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Internet companies, stakeholders back energy efficiency

January 31st, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

When Internet giants such as Facebook, Yahoo!, Twitter and Google leave a large carbon footprint, activist stakeholders like Greenpeace are going to notice. Greenpeace has been campaigning on increased energy efficiency in the sector and in 2011 released its report—How dirty is your data?—on the pollution cloud the IT sector was generating.

Greenpeace has “argued that IT companies, by increasing their electricity consumption while avoiding increasing demand for coal, could become a strong force in helping move countries to low-carbon economies”—a position also supported by a variety of multinationals within the ICT realm like AT&T and stakeholders such as the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Taken from “published figures for data-center power consumption and electricity utilities’ reports of their energy sources,” Greenpeace estimated that “Facebook’s reliance on coal” was at 53.2 percent use in its data centers, just below Apple’s 54.5 percent, but “higher than Google’s 34.7 percent.” Twitter’s coal reliance was at 42.5 percent, while Yahoo!’s reliance was at 18.3 percent, the report stated.

Greenpeace launched a massive campaign two year ago to “Unfriend Facebook,” garnering 700,000 supporters, “to lobby the company to change its energy policies,” especially after the social networking giant announced it would open a new data center in Oregon in February 2010. Though the facility was intended to be energy efficient, PacifiCorp was its source of power, which uses coal as its main source of energy.

In October 2011, Facebook announced that it would build a new data center in Lulea, Sweden, “using hydroelectric power for the servers and relying on the local climate to cool the data center for free.”

Facebook has also announced that it will “develop its platform to work more closely with Greenpeace to ‘promote environmental awareness and action’,” and move away from coal, powering its data centers “with clean and renewable energy.” The two organizations came together to publish a joint statement regarding the effort.

“[Facebook] looks forward to a day when our primary energy sources are clean and renewable, and we are working with Greenpeace and others to help bring that day closer,” said Marcy Scott Lynn, of Facebook’s sustainability program. “As an important step, our data center siting policy now states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy.”

For the company’s existing data centers, it will “engage in a dialogue with our utility providers about increasing the supply of clean energy that power Facebook data centers,” in order to make the company less coal-reliant. Through the Open Compute Project, an organization promoting “low-cost, low-energy computing infrastructure,” Facebook, along with Greenpeace, will distribute and promote the results of its “research into energy efficiency.”

“This move sets an example for the industry to follow,” Tzeporah Berman, co-director of Greenpeace’s international climate and energy program, said. “This shift to clean, safe energy choices will help fight global warming and ensure a stronger economy and healthier communities.”

Using Facebook was “particularly effective” for Greenpeace, added Ms. Lynn. “We are excited to work with them to explore new ways in which people can use Facebook to engage and connect on the range of energy issues that matter most to them—from their own energy efficiency to access to cleaner sources of energy.”

In post on January 19, 2012, Google announced that it “has been working on a project to bring” its facilities to “higher standards for environmental management” and that its data centers had “received ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification.” The company claims it is “the first major Internet services company to gain external certification” for its US data centers. Google set some challenging goals for itself and followed through on meeting the key elements required to reach its goals. Some of the improvements Google has implemented are minimizing the “run time and need for maintenance” of its generators, and extending “the lifetime between oil changes” for them. In the process, the company has reduced its oil consumption by 67 percent.

Google has also implemented a system to “handle, package, ship and recycle every single battery” it uses for its servers’ power supply in each data center, ensuring “the safety of the environment” and its workers.

The company states that its decision to be more responsible when it comes to the environment and safety of its workers, it wants “to be the gold standard in environmental and workforce safety, and because we care about the communities where we live and work.”

The Google data centers that have received the dual certification are:

  • The Dalles, Oregon
  • Council Bluffs, Iowa
  • Mayes County, Oklahoma
  • Lenoir, North Carolina
  • Monck’s Corner, South Carolina
  • Douglas County, Georgia

Google intends to pursue certification for its European data centers as well.

As prominent companies within the sector Facebook and Google are setting powerful examples on how technology and sustainability can be paired to move the world toward a less-fossil fuel intense economy.

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Struggle against conflict minerals continues

January 27th, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Despite the recent departure of a main stakeholder from the Kimberley Process—a standard-setting multistakeholder effort to curb the trade in blood diamonds—similar efforts continue to gain traction on the issue of conflict minerals. The European Union is considering action after the U.S. passed legislation to curb the trade, while the private sector and activist stakeholders simultaneously seek ways to sever the connections between mineral trade, warfare and human rights abuses.

