Public procurement and transformative solutions: A migration strategy for India’s procurement in the 21st century (Report)

Role: author with Sachin Joshi

Summary: 
This report is an outcome of thought-leadership collaboration between stakeholders in India and Sweden that seeks to spur momentum to ensure innovative and global sustainable development through the mainstreaming of transformative solutions.

The collaboration is based on two national public procurement projects, one in India and one in Sweden. The objective is to explore ways that allow public procurement to deliver economic development, innovation, poverty reduction and global environmental sustainability by supporting transformative solutions. 

The migration strategies include the following elements:
• Establishment of a “migration bridge”: To allow an organization in a structured way to move from current procurement to a situation where they rethink what they need. To ensure that this happens it is important to clarify responsibility within the organization, when in time as well as where in the organization it is best to move from refining current procurement to also re-thinking the way services can be provided.

• A change of reference point: To ensure that use of new transformative solutions is the reference, not current unsustainable practices.

• Cluster support: To encourage new groups of companies to deliver the solutions that are needed.

• Clear goals: To support transparency, identification of best practice as well as evaluation.

• A global perspective: To promote a perspective where transformative solutions can be used by those most in need.

Link to report

The revolution from pre-Kyoto to post-Copenhagen (Article)

Role: author

Summary
To understand the current situation and the opportunities ahead, it is important to understand the different approaches companies have to take for a low carbon development and what kind of behaviour that different organisations and incentive structures promote.

Four different levels of innovation can be identified, see Figure 4. The first level of low carbon innovation is when focus is on incremental improvements that reduce the company’s own problems. This is where most of the attention has been focused by policy makers, NGOs and businesses themselves. The reason for the focus is twofold: it is easily noticeable and understandable. When emissions are

discussed, people usually think about a coal power plant or just a chimney with smoke coming out. This focus makes sense for big polluters and only if incremental changes are needed.

The second level, which has got a lot of attention today, is incremental reductions through out the value chain, including all suppliers, starting from the extraction of material from nature and then also looking at the use-phase & end-use of the products. For most companies which are not the major emitters, it is in these parts where the majority of the emissions exist. Among IT companies, retailers, biotech companies and the manufacturing companies, up to 98% of the emissions cannot necessarily be associated with their own direct impact.

Still it is common for companies to aim for “climate neutral” and offset the emissions as they focus on level 1. This is a reason why offsetting might be one of the worst innovation killers today, keeping the companies on innovation level 1.

The third level is when the company acknowledge that the way they produce

things is not sustainable and instead of trying to improve unsustainable production methods, it develops solutions that become part of the solution. This can be a manufacturer of furniture that becomes a net producer of sustainable bio-energy, or a car manufacturer who builds so many wind power mills as it constructs its manufacturing plant & becomes a net producer to ensure that it puts more renewable energy on the grid than used.

The fourth level, and the most important level for the 21st century, is when the company starts to focus on what it is providing to society through its products and services. The question on this level is if the services the company provides are helping people getting a better life while helping to reduce emissions society2 then obviously the other levels are needed as well. But unless we get more companies to focus on how their core business is contributing to a low carbon economy, it will be impossible to reach the reductions needed.

Some people are afraid that focus on the core business, and solutions that company provides that can help reduce emissions in society, will distract them from the need to reduce their internal emissions. Looking at the companies that have begun to explore this area are almost leading in level 1-3 as well. Probably, because the companies that link low carbon development to their core business, requires a commitment from the CEO and the board. And if one wants to be the company that helps the customers towards a low carbon economy, it is not credible if the company has its own emissions. If anything is true, it is probably that many of the current initiatives that focus on internal emissions are distracting from effort on the higher innovation levels and not the other way around.

Download the full report

Indian Companies with Solutions that the World Needs (Report)

Role: Co-author with Sachin Joshi, Seema Arora and  Shirish Sinha

Summary
This report, ‘Indian Companies with the solutions that the World Needs’, builds on the previous report “Indian Companies in the 21st Century” by WWF and explores in a more detailed manner how some companies in India are understanding and responding to changing sustainability trends through innovation and business strategy.1

The five in-depth case studies and two examples in this report include companies from diverse economic sectors that have varied economic, social and environmental concerns and impacts. Nevertheless, they contain some common threads and lessons that can be applied in different contexts. The case studies capture key initiatives and identify important ways in which sustainability has affected the drivers of business competitiveness and success: access to markets, operational efficiency, access to capital or superior reputation, and most importantly innovation.

Recent years have seen a growing range of economic, social, environmental and governance issues push into the mainstream of politics and business. The priorities for action emerging from a range of summit meetings - such as the G8 and the World Economic Forum - tend to share one common characteristic: they all relate to current market failures or dysfunctions.

While most sustainability challenges – such as income disparity, loss of biodiversity and assosiated impacts - are not new; globalisation has directly or indirectly exacerbated many problems to a degree where many of these questions are now dealt with as matters of global and national security, e.g. climate change and food prices. Information technology is propelling increased awareness about the scope of societal needs and the lack of progress to date by governments and traditional non-governmental organisations. Businesses, civil society and governments, once considered strange bed-fellows, are now working together to resolve some of the most chronic problems.

This trend was implicit in the 2008 agenda of the World Economic Forum annual meeting at Davos, which closed with a call by business, government and civil society leaders for a new brand of collaborative and innovative leaders to address the challenges of globalisation, particularly the pressing problems of conflict, terrorism, climate change and water conservation.2

Business, political and civil society leaders at the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit 2007, called on India to focus on skills development, improving governance, upgrading of education, forging public- private partnerships in infrastructure and addressing environmental degradation and water scarcity to sustain the high growth the country requires.

Download the report

Indian Companies in the 21st Century (Report)

Role: Co-author with Mohmmed Saqib and Rajesh Sehgal

Summary
In a situation where the world requires innovative companies to address
the serious global challenges faced by humanity, including high resource consumption, pollution, population growth, demographic and geopolitical changes, India, with its rapidly changing business environment, may indeed prove to be one of the most important countries on the planet over the next several decades.5

This report shows that there exists significant interest within the Indian business sector in sustainable development and innovative solutions that can be applied to achieve this goal. The approaches utilised in this regard by lead- ers in the Indian corporate sector are well ahead of many of their western counterparts, which are often, and often erroneously, viewed as leaders in the eld of corporate social responsibility (CSR). A number of common denominators exist within the progressive approach of these Indian companies, and these have been collectively referred to by one Indian company as “third generation CSR”.

This third generation CSR is an approach where companies look to ensure that their core businesses deliver sustainable development results. This dif- fers from the rst generation of CSR, that looked at philanthropy as one way of using pro ts, and the second generation that was searching for ways of minimizing the negative impacts of the companies’ operations.

The most important element of the third generation CSR is that it examines the core activities of a company and determines means by which the company can evolve in order to ensure that it contributes to welfare, even if this does not translate into immediate returns. This approach means that environmental and social concerns are the starting point for the business activity, as opposed to being factored in at the end. Rather than compromising on pro t, companies provide information that allows government to proactively change business regulations in order to reward companies which deliver on social and environ- mental objectives, such as reducing the use of natural resources.

Download the full report