Wipro and WWF will work together to support a low carbon economy

Less than six months ago we sat down with Wipro to discuss the structure of a possible collaboration. And now the partnership agreement is signed (left picture show Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro and Ravi Singh, CEO WWF India signing the partnership agreement). The two full days invested in joint strategy work was well invested (as well invested as time can be before the actual results have been delivered). We worked out the more detailed structure and explored different opportunities. It is always a pleasure to participate in processes where the challenge is that there is too many really good projects to work with.

Here is the press release sent out:

Wipro and WWF sign a Partnership Agreement for Sustainable Development

Bangalore, August 6, 2008: Wipro Limited, a leading IT solutions and services company, in partnership with WWF India, one of the largest conservation organization in the country, today unveiled an initiative exploring the use of Information Technology to drive sustainable development – directly dealing with issues of climate change, water & waste management and biodiversity conservation. It is an attempt to develop ideas and actions for sustainable growth based on relevant dimensions of environmental sustainability. The initiative was unveiled in the presence of Mr Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro Limited and Mr Ravi Singh, Secretary General & CEO, WWF India, in Bangalore today.

The initiative intends to tap the synergy between Wipro’s IT Innovation, R&D deployment and systems approach and WWF’s deep expertise in areas of ecological sustainability, catalyzing relevant solutions and leadership in global advocacy.

The two organisations will collaborate in the areas of innovative IT and R&D applications for environmental sustainability. Some of the areas of joint work would be related to IT solutions as drivers for low carbon economy such as virtual meeting enablers, environment friendly ICT products, devices and systems that drive energy efficiency of a variety of economic assets and advocacy for ecologically sustainable standard practices in the IT industry. Other areas of joint work would include optimizing the ecological footprint of Wipro’s own operations and biodiversity conservation through pilots on Wipro’s campuses and WWF priority sites.

Mr.Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro Limited said, “Innovative IT Applications, and relevant R&D Services will be key drivers for becoming a low-carbon economy. Information Technology must play a critical role in catalyzing ecological sustainability”

Mr. Ravi Singh, Secretary General & CEO of WWF India said “We are now in a phase where the unsustainable trend of increased CO2 emissions and overuse of natural resources is undermining the future of the planet. Progressive institutions must move outside their comfort zone and join hands to address this challenge. IT solutions can play an important role in reducing CO2 emissions and we are looking forward to the partnership with Wipro to set an example.“

Wipro has a leading position in Global IT and R&D Services, a significant presence in ultra-pure water equipment and green lighting solutions, and is also offering eco-energy solutions to its clients. Its initiative for communities, Wipro Cares, has taken up biodiversity conservation. Wipro continues to explore how it can play a pivotal role in ecological sustainability.

WWF is one of the leading conservation organizations in the world, working on key areas of environmental sustainability including biodiversity conservation and climate change. WWF believes that role of business and industry is rapidly gaining importance in the area of sustainable development and that it is important to develop partnerships between environmental organizations and B&I.

Wipro runs a corporation wide initiative - Eco Eye, which drives ecological sustainability. It is a comprehensive program that drives increasing ecological sustainability in all its operations, as also areas of its influence. The initiative attempts to engage with increasing levels of intensity with all stakeholders – Wipro’s own employees, partners, suppliers, customers and immediate communities. It will focus on areas such as how to become carbon positive (i.e. contribute more to emission reductions than the company emits), water balance, waste management and bio-diversity. WWF will be a key partner for Wipro in the Eco Eye program.

WWF India through its Climate and Energy Programme, aims to bring in a paradigm shift towards climate smart development. A core element of the programme is to look at resource smart solutions for ecological sustainability and low carbon economy. The programme will work in strategic partnership with Wipro to bring a transition towards low carbon development path.

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This partnership is another sign of how fart things are moving and the kind of innovative approach some leading companies in the emerging economies have. I really look forward to this project. I actually started to work on a possible report on the plane back from India as I hope we will have results ready for the India Economic Summit and NASSCOM CEO Summit, more later.

Low Carb(on) food - Rating restaurants around the world

About 25% of the climate impact from an individual is due to our food habits. Compared with energy use from buildings and transportation [that require significant structural changes that an individual can do little/nothing about] this is an area that almost everyone in the OECD - and rich people in emerging economies like China and India - can do something about.

Skip meat (start with red meat) or at least reduce it drastically, is probably the easiest and most ethical you can do as an individual. (See Scientific American for example, a vegetarian in the US emits one and half tonnes less CO2 than a meat-eating American)

Changing habits is not easy and eating and the very idea of phasing out meat can feel close to impossible if you want to keep your quality of life and have been meat all your life. This brings me to the responsibility of the restaurants. They set trends and provide people with opportunities to try new things. They also have time to think about the food they serve as professionals. By supporting people’s opportunity to eat more ethical and low carbon food they have the opportunity to support the transportation towards a more sustainable and low carbon society.