But what happens when implementation of legislation and certification schemes at the local levels is stymied by a lack of infrastructure, corruption and political interests? What is to keep multinational corporations from turning to alternative sourcing to avoid the pitfalls of a lack of local capacity? How do these efforts affect local populations and development? And how long do various stakeholders stay engaged in a process when progress is limited?

Almost a decade after the Kimberley Process came into being to curb the trade in diamonds sold to support deadly conflict, stakeholders are still grappling with such questions. Global Witness, which helped drive the creation of the KP, withdrew from the process in December 2011 in frustration over chronic corruption and the continued ability of human rights abusers to bring their product to market through the KP.

As efforts to stem the flow of conflict minerals move towards systemic shifts in the way the trade is managed, the challenges of the KP may seem all too familiar.

Some American companies like Apple, Inc. are looking to stop the sourcing of any minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in order to prevent conflict minerals from reaching its products—the opposite effect U.S. legislators intended with the Dodd-Frank Act. As much as 90 percent of the previous level of DRC exports have ceased as multinationals back away for to avoid running afoul of pending reporting rule associated with the Act. Hewlett-Packard, Inc. has also joined Apple, Inc. in stopping the flow of potential conflict minerals from reaching its products.

The Dodd-Frank Act, which came into being July 2010, requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to force companies to report all minerals, such as tin, gold, and tungsten, used in their products—cell phones, computers, GPS systems—and where those minerals come from, even trace amounts, to prove such minerals were derived from a “conflict free” area of the DRC. Legislators hoped this would pressure DRC rebel groups and other combatants that profit from the trade but has shaken up the international mineral markets.

“If you go from compliance on through, this starts to set up not only nightmare scenarios, but also costly scenarios that make it difficult for companies to ensure an adequate supply of raw materials,” Tom Quaadman, Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, said.

AT&T has criticized the Dodd-Frank as too broad and raising concerns the new requirements “could trip up companies who contract with manufacturers and have little, if any, control or knowledge about the origins of minor amounts of minerals that end up in their products.”

The United Nation’s (UN) Group of Experts stated in a report that the situation has helped further entrench corruption and made the situation worse by leaving many DRC exporters “bereft of their main, or only customers, and therefore incomes.”

In late December 2011, a UN report confirmed that the “crackdown” on conflict minerals has pushed “trade deeper into the hands of criminals and smugglers “including former rebel officials who are now in the Congolese army. The report warns, “(It) appears to have increased the need for fraudulent operators to seek or accept military assistance in their mineral smuggling operations” and suggests a rise in the smuggling of conflict minerals into Rwanda because Rwanda’s reported production is much higher than what industry analysts deem realistically possible.

Several groups, companies and attorneys “have urged the SEC to phase in the new rules over time to help make it easier to comply,” as well as “narrow the scope of the rule” so the corporation won’t have to “track trace amounts of minerals.” However, human rights groups oppose a “phase-in” period and state that the “SEC needs to follow the Dodd-Frank mandate and implement the rule without delay.” Since the rule is a legal requirement, the SEC can’t stray from its intent.

Amol Mehra, coordinator of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, said, “Businesses should be held accountable for human rights issues, and investors find these concerns to be material in that they, at the end of the day, affect companies’ image and bottom line. All companies need to do…is simply tell us what is in their products.”

The challenges facing efforts to remove conflict minerals from the global supply chains of major multinationals are significant but doing nothing is simply no longer an option—and that is a point that stakeholders from across the spectrum continue to agree upon.

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China labor condition concerns continue

January 9th, 2012

Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

While China’s labor conditions have remained a mainstay of activist stakeholders’ campaigns and been featured in the international media for years—notably following allegations in 2004-05 about labor practices in manufacturing plants producing products sold in Wal-Mart stores, and reigniting after 10 Foxconn employees committed suicide in May 2010 at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant—some recent stakeholder assessments have found a slow pace of improvement.

Foxconn, one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, employs nearly one million people throughout China and builds products for corporations like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Motorola, and Dell. Mike Daisey, a monologist who performs an Off Broadway show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” in Manhattan’s Public Theater, decided to visit the Foxconn plant recently for a little research to see for himself what the safety and working conditions were, and “what he found surprised him beyond belief.”

