formulation, implementation and monitoring of public policies; facilitate dialogue between companies, communities and the public sector; and support in the development and implementation of certification systems with environmental credibility (for example, FSC and Rainforest Alliance).

source: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/45817-Imaflora-Research-in-Partnership-With-General-Mills-Reveals-That-Sustainable-Agricultural-Techniques-Position-Popcorn-Maize-Production-in-Mato-Grosso-Among-the-Ten-Most-Efficient-in-the-World?tracking_source=rss

#CSR #corporate social responsibility #social good #philanthropy #employee engagement #workplace givi

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khalilhumam · 4 years ago

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The evolution of the EITI and next steps for tackling extractive industries corruption

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/the-evolution-of-the-eiti-and-next-steps-for-tackling-extractive-industries-corruption/

The evolution of the EITI and next steps for tackling extractive industries corruption

By Kelsey Landau, Victoria Bassetti Since 2002, one of the highest-profile efforts to increase natural resource transparency in resource-rich countries has been the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a multistakeholder initiative consisting of countries, companies, and civil society organizations. Any attempt to grapple with issues of transparency, governance, and anti-corruption in the natural resource sector must proceed with an understanding of the groundwork laid by the organization and the lessons learned from its experiences. As the EITI nears its 20-year anniversary, the time is ripe to analyze evidence surrounding EITI’s successes in opening up extractive industries data, along with its shortcomings—and its potential. Charting the EITI’s evolution and journey through the mechanisms of transparency, accountability, and participation can illustrate the ways in which truly effective natural resource governance can take root. Today, the governments of 53 countries commit themselves to implementing the set of disclosure requirements known as the EITI Standard. (While the Obama administration committed the United States to EITI implementation in 2011, the Trump administration withdrew the country from the initiative in 2017.) While the EITI’s original focus was on transparency in revenue collection, the Standard has expanded to cover a wide variety of resource-related data, including contracts with extractive companies, data on resource production, and extractives-related employment numbers. In other words, the Standard now encompasses much of the natural resource value chain, the sequence of resource governance decisions beginning with the decision to extract a resource and ending with government spending of resource-derived revenues. To date, $2.64 trillion in natural resource revenues have been disclosed by EITI-implementing countries. The EITI was launched after academics in the 1990s and early 2000s began to note that large endowments of natural resources, far from ensuring a country’s economic future and the well-being of all its citizens—as had been suggested by previous theories of development economics—in fact served to undermine economic growth and corrode institutions. At the same time, governments the world over were making deals with oil, gas, and mining companies that purportedly required that some of the revenue be returned to the state in the form of royalties, taxes, and other proceeds. These windfalls could have been the basis for a significant improvement in the material lives of these states’ citizens. But, too often, they were not. Efforts to discover where of all the money was going had been stymied, with little information regarding how that money was spent—or indeed, even how much governments received from extractive projects—made publicly available. This opacity limited people’s ability to gauge whether their governments were using the resource wealth to benefit all citizens—who exercise sovereign rights to their countries’ resource endowments under international law—and so in turn inhibited their ability to hold their governments to account. At least, that was the theory when the EITI was founded in 2002: that a flood of data about the money would unleash a wave of citizen engagement, which in turn would drive down corruption and improve development outcomes. But reality is far more complicated, and mechanisms beyond transparency are needed to more fully effect change. Research has shown that while transparency is an important precondition for fostering accountability and ultimately reducing corruption, it is not, by itself, sufficient to promote change. For example, a recent success stemming from EITI’s transparency model demonstrates that its disclosure regime is often only the first link in a chain leading to reduced corruption. In 2017, the nonprofit investigative organization Global Witness analyzed the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s 2014 EITI report. It found discrepancies which showed that the mining conglomerate Glencore may have paid more than $75 million between 2013 and 2016 to Dan Gertler, a businessman previously accused of bribing senior officials there. Spurred on by these and numerous