One campaign that could highlight the situation around the world could be to measure the “climate friendliness” among restaurants in key metropolitan areas around the world. A simple six level rating system could be used where average numbers for different cities (or even parts of cities) could be compared. By looking at the menu (in many cases this can be done on the web, making this campaign pretty easy to realize)

The rating system for restaurants:
A. Climate footprint provided for all dishes, non veggie dishes are indicated on the menu instead of indicating the veggie dishes and handing out veggie recipes : 6 points
B. More than three veggie dishes: 3 points
C. At least two dishes and not more than one of the three below: 1 point
D. One veggie dish, not any of the three below: -1 point
E. Only one of these: Salad, Pasta, Risotto: -3 points
F. No main course: -6 points

In India right now and there would be very many B restaurants and the opportunities for A as the marking of “non veggie” dishes are almost standard.

Two other things I would like to explore:
1. Rate TV programs and web pages by leading chefs from a climate and ethical perspective. How much do you help people and the planet, and how much do you destroy, by following the recipes from Jamie Oliver compared to Martha Stewart?
2. Develop an electronic climate guide for buying food that can help compose low carbon dishes.

PS
The most important is, and this must never be forgotten, what you do at work or together with other (too many politicians and business leaders duck their responsibility and think "individuals" or the "market" should move first. Stuck in a system that keep people depending on cars and living in energy consuming houses that is hard. Wired had an article about "the man" showing how much CO2 that is due to the infrastructure, can't find it but I think it was around 8.5 tonnes per person [here is the article].). Big changes require big coordinated actions. Changing governments and companies is what we need much more than change of light bulbs. If the planet depend on it governments should ban old light bulbs and responsible companies stop selling them, not asking people to chose between this and a million different things. But food is emotional so if people start thinking about food maybe things can start to happen?

The governments in Denmark and UK both have green IT strategies now

Interesting to see how the world is moving toward a perspective when IT is seen as an opportunity. Denmark has an action plan and UK have a Green IT strategy to encourage more sustainable use of IT. Denmark even encourage export of low carbon IT solutions to countries like China and India.

Would be good to do a quick survey around the world to see who is doing what. Japan is leading the work in many ways, but there might be other countries with interesting work going on. I wrote a suggestion for the Swedish Government together with Ewa Thorslund from the Swedish confederation of IT companies three years ago I think, still valid and the Danish Action Plan actually include a few of the key recommendations we had. The recommendations are quite obvious so might just have done that without looking at the work we did.

As the work continues on an EU level it would be interesting to see how the commission could get its act together and show some leadership.

Here in India Tata Communication “announced the launch of its Telepresence services, the first ever offering to deliver both private and public Cisco TelePresence rooms to businesses across the world. This groundbreaking service will enable a broader ecosystem of connected rooms for enterprises and their partners” earlier this month. Would be interesting to calculate the potential CO2 savings from this initiative. Here is the link to the press release on Tata's homepage.

Futurecast 2020 by Robert Shapiro

The subtitle of the book is “a global vision of tomorrow”, but this is really a boring book when it comes to visions. A more correct subtitle would be “a mainstream presentation of business as usual slightly more progressive, but not much, than George W Bush”… but maybe that subtitle was too long…

The reason I read to book, and many with me I guess, is that Shapiro claim to have been the advisor to many of the significant Democrats lately. My thought when I read this was that I hope Obama will keep Shapiro very far from any role where he can influence the US policy if he becomes president. Maybe the reason for Al Gore’s poor performance as a vice president was partly due to advisors like this?

It is so US centric and free market simplistic that is hard not to laugh in many places. I would not recommend this book as I think all the things Shapiro tries to do have been done much better in other book.

Two things could make a quick read of this book useful:
1. It is interesting to see the global consensus that is emerging in certain areas and where we most certainly will see discussions and changes in the years to come. Two examples:
- The very poor shape of the US economy and what will happen with the deficit, the demographic challenge [but ignore his suggestions for ways forward as they are more of the same and just create more problem further ahead].
- The need to approach the energy issue from a political perspective, not a simple supply and demand that many economists still do.

2. To understand how certain people cling to a worldview that does not work any longer, but instead of changing the worldview they want to change the world (or turn it back) so it fits with how they think it should be.

Affluenza by Oliver James

Affluenza by Oliver James is not really a book, it more like a collection of short stories and emotional outbursts (that are structured in a good way). The format is not my favorite and I think the book could have been 50 pages instead of 500 pages (but I know that people love reading about other people in a ‘gossip format’ and if this tabloid strategy make more people read this is might be worth the prize). Among the 500 pages there are enough interesting observations and concrete suggestions to make it a worthwhile reading exercise. To have concrete suggestions is very rare and something that makes the book more interesting than 95% of the books out there “only observing” the state of society.

The main argument in the book is that we now have a society, that is spreading globally, that only wants “simple satisfaction”. This global hunt for more is not only destroying the planet it is making many of us feel bad. It is not just the occasional day when people feel “down”, but something much deeper that is going on. James travels around the world to meet different people and use their stories to discuss different aspects of “Affluenza”.

The end result is not too far from Kalle Lasn and Adbusters, but James also add a little conservative touch by promoting more traditional family value.

The four root causes Oliver identifies are however structural and something that I think will be increasingly discussed the coming years.

1. Companies only looking at the share price
2. Privatization of public utilities
3. The belief that business need as little regulation as possible and that the rich don’t need to pay tax
4. The conviction that consumption and market forces can meet human needs of almost every kind.

To highlight these as (at least possible) fundamental challenges to our wellbeing, and at the same time also give concrete suggestions forward, is something more authors should try.