“What I was really shocked by was institutionalized dehumanization,” he said. “The systems that are put in place are working and the objective of them working is to work people, basically, to death.”

While most Americans don’t routinely consider the human cost associated with the production of popular consumer electronics products, Daisey firmly believes that Steve Jobs knew of the conditions in which his products were built at Foxconn, as does Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook. “Apple is a company that believes in micromanagement. They pay attention to details,” Daisey said. “There is no question in my mind that they know what conditions are like on the ground.”

For the past two decades, multinational corporations have shipped thousands of jobs to companies like Foxconn in China, taking advantage of cheap labor in developing countries. “Unfortunately in doing so, Corporate America chose to ignore its Western values and high labor standards,” Daisey said. Several of the workers Daisey met had been doing the same tedious job over and over for so long that the “joints in their hands have disintegrated from doing that work…. [Hands] literally swollen, literally deformed [and] permanently warped.”

But the days of the docile worker in China are coming to an end, and the Chinese corporations know it. Workers like Lan Yimin, 22, represent “the new generation of Chinese factory workers,” who are unwilling to settle for low wages and long hours. Lan, who works in a factory in Shajing, China, doesn’t want to “eat bitterness—as the Chinese call it.” With more information at their fingertips, and as China’s economy booms, Lan’s generation knows more about their rights than their parents before them did. “The young generation has a wider social circle; we talk more about factory conditions and we know more about our legal rights,” Lan said.

As Chinese workers fight for higher wages and labor standards by going on strike, the Chinese government isn’t sitting idly by. In recent years China has moved legislatively to mandate better salaries and working conditions “and is now trying to maintain a delicate balance of improving income levels for workers while not scaring away foreign corporations with higher labor costs.”

“If the [Chinese] government does not treat the workers’ struggle for collective bargaining seriously, if it decides to treat these demands as political, then this will turn into a political struggle,” says Han Dongfang, a labor activist who, for his role in the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989, was deported to Hong Kong.

Microsoft has also come under scrutiny for China-related labors concerns with conditions at the KYE Systems factory where Microsoft hardware is assembled for export to the United States, Europe and Japan. Labor rights advocates have raised questions over 15-hour work days and 65 cents-per-hour pay rates affecting thousands of teenage and young adult workers. Employees are prohibited from listening to music or talking. One worker told the National Labor Committee, “We are like prisoners. It seems like we live only to work. We do not work to live.” Microsoft accounts for approximately 30 percent of the work performed at the KYE Systems factory. Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Acer, Logitech and Foxconn also outsource their production to KYE Systems.

Workers at both the Foxconn and KYE Systems factories sleep in dormitories, work long hours and do not get bathroom breaks during shifts.

“And in what must be the best of both worlds for U.S. companies like Microsoft, the workers give the U.S. companies a pass,” the NLC’s report states. “The young workers never think or talk about the foreign companies and put all the blame on the factory. No one has told them how wealthy and powerful Microsoft and the other companies really are.

“Since the young Chinese workers would never dream of making demands against Microsoft or the other corporations, this permits the corporations to tout their codes of conduct while knowing full well that they will never be implemented. It’s all just part of the game.”

Microsoft responded to the NLC report’s allegations of its knowledge of workers’ treatment expressing the company’s commitment to fair labors standards. “Microsoft is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by our vendors. Microsoft has invested heavily in a vendor accountability program and robust independent third-party auditing program to ensure conformance to the Microsoft Vendor Code of Conduct.

“Actions for non-compliance with our requirements may include corrective action plans, remedial training, certification requirements, cessation of further business awards until corrective actions are instituted, and termination of the business relationship. We unequivocally support taking immediate actions to address non compliant activities.”

Foxconn Technology Group has announced plans to replace its human workers with one million robots, a feat that doesn’t sound easy, but it would certainly cut down on worker abuse and remove some concerns about low labor standards. While such a strategy may help get rid of the bad publicity associated with the past two years’ suicides, it doesn’t represent the kind of systemic shift in attitudes on labor conditions and rights that the majority of stakeholders want to see from Chinese companies.