other accusations of corruption, the United States imposed sanctions on Gertler in 2017. Those sanctions, in turn, may have prompted the then-president of the DRC, Joseph Kabila, to not run for reelection. The EITI, as this example illustrates, is largely reliant on others—including “infomediaries,” such as journalists and civil society organizations—to translate technical information (which includes all resource-related disclosures) for a general audience. This, in turn, helps foster the participatory civic engagement that is critical to promoting accountability. From the EITI’s inception to the present, transparency has been at the core of the its work, while participatory and accountability mechanisms were often weak or absent. To be sure, the EITI’s model requires all implementing countries to form multistakeholder groups (MSGs) consisting of representatives from government, industry, and civil society to oversee EITI implementation and thereby to presumably foster participation. But many MSGs are not representative of society as a whole, and (with a few exceptions), only operate at the national level, leaving critical stakeholders at the regional and city levels out of the discussion. Moreover, the EITI has been criticized for prioritizing the release of data and diminishing the decisionmaking authority of national MSGs. As a result, while some MSGs have become “legitimate arenas for dialogue,” in other places they often prove less able to impact decisions or prompt policy changes that are responsive to their concerns. What participatory efforts like MSGs can miss—and what is increasingly recognized by academics and practitioners as a critical part of the picture—is an intentional focus on accountability mechanisms. Pioneering work by Jonathan Fox has argued in favor of a “sandwich strategy” to foster social accountability, which requires an opening from above in the form of commitment by reformists with power over policy implementation along with more traditional citizen engagement efforts that push from below. The mutually reinforcing mechanisms of the sandwich strategy can both strengthen citizen participation efforts and create accessible and responsive institutions. Of course, a key challenge of the sandwich strategy involves the difficulty of finding powerful policymakers willing to engage with transparency and participatory efforts. Here, one useful tactic is to remove the roadblocks that can inhibit pro-reform policymakers. A requirement first introduced in the 2016 EITI standard could be of use in tackling this challenge: the mandatory disclosure of beneficial ownership information beginning in 2020. Beneficial owners (i.e., the real owners or those who benefit from the profits) of extractive companies often hide behind shell companies and other “unaccountable corporate entities,” making it impossible to tell if the real owners are, in fact, government officials themselves. These “politically exposed persons,” as they are known, are fundamentally unable to serve in the role of reformists committed to effective governance in natural resource management, since their personal interests override common interests. Furthermore, murky ownership schemes can fuel perceptions of corruption and trigger citizens to lose confidence in government institutions. While beneficial ownership disclosures are also unlikely to be a panacea for fostering top-down accountability efforts, they will greatly assist in the identification of those government officials who can never serve that role. Evidence to date suggests that a bundled approach of transparency, accountability, and participatory (TAP) mechanisms is most effective in promoting effective governance—of natural resources and beyond. (Indeed, the EITI itself acknowledges that implementing the Standard is “not a silver bullet to solve all corruption issues,” but instead can be a “tool to identify and address weaknesses” in natural resource management.) Bottom-up citizen engagement efforts rely on transparency in policy, actions, and expenditure, so that citizens are aware of government officials’ actions and can work to hold them to account. Avenues for citizens to participate in the policy process and express their concerns to government officials further this work, and receptive, accountable policymakers committed to reform are indispensable for responding effectively to citizen concerns. The Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption (LTRC) project adds another hypothesis to this TAP troika: that careful attention to contextual factors; consideration of the implementation gap within TAP programs; and attention to natural resource-specific complementary institutions, structures, and programs that are likely to significantly interact with TAP interventions are needed to have a greater chance of success. (See here and here for more on the “TAP-Plus” hypothesis and the pilot studies we are undertaking to test it). The EITI has achieved successes in producing high-quality open data across the natural resource value chain in implementing countries. Now, it is time to test new strategies by developing country-adapted and evidence-informed strategies to address corruption and to achieve sustainable development goals. Research and editing assistance from Joseph Glandorf. Editing assistance from Robin Lewis.