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Global Witness departure damages Kimberley Process

January 5th, 2012
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Global Witness recently made a difficult decision to withdraw from its official observatory position of the Kimberley Process (KP) over concerns the scheme was serving “an accomplice to diamond laundering“—a process by which dirty diamonds are mixed with clean ones en route to international markets. The withdrawal of a key stakeholder from an international process to curb the trade in products used to fund deadly conflict raises concerns not only for the integrity of the multistakeholder process that has driven the KP’s evolution, but for efforts on other supply chain issues such as the trade in conflict minerals.

The KP, which Global Witness helped form in 2003, was initially created due to conflicts in Sierra Leone and Angola where the trade in rough diamonds was used to fund conflict and drive massive human rights abuses, to help regulate the sale of certified rough diamonds and remove “blood diamonds” from the international market.

Global Witness’ main concern ahead of the recent withdrawal was KP’s decision in late 2011 “to allow Zimbabwe to export diamonds from the Marange fields, which has been singled out repeatedly by international human rights stakeholders as an area where local government officials are colluding in extensive human rights violations and national authorities have little interest in cleaning up the practices. The NGO also claimed that KP failed to evolve and didn’t address any “clear links between diamonds, violence and tyranny” during the past nine years.

Charmian Gooch, founding director of Global Witness, said in a statement, “Nearly nine years after the Kimberley Process was launched, the sad truth is that most consumers still cannot be sure where their diamonds come from, nor whether they are financing armed violence or abusive regimes.

“The scheme has failed three tests: it failed to deal with the trade in conflict diamonds from Ivory Coast, was unwilling to take serious action in the face of blatant breaches of the rules over a number of years by Venezuela, and has proved unwilling to stop diamonds fuelling corruption and violence in Zimbabwe.”

The decision by KP helps pave the ways for others like Anjin Investment, a Chinese-Zimbabwean company, to sell millions of dollars worth of diamonds from the country. There have been allegations Zimbabwean army officers hold senior positions in Anjin, and that some high-ranking officials—top military personnel such as Emmerson Mnangagwa, General Constantine Chiwenga of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), and Colonel Sedz—are “involved in the daily management and operations of [Anjin].”

Gooch reported, “Over the last decade, elections in Zimbabwe have been associated with the brutal intimidation of voters. Orchestrating this kind of violence costs a lot of money. As the country approaches another election there is a very high risk of Zanu PF hardliners employing these tactics once more and using Marange diamonds to foot the bill. The Kimberley Process’s refusal to confront this reality is an outrage.”

Anne Dunnebacke, senior campaigner at Global Witness, stated that “the Zimbabwe incident was the catalyst for the organization’s withdrawal,” but that it wasn’t the only reason.

“We’ve been pushing for reform within the process on a number of issues for many years,” Dunnebacke said. “Over the course of the nine years some improvements have been made and we’ve seen instances where reforms have been adopted. But in recent years that has not been the case. There is next to no political will by governments or industry to reform and make it credible.”

Dunnebacke believes that in order for the industry to take action, a different kind of pressure needs to be applied and vowed Global Witness would remain part of broader campaigns to reform the diamond trade. She claims the industry has stepped back with the excuse, “‘We have the Kimberley Process for diamonds, so that’s that—we’ve solved the problem of blood diamonds.’”

Global Witness has 50 participants worldwide, including the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), with more than 70 countries as its members, who “account for around 99.8 percent of the global production of rough diamonds,” and have all “signed the Kimberley Process agreement to adhere to United Nations-backed safeguards on trade” in the rough diamond field.

Farai Maguwu, director of the Center for Research and Development (CRD) that is based in Zimbabwe, believes that while Global Witness withdrawing wouldn’t collapse the entire KP system, it was “a very big blow.”

Maguwu was arrested in 2010 “as an enemy of the state…allegedly for ‘endangering national security’ by holding information pertaining to the Zimbabwean military’s gross human rights violation at Marange’s diamond mines,” but was cleared of the charges after several civil society movements and local and international NGOs lobbied on his behalf.

“The Kimberley Process will never be the same,” Maguwu said of the Global Witness withdrawal. “A very influential member of the Kimberley Process has cast a vote of no confidence.”

Michael Mann, Catherine Ashton’s spokesman for the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, in early December, and after Global Witness withdrew from KP, sent out an e-mail stating that while the KP “may not be a perfect instrument, …it is the best we have, and therefore all parties, including civil society, should work to make it effective.” Mann included, “Abandoning it doesn’t help achieve that common goal.”

The United States became chairman of the KP in the last rotation, a position which was last held by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC’s tenure at the helm was also controversial given that the country is at the heart of trade in “conflict minerals”—tin, tantalum, gold and others—that are the current subject of vociferous campaigning by human rights stakeholders and multistakeholder efforts to address concerns.

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IT for the Bottom of the Pyramid

November 30th, 2011
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

In 2002, C. K. Prahalad and Stuart L. Hart released their book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, a controversial idea on targeting production to impoverished individuals and communities that sparked debates across corporate conference tables in the United States and abroad.

The book’s challenge: produce and distribute products and services that are “culturally sensitive, environmentally sustainable, and economically profitable” to sell to the four billion people at the bottom of the pyramid—those with annual per capita income of less than $1,500. By doing so, some of the world’s wealthiest companies would have to restructure their managerial practices for the new market, and learn to think outside the box in terms of pricing and packaging.

(more…)

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Renesas turns disaster into opportunity

November 29th, 2011
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

When Renesas Electronics’ semiconductor plant in Naka, Japan completely shut down due to the major damage caused by the 9.0 earthquake that struck on March 11, 2011, the company leapt into action on a recovery process that would result not only in the adoption of new business practices but also a renewed sense of community for the company and its employees.

(more…)

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Charting the Digital Planet Revolution

July 28th, 2011
Posted by Juliette Terzieff

The world is changing. A revolution is underway. Driven by a family of technologies that can erase barriers associated with time and distance or raise an individual voice instantaneously onto a global platform, people, organizations and governments around the world are embracing the potential changes this digital revolution can produce. Future 500’s new Tech Planet Journal initiative works to chronicle and shape positive development with broad stakeholder support.

It seems like every day there are news stories from around the world on a dizzying array of topics associated with how the Internet, broadband, microchips and software are changing the way we live and work…

Social media has become more than an outlet to discuss favorite recipes or weekend plans with friends.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube have become tools of the pro-reform masses across the Middle East, Asia and North Africa. When natural disaster strikes millions the world round turn to those same tools for damage assessments, missing persons’ pleas and donation drives.

Humanitarian agencies and NGOs have begun to look at incorporating Internet-based solutions driven by volunteer communities such as Ushahidi, CrisisMappers and OneStreetMap into existing systems of global humanitarian response. Western governments are providing millions of dollars in funding to support technological fixes to help dissenters sidestep government censorship of the Internet and restrictions to access.

Mobile telephones are evolving into more than just a replacement for traditional rotary phones – morphing into a valuable asset that overcomes infrastructure gaps in the developing world.

Across Africa mobile banking has opened up economic opportunities for the urban poor, women and agricultural communities. Farmers in Asia, the Middle East and Africa are able to avoid some of the worst climate change effects by tapping into mobile solutions to get information on weather patterns.

The field of mHealth is exploding with a huge percentage of development focused on using mobile phones to diagnose, track and deliver care. The drive to improve maternal and child health worldwide continues to draw particular focus.

If it seem like a lot, that’s because it is…and actors worldwide – whether they be individual entrepreneurs, NGOs, companies or governments – are innovating and driving additional applications every single day.

Not every innovation will solve the problem it sets out to address. Not every government embraces technology. Not every community welcomes to the openness, and scrutiny, that comes with access.

These are opportunities and challenges the world will need to address as we move through the 21st century.

The Future 500’s new Tech Planet Journal initiative is working to track and shape the revolution – in part by providing a website clearing house of case studies, organizations, tools, services, and reports that document the current and potential impacts of digital technologies on sustainability, prosperity, and democracy.

Come visit the new Tech Planet Journal site…and let us know what you think.

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Cutting Criticism of Forest Protection Effort

July 26th, 2011
Posted by Juliette Terzieff

Environmental and human rights watchdogs often levy criticism against governments and corporations for failing to live up to socially responsibility commitments. But this week Global Witness released a report on the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN) initiative highly critical of failures to adequately screen participating companies for illegal timber and habitat destruction activities.

Global Witness’ report Pandering to the Loggers claims that companies associated the GFTN are using WFF association to bolster environmental credibility while continuing to contribute to the destruction of forests and trade in illegally sourced timber. The report names Malaysian logging company Ta Ann Holdings Berhad, British building supplier Jewson and the Swiss-German timber company Danzer Group as GFTN members involved in human rights abuses or environmental degradation of forests.