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cristinagooge · 5 years ago

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The governments of Canada and Quebec and the international community join forces to advance the responsible development of artificial intelligence

From: Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

News release

The evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) represents one of the greatest technological transformations of our age. AI is radically changing the way people live, work and play. International and multistakeholder collaboration are critical to the responsible use and development of AI based on shared values such as human rights, diversity, inclusion, innovation, and economic growth for all.

June 15, 2020 – Ottawa, Ontario, and Québec, Quebec

In this spirit, the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, along with representatives of the 14 other founding members of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), today announced the official launch of this initiative.

In the wake of this international launch, the Government of Canada is also joining with the Government of Quebec to advance the responsible development of AI. Minister Bains, along with Nadine Girault, Quebec's Minister of International Relations and La Francophonie, announced the opening of the International Centre of Expertise in Montréal for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (ICEMAI) as well as the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) under GPAI.

GPAI will facilitate international and multistakeholder collaboration by bringing together experts from industry, civil society, governments, and academia. It will conduct activities across four themes, including two supported by the Montréal Centre of Expertise: Responsible AI and Data Governance. A corresponding Centre of Excellence in Paris will support the other two themes: Future of Work and Innovation & Commercialization. In light of the current pandemic, GPAI will also investigate how AI can be leveraged to respond to and recover from COVID-19. Several Canadian experts will contribute to the cutting-edge research and activities of GPAI's Working Groups on these themes, including Yoshua Bengio, Founder and Scientific Director of the Mila research institute in artificial intelligence, who will co-chair the Working Group on Responsible AI.

International Centre of Expertise in Montréal for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

The ICEMAI, whose creation is being led by Montréal International, will be one of GPAI's two international Centres of Expertise, along with the Paris Centre of Expertise. The Centres will work closely with the GPAI Secretariat, which will be hosted at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In addition to its thematic work, the ICEMAI will also plan the first annual GPAI Multistakeholder Experts Group Plenary, to be held in Montréal in December 2020.

The ICEMAI will work with the Government of Canada's Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence, Forum IA Québec, and the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies, as well as with experts from Quebec, Canada, and around the world to strengthen innovation and the commercialization of AI technologies.

Signing of a memorandum of understanding on GPAI

Ministers Bains and Girault also made public a MOU between the governments of Canada and Quebec on GPAI. Modelled on the Canada-Quebec Agreement on UNESCO, the MOU is the result of excellent cooperation between the two governments. It will enable Quebec to highlight the important role of its AI ecosystem, specifically in the area of responsible development of AI, and to take its place internationally as an essential partner and subject-matter expert. As an active participant in Canada's activities in GPAI, Quebec will be able to advance its scientific perspectives and recommend experts to GPAI's Working Groups.

The MOU will also allow Quebec to participate in GPAI-related activities. The governments of Canada and Quebec will continue to involve and closely collaborate with other provincial and territorial governments to ensure Canada's work draws from the strong expertise in AI found from coast to coast.

Beginning in 2018, the governments of Canada and Quebec recognized the importance of these international developments. In March 2018, the Government of Quebec announced a $5-million grant to set up an international AI organization in Montréal or attract one to the city. The federal government had previously committed to investing up to $10 million over five years to support the Montréal Centre of Expertise and GPAI. The total amount of the investment will be up to $15 million over five years.

Quotes

"In launching GPAI, the Government of Canada recognizes the need for the responsible development of AI. This builds on our Government's Pan-Canadian AI strategy to advance AI research and promote collaboration. Our partnership with Quebec in this area will help us ensure that AI benefits Canadians in an equitable and socially responsible way. By connecting the work of GPAI with the technological innovations of Montréal's AI sector and by establishing partnerships with the provinces and territories, we will produce useful research and expertise for governments around the world." — The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

"Quebec, and particularly the Montréal metropolitan area, is world-renowned in artificial intelligence research. The large university community, distinguished researchers, innovative companies, and numerous public and private investments in this rapidly growing ecosystem make it a trusted and recognized leader. The recent signing of the memorandum of understanding between the governments of Quebec and Canada sets out Quebec's role within the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence and demonstrates Quebec's indisputable leadership in the responsible development of AI. The Government of Quebec, working with the federal government and GPAI member states, will actively contribute to the advancement of AI to benefit humanity. Today, I am pleased to announce the opening of the International Centre of Expertise in Montréal for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, which will play a key role in GPAI." — Nadine Girault, Minister of International Relations and La Francophonie

Quick facts

In March 2018, Quebec announced a $5-million grant to support the creation of an international artificial intelligence organization in Montréal or to attract one to the city.

Canada and France, along with a number of international partners, have been working together since June 2018, including through Canada and France's G7 presidencies, to develop and launch GPAI.

GPAI is an excellent example of Canada's leadership and its commitment to multilateral cooperation, consistent with Canada's pillar of "strengthening multilateralism" in its platform for the United Nations Security Council.

GPAI brings together countries and experts across disciplines and from various stakeholder groups, including industry, civil society, governments, and academia. GPAI will support the development and use of AI based on human rights, inclusion, diversity, innovation, and economic growth, while seeking to address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The two Centres of Expertise will support the thematic work of GPAI discussed at the 2019 G7 Leaders' Summit and endorsed in the 2020 G7 Science and Technology Ministers' Declaration on COVID-19.