“WWF should publicly disassociate itself from any company using timber from illegal or unethical sources. It’s shocking that one of the world’s most trusted conservation groups deems it acceptable to take money from such companies. This investigation raises bigger questions about the underlying strategy and efficacy of such voluntary schemes,” Global Witness Forest Campaign Leader Tom Picken said.

The report’s authors noted that producing a report so critical of another NGO stakeholder that is involved in promoting solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental and human rights issues was a difficult decision. But because the GFTN receives public funds and current strategies to combat deforestation are insufficient, publication of the report went ahead.

The GFTN works to link environmentally responsible producers, suppliers and buyers committed to forest protection through sustainable forest management, supply chain transparency, and product certifications. Over 270 entities – including major international brands Avon, Hewlett-Packard, Kimberly-Clark and Marks & Spencer — representing annual trade in wood and forest-sourced products worth $45.2 billion participate in the 20-year old program.

Global Witness said the network lacks transparency, a system for independent evaluations, and monitoring or enforcement mechanisms, and that membership rules are simply inadequate to prevent abuses. The organization has called for an independent assessment of GFTN rules and effects on the world’s forests.

GFTN officials were quick to respond to the Global Witness allegations by highlighting the network’s contribution to creating a multi-sector standard for responsible purchasing and credible product certification.

“GFTN creates market conditions that help conserve the world’s forests, while providing social and economic benefits for the businesses and people that depend on them,” GFTN head George White said in response to the Global Witness report.

“Of course, some GFTN partners have a way to go on their journey to sustainability. But these are precisely the companies that should be in GFTN, and we applaud their commitments to improving their environmental performance. Companies caught flouting the rules and spirit of GFTN will be removed from the network.”

Destruction of the world’s forests and the long-term environmental implications have united a broad array of stakeholders in efforts to slow the pace of deforestation. The United Nations General Assembly declared 2001 the International Year of Forests noting that 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods and that 80% of the world’s biodiversity is housed in forests.

The overall rates of annual global deforestation dropped from 16 million hectares in the 1990s to 13 million between 200 and 2010 according to the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, but the amount of primary forest – areas untouched by human activity – continues to decline.

Efforts to build on forest protection efforts will ultimately be most successful with the inclusion of private sector actors who help manage local, national and global marketplaces’ demand for forest products. The reality that not all companies are able or willing to shift over to sustainable practices should not erode support for efforts such as the GFTN.

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ITU boosts e-waste, climate battle efforts

May 14th, 2011
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff:

Stakeholders across the spectrum are responding to predictions of massive growth in e-waste and the detrimental effects discarded electronic devices have in the developing world. Major national and international telecommunications firms, for example, committed to developing the first industry standard universal charger to promote efficiency and aid in the battle against climate change, the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Industry (ITU) announced this week.

The new charger upgrades a 2009 universal battery charging system decision by the ITU that eliminates the need for individual chargers for products sold by different manufacturers. This will eliminate the need for manufacturers to sell chargers with each new phone.

With this week’s decision, the ITU expanded the reach of the universal charger to cover cameras, GPS systems, headphones and other lower-power devices. The new chargers will use faster charging currents to reduce charging tomes, and also feature a detachable cable with standardized connectors to allow data transfer. These additions will reduce the number of cords needed, decrease production energy consumption and ultimately impact the amount of waste generated by the industry. ITU officials expect manufacturers to roll out the chargers –which will be produced with eco-friendly materials – by the billions over the next few years.

“Other standards claim to be universal and energy efficient, but only ITU’s solution is truly universal and a real step forward in addressing environmental and climate change issues,” ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said after the decision. “This updated standard will bring the benefits of the universal charger to a wider range of devices and consumers… The environmental impact of wide adoption will be enormous.”

Several major industry players have already committed to the new system, including AT&T, France Telecom-Orange, Swisscom, Telecom Italia and the China Academy of Telecommunication Research. The Geneva-based ITU works with 192 governments and over 700 private sector entities to set industry standards.

Buy-in from industry players operating or based in high usage growth regions like Asia and Africa is paramount for the broadest impact. In China, for example, the growth of the middle class over the last decade has catapulted demand for electronics while domestic energy consumption levels have risen dramatically.

The new standard meets requirements of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal –known more commonly as simply the Basel Convention –according to the ITU.

E-waste –the collective name for discarded or scrap electronics like television, cellular telephones, refrigerators and computers –remains a major campaign focal point for influential stakeholders such as Basel Action Network, Greenpeace International and the Campaign for Recycling.

The world produces around 40 billion metric tons of e-waste every year –with hundreds of millions of tons making their way to landfills in places like China, Nigeria and India. The components contain toxins and heavy metals like mercury and lead which leak into nearby soil and water supplies, and endanger the health of impoverished workers picking through landfills for components to sell.

In late 2010, the United Nations released a report with stark warnings about the growth rate of e-waste in developing countries. India will see a 500% growth in the amount of e-waste in its’ landfills over the next decade, while China and South Africa will see 400% increases over their 2007 levels in the next ten years. The bulk of the waste will not originate in those countries but come from abroad, predominantly the U.S.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives in the U.S. and internationally are looking to address the need for better recycling and waste processing. Companies including Samsung, Capital One, Bank of America and the Apollo Group have signed up as Basel Action Network e-Stewards committing to support the group’s rigorous certification process for responsible electronics recycling. In April 2011 the Consumer Electronics Association pledged to triple recycling rates in the U.S. for e-waste by 2016, to equal one billion pounds of electronics annually, through a combination of public education projects, infrastructure building and recycling enhancement. The industry group’s eCycling Leadership Initiative will look to build national recycling standards to enhance different state-level policies.

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Tapping DRC youth to power change

May 6th, 2011
Posted by Senior Director, Juliette Terzieff: 

Local stakeholders in the Democratic Republic of Congo are working to build local capacity for sustainable change –with an emphasis on the country’s youth and the opportunities ICT tools provide to raise Congolese voices.

“Local organizations on the ground are often overlooked, yet it is through the strengthening of local entities that true change and stability is possible,” says Maurice Carney of Friends of the Congo (FotC).

Local stakeholders face a broad array of challenges in their work. Security across the DRC is shaky, at best, even in areas where armed combat isn’t a daily occurrence. While international efforts to address violence in DRC as it relates to the trade in “conflict minerals” such as tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold have intensified with action from the U.S. government, multinational electronics companies and others, the violence is unlikely to end anytime soon.

Tens of thousands of people have fled eastern DRC flooding into cities like Kinshasa where crime and abject poverty are standard challenges. Corruption and bribery are rampant. The DRC also has a marked lack of infrastructure –from roads, to water supply, to telecommunications.

Yet no one knows better the kind of change needed in the DRC than the people who live there.

And with an estimated 40 million residents under the age of 18, DRC’s youth have the potential to mobilize into a formidable force.

One such program –the Youth Project –being championed by FotC is looking to harness that potential and turn it into real power.

Beginning with one social network cell based out of Kinshasa, a core team of ten Congolese have created the opportunity for young Congolese to tap into the Internet and the array of tools –like Skype, Facebook and Twitter –that are available to help them raise their voices to a global audience. Participants are encouraged blog, vlog or create videos highlighting the issues that mean the most to them. Because many of the participants have little or no experience with ICT tools or virtual community building, administrators provide training and development support that covers everything from basic operation of computers and cameras, to life lessons that emphasize self-sufficiency to push for change.

FotC hopes to see the program go nationwide and is working with the core team to explore ways to make the program itself self-sufficient.

“The reality of the situation on the ground is stark. If the people of the country aren’t empowered to make their own change then the situation will perpetuate…and the youth are key,” believes Carney.

Capacity remains a challenge –with the fledgling network currently reliant on a modem that can connect four computers, and sporadic electricity supply. While the administrators have a generator to use during power outages, finding fuel for it is a constant challenge.

Even though Africa is home to around 400 million cellular telephone subscribers, it remains the world’s least “wired” continent. Research, like this study from the University of Cape Town, shows the relationship between Internet access and economic growth –and as the world has witnessed over the last five months ICT tools can also help power social change.

In addition to their own programs, FotC is lending support to efforts of other local organizations helping put together “Ruined: A Mother’s Day Fundraiser” in Washington, D.C. to benefit two south Kivu-based groups, the Association of Widows and Congo Restoration. The event will feature a performance of the Pulitzer-prize winning play “Ruined,” followed by a panel discussion with the play’s actors and women from the DRC.

The Association of Widows provides a variety of services to the local communities including health care, skill building opportunities and child-care. Congo Restoration works exclusively with war orphans and female victims of violence, providing help with basic survival needs, training and education.

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