Canada has a thriving AI ecosystem composed of more than 850 start-up companies, 20 public research labs, 75 incubators and accelerators, and 60 groups of investors from across the country, grouped in major hubs such as Montréal, Toronto, Waterloo, Edmonton, and Vancouver.

Canada's AI ecosystem is attracting increased investment in start-ups, incubators, and research institutes. The Montréal Centre of Expertise will also benefit from significant investments in AI in Canada and Quebec. In addition to receiving more than $900 million in foreign direct investment since 2017, the Montréal AI ecosystem has benefited from nearly $1 billion in public funds, both from federal and Quebec initiatives. Of this funding, $40 million comes from the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, while $230 million comes from the Innovation Superclusters Initiative that gave rise to the Montréal SCALE.AI Supercluster, which is focused on supply chains and SMEs. Over the next 10 years, these investments are expected to contribute $16.5 billion to Canada's GDP and help create over 16,000 jobs.

GPAI (formerly the International Panel on Artificial Intelligence) was discussed in December 2018 at the G7 Multistakeholder Conference on Artificial Intelligence, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Minister Bains and Mounir Mahjoubi, France's former Minister of State for the Digital Sector, announced its mandate. In May 2019, GPAI's organizational structure was made public at the end of the informal meeting of G7 digital ministers.

The creation of GPAI is a key element of the Canada-France Statement on Artificial Intelligence and is in line with the roadmap adopted by the Premier of Quebec and the Prime Minister of France at their 20th Alternating Meeting.

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vsplusonline · 5 years ago

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MeitY gets a blockchain plan

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/meity-gets-a-blockchain-plan/

MeitY gets a blockchain plan

Mumbai: The National Institute for Smart Governance (NISG), a publicprivate body promoted by the Centre and software industry lobby Nasscom among others, has recommended that laws and regulations should be based on the functions performed by technologies such as blockchain and not on the technology itself.

It made the recommendation in the draft national strategy on blockchain policy that had sought comments and suggestions from stakeholders.

BCCL

The National e-Governance Division (NeGD), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), had in July 2019 tasked NISG with preparing the policy.

The policy document also suggests the kind of regulatory approach the government could adopt. Policy and regulations should be clear before enforcement, it said.

“Public statements, whether through the press or formal speeches, are helpful but are not official statements of application by the agency. If an agency intends to enforce its laws in new and innovative ways, it must first notify industry stakeholders of its intent to do so and the way in which existing law applies,” it said.

Stakeholders said that the suggestion was made following the experiences of cryptocurrency startups which are currently using peer-to-peer models due to a restriction on the use of banking channels to trade in cryptocurrency.

The policy paper also recommends the establishment of an office/body to coordinate blockchain strategy across various state bodies. “Given the multi-tiered and multistakeholder structure of regulation, a coordinated approach across departments and sectors is necessary. Not only would this office work to determine applications of blockchain that could cut costs for taxpayers, it could also provide a gateway for entrepreneurs to best understand the laws surrounding blockchain and virtual currencies,” the NISG said.

The NISG said it would conduct stakeholders meetings in collaboration with NeGD across some Indian cities to define the ecosystem for the technology in India.

The policy states that there is a lack of regulatory clarity and not enough awareness in the government on the technology, but the suggestion to set the policy at a national level may not work in case of cryptocurrency regulation, said Tanvi Ratna, CEO, Policy 4.0, a global policy and regulatory advisory firm, commenting on the draft.

“We have seen with all regulatory evolution with the internet era as well that states, if given the space to innovate and compete for talent and growth, can often devise very different approaches. This is definitely the case in the US where states like California, Delaware and New York have usually been well ahead of the federal government and it is also the case in India where states like Karnataka, Andhra, Telangana have often pioneered policy models that get adopted at national levels,” Ratna said.

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jacobhinkley · 6 years ago

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Regulations Round-Up: Central Bank-Issued Digital Currencies, Regulatory Clarity

In recent regulatory news, Spain’s Central bank has issued a report favoring the development of a central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC), the president of Taiwan’s central bank has advocated caution regarding CBDCs, the Blockchain Research Institute has published a summary of recent roundtable discussions calling for great regulatory clarity, and a Russian court has a warned a publishing company for breaching advertising legislation with an ad pertaining to cryptocurrencies.

Also Read: Brazil’s Pro Bitcoin Presidential Candidate: É Boa Pra Caramba!

Spanish Central Bank Report Favors Central Bank-Issued Digital Currency

Spain’s central bank, Banco de Espana, recently published a report that seeks to consider the potential impacts that cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology may have upon the Spanish economy.

The report advocates that the introduction of a central bank-issued digital currency would allow Banco de Espana to more efficiently implement monetary policy, stating: “An argument that could be considered at the time of assessing the introduction of CBDC is related to the improvement in the conduction of monetary policy through a better control in the market returns that savers and borrowers have to face. Also, the possibility of eliminating the restrictions associated with the zero level of the interest rate is theoretically attractive, especially in an environment of low interest rates such as the current one.”

Taiwan Central Bank President Advocates Caution Regarding CBDCs

By contrast, the president of Taiwan’s central bank, Yang Jinlong, recently advocated that financial institutions adopt a cautious approach regarding the central bank-issued digital currency.

During the Finance Technology Ecology Summit, Mr. Jinlong stated: “The financial authorities should be cautious about issuing central bank digital currency (CBDC). We will continue to pay attention to this issue, as well as the development of virtual currency, which may also drive out the debating topic of whether the central bank should issue CBDC. At present, the international consensus towards CBDC is that the general CBDC to the general public should be treated with cautious because of the complexity of issues involved, including the technology, security, policies, and user privacy protection issues.”

DLT Think Tank Advocates for Clarity Regarding Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Regulation

Major distributed ledger technology (DLT) think tank, the Blockchain Research Institute, has published a report calling for increased regulatory clarity regarding DLT and cryptocurrencies.

The report, the “2018 Blockchain Regulation Roundtable,” drew upon discussions involving “executives from blockchain start-ups,” “senior representatives of various global banking and securities regulators,” “senior non-regulatory government officials,” “business leaders from various established industries that are experimenting with blockchain in their business models and practices,” and “lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, and other key industry professionals.”

The report emphasized four “core issues” pertaining to regulations that it calls to be addressed: “The lack of regulatory clarity, the obsolescence of statutes and regulations, the lack of a mechanism for meaningful dialogue between regulators and other stakeholders, and the lack of dialogue between financial service providers and blockchain entrepreneurs.”

The report makes six key recommendations, advocating that the roundtable participants “form a multistakeholder action committee, prepare all stakeholders and the public for self-sovereign identities and pass legislation to recognize digital identities as valid, institute a national regulator with oversight of the nascent industry rather than allow individual agencies to create their own regulations piecemeal, agree on distinctions among cryptoassets and regulate accordingly, discourage discrimination against blockchain entrepreneurs and support start-ups in the space, and encourage the formation of special interest groups to move governance issues forward across applications and domains.”

Russian Court Warns Publisher for Breaching Advertising Laws With Crypto Ad

The Eleventh Arbitration Court of Appeal in Moscow has warned a publishing company after one of its newspapers published cryptocurrency-related advertising deemed to be in violation of Russian laws.

The dispute involved Unity NK – the company producing the newspaper Unity Nizhnekamsk, The Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (OFAS) for Tatarstan, and the Volga-Vyatka Central Administration of the Central Bank of Russia. The case arose following the discovery of an advertisement in Unity Nizhnekamsk for “Invest[ment] in cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash” and the “Creation and setting up mining farms” by employees of Russia’s central bank – which then appealed to the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service due to concerns that Unity NK had violated advertising legislation.

The Tatarstan OFAS determined that “From the meaning of the content of the above advertising it follows that Blumchen Richard Timurovich [the owner the phone number provided in the advertisement] provided financial services, and not consulting,” and as such, Unity NK should be brought to administrative responsibility due to the ad’s failure to detail the name of the individual offering to provide financial services, as is mandated by Russian advertising legislation.

After initially considering fining Unity NK 50,000 rubles (approximately $738 USD), the court chose just to warn the company instead. “The court of first instance reasonably considered that the application of a fine of 50,000 rubles will be unjustifiably punitive, not corresponding to the gravity of the offense and the degree of guilt of the person brought to justice,” the judge stated. “The warning meets the general constitutional principles of punishment justice, its individualization, proportionality to the constitutionally established goals and protected legitimate interests, and is sufficient to implement the preventive nature of administrative liability measures.”

What is your opinion on central bank-issued digital currencies? Join the discussion in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Wikipedia, Pixabay

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bowsetter · 6 years ago